3rd International Week on Management of Networks and Services End-to-End Virtualization of Networks and Services Manweek 2007, October 29-November 2, San José, CA, USA
IT service management automation - An automation centric approach leveraging configuration control, audit verification and process analytics
Naga Ayachitula1, Melissa Buco1, Yixin Diao1, Bradford Fisher2, David Loewenstern1, Christopher Ward1
1IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, United States 2IBM, United States
Abstract. People, processes, technology and information are the service provider’s resources
for delivering IT services. Process automation is one way in which service providers can reduce
cost and improve quality by automating routine tasks thereby reducing human error and
reserving people resources for those tasks which require human skill and complex decision
making. In this paper we propose a conceptual methodology for IT service management process
automation in the area of configuration control, audit verification, and process analytics. We
employ a complexity model to assist in identifying the opportunities for process automation.
We recommend and outline an automated approach to the complex task of variance detection of
the hierarchically defined Configuration Items in a Configuration Management Database
(CMDB) against the Configuration Items in the IT environment. We also recommend the
integration of this automated detection with human centric remediation for resolving the
variances detected and outline an automated approach to the variance detection.
