Managed IT Services

The key differentiating factor between the success and failure of a project,

says a well known CIO, is that you understand, define and create an agreement on

the deliverables at the start itself, with both your suppliers as well as your

customers. And, IT infrastructure according to this CIO has everything to do

with IT-h/w or s/w, LAN or WAN. Once you consider that the IT in your

organization is a supplier and the other parts of the enterprise are its

customers, you will discern that you need a function or solution or process to

happen from your desktop and the IT needs to provide for it. You do not care if

the LAN is down or a printer is under repair. Therefore, your expectations for

the delivery of service from your IT must be setup and agreed upon.

You can outsource the entire IT project, its implementation, products,

sourcing, maintenance and so on to an outside party on a revenue sharing basis

(BOOT -Build, Own, Operate, Transfer basis). This operator would set up the

whole thing, run it for sometime and eventually hand it over to you to run.

These contracts are fairly long term, to the tune of 10 years and longer and the

deals are worth huge amounts of money. In fact, organizations can choose how

much of their infrastructure they want to outsource. It is important to select

the right MSP (Managed Service Provider) to work with. When you do decide to

outsource you will come across several technology terms. We'll explain those

here.

CMDB



CMDB stands for Change Management Database. This is an ITIL based process for
managing change in processes/workflows as well as configuration. 'Configuration'

does not deal with just the configuration of servers, desktops/workstations,

networks and so on, but refers to the configuration of your IT with the

definitions of how each element of it interacts (and iterates) with every other

element. Change management starts when an IT user requests a change and

continues till the point that the change is finally made and the request ticket

marked 'closed'. A part of this process may also involve risk modeling and

analysis of how that change might affect the business or the business processes.

After that, accounting of the resources required is made and the change is

implemented. Management of processes involves efficiently marshalling the steps

in a workflow and dynamically guiding it.

IBM's Tivoli Change and Configuration Management Database and Mercury's

Universal CMDB among others help you perform C&CM efficiently and

transparently. These products feature automatic discovery of current

configuration (using agents that communicate over secure channels) and a

workflow-based process to track and manage the change processes. These software

also maintain the information in a centralized database and generate various

kinds of reports out of it. Similarly, ZENMetrics from the UK based 413

Technologies is an agentless configuration and change discovery system. It can

monitor network infrastructure, device and software configuration.

Service Impact Modeling



When you manage your IT as a service, how do you pinpoint some part of it and
ascribe a value of profit or risk to it? You require a modeling tool that can

let you model the entire orchestration and a business vis-à-vis IT service

impact intelligence. And this needs to be placed in-stream without creating

ripples in the existing environment. An SIM toolkit (from the likes of BMC

Software) gives you real time service-specific views and reports and lets you

trip alarms and implement remedial steps when something unexpected is detected.

This data is picked up from CMDB data stores.

Federated Data Model



In a federated model, data is marshaled according to the entity or area it is
attached to. One would use an FDM with a CMDB implementation so that specific IT

assets can be attached to their respective accounting, SLAs, POs,

troubleshooting tickets and so forth. Such a structure can increase the

responsiveness of your IT and helps with compliance. It provides for an easier

and quicker view of your IT assets and what technologies are being tied in

where, enabling you to control critical changes more accurately. The FDM can

also help reduce information silos, reducing unexpected results when changes are

made.

Business Process Modeling



Using UML (Unified Modeling Language), one can assess the enterprise business
architecture and its internal relationships including organizational structure

and data. BPM is used within the company to model various entities, information

capture and release points and explore the relationships and requirements versus

delivery to find out if optimal processes are being followed. In tune with this,

there is an organization called the BPMI that overseas standards being evolved

for business process management. So far, the sub-group Object Management Group

has adopted two standards, viz. BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation) and

BMM (Business Motivational Model). Further a specification called the SVBR

(Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules) has been adopted.

Shared services



This is a popular trend in managed services. You go in for outside management of
your IT to decrease your OpEx. When an MSP can create a common pool of resources

for its customers and provides its services out of that pool, the cost of his

operations from that pool goes down. This is subsequently passed on to you.

Multi-play Networks



Enterprises go in for WANs because this offers them a dedicated pipe between its
offices, data centers and other points of presence or commerce. WANs also let

the enterprise enjoy the additional benefits like utilizing the extra bandwidth

available for VoIP. The SBI Connect network implemented by the Datacraft for the

SBI Group lets SBI switch to VoIP for calls between all their branches rather

than go through the PSTN network. This reduces the cost of operations on non-IT

areas (like communications).

Other favorites include managed voice services where an MSP provides the

enterprise with VoIP along with security features, redundancy and quality of

services. ISPs in India are providing such services on a pay-per-use model.

Similarly, rather than setting up your own infrastructure for VPN services, an

MSP can provide you connection end-points while managing the 'how' of it

transparently. Common SLA parameters include round-trip times, supported

protocols, security, redundancy and reporting.

Managed Applications



This is not about managing updates and patches. We are referring to the
management of enterprise/business applications. The new model seems to be SaaS

(Software as a Service) where the application is hosted with an ASP (Application

Service Provider). In such cases, the background of the application, its

upgrades, maintenance and so on, is completely transparent to the user

enterprise. The most successful player in this field is the CRM service

provider: SalesForce.com. SalesForce.com

have evolved a partnership model where partner organizations like TCS, Wipro and

Satyam (in India) provide customized versions of the application to their

customers. These customizations can range from simple style sheets and skinning

to complete reconfiguration of the modules involved to different conditions and

customizations for particular industries.

Not only do these MASP (Managed Application Service Providers) manage their

own applications, but some of them like HP and IBM can also manage your SAP,

Siebel and PeopleSoft applications. Here, the application consultant (MASP)

works with you on understanding your problems and demands of the software and

tries to solve them by releasing custom modules and patches. MSPs can pull in

their expertise and manpower from similar other projects and come out with even

their own releases of the application that better suits your need.