Perancangan Configuration Management Database Perusahaan untuk Meningkatan Kinerja Layanan Teknologi Informasi

Makalah ini membahas perancangan configuration management database di PT. Northstar Pacific Capital untuk mendukung kegiatan bisnis dengan ketersediaan layanan teknologi informasi yang baik. Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) memberikan referensi-referensi best practice mengenai tata kelola layanan teknologi informasi. Salah satu bagian dari framework ITIL adalah CMDB atau Configuration Management Database yang merupakan sebuah hubungan strategis dengan menggunakan hubungan diantara komponen-komponen IT atau disebut juga Configuration Item (CI). Nilai strategis dari CMDB dapat diperoleh apabila sebagian atau seluruh CI dapat dipetakan kedalam sebuah CMDB yang dapat menggambarkan hubungan antar CI. CMDB dapat membantu Perusahaan dan organisasi IT dalam pengelolaan komponen-komponen infrastruktur. Metodologi yang digunakan pada penelitian ini adalah dengan mengambil framework ITIL. Dari hasil analisis didapatkan korelasi yang baik antara hasil rancangan CMDB dengan peningkatan kinerja layanan teknologi informasi di PT. Northstar Pacific Capital yang akan mendukung kegiatan operasional seperti yang diharapka

Research in Information Technology Service Management (ITSM): Theoretical Foundation and Research Topic Perspectives

In information systems (IS), Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) has become a popular research area among IS and management researchers as a result of industry push and the development and advancement of research in service sciences. From academic perspective, a growing number of papers have been published addressing many aspects of ITSM issues. This paper presents the results based on a study of comprehensive review of publications in ITSM over the past decade (from 2000 to 2010) with the objective of answering the following research question: what is the current state of research in ITSM, from theoretical foundation and research topic perspectives. Our findings suggest that 1) there is generally a lack of theoretically driven researches; 2) the field is still developing with a growing number of published papers dealing with the development of concepts, constructs, models, methods and implementations for theory development; 3) ITSM performance issues, justifications, and IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) topics are among the most popular topics of research

Requirements modeling in SEAM: The example of a car crash management system

This paper presents how business and IT requirements are captured with the Systemic Enterprise Architecture Methodology (SEAM). The method is applied to the Car Crash Management System (CMS) - Software Product Line (SPL) case study. The existing business situation is analyzed. We identify the problems and list relevant solutions. We select one of these solutions for which we define the business and the IT requirements. We then present the two components of SEAM used in this paper, goal-belief and behavior modeling. We end the paper by presenting the systemic foundations of SEAM

IT Service Alignment Verification of Quantitative Properties in Service Design

Despite many years of research, alignment of business and IT services remains a challenge. In this paper we show how to verify the quantitative properties of a service against stakeholder requirements during service design. We model the service with the Systemic Enterprise Architecture Method (SEAM). This allows us to specify the service alignment constraints with what we call a feasibility constraint. We translate the SEAM model into Scala code, where the feasibility constraint is mapped to a constraint of a Scala function. We then check the Scala function’s verification condition with the Leon verification tool. An alignment is achieved if no counterexample is found. If a counterexample exists, it allows to detect which service component is at the source of the misalignment

Designing, Aligning, and Visualizing Service Systems

Service is a concept that separates the concerns of an organization into (1) the value created for users and (2) the way the organization manages its resources to provide this value. The discipline of management of information technology (IT) uses services to coordinate and to optimize the use of IT resources (servers, applications, databases, etc.) in a way that brings value to users. The concrete application of the service concept is challenging due to its abstract, interdependent and recursive nature. We experienced this challenge while collaborating with the IT department of our university (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, EPFL) when the IT department adopted the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) best-practices framework for IT service management. As researchers, we have the goal of improving the understanding of services as a means to structuring what people and organizations do. In the context of the IT department, we studied how to apply the service concept internally within the IT department, and externally (as business services) in the overall organization. In this thesis, we model services by using systems thinking principles. In particular, we use and improve SEAM, the systemic service-modeling method developed in our laboratory. Our main result is an ontology for SEAM service modeling. Our contributions are the heuristics that define how the ontology relates to a perceived reality: for example, the heuristics focus on behavior rather than organization and they put an emphasis on service instances rather than service types. We also define alignment between service systems, based on the properties of the systems¿ behavior. We show how to model an organization by implementing the concept of service as defined by our ontology. This ontology supports the design of service systems that align across both IT and business services. During our work with over one hundred IT services, we developed several visualization prototypes of a service cartography; we use these prototypes to describe and to relate the different views required for managing services. Our results offer a concrete way to implement the abstract concept of services. This way could be of interest for any organization willing to embark on a large-scale service project

Animation-Based Service Specification, Verification and Validation

[Context] With the expansion of services and service science, service systems have become an important abstraction for the service revolution. Service is defined as the application of resources (including competences, skills, and knowledge) to make changes that have value for another (system). The service system is a configuration of people, technologies, and other resources that interact with other service systems to create mutual value. Many systems can be viewed as service systems, including families, cities, and companies, among many others. Therefore, services became very important for unifying concepts from various disciplines. Service specifications are used to represent service systems on different levels of abstraction: from business down to IT. [Motivation and Problem] Traditionally, high-level service specifications are used only for communication among different participants, to catalyze the discussions between them; but only the specifications modeling IT systems have enough details to be simulated and executed. As a consequence, it becomes difficult to create precise high-level specifications and make sure that the implemented services are those that correspond to the business needs, potentially leading to severe project problems. Therefore, the challenge is to create abstract, yet precise service specifications, while keeping the relation between specifications at different levels of abstraction. [Idea and Results] In this work, we use formal methods and code generation techniques to create service-prototypes from service specifications at any level of abstraction, keeping the relations between different specifications. Stakeholders can try out the prototypes and give feedback regarding services that are being provided. This way, prototypes are used to validate the specifications and detect inconsistencies and unexpected behavior. [Contribution] The contributions of our work are threefold. First, we provide the visual formalism for service specification and simulation, by adding the necessary concepts to the existing method SEAM. Second, we define two design spirals: for service specification and for service validation and verification. The service specification spiral enables us to keep the relation between several service specifications. It includes steps with explicit design decisions on how to refine high-level specifications in order to include all the details necessary for providing the identified services. The validation and verification spiral is used to validate and verify specifications at any level of abstraction. Finally, it provides an environment that enables the simulation and prototyping of service specifications that are then used for their validation and verification. [Relevance] In addition to the theoretical contribution to the knowledge base of service design, we also provide the tools and guidelines that help business and IT analysts create and validate the service model, as confirmed by a survey conducted with practitioners. We illustrate the application of this work with a case study based on a consulting project we conducted at EPFL

Formal semantics for refinement verification of entreprise models

In this dissertation we investigate how Business/IT alignment in enterprise models can be enhanced by using a software engineering stepwise refinement paradigm. To have an IT system that supports an enterprise and meets the enterprise business needs, management seeks to align business system with IT systems. Enterprise Architecture (EA) is the discipline that addresses the design of aligned business and IT systems. SEAM is an Enterprise Architecture method, developed in the Laboratory of Systemic Modeling (LAMS) at EPFL. SEAM defines a visual language for building an enterprise model of an organization. In this work, we develop a theory and propose a technique to validate an alignment between the system specifications expressed in the SEAM language. We base our reasoning on the idea that each system (an organization, a business system, or an IT system) can be modeled using a set of hierarchical specifications, explicitly related to each other. Considering these relations as refinement relations, we transform the problem of alignment validation into the problem of refinement verification for system specifications: we consider that two system specifications are aligned if one is correctly refines the other. Model-driven engineering (MDE) defines refinement as a transformation between two visual (or program) specifications, where a specification is gradually refined into an implementation. MDE, however, does not formalize refinement verification. Software engineering (SE) formalizes refinement for program specifications. It provides a theory and techniques for refinement verification. To benefit from the formal theories and the refinement verification techniques defined in SE, we extend the SEAM language with additional concepts (e.g. preconditions, postconditions, invariants, etc). This extension enables us to increase the precision of the SEAM visual specifications. Then we define a formal semantics for the extended SEAM modeling language. This semantics is based on first-order logic and set theory; it allows us to reduce the problem of refinement verification to the validation of a first-order logic formula. In software engineering, the tools for the automated analysis of program specifications are defined. To use these tools for refinement verification, we define a translation from SEAM visual specifications to formal specification languages. We apply, using case studies, our theory and technique in several problem areas to verify: (1) if a business process design and re-design correspond to high level business process specifications; (2) if a service implementation corresponds to its specifications. These case studies have been presented to a group of domain experts who practice business/IT alignment. This inquiry has shown that our research has a potential practical value