Information Technology Infrastructure Library (Service Delivery)

The rapid development in information technology has had a significant impact on how an organization conducts its business practices. Information technology is expanding rapidly all over the world now. Because of that, organizations have become increasingly global and more competitive. To remain competitive and to provide better business services, companies are now implementing latest information technology frameworks. From a business perspective, a company's information technology framework should support organizations structures and it should have inter -linkages with other departments within the company. With the implementation of compliance and reliable information technology frameworks, a firm not only minimizes the cost of operation but also increases its capacity to efficiently deliver various business services to users or to clients. A good example would be The Visa USA Inc.

Accomplishing competitive advantage, cost efficiency and to engage in improving technology is the strategy of The Visa USA Inc. The objective of The Visa USA Inc is to make a clear and distinct link to business objectives in order to support their customers. ITIL helped The Visa USA Inc to optimize the strategies and cut cost.

IT infrastructure plays a key role in business strategy. It is also the source of competitive advantage in many industries. The technology infrastructure that supports business has grown in scope, and its impact has deepened. Thus, the industry's implementation of IT frameworks has gained importance to reduce business risks. They try to keep new technology investments and ongoing support to existing IT solution directly aligned with its business objective.

Introduction
Many organizations to-day are implementing Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) best practices. ITIL is a framework that provides best practice guidelines for managing and delivering IT services. It offers structured, scalable, common sense processes that organizations need to adopt and adapt to fit in their own environments. In another words, ITIL is a summary of best practices for the implementation of IT management processes. It defines a series of service-support and service-deliver management processes which can be used for the improvement and cost reduction of the quality of IT services. It is extremely important to understand by all IT executives that just because adopting a reliable or compliance ITIL does not mean that it will do all the work for them. ITIL describes only what best practices should be pursued that benefits the company. It does not define how to implement detailed processes and work-level procedures that enable those recommendations. It provides a guidance on what should be done, but leaves to each business to decide on what work-level procedures need to be developed and implemented for meeting the objectives of daily services delivery and services support activities and for operational improvements in IT.

It is interesting to note that ITIL was first developed in 1980 by a branch of the British Government in view of the growing dependency on Information Technology. When this Framework gained popularity both in United Kingdom's private sector and in European companies, it then made its way to the United States. Today, the majority of U.S. companies adopting ITIL have undertaken only two of its practice areas - Service Support and Service Delivery.

Capacity Management
The ITIL Capacity Management process is crucial to IT service optimization. While there are many different activities or ways that ITIL can support efficient and effective operation, the Capacity Management helps companies to achieve its business objectives. This process includes monitoring, performance analysis, and capacity planning processes which help to ensure that service definitions are fulfilled by using only a minimum of computing resources. With Capacity Management, the overall organizations' goals and priorities can be met by IT department without wasting capacity. The main objective of Capacity Management is to visualize or to understand the future business requirements, organizations' operations and the IT infrastructure; it also aims to ensure that the needs of all current and future capacity and performance aspects of the business requirements are addressed cost effectively. To predict IT resources requirement and capacity planning, Capacity Management focuses on three main areas of responsibilities. Those are:
• Business Capacity Management (BCM)
• Services Capacity Management (SCM), and
• Resource Capacity Management (RCM)

Business Capacity Management (BCM) ensures that future business requirements for IT services are considered, planned and implemented in a timely fashion. Services Capacity Management (SCM) focuses on the management of the IT services provided to the customers. It not only monitors and measures services but also collects report and analyzes data. Resource Capacity Management (RCM) focuses on the management of the components of the IT infrastructure and ensures that all finite resources within the IT infrastructure are monitored and measured, and that collected data is recorded, analyzed and reported.
Works relating to monitoring, performance analysis, and capacity planning are necessary before organizations make decisions to invest in new technology to optimize their IT services. For instance, the capacity management approach had paved the way for the merger between JP Morgan Chase and Bank One. Before merging process started, IT executives from both sides were performing capacity testing for retail business solutions and were analyzing ways and means to deal with major reconfiguration needs in dual IT applications and systems. Focusing on the three main areas of responsibilities of Capacity Management, IT executives implemented virtual IT infrastructure which can monitor and visualize how server application and systems react to changes in code and hardware. They also swapped out servers and mainframes, and presented heavy data loads that were sometimes 80 percent above standard levels. Had such a system strain been anything other than virtual, for JPMorgan/Bank One's back office might have been a nightmare of non-working teller systems for 25 million on-line customers. Apart from this, the Bank might have to deal with many other technical problems. But, by using capacity management and performance modeling software, the executives and their team put the JPMorgan IT infrastructure through the test and were able to pinpoint potential user logjams, compatibility problems and even untapped resources before undertaking actual changes. It helped them understand infrastructure requirements and cut huge IT expenses. Further, it made them aware that all finite resources were within the IT infrastructure. All these made the merger entirely successful.

Case Study
Global companies such as Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, Visa USA Inc., Shell Oil and many other companies have become successful in implanting the ITIL frameworks and this has helped them minimize the operating cost and improved their services. The Visa USA Inc. has adopted the frameworks not too long ago and the ITIL frameworks have helped the Visa's global transactions by lowering its cost of doing business. This company followed the best-practice guidelines in developing the appropriate systems that they need to monitor tools called Services Views that let the company track in real time every transaction running through its VisaNet payments-processing network. This global payment system handles more than 40 billion transactions and processes payments in excess of $1.7 trillion annually. And, it is used by 21,000 financial institutions and more than 20 million merchant locations. This kind of improved monitoring systems let the Visa spot problems in its networks and systems much earlier and quickly identifying the sources . With ITIL system in place, the company was able to improve the system. The capacity management indeed plays a vital role in bringing about success in the company's business.

It appears to me that IT executives in company are deploying IT Infrastructure Library to slash technology costs and improve the quality of IT services. One of the main benefits of ITIL is that it lets companies to better deal with ongoing struggle for aligning IT initiatives with business goals. It helps the IT organizations develop a culture, a mind-set for providing services for the business' sake and not for technology's sake. The guidelines provided by this approach for service support, services delivery, application management, and other processes are particularly valuable for companies with global operations. Companies adopting the framework report favorable results. ITIL-compliant processes are a complete package and that all the bases are covered in IT service management. Capacity management alone renders all IT executives to remain thoroughly familiar with issues while using new IT frameworks. With an integrated IT departments and systems, common language and best practices guidelines help companies achieve standardizations they need to deliver consistent IT services to the end-users.

Conclusion
To conclude, the ITIL can play a very critical role in achieving the objectives of the companies. If the past trend is of any guidance to future, its use can be expected to be more widespread as time goes by.