Information Technology infrastructure Library (ITIL) Implementation Report

Introduction:

Sage IT was established by David Sage in 2008 and he is the CEO of the Sage IT now. The Sage was incorporated as a Private Company Limited in 2011. In 213 the Sage Became 1^st public Listed company in Auckland as a purely IT based company. The Sage IT serves with 2 major industry branches. In all of areas, The Sage has experienced exponential growth. The CEO of Sage IT limiter, David Sage has appointed Jim Cosby as Sage IT’s new CIO (Chief information officer). David Sage replaced the old chief information officer to manage the growth of this area. As first Sage was only providing services such as assembling computer and selling them but with the growth of their success, they also started giving software development programs and computer training programs. As mentioned, is case study Sage is lacking management plans so Sage is having issues. So, to solve those problems Sage wants a report on how they can implement ITIL in their IT infrastructure can solve their issues. This report will evaluate the risk and the issues of the Sage and how establishing and implementing ITIL can solve those problems and can prevent issues from happening.   

Task 1:

ITIL:

Information Technology infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a framework designed for standardizing the planning, selection, maintenance and delivery of IT services within the Business. The goal of following ITIL is to achieve predictable delivery service and improve efficiency. Rather than being just a back-end support, IT administrator can be a business service partner with the ITIL framework. ITIL guidelines align IT department expenses and actions to business needs and modify them accordingly their business shifts or grows. (Rouse, 2017)

The ITIL’s goal is to improve how IT supports and delivers valued business service. ITIL is nit just process management or security management. ITIL also focuses on improvements of the capabilities of processes, technology and people. ITIL provides value to an organization, its capabilities and resources, including customers and employees.

Benefits of implementing ITIL in Enterprise:

• IT costs reduction
• Implementing best practice to provide improved IT services
• Delivers required guidance and standards
• Productivity enhancement
• Enabling businesses to manage failure, interruption and risk
• Implementation of skills ad experience in an improved way
• Providing a stable infrastructure for helping business with growth, change and scalability

Figure 1: ITIIL Service Lifecycle

The ITIL framework is divided in 5 core categories

• Service Strategy
• Service Design
• Service Transition
• Service Operations
• Continuous Service Improvement

Service Strategy process:

This process is involved in development of service concept. And its also involved in enabling the service selection that is to be provided. It also includes to check if the requests from users are being fulfilled. Also, to check if the failures of services are addressed and get resolved in time. (Comodo, 2016)

Service Design Process:

this phase deals with the design of the services. While designing a service four ‘P’ should be ideally considered. These four ‘P’s are Processes, People, Partners and Products. Following are the management process that are involved in Service design. 

• Service Level Management
• Availability Management
• Service continuity Management
• Capacity management
• IT security management
• Operational Level Management

Service Transition

In ITIL this process pacts to make and implement IT services. Its also used to ensure if the changes that are made to services are completed in a defined and an planned way.

Service Operation:

this includes some processes such as monitoring the services, categorizing the events to decide the most suitable actions, manage the lifecycle of incidents, provide instantly solutions to the requests of service etc.

Continual Service Improvement (CSI):

This phase of ITIL lifecycle focuses on implementing techniques from management to understand successes and failures that happened before. This phase also delivers processes to IT organizations for evaluating and enhancing the technology implemented and the effectiveness of the management of services (Comodo, 2016)

Risk assessment:

Figure 2: Process Risk Assessment

It’s a term used to describe the methods or processes to identify risk factors and hazards that have potential to harm company’s production processes and services. Risk assessment also includes analyzing and evaluating the risk that are associated with those hazards. This process is called risk evaluation or risk analysis and it’s a part of Risk assessment. Risk Assessment is useful to determine and analyze the risk and their level that are associated with specific processes. Implementing ITIL doesn’t eliminate the Risk so having a Risk assessment is necessary if anything goes wrong. James Cook Sage IT’s IT director explained a risk assessment which focuses on service delivery. This assessment also includes the loss and gains of making any decisions. They also developed workshops so that departments can recognize the risks that can be there with different initiative. (ccoh, 2018)

Task 2:

Organization dynamics is behavior of employees in the company which may affect various business aspects. There is a common issue that organizations invest in development and resources more than its required. Organization to achieve their target they should align IT requirements of their business with business practices. Scenarios shows that Sage company provides marketing, selling and computer assembling services. Sage also started software development and computer training branch and it requires to utilize some application often. Sage align their business techniques by implementation of ITIL in their structure to provide those services with preventing effects of organizational dynamics. Jim Cosby the CIO at Sage IT Limited said that his key objective is the implementation of IT functions that is built by utilizing the best practices of ITIL.

According to Jim Cosby Sage lacks a resourceful entity to make decisions and to correctly accept the decisions that has been made. Jim Cosby can establish a great working relationship with their external and internal audit department because he has worked with ITIL at the previous position. Following are the goal which were provided by Jim Cosby

• IT activities with highest risk area needs more focus. There will be more opportunities in the improvement of processes if organization looks in details in IT infrastructure.
• IT infrastructure needs governance. The Sage lacks steering committee to make decisions. Most decisions of The Sage are made by only considering short-term benefits and this costs Sage higher budget than what was decided
• Lot of money is spent for IT infrastructure still there are not proper return of these investments. These investments are considered as company’s asset so these should be company’s value

To get the best practice of ITIL for the Sage, Sage should implement ITIL’s 4 P’s model. Without getting effected by dynamics of organization it can get ITIL’s best practice. These 4 P’s are Products, People, Processes and Partners. When it comes to providing best service to customers and employees, these all should be considered.

Below is the explanation how these 4 P’s are important for ITIL.

People: Employees are the central part for an organization. If the organization has resourceful employees, they can achieve best result of deployment, development and operations. the relationship between customer and service provider plays and important role for the organization. If the employees are not understanding the needs of customers, it can end up in unwanted service development and company lose. This will the wastage of time and resources. (Watts, 2017) 

Product: here the product is referred as the service provide by the organization. For this scenario the product is assembling computer and selling them provided by the Sage. The other products are software development and computer training. These services should get balanced with performance, cost and functionality. This process requires committee for decision making. So, to establish that committee ITIL could be proven to be helpful. (Watts, 2017)

Processes: Process is to give input and turn it into an effective output by utilizing all the tools, technologies and roles. A Decent process requires proper control and staff to control it. Thus, it can run efficiently and effectively. Does not matter if an organization has manual or automated process, it should be supporting the services once customer uses them. (Watts, 2017) 

Partners: as mentioned in scenario Sage is facing competition from other companies providing services to customers in same field. To survive this competition in the marketplace Sage needs to develop a partnership with stakeholders so that they can get external resources for their processes and services. So, for that establishing a partnership with an organization on good term can be helpful for both companies. Without any partnership on them on it will be hard for an organization to provide proper service and survive the competitions. (Watts, 2017) 

Task 3:

The Sage’s business and growth is getting effected by the amount of root issues Sage have in their IT infrastructure. In the interview the member of Sage has discussed some root issues. Below are the list of issues and their solutions.

1. Issue: the scenario explain how Sage is lacking in aligning their IT infrastructure with their business goals. Because of this nonaligned issue Sage is facing issues by not providing expected satisfied service to customer and as there are so many companies in market which provides same services so its important to be better at providing these services to survive this competition.

Solution: implementing ITIL can be helpful for this solution as it can provide good strategy for aligning Sage’s IT infrastructure and Business strategy. This can help Sage company so provide best service possible to customers.

2. Issue: The Information Security Director Sarah Winston mentioned in the interview that for not Sage is lacking in enforcement components and monitoring.

Solution: there is a security committee with all IT department head at Sage that establish standards and policies. Security threats can be expected as the monitoring influence of Sage is not enough strong. The CIO of Sage, Jim Cosby is planning to implement the ITIL in their business and IT infrastructure which will help Sarah to make a monitoring committee is its necessary.

3. Issue: Due to lack of finically savvy management system the Sage is facing financial problems.

Solution: The Sage invests in IT infrastructure, hence its better to have a partnership with stakeholder companies thus Sage can grow a joint portfolio of application. Both companies will be providing some resources, so it be proven as cost effective. Development of IT infrastructure with vendor-based system can be beneficial as a long period of time even though it takes more time. 

4. Issue: The CEO of the Sage David Sage mentions that currently Sage IT has less return on investments. This is causing them losing more money than required.

Solution: this low return on investment are happening because of the Sage do not manage their assets properly. As mentioned in the interview with Jim Cosby the investment is an asset for Sage. The possible solution for this issue is to focus on Long term profits rather than short term aids. To prevent the wastage of resources Sage should implement a system which can decrease the redundancies.

5. Issue: In regards of technology Sage IT is not up to date. Both Auckland and Hamilton branches use same application, but they are using different units.

Solution: In term of technology The Sag should be up to date so that I can be cost effective and provide better service. James Cook mentioned that its possible to save $1Billion if they virtualize and integrate their system.

6. Issue: Sage currently is not having aligned enterprise strategy and aligned IT strategy. Sage is also currently lacking a management risk program too.

Solution: Sage can lack performance in providing good service considering business goals and clients as Sage’s IT strategy is not aligned with their enterprise strategy. Jim Cosby the CIO of the Sage mentioned that by implementing the ITIL into their system they will align these strategies. Addressing the issues that has occurred will be also their as implementing ITIL will also establish a risk Management program.  

7. Issue: As the Sage IT department isn’t following the budget properly, the risk assessment initiative was not perfect foe the company.

Solution: IT director of Hamilton Branch James Cook discusses in interview that the department was over budget in some aspects and they were also late in order to provide that service. Some of these services were under budget. To solve this, there would be a appropriate implementation model which development team should follow to work on their service with being close to customer needs and their budget. 

Conclusion:

As Jim Cosby the CIO as Sage IT Limited discussed the Sage IT should incorporate with ITIL v3 in their IT infrastructure. Implementing ITIL will help Sage to improve their Service provided to customers by modifying their IT infrastructure and implement the required committees and processes. I have discussed in report that the ITIL will provide best service the Sage can get to solve and face their issues. So, for general the ITIL will be useful to align Sage IT’s IT infrastructure and Business strategies. I have also mentioned the risk assessment to prevent the problems from happening.

References

• ccoh. (2018). oshanswers. Retrieved from oshanswers: https://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/hsprograms/risk_assessment.html
• Comodo. (2016, 11). OneComodo. Retrieved from OneComodo: https://one.comodo.com/itil.php
• Rouse, M. (2017, 09). techtarget. Retrieved from techtarget: https://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/definition/ITIL
• Watts, S. (2017, 06 20). BMCblogs. Retrieved from BMCblogs: https://www.bmc.com/blogs/four-ps-itil-service-design/