A general understanding of the objectives of standards and frameworks is required for this recipe.

Plan to invest in one or more of the following:

IT Service Management is a broad term used to describe a process-focused approach to IT management. The goal for most organizations is to implement a service-focused approach to delivering IT dependent services to the end customer.

The industry standard approach for achieving the ITSM objective is to use best-in-class standards as a guide. Examples of common industry frameworks include, but are not limited to, the following:

Frameworks are guides and can be compared to the rules of a game (for example, soccer). In a game, the rules provide a consistent approach but do not limit the individual or team strategy. Another critical factor is individual creativity, which, when championed, often leads to a strategic advantage.

ITSM frameworks work best for organizations when the adoption is personalized to the organizations specific strategies and internal capabilities.

The authors recommend that you read the Understanding ITSM frameworks recipe.

Plan to do one or more of the following:

ITIL© processes take a repeatable cyclic approach to ITSM organization underpinned by continual service improvements. The ITIL© goals are aimed at ensuring the following for the organization:

The official phases of ITIL© are as follows:

SCSM is a technology capability enabler of a subset of the ITIL© processes. It is important to follow the principle of People, Processes, and Products. SCSM is a product that complements your organizations agreed processes and needs people to implement, manage, and continually improve the overall IT service strategy.

ITIL© implementation is not mandatory for SCSM deployment, but an understanding of ITIL© is recommended.

Appendix B, Useful Websites and Community Resources provides a list of useful websites for ITIL© and is highly recommended by the authors.

For this recipe, the authors recommend you read up on the difference between asset inventory and asset management as an organizational process.

Asset Management is a life cycle process, which tracks an IT asset with its associated financial data from when the asset is requested to when the asset is retired, as shown in the following figure:

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An example of the steps for creating an Asset Management process is as follows:

Asset Management begins and ends with people and ultimately can cost or add value to a business. A non-IT related analogy is the lessons from retail stock takes, which typically happen annually. The stock take is the best opportunity for a retail shop to get the most accurate figure for its profit or loss on stock. Two forms of lost revenues are as follows:

IT asset management is the stock take required for all your technological assets, and its resultant analysis for intelligent decision making to provide factual compliance measurements. The IT equivalent of the stock take process is referred to as audits for software and hardware. SCSM with partner extensions or in-house authoring provides 80 % of the Asset Management for the organization. People and process critically account for the high value of 20 percent.

There are various tools (products) labeled as Asset Management tools. The true Asset Management tools should have the capability of tracking assets from order to decommissioning, and in some cases, recommissioning.

Asset Management is an end-to-end process, and the tools are enablers of successful implementation. Successful Asset Management organization programs recognize the full life cycle management of assets.

See the Using the SCSM Authoring Tool and Extending Service Manager classes recipes in Chapter 11, Extending SCSM with Advanced Personalization, for advanced recipes on management pack authoring.

This recipe is focused on a Configuration Management System (CMS) process using SCSM. The CMS process differs from a Configuration Management Database (CMDB). A CMS combines one or more CMDBs. SCSM implements a CMS within its CMDB by merging data from multiple CMDBs including the following:

This recipe is focused on how you create a CMS process with SCSM using AD, ConfigMgr, and OpsMgr.

An example of the steps for creating a CMS process is as follows:

SCSM addresses the technology requirements of a CMS process by providing a simplified and consistent framework for connecting multiple CMDBs. In the example, the three CMDBs provide information, which SCSM merges to provide a single view of the asset. Using a database server as our asset, here's an example:

SCSM presents a consolidated view of this information to the analyst and is dynamically refreshed by the owner of the data.

SCSM builds the ITIL© process on its CMDB, which is a dynamic CMS. The CMS approach ensures that the data accuracy and management is performed at the source (AD, ConfigMgr, OpsMgr, or another supported connector). This approach removes the risk of data inconsistency typical of other systems where the IT Service Management (ITSM) tool does not automatically synchronize with CMDBs in scope.