Few clarifications about basic concepts.

[Ahmar]

I am appearing in the Foundation Exam tomorrow. Can anybody help me clarify some basic concepts.

1. Who implements the actual change; Change Management or Release Management?

2. Escalation of incidents by Service desk (functional or heirarchical) is done from first to second/third line of support. Is this second/third line of support part of Problem Management or Incident Management? If it is part of Incident Management, when is incident escalated to Problem Management?

3. What is the basic difference of Availability Management and ITSCM? Apparently both are working to improve the availabilitiy of the services.

4. Who updates the change/relase records in CMDB; Change/Release Management or Configuration Management?

5. Can users/customers raise RFC's directly to Change Management?

Thanks a lot.

[Ed]

Ahmar

1. Release Management.

2. Incident - It is moved into Problem Management id perceived to be more than an incident

3. The book sayas @The goal of the Availability Management process is to optimise the capability of the IT Infrastructure, services and supporting organisation to deliver a Cost effective and sustained level of Availability that enables the business to satisfy its business objectives.@

and also
'Capacity Management is responsible for ensuring that the Capacity of the IT Infrastructure matches the evolving demands of the business in the most cost-effective and timely manner.'

Not quite the same thing!

4. Configuration Management

5. Yes if you want them to - Mine do.

Regards & Good luck

Ed

[Ahmar]

Thanks.

But you missed my third question. I asked for the difference between availability and ITSCM (Continuity) managment. I have read the formal definitions many times but the concept is still unclear.

Thanks again.

[Rache]

availability = about managing the demands that the business places on the it ensuring the services are up when needed maintainability and reliability come into this and I personally think it is quite close to capacity management measuring the downtime of the system and the mean time to repair system incident s

continuity = is a bit like disaster recovery it would include having contingency / continuity plans in place preventing loss of service

availability i think is about it being there and continuity is bringing it back when it wasnt there or having something else operational in its place

i think anyway but i only got my exam a few weeks ago so am ready to be corrected!!!!

[WendyB]

I just finished my Foundations Exam, but this is my understanding at a very basic level of Availabitliy and ITCSM.

• Availability Management is keeping things up during normal operations
  
• ITSCM is keeping Business Continuity when things happen that the businss can't do business - IE natural disaster

[ozz]

Think of availability management as "managing what is unavailable?" Rather than what you have to do to keep the network running, think what will you will do when the network is NOT runnning..

snip

Availability
Availability is the ability of an IT Service or component to perform its required function at a stated instant or over a stated period of time.

THIS is the part to note

Availability (or rather UnAvailability) is the key indicator of service quality perceived by the business and User. Availability is underpinned by the reliability and maintainability of the IT Infrastructure and effectiveness of the IT support organisation. In summary, Availability depends on the:

Availability of components
resilience to failure
quality of maintenance and support
quality, pattern and extent of deployment of operational process and procedures
security, integrity and Availability of data.
An IT Service that consistently meets its SLA Availability targets has the characteristics of low frequency of failure and rapid resumption of service after an Incident has occurred.



Oz

[ubgk]

Wherever it is beyond the scope of Availability mgmt, ITSCM needs to take care. Generally ITSCM is part of the bigger Business continuity mgmt process. AM is more to do with Technical faults,component faults etc ie more concerned abt the Technical aspects. ITSCM covers risks like disaster, sabotage etc which are even beyond the control of the Organisation.

[ARoll]

[MAKH]

Hi,

Actually for the 1st question Release Mgmt will not implement the change. Neither the Change Mgmt. Project team, vendors, developers ..etc will implement the Change. The Release Mgmt oversees the implementation and makes sure the right procedures for building, testing and deploying are followed.


Question 2. You may have as much as business required of support levels. When engineers are working to resolve the incident and restore it is Incident Management regardless of the support line level. When engineers and analysts are looking for/at the underling root cause of the incident to eliminate it and prevent the incidet recurring it is Problem Management wither the incident has been resolved yet or not.

Question 3. The AvM makes sure that the IT Service is Avaialabe for the customer. The ITCSM makes sure that all REQUIRED IT services to support the critical business processes could be recovered ASAP in case of business disruption (i.e. disasters)


4. Configuration Mgmt
5. Yes


M. A. Kh.[/b]