It is official: Availability Management is more important than Capacity Management. September 28, 2009
Posted by ivankamenken in business, itil, itsm.Tags: availability, capacity, Internet, itil, technology, Telstra
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Today I decided to work from home as I needed to get a couple of things done urgently. And for most of these tasks I needed to be online.
A few weeks ago we switched our internet providers because our old provider – although very stable – only offered ADSL in our area. And the new provider offers ADSL2 – with promises of faster speeds due to larger capacity capabilities.
So here I was today… all ready to start my important jobs – and then: I couldn’t log onto the internet, it just dropped out.
And it has been online/offline for the remainder of the day… Very annoying!
Luckily I have my plan B – as I know availability of internet services is important to me: I have my mobile internet solution. And this is what I used pretty much all day. Thank goodness for Availability Management and the proactive insight to have mobile internet where-ever I go.
It’s nice to have high speed internet – it’s nice to have maximum capacity – but it’s of no use to me when it is not available!
Why The Australian Taxation Office needs to improve its Demand and Capacity Management. ITIL anyone?! March 17, 2009
Posted by ivankamenken in itil, itsm.Tags: capacity, capacity management, Demand, IT Service Management, itil, service management, the art of service
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OK – here’s the deal:
On Saturday I received an email from the ATO (Australian Taxation Office) notifying me that I need to renew my digital certificates. These digital certificates are important as I can’t do my company tax, payroll tax and Sales Tax declarations online without them.
It is now Tuesday and so far I haven’t been able to renew the certificates due to a number of reasons:
- The ATO application only seems to work on Internet Explorer. My laptop defaults to Mozilla Firefox so the initial attempt to renew ran into an error code…
Not too worry, I’ll re-run the renewal in Internet Explorer… or so I thought: - The website didn’t work on Internet Explorer and I had to send 2 requests for support before somebody contacted me this morning with a known error:
The Skype add in to Internet Explorer has to be upgraded as this is incompatible with the Java Applet that the ATO uses for the digital certificate renewal process.
OK… I think I get it… and lucky me: it worked! That is…. it worked for 1 certificate! Now – I need to do 2 certificates and the process started again:
“General Process Error – An unexpected Error has occurred. Please contact your service desk for technical support” - So I called the Service Desk again… And you know what the answer was? (you’re going to LOVE this one!)
A lot of people are trying to use the renewal system at the moment. The server can’t cope – can you try again later?!?!
WHAT THE?!
Hang on – let me get this straight: the ATO sends renewal notices to a number of business owners (I now suspect I wasn’t the only person who received the email on Saturday). But when these business owners actually renew the certificates, the server can’t cope???
ITIL Demand Management and Capacity Management 1-0-1:
When you send an email to 100 people asking them to renew their certificates…. you need to be able to deliver this service to 100 people – in the unlikely event they ALL decide to renew their certificates at the same time!
If you don’t want this for whatever reason….(I can understand that this might be cost prohibitive) stagger or tier the notification process so you can manage the demand for the service… you can do this! You can schedule emails to go out on different days to alleviate the demands for service and spread it out over a longer period of time.
Maybe the ATO needs some TLC from The Art of Service… 
I’ll be happy to have a chat to them over a coffee. I’m sure we can work something out and make this world a less stressful place for business owners!
ITIL Service Strategy: Demand Management, and the top 4 resistance you can expect during implementation January 25, 2009
Posted by ivankamenken in itil, itsm.Tags: business, capacity, Demand, IT Service Management, itil, ITIL expert, ITIL V3, itsm, management, project, service management, SLA, the art of service
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Every process that you implement into the organization, will initiate some form of resistance. A large component of your project planning should revolve around communication, education and awareness. It is through these activities that people in the IT organization AND in the business units start to understand what Demand Management is trying to achieve.
It may take anywhere between 6 months and 2 years before people start to actively believe and evangelize about the benefits of Demand Management, keep that in mind!
Some potential reasons for resistance are listed below:
- Difficulty to produce a service before the demand materializes.
Developing products and keeping them in stock is easy: as long as you have a manufacturing process and the warehouse to store it. With services this might be more difficult. For services you not only need physical assets, but also the capabilities of Human assets. In order to prepare for the delivery of a service you need to train, up skill or employ people with the desired skillset. When the demand is not there yet, these people might feel frustrated because they can’t do the job that they were promised. - Aligning Capacity Production cycles to PBA (Patterns of Business Activity).
This is also a potential area for resistance as the Business processes might be fluctuating more than initially expected. With the help of Demand Management you spend a lot of effort in aligning the Production cycles to (what you think is) the PBA, but all of a sudden the business activities change. This also may lead to frustration of staff members and you will hear the catch phrase “I told you so… this new process doesn’t work!”
- Customer resistance to Demand restrictions
Potential resistance doesn’t only come from within the IT organization, but you can also expect some to come from the business side. Especially since most of the communication around demand and business activities has been between the Business Relationship Manager and the Customer…. Most end-users won’t necessarily have been involved in this process but they will be affected by the potential demand restrictions that are a result of these discussions. This form of resistance can be managed by strong communication messages to all stakeholders, including end-users. - Loss of business growth due to too many restrictions
One of the possible challenges that you may face is that the Demand Manager will be a bit ‘too enthusiastic’ about the way the process is implemented. The process and associated controls go from one extreme to the other (being from no formal demand restrictions at all to too many restrictions). The pendulum needs to swing to a happy medium where the business is supported in its growth strategies by appropriate demand restrictions and controls. This issue won’t happen as clearly when the Service Level Packages are clearly aligned with the desired business outcomes.
Does ITIL still cover all Service Management aspects when you utilize Cloud Computing? January 22, 2009
Posted by ivankamenken in cloud computing, itil, itsm.Tags: capacity, capacity management, cloud computing, IT Service Management, itil, ITIL V3, ITIL V4, SaaS, service management, SLA, the art of service, virtualization
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This week I have been engaged in an email discussion on the subject of the limits of ITIL when it is used in a cloud computing environment. Should there be an extension to ITIL specific for Cloud Computing environments? (hey – idea, just thought of this.. we could call this ITIL V3.1 or ITIL V4… just kidding!).
Following is the summary of some of the emails we exchanged as I thought that it might give some food for thought for other people who work in this space.
The question: where does ITIL fall short in a Cloud Computing environment?
My initial response is: no-where… but let me think about this a bit more
This is an interesting question as it links in to two (and probably more) factors:
- Do you see ITIL as an operational framework, or as a component of IT Service Management as a whole
- Do you see cloud computing as a collection of various internet / virtual based IT services?
Cloud computing is more than only desktop or server virtualization although most organisations are working with Cloud Computing concepts in this context. Cloud computing is also Software as a Service, Platform as a Service and Storage as a Service, as well as Web based (hosted) database and application services.
When you continue on this train of thought, you can also think about WHERE the ITIL framework is being utilized: at the delivery side of cloud computing services, or at the receiving side of cloud computing services?
OK –first scenario: Let’s assume that we are part of an IT organisation that DELIVERS Cloud Computing Services (and SaaS in particular). Which areas of ITIL are not coherent with this delivery model? Myanswer is easy: NONE.
All components of ITIL are of interest and importance as the SaaS is a service delivery to external customers so you need to consider all phases in the lifecycle from Strategy to Operation and CSI.
You will need to have controls and management structures in place to build a sustainable IT infrastructure that has the ability to deliver the Software Services as per the agreed Service Levels. You probably need MORE controls because you always have the unknown factor of the ISP or internet connection to deal with.
Second scenario: Virtual server environment as part of a data centre that utilizes ITIL processes for Service Management controls. The ‘boxes’ still have to fit in with the overall service offering, you still need to manage their entire lifecycle. Capacity management and Configuration Management are extremely important as automated sniffing tools might have some issues with an accurate overview of the Configuration Items.
I fully agree with the fact that is only the process component of IT Service Management, and there is a whole lot more to managing your IT Services in a consistent and quality way than to simply look at the ITIL books.
In fact – most ITIL implementations fail to deliver any value and measurable benefits because of the isolated focus on ITIL and not ITIL in the context of IT Service Management.
So we absolutely agree on that point!
I have attached the first few pages of one of our Cloud Computing publications – it might inspire you!
ITIL is by no means the holy grail to fix all problems within the IT industry, but the point that I was trying to make is that it shouldn’t make a difference how and where you get your service components – the delivery management controls should stay the same!
Mind you – I am not looking at this from a technical point of view.. I agree that at a technical level a lot of the activities will be (slightly) different, but when you approach this question from a Service Management point of view it stays very much the same.
Even the RACI diagrams for most roles will be unaffected by the introduction of cloud computing services.
______________________________________ end of email _____________________
One of the reasons why I feel so strongly about the need for ITIL Service Management processes with appropriate levels of control and coordination is because I have been at the receiving end of a SaaS service provider who clearly didn’t have those controls. And I can tell you from personal experience that this is highly frustrating!
I am sure I will be writing about this more often…
ITIL Capacity Management and Financial Management working together to block business processes December 5, 2008
Posted by ivankamenken in business, itil.Tags: capacity, connectivity, cost, Demand, finance, Internet, IT Service Management, itil, ITIL V3
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I just checked into my hotel in Rio de Janeiro – great location: close to the beach and not too close to the busy streets. As I have to deliver a presentation tonight I wanted to do some work in preparation, so I asked the girl at reception about the internet connection. (normally I have to ask for a cable as I don’t carry one with me)
No problem with the cable as it is wireless internet so she gives me the userid and password for the connection. I am happy as my business processes can continue from my mobile/virtual office. But that happiness quickly vanished when she shouted at me – just before I stepped into the lift on my way to my room – “oh, and internet is charged at $0.20 per minute”
WHAT?!
Wow – that’s a bit steep!! In most hotels it is either free, or you pay anywhere between $18 and $25 per day for connectivity. But 20 cents per minute? Most of my business processes rely in some shape or form on internet connectivity! So that will cost me $12 per hour?! I had to swallow really hard to accept that. But there was no option – it’s this or no internet at all…
So while I walked on the beach it got me thinking: we talk within the ITIL processes of Capacity Management, Demand Management and Financial Management about financial constraints to channel business usage of IT services. But never should it lead to our business people taking walks on the beach because they get really nervous everytime another minute passes and they know they have to pay for it.
Remember – charging models have to be simple, realistic and FAIR. I fail to see how these principles are applied in this particular hotel.
Over and out – I’m turning off the internet now.. this blog has cost me $2.00 already!
Will ITIL V5 still have Capacity Management as a process? Or is it replaced by Cloud Management? October 17, 2008
Posted by ivankamenken in cloud computing, itil.Tags: business, capacity, cloud computing, itil, itsm, technology
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This was the discussion I had with Rob England (IT Skeptic) and Eric Lauzon (CIO – Asia for Nortel) during the networking cocktail party on Monday.
That morning Eric had explained how Nortel transitioned their IT strategy. This was needed partially due to the way the world is changing and turning towards hyperconnectivity. Examples of hyperconnectivity he gave are the 4-fold increase of Internet commerce transactions, the amount of new facebook registrations each day and the NIKE wifi shoes. Eric also discussed how Nortel implemented a unified communications strategy where the desktop is completely integrated with telephony (voip) and other cool things.
In the afternoon there was a panel to discuss the balance between capacity, resource and cost.
Anyway – those were the triggers for the discussion.
So with our rapidly changing industry and the fact that this change is not just the change in technology, but also the change in customer demands and expectations – are we really going to need Capacity Management in the future?
Clients want access to an IT service and they want it NOW – this is what they are used to in the consumer technology market… and with the options of Cloud Computing, SaaS, virtualization and other web-based services we can pretty much deliver everything our clients want…. within their expectations for timeframew… so why bother with capacity management?
Well – because you still need to have an idea of where the company is going; what are the corporate objectives, what is important to the bottom line of the company, what type of service are they going to need in the future? So you will probably always need to do Business Capacity Management (the future looking part of the process).
The nitty gritty part of the process – the routine activities of monitoring, measuring and analysing utilization and performance of individual components will probably not be as important anymore in the future. All that stuff is dealt with at the supplier side. The ‘cloud’ … you don’t control those components so you don’t need to perfomance manage them.
The internal IT shop will need to manage the performance of the web-based services –> the outcomes of that service, that is! So a much closer link to Service Level Management than we currently have. And probably closely linked to supplier and vendor management as we currently know it in outsourcing situations.
So I don’t think the process will be eliminated or deleted from the framework, but the activities to be performed will change. You can’t stop the control activities but you can eliminate a lot of the operational activities.
Interesting times coming our way!
