IBM Integrated Services Management and cloud computing

While the corporate side and the user community have long endorsed a service based philosophy, many IT organizations are just beginning to adopt the guidelines behind service management and its benefits. With the success of process rebuilding, IT departments (and their customers) are beginning to realize that they are providing and using services, rather than just providing access to technology. As a result, traditional systems management procedures have evolved, with many discussions surrounding the proper role of IT service management, and there have been a number of publications to illustrate this. It and IT services are now described in different ways. Itinfrastructure library®v3 (ITIL V3) defines service management as "a set of specialized organizational functions that provide value to customers in the form of (IT) services." "1 people agree that superior service management is critical to maximizing the benefits of an enterprise's information technology investment."

Recently, cloud computing has become a common way to deliver valuable and supporting business services for it. Customers and end users access the IT service directory through the Self-Service portal and use and pay services whenever and wherever they want. For many enterprises and their IT organizations, the adoption of cloud models is a way to improve cost efficiency and effectively achieve support for IT business. Integrated service management is essential for delivery and even access to a cloud-based environment.

While most traditional IT service management disciplines still take a sound approach, the cloud-based service delivery model emphasizes the essential capabilities in a new way. Cloud services can have multiple sources, and CIOs must integrate and manage these services transparently to customers and end users. Integration is key to success in a cloud environment because of the need to coordinate the actions of partners, vendors, and customers to align with the Enterprise's IT strategic intent. The need is also evident: integrated service management is increasingly important in the cloud environment. In fact, it is essential.

This article defines the important aspects of integrated service management and cloud computing and describes their symbiotic relationships. Just as power and computing are inextricably linked, integrated services management and the cloud are now a matching pair. IBM has learned a wealth of lessons about how to combine them to achieve the best business results at the lowest level of risk.

Setup phase: Service Management is ...

If you scrutinize service management at a higher level of detail than ITIL V3, we find that service management is a whole of the following: regulatory, process, role and responsibility definitions, automation tools, and the information and best practices needed to integrate and operate available resources to produce valuable services and respond quickly to the needs of the business and its customers in the legacy environment and cloud environment. The scope of service management includes expected business requirements, service portfolio management, Service lifecycle management, service operation, and continuous improvement. Service management involves the collaboration of creating value between the customer and the user community and the provider and the vendor community. This means exceeding infrastructure management and providing business service management.

The task of integrated service Management has finally been recognized as a key success factor in enterprise information technology. Integrated service management enables organizations to deliver innovative business services by delivering a higher level of visibility, controllability, and automation, beyond traditional IT service delivery management to business service delivery. Integrated service management extends the traditional conceptual IT infrastructure into an infrastructure that includes many smart devices, such as smart meters and flow controllers, in highly automated networks. These devices work together to generate business services that support technology. Integrated service management sees IT management processes as a special form of integrated business processes, rather than "the rest of the business", so the same technologies and values that are provided to business processes through integrated applications apply equally to IT management processes. Integrated service management tailored to specific industry requirements and business situations is the latest IT management evolution step that enables organizations to:

Integrates the processes, organizations, and technologies needed to support the current and future business that supports it
Promote broad use of well-defined policies to support fast and accurate responses
The basis for analyzing critical real-time information and the ability to quickly make decisions based on rapidly changing global market demands is integrated service management that links the entire business, including IT management, directly to the technical resources it needs.

Service Integrator Role

Integrated service management encompasses business, IT, and partners. CIOs advocate for the effectiveness and innovation of all business infrastructure technology elements, not just the traditional business services directory that supports it. The Service Integrator role is formally delegated the privilege of enforcing supervision, ensuring good management of relationships and continuing responsibility for maintaining End-to-end service performance. Service integrators must also promote organizational change that can quickly increase employee productivity and bring a culture of cooperation, all within the context of managing a complex, multi-source environment. Individuals or teams that perform this role must respond quickly, without organizational boundaries, and act decisively.

Cloud computing is ...

Cloud computing is becoming an important model for delivering valuable business services that support it. It is a model that enables and supports a specific style business model and a specific user experience. Provide users with cloud computing applications, data, and IT resources through self-service portal sites. The requested service is delivered transparently through the network. The cloud, like its generic term, provides economies of scale and flexible purchasing options. Another part of this emerging construct is the infrastructure management approach used to manage a large number of highly virtualized resources. These virtualized resources can be located in multiple locations, but are still executed as a single large resource to provide services. Figure 1 illustrates the relationship between virtualized resources and various service types. Basic cloud services can be grouped into four categories. In the public cloud management platform, business support Services (BSS) is used to support identification, order management, and billing and subscriber management capabilities related to consumers and end-users. Operational Support Services (OSS) are used to support the successful delivery and operation of cloud services.

Figure 1. IBM Cloud Computing Reference Architecture

The IBM Cloud Computing Reference Architecture highlights how service management functions and services are built into a "cloud" environment, linking the business to the technical resources it needs in an integrated service management manner.