HomeinsightsITOM can now realise the promises of ITSM
governance & service management
ITOM can now realise the promises of ITSM
Gil Regev, Olivier Hayard & Alain Geerts · 8 de octubre de 2024
context
The ever increasing digitalisation of our service infrastructure makes us dependent on a myriad of IT components for the accomplishment of tasks from the most mundane to the most mission critical. From buying bread at the local bakery to being treated in an emergency room through the purchasing of a train ticket, we have become sensitive to the most minor of service disturbances. Who wants to miss their train and therefore their all important meeting just because the smartphone app is now unable to complete the financial transaction? Who wants to get a repeat surgery because their patient data is just now unavailable in the operation block?
All organizations, small to large, private to public, are now concerned by these service guarantees that must match their stakeholders expectation. Not only has the bar been raised on the expectations side, the technology stack, or rather, network, has seen a comparable increase in complexity. The term ITOM was coined a few years ago to designate this backbone that maintains the IT Service Management frontend (ITSM) where stakeholders expectations are met and value is created.
You might wonder why a new term is needed. Don’t we have enough concepts with ITSM, DevOPS, AIOps, SecOps etc? The simple answer is that IT vendors needed an all-encompassing term to designate the many organizational and technological parts that together enable ITSM. ServiceNow, one of the ITSM market leaders[1], lists the following apps and capabilities for its ITOM module [2]: Discovery, Service Mapping, Certificate management, Firewall Audit and reporting, Service Graph Connectors, Configuration Management Database (CMDB), Agent Client Connector, Event Management, Metric Intelligence, Health Log Analytics, Cloud Accelerate.
DevOps, AIOps, SecOps and the apps and capabilities of a vendor’s module are the components of ITOM. The simplified and global picture is therefore of ITSM as stakeholders-facing (customers, suppliers, employees) and ITOM as the hidden infrastructure (or backbone) that enables it. See Exhibit 1.
Looking at this picture you might think that this is yet another bag of things with a name, but there’s more to it than that. ITOM is all about the integration of the apps, capabilities and practices, with AI as a main enabler. To understand the possibilities offered by this integration let us consider a few examples.
configuration management
How can you efficiently create and maintain a trustable CMDB that is both correct and complete? With the Discovery module you can identify the state of your CIs (the territory) and to compare it with what it should look like (the map). The Service Mapping module enables you to automatically register the dependencies between your services with your CIs. It also has semi-automatic capabilities that suggest possible dependencies that are then validated manually. Some other dependencies must be made completely manually. Service Mapping can then propose automatic tracing of the route from an entry point (a user request, a URL, an API). Your CMDB is likely spread across multiple applications (e.g. monitoring tools such as Dynatrace, or vulnerability assessment tools such as Tenable) each using different CI identifiers. You can use Correlation IDs to identify a given CI across the applications in which it is referenced.
incident and problem management
The integration of authoritative sources (CMDB) provides you with the CIs that are to be monitored for automatic incident record creation with respect to events such as lack of drive space or memory in a VM. Once an incident occurs, what help can you get for investigating it? Event Management integrated with your service graph, which in turn is dependent on Service Mapping and CMDB, can help you to determine the most probable root cause so that the relevant people are alerted. This helps you to avoid exhausting your experts with incidents that do not concern them and getting them to work on those that are the most urgent and important. Problem Management is also about being proactive in preventing incidents. With ITOM you can provision the resources needed for your services integrating your Service Graph and CMDB with VMWare for proper configuration. You can then automatically monitor and configure the VMs through VMWare, e.g. increase memory or processors in response demand spike.
security
To maintain a secure IT landscape, even for a small or medium size park, you need automatic patching, updates, as well as vulnerability, obsolescence and intrusion detection (e.g. Tenable). Some of these features are provided by the vendors of individual components, such as OS and drivers, but what about forward looking, proactive management? What about managing the lifecycle of your security certificates and licenses so that they don’t expire and create service disruptions? What about the management of interactions that can bring down a sensitive service at the worst possible moment? How would you guard yourself against a critical VM that has decided to update just at the most congested weekend of the year? If a zero day vulnerability affects your software or hardware, you want to be alerted immediately and forcibly so as to possibly change your change request priorities. But you don’t want to be alerted by even zero day vulnerabilities if your IT park is not affected by it. You don’t want to be woken up every other night by an alert just to discover that it affects software that you don’t have. ITOM helps you by integrating the capabilities of Discovery, Service Mapping, Certificate Management, Firewall Audit and CMDB to identify threats and intelligently filter them by their potential impact on your service portfolio. The examples above are drawn from our experience helping IT departments to deliver this value to their stakeholders.
The promise of ITOM is that the integration and automation of its capabilities with the use of modern development and operations processes and tools can help you to deliver the value you always expected from your ITSM initiatives.
Footnotes:
[1] Acknowledged as such by Gartner and Forrester Research
The authors of this insight are Gil Regev – Senior Manager at Knowledge Management Dpt, Olivier Hayard – Head of Knowledge Management & Alain Geerts – Head of Governance and Service Management at Itecor.
¿Por cuánto tiempo quieres ocultar la barra de herramientas de accesibilidad?
Perfiles de Accesibilidad
Modo de Discapacidad Visual
Mejora los elementos visuales del sitio web
Perfil Seguro para Convulsiones
Elimina destellos y reduce colores
Modo Amigable para TDAH
Navegación enfocada, sin distracciones
Modo de Ceguera
Reduce distracciones, mejora el enfoque
Modo Seguro para Epilepsia
Oscurece colores y detiene el parpadeo
Módulos de Contenido
Tamaño del Icono
Por Defecto
Altura de Línea
Por Defecto
Módulos de Color
Módulos de Orientación
En nuestro sitio web utilizamos cookies para ofrecerle la experiencia más relevante recordando sus preferencias y visitas repetidas. Al hacer clic en "Aceptar todas", consiente el uso de TODAS las cookies. Sin embargo, puede visitar "Configuración de cookies" para dar un consentimiento controlado.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Las cookies funcionales ayudan a realizar ciertas funcionalidades como compartir el contenido del sitio web en plataformas de medios sociales, recoger opiniones y otras características de terceros.
Cookie
Duración
Descripción
__cf_bm
30 minutes
This cookie, set by Cloudflare, is used to support Cloudflare Bot Management.
__hssc
30 minutes
HubSpot sets this cookie to keep track of sessions and to determine if HubSpot should increment the session number and timestamps in the __hstc cookie.
Las cookies analíticas se utilizan para entender cómo interactúan los visitantes con el sitio web. Estas cookies ayudan a proporcionar información sobre las métricas del número de visitantes, la tasa de rebote, la fuente de tráfico, etc.
Cookie
Duración
Descripción
__hstc
1 year 24 days
This is the main cookie set by Hubspot, for tracking visitors. It contains the domain, initial timestamp (first visit), last timestamp (last visit), current timestamp (this visit), and session number (increments for each subsequent session).
_ga
2 years
The _ga cookie, installed by Google Analytics, calculates visitor, session and campaign data and also keeps track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookie stores information anonymously and assigns a randomly generated number to recognize unique visitors.
_ga_JYCPSB48B8
2 years
This cookie is installed by Google Analytics.
CONSENT
16 years 2 months 25 days 10 hours
YouTube sets this cookie via embedded youtube-videos and registers anonymous statistical data.
hubspotutk
1 year 24 days
This cookie is used by HubSpot to keep track of the visitors to the website. This cookie is passed to Hubspot on form submission and used when deduplicating contacts.
Las cookies de publicidad se utilizan para ofrecer a los visitantes anuncios y campañas de marketing relevantes. Estas cookies rastrean a los visitantes en los sitios web y recopilan información para ofrecer anuncios personalizados.
Cookie
Duración
Descripción
IDE
1 year 24 days
Google DoubleClick IDE cookies are used to store information about how the user uses the website to present them with relevant ads and according to the user profile.
test_cookie
15 minutes
The test_cookie is set by doubleclick.net and is used to determine if the user's browser supports cookies.
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE
5 months 27 days
A cookie set by YouTube to measure bandwidth that determines whether the user gets the new or old player interface.
YSC
Session
YSC cookie is set by Youtube and is used to track the views of embedded videos on Youtube pages.
Las cookies necesarias son absolutamente imprescindibles para que el sitio web funcione correctamente. Estas cookies garantizan las funcionalidades básicas y las características de seguridad del sitio web, de forma anónima.
Cookie
Duración
Descripción
__hssrc
Session
This cookie is set by Hubspot whenever it changes the session cookie. The __hssrc cookie set to 1 indicates that the user has restarted the browser, and if the cookie does not exist, it is assumed to be a new session.
_GRECAPTCHA
5 months 27 days
This cookie is set by the Google recaptcha service to identify bots to protect the website against malicious spam attacks.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-advertisement
1 year
Set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin, this cookie is used to record the user consent for the cookies in the "Advertisement" category .
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional
11 months
The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy
11 months
The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Las cookies de rendimiento se utilizan para entender y analizar los índices clave de rendimiento del sitio web, lo que ayuda a ofrecer una mejor experiencia de usuario a los visitantes.