White paper on IT Operations Management from ServiceNow

1. IT
Operations
Management:
A
Service
Delivery
Primer
White
Paper
IT Operations Management:
A Service Delivery Primer

2. IT
Operations
Management:
A
Service
Delivery
Primer
White
Paper
Agile Service Delivery Creates Business Value
Today,
IT
has
to
innovate
at
an
ever-­‐increasing
pace
to
meet
accelerating
business
demands.
Rapid
service
delivery
is
essential
–
new
business
services
and
service
upgrades
must
be
rolled
out
in
weeks,
not
months
or
years.
This
delivery
pressure
is
driving
the
adoption
of
agile
development
and
continuous
integration
approaches
that
include
DevOps,
Scrum
and
Kanban
initiatives,
which
are
now
replacing
traditional
waterfall
methodologies.
Public
and
private
clouds
have
increased
the
agility
and
flexibility
of
IT
infrastructure
itself,
abstracting
away
the
complexity
of
hardware
and
software
stacks.
This
fundamental
shift
makes
IT
an
equal
partner
in
the
success
or
failure
of
an
organization.
Rapid
service
delivery
underpins
every
aspect
of
business
operations,
creating
customer
value,
providing
competitive
differentiation,
and
unlocking
organizational
efficiency
and
creativity.
The
ability
to
deliver
high-­‐value
services
quickly
and
economically
is
a
core
competency
–
and
a
key
source
of
sustainable
business
advantage.
However,
short
delivery
cycles
create
enormous
challenges
for
IT.
Formerly
infrequent
activities
–
such
as
release
deployment
–
now
have
to
be
repeated
again
and
again.
Agile
development
requires
close
coordination
and
transparent
communications,
which
are
often
difficult
to
achieve
without
significant
organizational
change.
To
streamline
service
delivery,
IT
also
needs
to
break
down
barriers
between
development
and
operations
to
create
a
unified
DevOps
engine.
To
rise
to
these
challenges,
IT
needs
automated,
repeatable
service
delivery
mechanisms
that
span
the
entire
service
lifecycle.
Without
these
mechanisms,
IT
spends
precious
time
reworking
deliverables
and
re-­‐executing
manual
tasks,
rather
than
creating
business
value.
Existing
siloed
approaches
just
do
not
work
–
disconnected
tools
and
manual
processes
are
too
slow
and
error-­‐prone,
and
they
do
not
scale.

3. IT
Operations
Management:
A
Service
Delivery
Primer
White
Paper
Challenges Across the Service Delivery Lifecycle
Conceptually,
the
service
delivery
lifecycle
consists
of
three
major
areas
–
development,
deployment
and
operations
–
but
in
reality
these
are
intimately
interlinked.
IT
faces
challenges
in
each
area,
but
must
also
address
end-­‐to-­‐end
issues
to
consistently
deliver
services
successfully.
To
do
this,
they
need
a
unified
platform
that
binds
service
delivery
into
a
cohesive
whole
–
one
that
creates
visibility,
drives
consistent
processes,
and
automates
repetitive
activities.
The Service Delivery Lifecycle
There
are
many
cases
where
a
holistic
approach
is
essential.
Consider
the
following
examples:
• Cloning
production
systems
for
development
and
testing
–
Development
teams
need
a
real-­‐world
baseline
to
develop
and
test
releases.
Otherwise,
they
risk
poor
quality,
significant
service
outages
and
business
disruption.
However,
manually
cloning
production
systems
is
time-­‐consuming,
and
it
is
easy
to
make
mistakes
–
particularly
when
a
separate
team
has
manually
deployed
the
production
system.
To
avoid
issues,
deployment
and
cloning
processes
must
mirror
each
other
and
be
repeatable
–
which
requires
automation.
• Release
handover
–
When
development
releases
to
deployment,
the
handover
must
be
seamless
and
predictable.
Otherwise,
the
configuration
that
is
deployed
may
not
match
the
one
that
was
tested.
Manual
processes,
undocumented
scripts,
and
poor
communications
all
increase
the
risk
of
handover
failure
–
and
also
create
significant
compliance
issues.
Predictable,
automated
release
processes
are
crucial
–
particularly
when
rapid
product
evolution
has
given
rise
to
numerous
variants.

4. IT
Operations
Management:
A
Service
Delivery
Primer
White
Paper
• Post-­‐release
feedback
into
development
–
Once
a
release
is
deployed,
operations
teams
inevitably
make
changes
to
address
problems
and
optimize
performance.
These
have
to
be
fed
back
into
future
release
cycles
for
both
planning
and
continuity
purposes.
Development
teams
need
visibility
of
defects
and
enhancement
requests
so
that
they
can
add
these
to
the
product
backlog
–
this
requires
a
formal
communication
process
from
operations
to
development.
To
prioritize
development
items,
product
owners
need
the
ability
to
analyze
production
services
for
costs,
utilization,
and
incident
hotspots.
Workarounds
applied
to
the
production
system
also
need
to
be
propagated
forward
into
future
releases
–
otherwise,
issues
will
reappear.
There
are
many
additional
cases
where
end-­‐to-­‐end
visibility
and
automation
is
needed.
Examples
include
business
controls,
auditing,
patch
deployment,
troubleshooting
and
others.
Without
a
unified
service
delivery
platform,
these
all
create
significant
business
exposure.
At
the
same
time,
each
individual
service
delivery
area
presents
its
own
challenges:
• Development
teams
lack
the
shared
visibility
and
control
that
is
essential
for
agile
development.
They
have
no
single
system
of
record
for
planning,
design,
build,
test
and
release
processes,
and
lose
track
of
rapidly
evolving
requirements
as
a
result.
This
leads
to
omissions
and
mistakes
–
and
ultimately
to
unnecessary
rework
and
delivery
delays.
Internal
communications
is
also
a
major
issue,
particularly
between
onshore
development
and
offshore
QA
teams.
• Deployment
teams
have
no
consistent
way
to
provision
IT
infrastructure
and
business
services.
They
rely
on
disconnected
tools
to
install
software
and
configure
systems
–
leading
to
long
deployment
times
and
extended
service
outages.
Mergers
and
acquisitions
also
complicate
the
process,
with
disparate
technologies
and
architectures
magnifying
effort
and
increasing
risk.
Even
when
IT
infrastructure
is
relatively
homogeneous,
IT
is
often
locked
into
a
specific
hosting
provider
because
their
business
services
are
not
standardized
and
portable.
• Operations
teams
must
deal
with
the
aftermath
of
poor
releases,
firefighting
issues
that
directly
affect
customers
and
cost
millions
of
dollars.
Releases
are
“thrown
over
the
wall”
without
any
clear
indication
of
what
has
changed
–
making
it
difficult
to
resolve
new
problems,
let
alone
plan
proactively
for
new
releases.
Because
of
this,
operations
is
often
reduced
to
reporting
issues
back
to
development,
rather
than
providing
effective
second-­‐line
support.
Left
unchecked,
these
issues
prevent
rapid
and
responsive
service
delivery.
Other
business
functions
soon
lose
faith
and
launch
shadow
IT
initiatives
that
bypass
IT.
As
a
result,
IT
loses
control,
faces
serious
governance
and
security
issues
–
and
ultimately
struggles
to
fulfill
its
mission.
Something needs to change …

5. IT
Operations
Management:
A
Service
Delivery
Primer
White
Paper
ServiceNow Unifies and Automates Service Delivery
With
ServiceNow,
IT
delivers
high-­‐quality
services
rapidly
and
predictably.
ServiceNow
combines
the
benefits
of
release
management,
configuration
automation
and
service
analytics
into
a
single
system
of
record
that
unifies
processes,
automates
delivery
tasks,
and
breaks
down
barriers
between
delivery
teams.
Manual
activities
and
siloed
systems
are
replaced
by
consistent
workflows
that
are
repeatable,
scalable,
compliance
and
secure.
As
a
result,
development,
deployment
and
operations
are
melded
into
an
efficient,
responsive
team
that
scales
to
meet
the
delivery
demands
that
IT
organizations
face
today.
Orchestration
and
Cloud
Provisioning
ServiceNow
fully
automates
service
deployment,
orchestrating
infrastructure
and
application
provisioning
–
including
in
public
and
private
clouds.
Using
ServiceNow,
IT
can
create
a
standard
set
of
infrastructure
services,
and
then
combine
these
reusable
building
blocks
to
deploy
and
upgrade
complex
multi-­‐system
business
services.
ServiceNow
has
a
drag-­‐and-­‐drop
workflow
designer
that
makes
this
process
intuitive
and
efficient.
It
also
allows
manual
activities
to
be
incorporated
directly
into
these
provisioning
processes,
so
that
items
such
as
approvals
and
physical
infrastructure
deployment
can
be
included
when
required.
Release
Management
ServiceNow
provides
single
system
of
record
that
drives
and
tracks
all
development
processes
and
deliverables.
With
ServiceNow,
development
teams
plan,
build,
test
and
release
business
services
more
efficiently
and
accurately.
Its
broad
range
of
release
management
capabilities
include
specific
support
for
agile
methodologies
such
as
Scrum,
delivering
rich
process
support
and
comprehensive
data
models.
ServiceNow
also
provides
extensive
support
for
waterfall
and
other
traditional
approaches,
coordinating
activities
and
improving
communications
in
distributed
SDLC
environments.
IT
organizations
accelerate
execution
and
improve
release
quality
without
significant
process
changes,
while
creating
a
clear
path
forward
to
agile
development
and
continuous
integration.
Service
Analytics
ServiceNow
includes
a
rich
set
of
analytical
capabilities
that
allow
IT
to
understand
both
cost
and
operational
performance,
so
that
they
optimize
business
services
and
drive
continuous
improvement.

6. IT
Operations
Management:
A
Service
Delivery
Primer
White
Paper
Orchestration
Workflow
Service
Template
Service
Catalog
Orchestration and Cloud Provisioning
IT
needs
standardized
infrastructure
building
blocks
when
developing
and
delivering
business
services.
These
provide
key
resources
for
development,
and
allow
the
deployment
process
to
be
broken
down
into
consistent,
repeatable
steps.
For
instance,
IT
may
host
many
business
services
within
a
public
cloud
environment
–
such
as
Amazon
EC2.
Although
the
overall
business
service
is
different
in
each
case,
the
task
of
creating
Amazon
EC2
instances
and
installing
software
stacks
is
the
same
across
many
services.
Standardized
infrastructure
services
With
ServiceNow,
IT
creates
standardized
services
that
automate
infrastructure
provisioning,
making
it
efficient
and
repeatable.
ServiceNow
orchestrates
all
of
the
provisioning
steps,
interfacing
directly
with
the
IT
infrastructure.
It
can
create
single
components
–
such
as
VMs
–
or
can
provision
an
entire
stack
in
one
step.
End-­‐users
access
these
infrastructure
services
through
ServiceNow’s
intuitive
service
catalog.
This
abstracts
away
the
underlying
complexity
of
service
provisioning
–
users
simply
select
the
service
that
they
want
to
provision.
They
then
enter
further
service
parameters
into
a
provisioning
template
and
submit
the
provisioning
request.
ServiceNow
then
automatically
orchestrates
the
entire
end-­‐to-­‐end
provisioning
process.
An
example
of
this
is
shown
on
the
right.
In
this
case,
the
service
catalog
contains
a
set
of
Amazon
EC2-­‐based
services.
The
user
selects
one
of
these
services
–
a
single-­‐instance
CloudFormation
LAMP
stack.
They
then
fill
in
the
service
template,
providing
both
service-­‐specific
information
–
such
as
type
of
instance,
subnet
IDs
and
required
storage
–
along
with
business
information
such
as
the
cost
center
and
project
for
the
stack.
ServiceNow
then
orchestrates
the
provisioning
workflow
and
notifies
the
user
whether
or
not
the
resource
was
successfully
created.
ServiceNow
automates
the
entire
infrastructure
lifecycle.
Users
can
create
new
infrastructure
services,
start
and
stop
services,
take
snapshots
for
cloning,
and
extend
leases.
Infrastructure
services
are
also
automatically
mapped
into
the
ServiceNow
CMDB,
ensuring
that
they
are
accurately
documented.
ServiceNow
includes
built-­‐in
orchestration
capabilities
for
a
wide
range
of
infrastructure
types,
including
Amazon
AWS,
VMware,
Active
Directory
and
Exchange.
It
is
also
easily
extensible
–
it
interfaces
with
any
system
that
provides
Web
services,
and
also
supports
Puppet,
Chef,
PowerShell,
JavaScript
probes
and
other
mechanisms.
ServiceNow
includes
service
analytics
dashboards
that
give
individuals
and
teams
precise,
easily-­‐
understood
information
about
their
Amazon
AWS
infrastructure.
They
can
see
all
of
their
active
resources,
along
with
billing
and
usage
information
broken
down
by
account,
cost
center,
project
and
application.

7. IT
Operations
Management:
A
Service
Delivery
Primer
White
Paper
Multi-­‐System
Service
Deployment
ServiceNow
also
orchestrates
deployment
of
complex
business
services
that
span
multiple
systems.
This
is
done
by
creating
end-­‐to-­‐end
workflows
that
use
standardized
infrastructure
services
as
building
blocks.
Individual
infrastructure
services
form
sub
flows
within
the
overall
business
service
workflow
–
providing
a
structured,
component-­‐based
approach
to
business
service
deployment.
Examples
of
these
end-­‐to-­‐end
workflows
include
deploying
a
new
release,
patching
a
production
system,
cloning
a
production
system
to
create
a
development
baseline,
or
any
other
typical
service
delivery
task.
ServiceNow’s
drag-­‐and-­‐drop
workflow
designer
provides
an
efficient
and
intuitive
way
to
build
these
workflows.
The
workflow
engine
supports
both
parallel
and
sequential
execution,
accelerating
the
provisioning
process
while
ensuring
that
dependencies
are
respected.
Workflows
can
also
include
manual
steps
–
such
as
physical
infrastructure
deployment
activities
or
approvals.
All
workflows
are
version
controlled
and
explicitly
published,
providing
strong
governance
while
enabling
continuous
improvement.
The
figure
above
shows
a
simple
example
of
a
deployment
workflow.
Here,
a
SQL
server
is
set
up
with
four
application
nodes
and
a
load
balancer.
A
single
subflow
runs
first
to
provision
the
database,
and
then
parallel
subflows
are
used
to
provision
the
application
nodes.
Finally,
parallel
flows
are
used
to
link
the
application
nodes
to
the
load
balancer.
By
using
ServiceNow
as
a
single
system
of
record
for
service
deployment,
IT
recognizes
many
benefits:
• Deployment
effort
is
vastly
reduced
due
to
extensive
process
automation.
• Processes
are
standardized
and
repeatable,
enhancing
deployment
quality
and
governance.
• Processes
can
span
heterogeneous
environments
simply
by
including
the
right
infrastructure
services.
• Details
of
hosting
environments
are
abstracted
away,
eliminating
service
provider
lock-­‐in.
These
same
end-­‐to-­‐end
workflow
mechanisms
can
also
be
leveraged
beyond
service
delivery
to
streamline
a
broad
range
of
business
processes.
For
example,
ServiceNow
clients
have
used
the
same
approach
to
handle
employee
onboarding,
orchestrating
all
of
the
activities
needed
to
provide
a

8. IT
Operations
Management:
A
Service
Delivery
Primer
White
Paper
complete
employee
environment
–
including
updating
HR
systems,
creating
Active
Directory
entries,
setting
up
email
accounts,
creating
SSL
tokens,
and
even
managing
facilities
requests.
Release Management
Today,
ServiceNow
provides
a
rich
set
of
release
management
capabilities
that
automate
and
streamline
processes
across
the
development
cycle.
In
future
releases,
ServiceNow
plans
to
integrate
these
capabilities
tightly
into
its
service
delivery
solution,
creating
a
unified
end-­‐to-­‐end
DevOps
framework
that
spans
development,
deployment
and
operations.
These
release
management
capabilities
allow
IT
to
define
software
releases
and
to
establish
standardized
task
workflows.
ServiceNow
supports
both
waterfall
and
agile
development
processes,
providing
targeted
functionality
for
both
Scrum
and
traditional
SDLC
methodologies.
Where
commonalities
exist
between
waterfall
and
agile
processes
–
such
as
definition
of
product
hierarchies
—
ServiceNow
provides
a
common
data
and
process
framework,
simplifying
migration
from
waterfall
to
agile
methodologies
and
allowing
both
to
exist
side-­‐by-­‐side.
With
ServiceNow,
development
teams
can
structure
the
entire
content
of
releases,
capturing
both
work
phases
and
work
items.
For
instance,
when
using
Scrum,
releases
are
broken
down
into
individual
sprints,
with
stories
and
epics
attached
to
each
sprint.
An
example
of
this
is
shown
on
the
right.
Other
work
items
can
also
be
added
to
the
sprint,
including
defects,
documentation
tasks
and
testing
tasks.
Similarly,
with
waterfall
methodologies,
releases
are
decomposed
into
individual
phases,
with
features
–
including
enhancements,
defects
and
documentation
–
assigned
and
corresponding
tasks
identified.
As
well
as
modeling
releases,
ServiceNow
also
provides
a
comprehensive
process
model
for
agile
development.
This
includes
management
of
items
such
as
backlogs,
along
with
automatic
allocation
of
specific
tasks
and
stories
to
individual
team
members.
ServiceNow
provides
detailed
tracking
of
development
and
test
activities
–
such
as
progress
boards
for
tracking
sprint
backlogs
–
along
with
value-­‐added
reporting
capabilities
including
velocity
and
burn-­‐down
charts.

9. IT
Operations
Management:
A
Service
Delivery
Primer
White
Paper
Conclusion
Today,
IT
organizations
face
escalating
business
demands
for
innovative
business
services.
This
is
driving
them
to
adopt
agile
software
delivery
methodologies,
and
to
embrace
public
and
private
cloud
infrastructures.
This
vastly
increases
the
importance
of
IT
within
the
organization,
providing
opportunities
to
create
significant
business
value.
However,
this
shift
to
agile
delivery
has
created
significant
challenges.
To
respond,
IT
organizations
must
ensure
complete
visibility
and
control,
break
down
communication
barriers,
and
automate
time-­‐
consuming,
error-­‐prone
delivery
processes.
Disconnected
tools
and
undocumented
processes
are
no
longer
viable
–
a
holistic,
integrated
approach
is
needed
that
addresses
the
entire
software
delivery
lifecycle.
ServiceNow
delivers
the
automated,
unified
platform
that
IT
organizations
need
to
accelerate
service
delivery
and
improve
service
quality.
By
enabling
agile
development,
automating
service
deployment,
and
providing
deep
insights
into
the
business
performance
of
services,
ServiceNow
lets
IT
transition
from
siloed
development,
deployment
and
operational
teams
to
a
unified
end-­‐to-­‐end
service
delivery
model
that
accelerates
innovation
and
enhances
service
quality.