Introduction

Prioritizing all the varying technological needs that a business faces today can be an immense undertaking.

Problem solving is a huge part of this, as is foreseeing any potential issues or roadblocks that may arise.

Keeping electronic records is essential to any business nowadays and there are a wealth of programs and

apps that help you manage this essential step. The Internet is a further tool that can help make your life

easier. IT Management is all about using advancements in technology to simplify these processes and help

make your business run more smoothly. Email, messengers, social platforms, and virtual assistants are all

readily available and will all streamline your essential processes, making your work less stressful while

keeping you more productive.

One of the huge benefits of computers is that we are able to compress all that data we used to store in file

cabinets or back rooms and keep safely stored on a tiny hard drive. This saves a lot of space, but you do

need to remember to arrange your files and folders in a way that makes them easy to access. While space

is one area where IT Management has clear benefits, another is speed. With so much information at the tips

of our fingers we can access just about anything we need at the click of a button. Having a centralized place

to find useful information, and, in turn, store it, makes our lives so much easier in a myriad of ways.

IT service management is the craft of implementing, managing, and delivering IT services to meet the needs

of an organization. It ensures that the appropriate mix of people, processes, and technology are in place to

provide value (www.estomi.com, 2017)

In line with this, the group has conducted a research together with an online interview of an IT personnel from

an international engineering design company named as Abdubezoo, which is one of the companies who work

for Amazon Design Services.

Background of the Company

Abduzeedo is a collective of individual writers sharing articles about design, photography, and UX. It was

founded by Fabio Sasso in 2006 as a personal blog, later growing to become a digital publication with several

writers from all over the world, working independently. Currently part of Steale LLC. Also known as ABDZ,

the short version of the weird name of the blog which means abducted in Portuguese, the site has seen the

evolution of the design community during a decade. From different styles to mediums, ABDZ has evolved

with the industry and became one of the most sought-after design blogs on the web (www.abduzeedo.com).

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the largest cloud service platform, offering compute power, database

storage, content delivery, and other functionality to help businesses scale and grow. Millions of customers

are leveraging AWS, such as Abduzeedo, to build sophisticated applications with increased flexibility,

scalability, and reliability. Amazon Web Services is a dream client of every designer. It took almost a year

since the inception till the first service (client) onboarding. Abduzeedo was responsible for the visual design.

There were many folks working on research and UX part of the project, and folks selling the whole thing up

the chain.

Objectives of the Study

In this section, the group has defined the goals or objectives of the research conducted which is in a form of

a combined research and interview. The objectives of the study are divided into the general and specific

objectives listed below.

General Objectives

The general objective of this paperwork is to discuss how information technology management services

(ITSM) are being applied to the chosen organization, which is Abduzeedo AWS.
Specific Objectives

The specific objectives are enumerated as follows and are divided based on the weekly lectures. It should

be taken into consideration that not all the topics were covered during the interview that’s why the topics

below are trimmed down to the discussions the group has had on hand. Also, some of the topics have been

discussed together with the other.

Specific Objectives related to Week 1 Topics

To be able to discuss the specific functions of the ITSM in the company.

To discuss how information technology infrastructure library (ITIL) is utilized in the company.

Specific Objectives related to Week 2 Topics

To be able to discuss the service strategy of ITSM in the company.

To be able to discuss the service design of the ITSM in the company.

To be able to discuss the service transition of the ITSM in the company.

Specific Objectives related to Week 3 Topics

To be able to discuss the service operation of the ITSM in the company.

Specific Objectives related to Week 4 Topics

To be able to discuss the financial management of the ITSM in the company.

To be able to discuss the demand management of the ITSM in the company.

Specific Objectives related to Week 5 Topics

To be able to discuss the capacity management of ITSM in the company.

To be able to discuss the continual service improvement imposed by the ITSM in the company.

Specific Objectives related to Week 6 Topics

To be able to discuss the information security management of the ITSM in the company.

To be able to discuss the problem management of the ITSM in the company.

 Specific Objectives related to Week 7 Topics

To be able to discuss the measurement and metrics used by ITSM in the company.

Research Discussions

Lecture Week 1 Research Discussion

Function of the ITSM Team

IT Management here is situated in one floor with 20 workforce members, a team leader, and general

manager. This team is the governing team for the company’s branch in this country. All the branches

worldwide are connected to each other via intranet.

The IT Service Management unit performs the service operation processes by providing support services for

the use of the information technology and management of the production environment. Their scope is about

the operation, maintenance, enhancement, giving update, and troubleshooting problems regarding the

software, applications, computer programs, and even the computers used by the employees in the company.

Information Technology Infrastructure Library

To help managing documents and information gathered in every project, a full support database was created

in which all employees can either have free access or limited access depending on their level. This database

contains all the necessary documents from start to finish of the project. This database is used to sort out,

collect, tally, and be used as basis for new projects to on hand.

This database creates service models which are very imporant so as to be able to estimate the time and

duration of new projects. The database also has the collection of software used by the company which make

it more economical for them as it has lower price than standalone licenses.
Lecture Week 2 Research Discussion

Governance and Risk

As it is said that governance is the core of all healthy organizations, the company also has their own

organizational structure, having a general manager and team manager for each department. So as to have

a more organized and systematic rules and regulations and policies and procedures, the company has been

implementing the Information Security Management System and Quality Control System, which are based

on ISO 9001 and ISO 27001. The company is fully accredited by these accrediting bodies, and are regularly

having an update into the situation of the company.

Service Strategy

The company utilizes the three types of service providers and are each explained below.

Type 1 - Internal service provider. The company has their in-house IT department within the company building

and they are responsible so as to operate within the coporate organization

Type 2 - Shared services unit. Being an international company and a sub branch of a larger one, the company

has their IT shared services unit which allows them to access some data in other countries.

Type 3 - External service provider. The company also uses extenal service provider especially in using the

internet and other applications and software. As their strategy, they use external service provider from the

internet which allows them to have online license of software and applications, which is much more

economical rather than having more licenses to be installed in each computer.

Service Design

For service design, the IT department regularly creates researches for possible concerns of enhancement

which are to be escalated. These tallied ideas and information within the information technology sector will

then be evaluated by the top management for further actions. All of the plans will be brainstormed and
conceptualized in the best possible way among the heads and corporate management. This ensures the

continuous improvement of the company especially in delivering a satisfactory output to clients.

Service Transition

One positive attitude of the company is that they can adjust to the necessary changes especially whenever

there is a need to change a process, scope, or other things related to the company. They always try to

improve, enhance, and adjust to the needs of the clients.

Information Technology Assets of the Company

Computers and the Internet. Each employee in the company has his or her own computer, which is somehow

connected to all other computers in the company through a specified folder. The computer contains software

that is necessary for the work of the employee using it, and it has access in the internet.

Telephone. Each employee in the company has his or her telephone which helps the employee to

communicate with other employees and other departments instantly.

Multipurpose Rooms. These rooms are used for meetings and other purposes, and also used when meetings

between two countries are held.

Lecture Week 3 Research Discussion

How the ITSM Team and IT Services Works Based on Situation

There were several groups in geographically distributed locations responsible for handling incidents and

service requests in the case organization. The employee which experiences a problem calls the IT

department and tells the scenario. The IT department then has three ways in solving the problem (the two

employees are situated in two different floors).

1. The IT employee instructs the other employee on how to resolve the problem.
2. The IT employee uses the computer of the other employee through a remote application.

3. The IT employee goes to the place of the other employee so as to resolve the issue manually.

Lecture Week 4 Research Discussion

Financial Management

The ITSM in the company applies the three step rule for their financial management.

Budgeting. In this part of the process, all the departments plan the income and expenditure of money. Planning is done

periodically (usually once a year). Planning is important because it decreases risk of over-spending in the future. The same

process controls income and costs incurred on a monthly basis. This means that monthly income and monthly costs will

be monitored and compared with budgeted (i.e. planned) funds. Based on that information, measures can be taken to

implement corrections that will keep the budget on track. Knowing

Accounting. This enables the IT organization to account for the way its money is spent. This particularly refers

to identification of costs by customer, by service or by activity. To have an efficient accounting process, the

ITSM continuously increases service provision and defines areas where cost savings can be made (i.e. financial

efficiency).

Charging. Their charging requires that accounting procedures and systems exist and are set up. It makes a difference

whether the organization is an internal service provider, or if it serves external customer as its main business. In the case

where an IT organization is an internal service provider (according to ITIL, these are Type I and Type II organizations), it is

not necessary to bill for services. Sometimes such IT organizations only allocate costs. If an IT organization sells its services

to external customers (Type III organization) they will, certainly, issue bills for their services and generate income which

funds that organization.

Demand Management

The following are the processes on how the ITSM of the company does regarding their demand management.
Analyzing current customer usage of IT services: The easiest way to do this is to analyze service desk data

regarding incidents, requests, and problems. Network usage and uptime can be measured via a service

dashboard, such as the kind used in a network operations center (NOC) environment.

Anticipating future customer demands for IT services: Here, the business relationship manager comes into

play. He or she may speak with the customer directly about forecasted needs, will analyze trends in usage

or tickets, and will make educated projections about future usage based on similar customers trends.

Influencing consumption as necessary by financial or technical means: For example, if a customer uses more

service than anticipated in the SLA, a service provider may charge fees for the excessive consumption to

offset the costs of the unforeseen demand. Demand management also makes sure that the appropriate costs

are included in the service design (www.bmc.com, 2018).

Lecture Week 5 Research Discussions

Capacity Management

The intent of the Capacity Plan is to measure existing application requirements for technical computing

environment resources and services and to identify anticipated future system resource and service

requirements (www.investipedia.com).

The capacity management of the ITSM in the company have the following goals:

 Reduce the number of end-business processes suffering interruptions or outages caused by inadequate

IT capacity resources.

 Reduce the number of critical business processes not covered by a defined service availability plan.

 Increase the percentage of critical IT resources with adequate capacity and performance capability,

taking account of peak loads.

 The key performance indicators that they use to measure the success of their capacity planning include:

 Reduced number of downtime incidents caused by insufficient capacity or processing performance.

 Reduced time needed to resolve capacity problems.

 Decrease in the percentage of unplanned upgrades compared with the total number of upgrades.

 Decrease in the frequency of capacity adjustments to meet changing demands.

Continuity Management

Although this plan provides guidance and documentation upon which to base emergency response,

resumption, and recovery planning efforts, it is not intended as a substitute for informed decision-making.

The ITSM department and staff also identifies services for which disruption will result in significant financial

and/or operational losses. Their plans include detailed responsibilities and specific tasks for emergency

response activities and business resumption operations based upon pre-defined time frames. They have

their Business Continuity Plan with funded business activity to provide resources required to:

 Perform activities required to construct and maintain plans

 Train and retrain staff

 Develop and revise policies and standards as the agency changes

 Exercise strategies, procedures, team and resource requirements

 Report on-going business continuity planning to the CASS Senior Leadership Team

 Research processes and technologies to improve resumption and recovery efficiency

 As such, this plan is considered a living document that is updated and improved upon on an on-going

basis.
Lecture Week 6 Research Discussions

Information Security System Management

This has been discussed already in the former sections. But to provide more details, the company has their

ISMS policies and procedures for the employees. This is created in line with the Data Privacy Act and other

republic acts regarding information security. They have their own handbook of their isms policies which were

also delivered to the employees through different trainings and orientations so that the employees will be fully

aware of their limitation especially on sharing information about the company.

Problem Management

Problem Management in the company has one goal: Identify and remove underlying causes of recurring

Incidents. They use trending and historical information to identify potential Problem cases. This can be

anything from formal Continual Service Improvement, to moderate data analysis (trending), or good old gut

feeling. Regardless of the source, Problem Management are prioritized based on value to the business, and

most of them take less than a week to have feedback from the department.

Lecture Week 7 Research Discussions

Metric

A metric is any type of indicator used to measure a given quantifiable component of

performance. Metrics are extremely important to organizations because they allow them

to understand the business needs and determine the best way to achieve their objectives.

Having a basis from the ITIL framework, the company metrics in ITSM is divided into three

categories:
 Technological: These metrics provide information about the equipment that makes

up the IT infrastructure.

Of Processes: This type of indicator measures the performance of the

organization’s processes to determine which are expendable, improvable and

indispensable.

Of Services: As its name suggests, this type of metric measures the quality of

service provided by the organization.

The company handles a huge amount of data of various types, and all of them are, of

course, measurable. The company uses the SMART criteria to indicates the

characteristics that the metrics that they have in order to prove the true value of their

business:

S - They should clearly define what elements that need to be measured.

M - They should make sense. No matter how complex the data analyzed in the

metrics are, the results should always be easy to interpret.

A - They must be accurate. Metric results cannot be based on an estimate, but

must be highly concise.

R - They must bring real value to the company. They should help establish the

needs of the organization, determine objectives and create a strategy for process

improvement.

T - The information loses value over time, as it becomes obsolete. Metrics must

then be able to provide up-to-date, quality data.

Many times, although companies accumulate an important set of metrics, it is difficult for

them to handle the results in the most useful way for the business. In this case, one of

the best option is to orient the Smart metrics in ITSM to measure two types of indicators:

CSFs (Critical Success Factors) and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Both are

commonly used terms in the ITIL world and both have different functions within the

organization (www.gb-advisors.com). This is one of the strengths of the company which

makes them above others.

Conclusion

This combined research and interview gives a combined theoretical and actual view of how the information

technology system management are utilized for an organization. Although every company has their own

techniques and structure, rules and regulations, policies and procedures, it is very informative for the group

to learn some of these things as these can enhance in their present understanding, and most especially,

these can be fully utilized in the future.

References

http://www.estomi.com/2017/07/13/itsm-important-business/

https://abduzeedo.com/about

https://www.bmc.com/guides/itil-demand-management.html

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/capacity-management.asp

https://www.gb-advisors.com/smart-metrics-in-itsm-importance/