ITIL as a guiding principle for IT operation today is increasingly making the service idea the center of IT alignment. General trends are contributing to the fact that more and more companies act as service providers that make a wide variety of services available to their customers and use SLA quality standards to guarantee those services. "Service portfolio management" is a new concept within the ITIL V3 framework. It describes the services available from a service provider in a way that demonstrates their business value. The process objective of service portfolio management is to devise a strategy for the provision of services to customers. The first step here is to find the answers to the following questions:

• Why should customers purchase these services?
• Why should they purchase these services from us?
• What does the price structure look like – how are customers reimbursed?
• What are our strengths and weaknesses, priorities and risks?
• How do we want to use our resources and abilities?

 

The process objective of "service operation" is to make sure that IT services are delivered in an effective and efficient manner. This includes satisfying customer requests and solving problems as well as completing day-to-day operational tasks.

Most service provides have a strong focus on the provision of services in the fields of network, system, and application management. They usually have to accommodate a wide variety of different customer IT infrastructures to ensure their central and efficient management. Going beyond a mere monitoring service, they often have to be able to flexibly map parts of their customers' IT operations and make them available as a service. Furthermore, they need to guarantee the availability of their services by means of SLA management. In addition to original service providers, many IT departments today also act as service providers and are faced with similar challenges. In order to be profitable, service providers need to establish a central control system that is sufficiently transparent and resource-efficient.

The modular structure and high level of automation of theGuard! solutions make them the perfect platform for service providers. theGuard! NetworkManager is able to centrally and consistently manage all active components, servers, etc. of their customers' systems, irrespective of which vendor supplies the devices.theGuard! Business Service Manager is able to integrate all major applications, operating systems, and ERP systems into the central business service management. Incident management requirements of the IT organization can be met with the ServiceDesk and Change & Configuration Management modules of theGuard!, which integrate the available monitoring and inventory data. E2E monitoring gives service providers a user's perspective on the services they deliver.

Business Process Management, Service Level Management, and Service Trees further contribute to the ability of service providers to provide visibility into the quality of their services. theGuard! thus makes it easy to answer any questions regarding the process objectives of service portfolio management.

Have questions about Service Strategy?   Contact REALTECH Or call us: +49(6227)837 0 +65(6570)0692 +1(610)356 4401

Brochure theGuard! Business Process Manager (pdf, 330 kB)