ITIL Puts Data Center Management On Right Track

Tom Bishop, CTO of BMC Software, which markets ITIL-related products, tells the story of a Wall Street firmthat fired a security manager for closing a port in a firewall that wasn't supposed to be left open. The security specialist didn't realize that an IT staffer was using the port to connect a trading application to traders, and revenue was lost when the port was closed and the app failed. Use of the port for the trading application hadn't been authorized by an IT manager nor documented by the staffer. According to ITIL principles, the wrong man got fired, Bishop says.

Rigorous ITIL practices will eliminate 60% to 90% of unplanned downtime, says Dennis Drogseth, an analyst with Enterprise Management Associates. But imposing standard practices is easier said than done, because IT professionals like the technologies with which they're familiar. When one person documents a best practice, naming tools and technologies, and they aren't the ones another staffer uses, resistance sets in, Drogseth says. "Who they are and how they work is closely allied to the tools they use," he notes.

Sprint's Montross picked people who were respected by their peers to lead his initial ITIL project and rewarded them for executing it well. "Some staff members say, 'Oh, this is just the flavor of the month,'" he says, "but overall, the favorable reactions have exceeded my expectations."

BRITISH ROOTS

ITIL began as project sponsored by the British Office of Government Commerce to raise standards in British IT operations by providing guidelines for existing benchmark standards such as the British BSI 15000, which became the basis for ISO's 20000, which sets standards for IT as a managed service. ITIL also heeds other standards in its guidelines and best practices, such as the Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology, a set of best practices to ensure auditable, accountable systems.

The basic ideas have been around for about 15 years and have slowly gained currency in the United Kingdom, as well as in Europe and Asia, where about two-thirds of large businesses have adopted the principles. About a third of large U.S. companies have started to adopt ITIL principles, Drogseth says, and another third have heard about them.

Along with BMC, several other companies market ITIL products. Software that manages user issues and code change management systems typically runs from $25,000 to $35,000; service accounting systems are $55,000 to $60,000; and configuration management databases $100,000 to $125,000.

Sprint is a good example of the need for ITIL. With a variety of systems and network management tools (including CA's network troubleshooter CA Spectrum; Voyence's network configuration tool, VoyenceControl, sold by HP; and Lucent's network services manager, VitalSuite), Sprint couldn't rely on the tools to do things in a standard way. Furthermore, voice services managers who've been around a while did things in a way that was different from the processes of younger, more aggressive data managers, making telecom service convergence an awkward internal goal.

In 2007, Sprint will replace one of its last legacy data warehouse systems. "It doesn't meet the purposes we require today for supplying our level of [voice and data] communications services," Montross says. Replacing such warehouse systems with ones that are ITIL compliant sits well with customers.