ITSM implementation three moves [case]

At present, the implementation cost of mature ITSM solutions abroad is relatively high, so that some IT departments that are cost-sensitive have become a vacuum zone for ITSM implementation. For the implementation of ITSM (IT service management) in the early stage in China, China Southern Airlines's ITSM implementation path is a reference.

China Southern Airlines IT environment

Among the major airlines, China Southern Airlines has a complete and comprehensive IT system. After 7 or 8 years of rapid construction, China Southern Airlines now has 11 major systems and many small systems. It has a large number of developers and maintenance personnel and 200 employees in the computer center; it has multiple data centers, only in the Central Data Center of the office building of the old Baiyun Airport, there are more than 300 minicomputers, high-end servers, fiber-optic storage devices, multiple storage devices, switches, tape libraries, and other devices, including more than brands such as IBM, HP, sun, and Dell; and database, firewall, network management and other management software.

For a variety of applications, the company uses several series of software products of a well-known company. These products have rich functions and each product has its own system and has its own console.

All production, operation, and daily operations of China Southern Airlines are closely related to computer information systems. The quality of IT services has affected all aspects of the company's operation.

China Southern Airlines computing center data department is responsible for managing all core servers. Although there are only a few system administrators, it is necessary to manage and maintain a large number of hosts, devices, databases, core software, and business systems, and ensure the normal operation of 7 × 24 hours.

In terms of software applications, although several software products of a well-known company are used, each software runs independently, resulting in Information separation and mutual tracing, this makes it departments less efficient to manage, and many decisions cannot find quantitative data support.

In the face of complicated network, storage and other application systems, the IT department's tasks are rather arduous. Personnel in the IT department are still playing the role of a "Fireman.

Traditional IT resource management cannot take full advantage of the overall IT resource performance and functions, and cannot achieve efficient and business-centric IT management. Obviously, implementing the ITSM system can simplify it management.

Fast, easy, and standard

At present, the implementation of mature ITSM products abroad requires tens of thousands of yuan of investment. How can we implement ITSM when we are not prepared for large-scale investment or the scale of a single department is not suitable for such a large investment? How can we perfectly combine advanced management modules with users' actual needs and management habits?

In my opinion, this is not only a confusions of China Southern Airlines, but also a serious problem that many domestic enterprises and IT departments are facing.

After extensive discussion on the implementation path and method of ITSM, China Southern Airlines finally regards fast implementation, ease of use, and standardization as the goal of system construction.

Because it is not a large-scale ITSM system construction, we must ensure that the implementation cycle is short. Only in this way can we quickly see the results.

Only by following the ITIL theory can we quickly upgrade and meet future needs when demand increases. In order to enable the system to be quickly promoted and applied, the Web approach can shorten the learning and use cycle of personnel and reduce the training and promotion costs. Therefore, China Southern Airlines computer center developed the system based on the popular B/S architecture and outsourced the development process to a company specialized in ITSM system development and implementation, instead of purchasing large foreign systems.

With this goal, we plan to implement and put the entire system into use within two months.

Assigning personnel responsibilities is the foundation

ITIL is process-oriented. In the process of process execution, it is necessary to reasonably group and define the personnel using the system and facing the system. That is to say, the existing organizational structure and IT service methods must be re-evaluated to define efficient and concise organizational structures and roles, and then define service processes.

Since there are only 11 people in China Southern Airlines computer center data department, we divide the personnel into three levels: first-line personnel, second-line personnel, and Manager Personnel. First-line personnel must handle basic transactions, events, and faults immediately at the service center. Problems that cannot be solved are escalated to Level 2 personnel and higher level personnel in special circumstances. Add the duty manager role to control the operation of the supervision process.

We have clearly defined the responsibilities and skill requirements of each role and level, so that all information can be tracked and managed completely, and the overall service management will no longer be out of control due to a link error.

It refers to the IT management network structure of China Southern Airlines computer center data department, as well as the organization structure of personnel groups, and describes the basic troubleshooting process. The dotted line indicates the reporting or monitoring process, and the solid line indicates the transaction processing process.

The core is to design ITIL-compliant processes.

With a sound organizational structure and goal positioning, it is necessary to build an ITSM System Based on the ITIL theoretical model and with the process and SLA (Service Level Agreement) as the core to use these processes, the entire IT service is used to achieve the ultimate IT management goal. We have extracted the following ITIL processes for implementation:

1. Service Center Management: provides a unified web portal. Maintenance personnel can query, manually input, and track events and faults at the helpdesk service center.

2. Event Management: network faults and security events are automatically triggered into the event database. Events manually added are also handled.

IT staff can quickly locate events by classification and find handling methods and suggestions based on historical information and knowledge base. for problems that exist, transfer to the problem management process.

3. problem management: establishes a problem handling process between the first-line, second-line, and manager, and tracks the process to manage all problems in an orderly manner.

4. Change Management: if some devices and servers need to be changed, hardware upgrades, software installation, and other changes, the system records and tracks the changes. Ensure that each change is recorded and approved properly.

5. configuration Management: the asset management module of a company automatically collects a list of all the company's equipment and installation software, add device data that is required by business management but not collected by management software. Manually process some devices and add configuration items (various devices and Information) by machine name) makes the management of assets and devices clear.

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Implementation Experience

First, we need to fully understand the core ideas of itil. In the implementation process, you can implement some of the most necessary modules and processes based on the actual needs of the Department-level and initial ITSM systems, and avoid copying the complex processes of large enterprises.

It is not necessary to completely imitate the forms of ITIL modules, but to reorganize and integrate them according to ITIL ideas and the actual situation. It is a key part of system implementation to study the business needs of enterprises, review their resource configurations, adjust their organizational structures, and define processes.

Event/fault management and service center are the most effective processes. Other processes can be selected based on their own needs, the level of demand, and the enterprise's own resources and organizational structure. They can also be customized or increased based on specific business habits, or subtraction, or combination.

The key to building an ITSM System in isolation is to integrate existing systems. A lot of information comes from existing systems. Therefore, it is critical to integrate the data of existing management systems. Otherwise, the system will produce repeated data input, resulting in inconsistent storage of multiple information.

During implementation of the China Southern Airlines System, the interface program integrates data from multiple existing software modules to automatically collect data and form historical data for the data analysis module.