What Is ITSM in Networking?
IT Service Management (ITSM) is a service for employees and customers. ITSM in networking allows businesses to create, follow, and monitor delivery of IT services to employees and customers while also improving each user's network experience.
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Why is ITSM important in networking?
Organizations rely on networks for reliable connectivity, and also to enforce security and provide excellent user experiences. This helps them meet their business objectives. Since any failure can hinder efficient functioning of an organization, they need a formal and rigorous way to manage their networks.
Attaching an ITSM system to the network can provide the following benefits:
- Plan and log changes in the network for assurance and traceability
- Anticipate and avoid networking issues and solve them quickly if they do occur
- Enable sustainable network growth by improving processes and defining efficient workflows
How does ITSM in networking work?
Because it is difficult to set up an ITSM system to work directly with thousands of individual network devices, ITSM systems work with central network management entities. This entity, usually the network controller, collects and provides network data that the ITSM system needs. It then acts on the directives that the ITSM system gives it.
To stay connected with external systems in a modern organization, network controllers offer APIs. Users and third-party applications can use these APIs to drive automation, agility, and process improvements through the controller. ITSM systems integrate with the network controller using these APIs.
What are the use cases for ITSM in networking?
Organizations can help ensure alignment of network operations with their key business objectives using ITSM in the following ways:
CMDB synchronization
The network controller sends configuration data for network devices to the ITSM Configuration Management Database (CMDB) so the ITSM system is always synchronized with up-to-date network information.
Network event-to-service ticket creation
The network controller provides network event details to the ITSM system, which creates incident, problem, or change tickets. Individual users may also create events to request service, or to report an issue they experience.
Software Image Management (SWIM)
The network controller monitors software image updates for compliance, security, and other operational triggers, then publishes events to the ITSM system. The ITSM system then creates change requests if needed.
Ticket enrichment with network context
The network controller provides network context and user details about an event when an ITSM ticket is opened. The controller provides the information you need to debug the problem and take steps to fix it. This helps you avoid manual steps, such as recreating the problem, by gathering the appropriate data after the event has happened.
How does ITSM in networking help?
Bringing ITSM rigor to networking drives efficiencies and reduces network operating costs:
Single site for incident management
An ITSM system acts as a repository for both user and system service requests. All prevailing incidents, changes, events, and problem management workflows are archived in one location, including the approval chain. The ITSM system also maintains formal change and maintenance workflows.
Tracing and accountability
All events, service requests, security incidents, along with their relevant information, approvals, and resulting actions are logged in the ITSM system. This provides context for problem resolution and helps with historical tracing.
Standardization of service
With a single control point, duplicate requests can be filtered, conflicting requests can be prioritized, and service resolution times can be logged, analyzed, and improved over time.
Meaningful reporting
With the wealth of collected information about the network and other IT systems and applications, comprehensive and insightful reports covering multiple aspects can be generated.
Improve customer experience
Ultimately, the objective of an ITSM system is to improve customer experience and business outcomes. It does this by enforcing rigorous processes to handle service tickets and leverage all the information for continuous improvement.
