IT Service Desk Manager

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Volume 1, Issue 8, August2014. ISSN 2348 - 4853

IT Service Desk Manager

Sangita Chandrakant Panmand [1], _{Sudarshan Ramakant Patil}[2]

Jainam Technology Pvt. Ltd, Bhaveshwar Complex, Patelwadi. Kurla, Mumbai, Maharashtra 400086.

A B S T R A C T

Service desk Manager (SDM), on-premise or on- demand, is designed to help you prevent service disruptions, better manage change risks, and provides a 360-degree view into your IT services. It is versatile, comprehensive IT support solution to help you build superior request, problem, incident and knowledge management process with simplified and enhanced change and configuration management. SDM Lets you get control of your change process and standardized your IT business process in accordance with industry-proven best practices. Service Desk Manager provides a modern, consumer-like user experience featuring mobility, social media-based collaboration and compelling visualization for end users, analysts and management. SDM can consolidate multiple, disparate help desks and separately manage customers without having to deploy multiple service desks, a key feature for Service Providers—all with the objective of reducing the cost and complexity of managing multiple software instances. SDM delivers extensive automated support tools to identify, diagnose, and resolve issues, delivering a higher quality of customer service while lowering costs.

Index Terms: Service desk Manager (SDM), ITIL, Service Desk, Process Automation

I. INTRODUCTION

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Volume 1, Issue 8, August2014. ISSN 2348 - 4853 involvement from IT. A large financial services holding company was able to reassign nine IT service desk agents, amounting to annual savings of more than 4.4% of service management costs.

II. HIERARCHY OF SERVICE DESK LAYER

The best practices enable an IT service provider to ensure the end user data is being delivered consistently under many different scenarios. Since the service desk is Single Point of Contact (SPOC) it understands that there are many reasons service can be interrupted. A service desk has means within its hierarchy to monitor and manage each layer of service from beginning to end. These layers are classified by:

Figure1. Layers of Service Desk

1. Network Operations:

The ability to monitor all network devices and connections remotely. A Service Desk manages and monitors incident reports, traffic, performs network reviews, implements backups and manages change on the network. Thus, a Service Desk ensures the infrastructure of the network is optimized to meet the business needs of the enterprise.

2. Systems Operations:

The ability to perform core system management tasks. Core system management includes performance monitoring, installation of patches, change management, account management and support for specific platforms, Linux, UNIX, etc.

3. Database Operations:

The ability to maintain and optimize database tasks. Performance monitoring, fault monitoring, log reviews, access management, and change control for database software such as Oracle, DB2, etc.

4. Security Management:

The ability to protect the enterprise from external/internal threats. A Service Desk will perform vulnerability scans, monitor IPS logs and map this data to the information security related regulatory mandates.

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Volume 1, Issue 8, August2014. ISSN 2348 - 4853 manage the transitions ensuring maximum data delivery. By performing the tasks outlined above, a Service Desk improves user satisfaction by:

• Minimizing business impacts of service failures

• Proactively managing use of the IT network of ITIL best practices • Resolving incidents and requests with minimal delay

• Communicating with the end user

As companies switch their IT service management from technology based to process based, they are able to integrate their IT needs directly into the corporation’s overall strategic plan. The Service Desk plays a strategic role in this transition. The Service Desk allows companies to be less dependent on specific technology and enables them to easily connect with business partners moving forward by focusing on processes. By switching the IT focus on processes the infrastructure delivers value add to the corporate users and customers. Once the services and processes are defined, the Service Desk monitors them and the company focuses on its strategic and tactical business plan.

III. ITIL-BASED PROCESS FOR SERVICE DESK

The ITIL industry standard promotes best practices for help –desk environments. Each ITIL-based process is a separate workflow that can be link to others, and administrators can implement any combination of ITIL workflows to address the specific needs of an organization [3][5].

1. Incident Management:

Accepts tickets from the end-user who have hardware or software issue. The objective is to recognize the issue and return the end-user to normal business operations as quickly as possible.

2. Problem management:

It is a process that enables analysts to identify root causes and potential incidents in order to proactively deal with issues before they can affect end-users or cause downtime.

3. Change management:

It is a process whereby changes to the infrastructure are closely reviewed and formally approved before being implemented. Service Desk is unique in that it provides steps for the preparation of implementation plans, resource identification, risk assessment, back-out plans, and scheduling.

4. Release management:

It Allows IT to bundle multiple changes into a coordinated release that applies changes sequentially and takes corrective action if one change fails. In that case, a back-out plan can be executed and the entire release halted and sent back to the change committee for remediation and reimplementation.

5. Configuration management:

It is primarily handled through the Symantec Configuration Management Database (CMDB) and Service Desk Notification Server [7].

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Volume 1, Issue 8, August2014. ISSN 2348 - 4853 It handles the review and approval process for knowledge-based articles and acts as a document management system for storing articles, FAQs, bulletin board entries, and Wikis tied to a database of known problem information.

IV. SDM ARCHITECTURE OVERVIEW

Following diagram shows the different components of the physical database, logical database, and client layers.

Figure 2. Service Desk Manager Architecture

Knowledge of the SDM architecture will help you master your administrative responsibilities. Most typically when SDM installation and configuration complete, everyday interaction only takes place with the client layer.

A. Physical Database Layer

Every installation of SDM requires a management database (MDB). MDB is a set of tables in SQL or Oracle database server. Primary server is required for every installation and can be only one per installation whereas secondary can be none, one or many secondary servers. Secondary server can be used for bandwidth heavy components of SDM such as support automation, visualizer, web services, reporting.

B. Logical Database Layer

Logical Database layer contains database agent process known as <platform>_agent. E.g. sql_agent communicate with chosen brand of Relational Database Management System (RDMS) and takes the generic SQL instructions from the object layer translate them into specific SQL instruction.

C. Object Layer

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D. Client Layer

The client layer consists of the browser, web server, and SDM web engine. Web server is usually Apache Tomcat or Microsoft IIS. The supported browsers are usually Internet Explorer, Google chrome and Mozilla Firefox. The web engine passes information to the object manager, which populates the real object attributes and instructs the database agent to store the object as a record with fields in the call_req table. The database agent then stores this information as a record in the call_req table in the MDB physical database.

V. PROCESS AUTOMATION

Process Automation is designed to speed the delivery of IT services while helping to remove manual errors. By defining, automating and orchestrating processes across organizational silos that use disparate systems, Process Automation helps improve productivity while also enforcing standards. With Process Automation, you can automate IT processes that span multiple organizations and systems, reduce the time it takes to deliver services, and enforce standards and compliance policies across departments

Figure 3. The graphical Workflow designer allows for easy process optimization

VI. SERVICE MANAGEMENT PROCESS MAP

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Figure 4. Service Process Map

1. IT Service Continuity Management (ITSCM) assures and support overall business continuity management by ensuring that the required IT technical and service facilities can be recovered within required and agreed upon business time-frames.

2. Service Level Management ensures that an agreed level of IT service is provided for all current IT services, and that future services are delivered to agreed achievable targets[4][7].

3. Service Catalog Management is the development and upkeep of service catalog that contains all accurate details, the status, possible interaction and mutual dependencies of all current services and those being prepare to run operationally [7].

4. Availability Management ensures that the level of service availability delivered in all services is match to or exceeds the current and future the agreed needs of the business in a cost efficient manner.

5. Information Security Management ensures the alignment of IT business security and that information security is managed efficiently in all services and service management activities.

6. Capacity Management ensures that cost-justifiable IT capacity in all areas of IT always exist and is matched to the current and future agreed needs of the business in a timely manner.

VII. SUMMARY

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VIII. REFERENCES

[1] F. Beisse, “A Guide to computer User Support for Help Desk & Support Specialist”, Fourth Edition. Course Technology, 2010.

[2] D. Madison, “Process Mapping, Process Improvement, and Process Management”. Paton Press LLC, 2005.

[3] P. Brooks (Lead author), Jan van Bon (chief Editor), “Metrics for IT Service Management”. Van Haren Publishing, 2006.

[4] IT Infrastructure Library: Service Operation, Office of Government Commerce and TSO, 2007 .

[5] Gucer, V. et al., Implementing IBM Tivoli Service Request Manager V7.1 Service Desk, IBM Redbook SG24-7579-00, November, 2008.

[6] ITSM & Service Desk Implementation problem @ RL Consulting IT Service Management Implementation guidelines 2003.

[7] Official ITIL * Website, “what is ITIL?” [Online]. Available:

http://www.itilofficialsite.com/AboutITIL/WhatisITIL.asp[Accessed: April. 07, 2012].

[8] A. Chen and S. K. Chou, “Issue in Implementing Information Technology Service Management” Service Science, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2010, pp. 1-5.

[9] Wikipedia, “Information Technology Infrastructure Library,” 2013.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITIL.

[10] C. Zhao, H. H. Gan and F. Gao, “A Study on the Process Model for IT Service Management,” Proceedings of Finite Element Analysis and CAD, Peking University Press, Beijing, 1994, pp. 1-5.