Dienstgütebehandlung im Dienstlebenszyklus

Description and survey of the possible, guaranteed or offered quality of a service (QoS) is one of the key features to establish a performance and quality oriented assesment or accounting of IT-services. This task is accomplished using various criteria - the so called QoS-characteristics - which, in most cases, are specific to a certain service. From the point of view of the service life cycle, characteristics of a service are evaluated with in the usage phase but are usually determined in the negotiation phase before a service is implemented. The realization of this specifications in the following phases of the service life cycle, service provisioning or implementation and service usage, has not been methodically supported until now and has to be done by hand . Thus, the impact of a specification made in the negotiation phase on the other life cycle phases can only be estimated with expert knowledge. An objective assessment of this impact is impossible. The work presented introduces a technique enabling the formal specification of QoScharacteristics, thus allowing an automatic realization of the specification in the provisioning and usage phase of a service. Until now, only isolated approaches on the specification of QoS-characteristics focusing on specific technologies have been made. In this thesis we present a completely technology independent approach distilled from the typical processes used for measuring QoS in different technologies. In order to implement this idea, a formal model of a common measurement process, based on the MNM service model, is introduced and the specification of a QoScharacteristic is formalized as a refinement of this model. A formal language, capable of facilitating the generation of these models has been developed for this purpose. Consequently, a compiler for this language has been developed to automatically generate a measurement system out of the specification of a QoS-characteristic. This enables the uniform and technology independent specification of QoS-characteristics. In conclusion, a concept for the computer aided specification of QoS-characteristics has been established which, as an audit included in this thesis demonstrates, can be applied to various scenarios in the area of service management. The concept introduced adds quality orientation to existing approaches like CSM (customer service management) and thus paves the way to quality oriented service management.Mit ein Schlüssel für die leistungs- und qualitätsorientierte Beurteilung oder Abrechnung von IT-Diensten ist die Beschreibung und Erfassung der möglichen, garantierten und erbrachten Qualität eines Dienstes. Dies geschieht an Hand unterschiedlichster Kriterien, so genannter Dienstgütemerkmale, die meist spezifisch für einen Dienst sind. Die Merkmale, an Hand derer ein Dienst in der Betriebsphase beurteilt wird, werden in der Verhandlungsphase, also vor der Implementierung des Dienstes festgelegt. Die Umsetzung dieser Festlegungen in den folgenden Phasen des Dienstlebenszyklus, der Dienstbereitstellung / -implementierung und der Dienstnutzung ist bisher methodisch nicht unterstützt und muss von Hand vorgenommen werden. Somit kann die Auswirkung einer Festlegung in der Verhandlungsphase auf die folgenden Phasen nur durch Expertenwissen und nicht objektiv abgeschätzt werden. In dieser Arbeit wird ein Verfahren zur formalen Spezifikation von Dienstgütemerkmalen eingeführt, das es erlaubt, die getroffenen Festlegungen automatisch in der Bereitstellungs- und Nutzungsphase eines Dienstes umzusetzen. Bisher sind zur Spezifikation von Dienstgütemerkmalen nur Insellösungen spezi- fisch für eine Technologie entwickelt worden. In dieser Arbeit wird ein technologieunabhängiger Ansatz aus dem typischen Vorgehen bei der Messung von Dienstgütemerkmalen in unterschiedlichsten Technologien entwickelt. Dazu wird ein formales Modell eines allgemeinen Messprozesses für Dienstgütemerkmale auf Basis desMNM-Dienstmodells aufgebaut und die Spezifikation eines Dienstgütemerkmals als Verfeinerung dieses Modells formalisiert. Zur Beschreibung dieser Formalisierung wird eine maschinenverarbeitbare Sprache entwickelt, mit deren Hilfe die entsprechenden Modelle später generiert werden können. Für diese Spezifikationssprache wird ein Übersetzer entwickelt, der aus der formalen Definition eines Dienstgütemerkmals automatisch ein Messsystem erzeugen kann. Somit wird eine einheitliche und technologieunabhängige Spezifikation von Dienstgütemerkmalen möglich. Damit entsteht ein Konzept zur rechnergestützten Spezifikation und Messung von Dienstgütemerkmalen, das in den unterschiedlichsten Szenarien des Dienstmanagements eingesetzt werden kann, wie die Tauglichkeitsprüfung in dieser Arbeit zeigt. Dieses Konzept erweitert bereits bestehende Ansätze, wie etwa CSM (Customer Service Management), um den Aspekt der Qualitätsorientierung und liefert somit die Basis für den Aufbau eines qualitätsorientierten Dienstmanagements

Requirements on Quality Specification Posed by Service Orientation

Abstract. As service orientation is gaining more and more momentum, the need for common concepts regarding Quality of Service (QoS) and its specification emerges. In recent years numerous approaches to specifying QoS were developed for special subjects like multimedia applications or middleware for distributed systems. However, a survey of existing approaches regarding their contribution to service oriented QoS specification is still missing. In this paper we present a strictly service oriented, comprehensible classification scheme for QoS specification languages. The scheme is based on the MNM Service Model and the newly introduced LAL–brick which aggregates the dimensions Life cycle, Aspect and Layer of a QoS specification. Using the terminology of the MNM Service Model and the graphical notation of the LAL–brick we are able to classify existing approaches to QoS specification. Furthermore we derive requirements for future specification concepts applicable in service oriented environments

Munich Network Management Team Leibniz Computing Center

Integrated IT-management has been a challenging research topic for several years now. However, integrated management of today’s large-scale, dynamic, and multiorganizational IT-systems is still in its infancy. To overcome the difficulties management solutions for such environments have either been re-done from scratch or simply ignored. It would be desirable to re-use well-established management solutions as far as possible. But it is not at all clear, when to re-use, how and what to re-use, or what to re-do from scratch. One of our research goals is a respective decision support. Based on two real scenarios we propose as a first step a methodology for systematically analyzing management approaches for the purpose of determining re-usability. In a two-dimensional portfolio, management cases can be positioned, and thus categorized, and their deficiencies when evolving towards other environments can be analyzed. We demonstrate the technique for an example

CMDB – Yet Another MIB? On Reusing Management Model Concepts in ITIL Configuration Management

Abstract. According to ITIL, a CMDB (Configuration Management Database), containing a logical model of the IT infrastructure, forms the basis for effective and efficient IT Service Management. However, a common understanding of what constitutes a CMDB has not yet been established. By contrast, concepts for building and using MIBs (Management Information Base) – also aimed at providing logical models of the IT infrastructure – have long since been established in the area of systems management. This paper presents an overview of the CMDB and MIB concepts, discusses how they relate to each other and compares them based on the main purposes of a CMDB. It discusses whether modeling approaches used for MIBs can be reused for CMDBs. To this end, a criteria catalog based on core CMDB concepts and basic information requirements of ITIL’s Service Management processes are derived, and the challenges of implementing a CMDB reusing concepts of common management models are discussed. Concluding, basic approaches towards integrating CMDBs and MIBs are presented.

Towards generic service management concepts - a service model based approach

Service management has been a hot topic in the research community for the last couple of years. However, due to the complexity of this research area, no commonly accepted definition of the terms service, service management, and the associated management tasks has evolved yet. This paper contributes to the ongoing process of defining these terms by proposing a top–down oriented and systematic methodology that is used to analyze and identify the necessary actors and the corresponding inter – and intra–organizational relationships. Then, a generic service model is introduced that defines commonly needed service– related terms, concepts and structuring rules in a general and unambiguous way. Since most of the work that is being presented here is still in flux, the service model is finally used to identify and structure open research questions