Comprehensive Approach: Practicing ITIL Change Management

A Comprehensive Approach to
Practicing ITIL Change Management
A White Paper Prepared for BMC Software November 2008
Table of Contents
Executive Summary.............................................................................................................................................................................1
The Problem.........................................................................................................................................................................................1
The Solution .........................................................................................................................................................................................2ITIL Approach to Change Management...................................................................................................................................2Integrating Batch Processing With ITIL-Based Change Management................................................................................2BMC Software-Delivering Batch-CMDB Integration..........................................................................................................3
EMA's Perspective................................................................................................................................................................................4
About BMC Software..........................................................................................................................................................................4A Comprehensive Approach to
Practicing ITIL Change Management
Executive Summary reducing the cost of change. Enterprise Management Batch processing is a critical part of most enterprises. It Associates believes this solution will provide significant is a foundation technology for applications including e- benefits to many enterprises, especially those with an commerce, accounting, stock and inventory control, en- existing CMDB implementationterprise resource planning, customer service, and many more. Any disruption to mission-critical batch process- The Probleming can cause extensive impact to the business through Mission-critical data processing relies in large part on downtime, lost revenue, contract penalties, and more. the automated initiation, execution, management, integration, and recovery of batch-mode IT process-However, change management processes, even those ing-scripts, jobs, tasks, and other non-interactive IT based on recognized best practices such as ITIL, rarely processes that manipulate a specific data set. These take into account the batch environment when planning processes may be application-oriented, such as account-for change. Systems are shut down, removed, rebuilt, ing, payments, e-commerce, supply chain management, and updated without any concern for the impact such ERP, purchasing, ordering, fulfillment or data mining; changes may have on critical batch processing, and the or system-oriented, such as data backup, grid and cluster business services that depend on it. support, virtual load balancing, storage management, or An emerging solution for this problem is to inte- data export-transform-load operations. Batch process-grate batch service definitions into a Configuration ing in a modern enterprise is a foundation technology Management Database, or CMDB. In ITIL best prac- for many critical business services, so it is imperative to tices, the CMDB serves as "a single source of truth" maintain consistent and reliable batch processing.for recording the configuration of devices, operating At the same time, change is inevitable and profitable systems, databases, middleware, applications, etc. This businesses demand almost continual change, so they provides (among many other things) a single point of can provide new products and services, build com-reference to determine the scope and impact of any petitive advantage, and continually improve customer change to any IT system throughout the enterprise. service. Without change, a business will stagnate, and Integrating batch process definitions with the CMDB inevitably be overtaken by its competitors. However, extends this single source of truth to include mission- with change comes risk, and the potential for problem... [download for more]