Implementing business service management - from concept to reality

Businesses are fast identifying the importance of business service management (BSM) as they evolve their infrastructures to more tightly align with, and support business goals and objectives. BSM is touted as the `next big thing` in enterprise management.

The foundation on which this approach rests includes mapping information and communications technology (ICT) to the businesses, modelling end-to-end services and building executive dashboards. A four-step approach in partnership with software vendors and system integrators will allow businesses to take BSM from an abstract concept into a powerful reality.

It might seem simplistic, but a good way to start implementing BSM is to establish which areas `management` wants to manage. The question to ask is: what are the key internal or external business services, processes, or transactions that the organisation cannot live without? As many early-adopting customers have discovered, this question is best tackled a little bit at a time.

Instead of adopting a `change the world` strategy of implementing BSM across every definable service and process from the outset, BSM-savvy enterprise IT managers require their organisations to prioritise and rank the business services that are the most critical to manage from a BSM perspective. For example, long-time Netcool customer EarthLink launched its BSM initiative around a few specific business-to-IT alignment challenges.

Its priority list read as follows:

* Link real-time customer subscription levels (IT data) with sales forecasts (business data)
* Link system downtime information (IT data) with contact centre call volume (business data); and
* Link scheduled system downtime (IT process) with ITIL change management initiative (business process).

In essence, EarthLink chose to hone in on three primary business services: subscription-based revenue, customer call centre volume, and its ITIL change management initiative -- with plans to bring more business services, processes and transactions under the BSM umbrella over time.

Once management has selected the services they want to manage, the next questions for the company and its various internal and external audiences is: `What do you want to see?` How should information be depicted onscreen? As a workflow diagram, a hierarchical model, a pie chart, or a balanced scorecard?

To verify all or a combination of these data views, a company will first need to decide which key data points must to be included, and know where this data resides. In the views you are trying to construct, know the purpose of the audience: will they be observing technical data about the infrastructure, revenue or bookings data, or manufacturing or customer support statistics?

Key to the success of any BSM implementation is to be able to access and visually depict exactly what data an internal and external audience wants to see, and knowing exactly how they want to see it. Software that can access and extract data from external data stores, such as customer databases, inventory databases, or provisioning and billing systems, is fundamental to success. Flexible, portal dashboard devices and graphical widget tools are also imperative, enabling you to build BSM dashboards "to spec" within your organisation.

Once the business has established what they are trying to manage and how they want the corresponding management screens to look, the next obvious question is: "How will I know when something`s going wrong?" This is where the real yeoman`s work resides in any BSM implementation. Underlying virtually every business service, process or transaction in an IT-centric organisation is a complex set of interdependencies that span the network, systems and applications layers of the infrastructure. Determining the dependencies that underpin a critical business service requires applying both automated and manual data-gathering processes across multiple data sources. Today`s IT-based business services run across wide-area networks, distributed server environments and Web-based applications. Building a true dependency model requires understanding and linking the unique attributes and behaviours of each of these infrastructure layers.

Although BSM solutions will inevitably become more automated, packaged and "out of the box" in their ability to map and depict dependencies across infrastructure layers, it would currently be misleading to suggest that every component, connection and every possible data route underlying every complex business service or process can be mapped out in a completely automated fashion.

The key to achieving this step is utilising software tools that enable simplified, wizard-based mapping and modelling of business services and processes. By applying automated discovery tools, accessing external data stores and unlocking employee knowledge, it is possible to build powerful, accurate service dependency models that trace problems from the high-level service all the way down to the offending component or connection.

Last but not least, deriving an accurate picture of business services requires `instrumenting` as thoroughly as possible the underlying network, systems and applications on which these services depend. Instrumentation means installing probes, agents or monitors that scan constantly and collect instantaneous data about potentially service-affecting problems, such as outages, capacity problems, transaction latency or quality degradation. A service model that is not supported by broad instrumentation will suffer from critical information gaps that obscure accurate problem diagnosis and resolution.

While instrumenting the infrastructure is possibly the least glamorous aspect of implementing BSM, this is the solid foundation upon which true BSM solutions must be built. Huge volumes of data should be collected, consolidated and correlated at the instrumentation layer and distilled into high-level "dashboards" or snapshot views all the way up at the visualisation layer. In its purest form, a BSM solution might be as simple as a red/green indicator button or a lone statistic depicted in a top-level screen. But this `view from the top`, however simple it appears, depends for its value upon the constant stream of data being delivered upward from the instrumented infrastructure.

In summary, following the four steps delineated above will help businesses transform business service management from a concept to a reality within your own organisation.