Background
The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is an Information Technology (IT) management framework that provides practices for Information Technology Services Management (ITSM), IT development, and IT operations.
ITIL gives detailed descriptions of a number of important IT practices and provides comprehensive check-lists, tasks and procedures that any IT organization can tailor to its needs. ITIL is published in a series of books, each of which covers an IT management topic. The names ITIL and IT Infrastructure Library are registered trademarks of the United Kingdom’s Office of Government Commerce.
So where do solutions from 1E fit into this? As outlined above ITIL is very prescriptive, it’s basically a set of processes that are underpinned by tasks and procedures. Due to the technology agnostic approach of ITIL it doesn’t really specify what solutions you could potentially use to achieve the objectives of each process. However if we look closely we can see 1E Solutions can, and do, contribute to the aims and objectives of a number of ITIL processes.
Availability Management
“Availability Management organisations to sustain the IT service-availability to support the business at a justifiable cost. The high-level activities are Realise Availability Requirements, Compile Availability Plan, Monitor Availability, and Monitor Maintenance Obligations.”
Nomad:
Nomad integrates with Microsoft Configuration Manager and ensures software packages and updates are deployed in a robust and reliable manner with minimal impact on any underlying services. Having your systems patched and updated is critical to ensuring they meet some of the objectives of the Availability Management Process namely, Reliability, Maintainability and Serviceability. The really clever thing is due to its efficient use of only the available bandwidth it doesn’t have any impact on any other network connected services or programs already running on the client machines.
1E Agent:
The Wakeup component of the 1E Agent ensures that client machines can be woken and are available to be patched or ready to conduct day to day business. You can schedule and stagger the machines being woken up so your Network availability is not affected by all your machines joining the network at the same time thus helping keep Security Authorities and Directory Services free to deal with other requests.
Capacity Management
“Capacity Management supports the optimum and cost-effective provision of IT services by helping organisations match their IT resources to business demands”
Nomad:
Nomad fulfils the cost-effective part of the statement above by deploying Nomad you can eliminate the need to have lots of Server Class Hardware that is usually required to store software packages and updates for download on remote sites.
1E Agent:
The NightWatchman aspect of the of the 1E Agent helps with capacity management by ensuring that systems are gracefully hibernated, slept or fully shut-down thus saving power both in terms of fiscal and carbon. As clients are no longer using Server and Network resources these resources will be able to carry out their day to day operational tasks like batch processing or system or data backups. As these tasks have more capacity available to them they should complete more quickly thus eliminating the risk of Tasks running in the next business day.
Software Asset Management
SAM is defined as “…all of the infrastructure and processes necessary for the effective management, control and protection of the software assets…throughout all stages of their lifecycle.”
AppClarity:
AppClarity leverages Microsoft Configuration Manager to instantly obtain an accurate picture of all deployed applications and their usage. It enables you to gracefully reclaim those unused licenses so you can reallocate or reduce Audit liability.
Shopping:
Through the use User and Computer Categories you can effectively control what Users have access to in Shopping. This ability to control what users are entitled to order and therefore download and install fulfils the aspect of controlling and protecting your Software Assets from misappropriation of Software to the wrong users.
Financial Management for IT Service
“The three core fundamental tenets of FMITS are Accounting, Budgeting and finally charging (which is optional)”
AppClarity:
AppClarity will enable you to fully account for all the Software that is deployed and in use and also not in use in your environment, enabling you to have informed input into your forecasting and budgeting.
1E Agent:
Due to the many reports available in the NightWatchman Management Centre report console you can accurately account for the monetary cost of power consumed for each individual computer. This information will contribute to you fully understanding the true operational cost of each computer and the whole estate.
Shopping:
Shopping enables users to Self Service their own Software and Services, however you can apply approval chains and charges for each Software application and Service. You can even rent out licenses. The reporting gives you the ability to understand what users and departments have shopped and deployed. This can help with accounting and forecasting for future Budgets.
Service Desk / Request Fulfilment
Tasks include handling incidents and requests, and providing an interface for other ITSM processes
Shopping:
Shopping gives users the ability to order software, hardware and services from one central point. Your Service Desk will be able to take these orders and action them accordingly. This is giving your Users more choice in the way they wish to interact with IT but in a controlled and accountable manner. Also the open integration of Shopping API’s enables you to let your native Service Desk interact act with the Shopping workflow.
