MOF Process Model for Operations

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	Abstract
	What's New?
	Introduction
	Overview of the MOF Process Model
	The MOF Process Model: An In-Depth View
	Using the Team and Process Models Together
	Where to Start?
	Summary
	Appendix: Resources
	Contributors

Abstract

This paper describes the Microsoft® Operations Framework (MOF) Process Model, one of the two core MOF models. (The other is the MOF Team Model.) The MOF Process Model describes Microsoft's approach to the IT operations and service management life cycle. The Process Model organizes the life cycle into quadrants, with each quadrant having a specific focus and set of tasks that are carried out through its corresponding set of service management functions (SMFs).

The MOF Process Model for Operations is a foundational document. For the complete list and location of each of the publications in the MOF series, see the Resources section at the end of this document.

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What's New?

Since the creation of MOF version 1.0 in the summer of 1999, only minor adjustments have been made to the core models in order to maintain synchronization with the service management function and product operations guides that were being developed. This update, MOF 3.0, is the first coordinated update to the full suite of MOF core models. The key goals of this revision are to:

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Introduction

A Demanding Environment

Today's business environment places increasing demands (rapid change, financial constraints, security and reliability concerns, global interconnectedness) on IT organizations in order to meet the expanding needs of a wide variety of stakeholders. Technology advances have enabled IT organizations to better meet these demands and have created many new business opportunities. One drawback, however, is that teams dealing with new technology can quickly lose track of its business intent, and the business perception of the value of IT can be questioned. At the same time, technology projects continue to challenge IT-many projects are unsuccessful or squander precious resources through poor quality results. Moreover, enterprise businesses are increasingly dependent on their information technology systems and are therefore more vulnerable to failures in those systems. While rock-solid technology is necessary to meet demands for reliable, available, and secure IT services, technology alone is not sufficient; excellence in processes and people (skills, roles, and responsibilities) is also needed.

According to industry analysts, 50 percent (or more) of all IT budgets is spent operating IT systems, and 80 percent of unplanned system downtime is caused by people and process failures. It is vital that enterprise businesses augment technology with skilled IT staff having well-defined roles and responsibilities and using effective IT operations processes and management skills.

Microsoft's Approach

Microsoft understands the challenges facing today's enterprise computing environments and has responded with best-in-class technology and proven best practice guidance on how to effectively design, develop, deploy, operate, and support solutions built on Microsoft technologies. This knowledge comes from Microsoft's internal IT and operations experience with large-scale software development and service operation projects, its service consultants' experience in conducting projects for customer organizations of all sizes and geographies, and the best knowledge from the worldwide IT industry.

The guidance is organized into two complementary and well-integrated bodies of knowledge, or "frameworks." These are Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) and Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF).

Microsoft Operations Framework provides guidelines on how to plan, deploy, and maintain IT operational processes in support of mission-critical service solutions. MOF is a structured, yet flexible, approach based on:

Microsoft Solutions Framework is an adaptable software development and deployment approach for successfully delivering technology solutions faster, with fewer people and less risk, while producing higher quality results. MSF has been widely used by Microsoft customers, partners, consulting services, and product teams and observed its tenth anniversary in 2003.

MSF describes how to:

MSF is a disciplined approach to managing technology projects based on Microsoft internal practices, the experiences of Microsoft Services working with customers and partners, and industry best practices in software development and project management.

The IT Life Cycle

In delivering an effective portfolio of IT services to the business, IT operations and project teams should focus on three key objectives:

Microsoft Solutions Framework and Microsoft Operations Framework combine to provide a complementary, integrated set of guidance that addresses the need for a consistent and unified approach to the overall IT life cycle. The two frameworks work together to minimize the time to value-that is, the time between recognition of the need and delivery of the service. Consistency of terminology and concepts between the two frameworks also supports the delivery of a high-quality service by facilitating effective communications throughout the life cycle.

Within the overall IT life cycle, MSF and MOF follow four basic steps to create a new solution (or change to an existing one) and to operate that solution in a production environment; these are:

This approach recognizes that a change to a currently deployed solution can originate from an operations requirement, a new business requirement, or external factors such as regulatory requirements. These changes also need to follow the four basic steps of the life cycle and, depending on their complexity, can trigger either a new (MSF) project, or a smaller-scale request for change.

Microsoft's view of the IT life cycle unites the varied activities that take place in an IT organization to ensure smooth, coordinated, and cost-effective delivery of IT services to the business. MOF and MSF target different, but integral, phases in the end-to-end IT life cycle. Each framework provides useful and detailed information on the people, processes, and tools required to successfully function within its respective area. Both MSF and MOF provide technology-agnostic guidance for improving IT processes that can be used in any environment.  

Figure 1. How MSF and MOF work together to meet business needs
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How MOF Builds on ITIL

Since the 1980s, current industry best practices for IT service management has been well documented within the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) from the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) in the United Kingdom.

The OGC is a U.K. government executive agency chartered with development of best practice advice and guidance on the use of information technology in service management and operations. To accomplish this, the OGC charters projects with leading IT companies from around the world to document and validate best practices in the disciplines of IT service management.

The core ITIL guidance and publications are organized as follows:

MOF "adopts and adapts" ITIL, and combines these collaborative industry best practices with specific guidelines for running on the Microsoft platform in a variety of business scenarios. MOF extends the ITIL code of practice to support distributed IT environments and current industry directions such as application hosting, mobile-device computing, and Web-based transactional and e-commerce systems.

Service Solutions and IT Service Management

Two important concepts are key to understanding how Microsoft Operations Framework supports IT operations. These two concepts are service solutions and IT service management.

Service solutions are the capabilities, or business functions, that IT provides to its customers and users. Some examples of service solutions are:

MOF embraces the concept of IT operations providing business-focused service solutions through the use of well-defined service management functions (SMFs). These SMFs provide consistent policies, procedures, standards, and best practices that can be applied across the entire suite of service solutions found in today's IT environments.

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Overview of the MOF Process Model

Simplifying the Approach to IT Management

Defining any high-level process model requires a compromise that balances simplicity and understanding with scientific accuracy. The world of IT operations is complex; it contains a multitude of operational environments and process dynamics that are difficult to capture and define with consistent accuracy. With so many processes, procedures, and communications happening simultaneously across a diverse set of systems, applications, and platforms, it is virtually impossible to model any particular environment exactly. In practice, a fully detailed and prescriptive model is generally inappropriate and cost prohibitive for most businesses to even attempt.

In contrast, the MOF approach is to simplify process definition into a high-level framework that is easy to understand and whose principles and practices are easy to incorporate and apply selectively or comprehensively. The power of this simplified approach will enable the operations staff of a business of any size, regardless of maturity level, to realize tangible benefits to the existing, or proposed, operations environment. The intent of the MOF Process Model is to provide a simple representation of the complex components and their relationships within the model.

Process Model Principles

The MOF Process Model assists the delivery and support of IT services by addressing the following four principles:

The MOF Definition of "Release"

An additional definition that will assist in understanding this document is the MOF definition of the term "release," which has a specific meaning within the MOF context. A release is considered to be any change, or group of changes, that must be incorporated into a managed IT environment. These changes are not handled separately, but rather as a packaged release that can be tracked, installed, tested, verified, and/or uninstalled as a single, logical release. Under this definition, a release is any of the following:

This broad definition of release supports the fundamental principle of managing changes in people, process, and technology in the provision of service solutions. (Note that this definition of a release is broader than the ITIL definition of a release.)

Key Components of the MOF Process Model

The MOF principles just discussed are instituted through the key components of the Process Model architecture, which are:

Normal operations activities are defined and grouped into quadrants, each of which is focused on a particular set of processes and tasks. Significant milestones in the operations life cycle are represented by operations management reviews, which are major decision and review points in the Process Model. These are essential in ensuring that key decisions involve the proper stakeholders, include all necessary information and expectations, and are well documented for future action. Service management functions document specific processes that are performed within each of the quadrants. These are typically quite specific and prescriptive toward a single activity-for example, capacity management or help desk functions.

Each of these key components is described in detail below.

Overview of the MOF Quadrants

Where ITIL groups core operational processes into two sets-service support (processes associated with the end-users of IT services) and service delivery (those processes associated with the paying customers of IT services), MOF organizes these core ITIL processes, plus additional MOF processes, into four quadrants of the Process Model:

Each of the quadrants has a unique mission of service that is accomplished through the implementation and execution of underlying operational processes and activities contained in the SMFs. For example, in the Changing Quadrant, the underlying SMFs are: Change Management, Configuration Management, and Release Management. Together, these functions comprehensively support the Changing Quadrant's mission of service, which is to effectively identify, approve, control, and release changes to the IT environment. The quadrants are represented in the model shown below. It is important to note that, although the model implies a sequential nature from quadrant to quadrant, in most cases activities from all quadrants will be occurring simultaneously. Each of the quadrants is briefly described below.

Figure 2. The MOF Process Model, showing quadrants and operations management reviews
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Changing Quadrant

Once a release (which contains one or more changes) has been developed, tested, and is deemed ready for deployment (following MSF or another software development or project management approach), the MOF life cycle starts with a Release Readiness Review to determine if the release is ready and approved for deployment into the target environment. This review should not be the first time the release is evaluated in this manner but is rather a final review milestone prior to the actual deployment.

Following a successful Release Readiness Review (that is, a "go" decision), rollout preparations are completed and the release is deployed and becomes fully functional in the target environment following the process guidance provided in the Changing Quadrant SMF guides. The use of these SMFs will provide a process and task road map to help ensure a successful deployment and rollout for managed releases. The post-implementation review then includes an evaluation to determine the degree of success and overall outcome of the deployed change(s) in the release. This is covered in greater detail later in this paper, and extensively in each of the quadrant's SMF guides.

Operating Quadrant

Assuming a successful deployment, the release is now operational and the daily activities to run the system or application are being executed according to the operations guide for the system or service. The SMFs in this quadrant can be thought of as the typical data center activities, such as system administration, monitoring, batch processing, and so forth. These activities ensure the smooth and predictable operation of the release.

It is crucial that, as the operations staff gains experience with a process, system, or application, the staff documents this experience and retains it in some sort of knowledge management system (or at least operations guide documents). Considering staff attrition rates and the fluctuating availability of qualified personnel, possession of such a knowledge base will enable the operations group to continue to provide consistent service levels to its customers. Having this knowledge and system documentation will also provide flexibility and added ease when workflow options for support and operations, such as outsourcing, are chosen.

Supporting Quadrant

The Supporting Quadrant contains the main SMFs required to provide ongoing support to the users of the IT service solutions. As with any process, system, application, or service, problems and issues inevitably will arise when operations begins. The support and operations staff must identify, assign, and resolve incidents and problems quickly to meet the requirements set forth in the service level agreements. The underlying SMFs in this quadrant include an integrated set of reactive and proactive resolution functions, which include service desk, incident management, and problem management.

Optimizing Quadrant

MOF recognizes that running IT operations successfully is an imperative to achieving business success in the competitive marketplace. The Optimizing Quadrant specifically addresses this idea by focusing on three fundamental elements of operations:

As noted earlier, the mission of service for this quadrant is to reduce costs while maintaining or improving service levels. This is accomplished through the management and negotiation of service levels and the evaluation of several key operational metrics in the managed environment. With a thorough evaluation and subsequent understanding of these operational attributes, the IT staff moves from simply "running" a system to proactively managing a service solution. Planning is a key focus of this quadrant, making sure that the IT organization looks as far as possible into the future in order to align with the ever-changing business priorities-for example, in planning growth in areas such as capacity or anticipating changes in the labor pool and predicting its effects on workforce management.

Placing the MOF quadrants into the logical order described here and applying the concept of iteration forms a spiral life cycle that can be applied to a specific application, a data center, or an entire operations environment with multiple data centers, including outsourced operations and hosted applications.

Overview of the Operations Management Reviews

The operations management reviews (OMRs) are a unique feature of MOF. Where ITIL points out that reviews of operations activity for efficiency and effectiveness should be conducted and describes these reviews at a high level, MOF makes these reviews an explicit part of the Process Model and provides detailed guidance on how to conduct them. Although there are many reviews and process checks that take place in any IT environment, these OMRs are specifically labeled on the Process Model diagram because they warrant senior management attention and can be used as a regularly reported "health check" on the state of the operations organization. (This document provides an overview of them; see the Resources section for pointers to detailed OMR documents and templates.) The operations management reviews are:

The Process Model incorporates two types of management reviews: release-based and time-based. Two of the four reviews-Release Readiness and Change Initiation-are release-based and occur at the initiation and final installation of a release into the target environment, respectively. The remaining two reviews-Operations and Service Level Agreement-occur at regular intervals to assess the internal operations as well as performance against customer service levels.  

The reason for this mix of review types within the Process Model is to support two concepts necessary in a successful IT operations environment:

The following table summarizes the mission of service and the operations management reviews for each of the four quadrants.

Table 1. Mission of Service and Operations Management Review for Each Quadrant

Overview of the MOF Service Management Functions

As noted earlier, service management functions (SMFs) are the underlying processes and activities within each MOF quadrant that support the mission of service for that quadrant. These SMFs are at the core of the MOF Process Model. Although all of the SMFs are cross functional (and cross quadrant) in nature, each SMF is assigned a "home" or "primary" quadrant that aligns the functions performed with the mission of service for that quadrant. This natural alignment allows the IT manager to see all the key SMFs in each MOF quadrant that are required to effectively run the operations environment.

The following diagram depicts the SMF alignment with each MOF quadrant in the Process Model.

Figure 3. MOF and IT service management functions
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Many of the MOF SMFs shown in this diagram are based on ITIL. The notable exceptions are the SMFs in the Operating Quadrant, as well as the Workforce Management and Infrastructure Engineering SMFs in the Optimizing Quadrant. As a result, the Operating Quadrant is primarily where MOF provides most of the operations guidance specific to Microsoft products and technologies. In addition, due to the focus applied to IT operations and enterprise management by Microsoft, many products (both Microsoft's and other vendors') now incorporate features and functions directly designed to make them more supportable, reliable, and manageable in alignment with the MOF Process Model.

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The MOF Process Model: An In-Depth View

Introduction

The following sections describe the MOF Process Model in more detail. The format for these sections is based on describing for each quadrant:

Changing Quadrant

Definition, Goals, and Objectives

The Changing Quadrant includes the processes and procedures required to identify, review, approve, and incorporate change into a managed IT environment. Change includes hard and soft assets as well as specific process and procedural changes.

The goal of the change process is to introduce new technologies, systems, applications, hardware, tools, and processes, as well as changes in roles and responsibilities, into the IT environment quickly and with minimal disruption to service.

The objectives for the Changing Quadrant are:

By specifying that changes must be approved before being made in the production environment, the mission of service for the Changing Quadrant incorporates the idea that changes should be inherently business driven, and that changes are made to create a competitive advantage.

A fundamental principle of the Changing Quadrant is recognizing that the ability to quickly change and adapt the operations environment is a key, sustainable business advantage. Change management should be part of the entire project life cycle, not just part of steady-state operations. In many cases, change management processes have been hindered or blocked by red tape and bureaucratic committees. MOF recommends that the degree of scrutiny and rigor applied to change evaluation and adoption should be commensurate with the cost and risk associated with the change.

Team Model Role Cluster

The Release Role Cluster from the MOF Team Model is the primary role involved with each of the SMFs in this quadrant; the Release Role Cluster is also the connecting point to the Release Management Role Cluster within MSF, which initiates a solution deployment project.

Operations Management Review

The Release Readiness Review is the final management checkpoint and approval step before deploying a release. Through the Release Readiness Review, key attributes of a given release are assessed against standards, policies, and quality metrics, as well as release criteria that evaluate the readiness of the release, production environment, supporting release package, rollout and rollback plans, training plans, support plans, and the risk management plan. The Release Readiness Review results in a go/no-go decision about whether to deploy the release.

Following deployment of the release, the change(s) now move to the change review process to evaluate and measure the success of the release in the production environment and to document lessons learned for future releases. This final review is called the post-implementation review (PIR) (which is also documented within ITIL).

The SMFs

The following three service management functions support the Changing Quadrant:

MOF bases these SMFs on ITIL and extends them to include Microsoft-specific practices and additional industry best practices.

Change Management

The Change Management SMF is responsible for the process of documenting, assessing the impact of, approving, scheduling, and reviewing changes in an IT environment. A key goal of the change management process is to ensure that all parties affected by a given change are aware of and understand the impact of the impending change. Since most systems are heavily interrelated, any changes made in one part of a system may have profound impacts on another. Change management attempts to identify all affected systems and processes before the change is deployed in order to mitigate or eliminate any adverse effects. Typically, the "target" or managed environment is the production environment, but it should also include key integration, testing, and staging environments.

The categories of assets that should be placed under change control are broad and include, but are not limited to, hardware, communications equipment and software, system software, applications software, processes, procedures, roles, responsibilities, and any documentation relevant to the running, support, and maintenance of systems in the managed environment. In other words, any asset that exists in the environment and is necessary for meeting the service level requirements of the solution should be placed under change control. Changes are also rated in their impact and urgency, and ITIL provides an excellent process flow for processing changes of different levels of importance.

Configuration Management

The Configuration Management SMF is responsible for identifying and documenting the components of the environment and the relationships between them. The goal of configuration management is to ensure that the current state is known and that only authorized components, referred to as configuration items (CIs), are used in the IT environment, and that all changes to CIs are recorded and tracked through the component life cycle. The information captured and tracked will depend upon the specific CI, but will often include a description of the CI, the version, constituent components, relationships to other CIs, location/assignment, and current status.

The information contained about the CIs should be held in a single logical data repository, referred to as the configuration management database (CMDB). Whenever possible, this database should be self-maintaining, with automated updates to CI records. CI records are the representation of the CIs in the CMDB, including attributes and relationships. At the enterprise IT level, this repository will often be a relational database with associated support tools, but for smaller organizations a spreadsheet may suffice.

In addition, configuration management is responsible for maintaining the definitive software library (DSL), which serves as the repository for all master copies of software deployed in the IT environment.

Configuration management is often confused with asset management. Asset management is an accountancy process that is a subset of the overall configuration management process and includes depreciation and cost accounting. Asset management systems typically maintain information on assets above a certain value, their business unit, purchase date, supplier, and location. The relationship to other assets is not usually recorded and the information is primarily used to track the whereabouts of expensive equipment.

Release Management

The focus of the Release Management SMF is to facilitate the introduction of software and hardware releases into managed IT environments and to ensure that all changes are deployed successfully. Typically, this includes the production environment as well as the managed preproduction environments. Release management coordinates and manages all releases and is typically the coordination point between the development release team and the operations groups responsible for deploying the release into production. In combining MSF and MOF in an end-to-end IT life cycle, this is the key point at which MSF-developed projects and solutions integrate fully with the MOF deployment process into a release product.

The oversight role of release management is critical in the successful deployment of complex releases that often involve multiple service providers, operations centers, and user groups. Good resource planning and management are essential to successfully packaging and distributing such releases to customers. Release management takes a holistic view of a change to an IT service and ensures that all aspects of a release are considered together, both technical and non-technical.

Releases should be defined, maintained, and scheduled for each IT service. Most organizations today implement changes on an as-needed basis-or worse, do not implement proactive changes such as service packs at all. The concept of releases and release management allows them to proactively schedule most changes so that high-importance and emergency changes that do not fit the change cycle are the exception, not the rule.

Operating Quadrant

Definition, Goals, and Objectives

The Operating Quadrant includes the IT operating standards, processes, and procedures that are regularly applied to service solutions to achieve and maintain service levels within predetermined parameters. To successfully perform the underlying service management functions within this quadrant, the operations staff must ensure that specific technical guidance exists for a given service solution. Documented operations guides are the primary means for providing the prescriptive guidance and include the tasks and step-by-step procedures necessary to ensure the service solution is available and performs to stated requirements. They also reference standard service management functions and any required adaptation to these functions. Operations guides based on MOF now exist for many Microsoft server products and are available on Microsoft's website.  

The goal of the Operating Quadrant is the highly predictable execution of day-to-day tasks, both manual and automated.

The objectives of the Operating Quadrant include:

Team Model Role Cluster

The Operations Role Cluster within the MOF Team Model is the primary role involved with the various SMFs in this quadrant.

Operations Management Review

The Operations Review is the management review within the Operating Quadrant. The primary goal of the Operations Review is to assess the effectiveness of internal operating processes and procedures and make improvements as appropriate. This review focuses on internal processes and procedures contained in the operating level agreements (OLAs) designed to support and fulfill the customers' service level requirements, as well as how those activities can be improved. The information gathered in this review may be used in the customer-facing SLA Review. These improvements should go through the change management SMF processes described earlier.

A secondary goal of the Operations Review is to validate that the operations staff has documented their day-to-day activities and tasks in a corporate knowledge management system. This ensures that the key operational knowledge remains current and accessible to all members of the operations staff.

The SMFs

The seven service management functions in the Operating Quadrant are:

The implementation of these SMFs will vary depending on the type of service solution being provided. In relating the MOF SMFs to ITIL, the SMFs in the Operating Quadrant are the most distinctive in that they are not based on any foundational processes provided by ITIL. Instead, these SMFs focus on the key operational activities required to manage a distributed computing environment, whether on the Microsoft platform or any other. They are also distinct from other SMFs within MOF in that they contain the majority of technical and/or product-specific guidance from Microsoft around MOF processes.

System Administration

System administration is somewhat of an umbrella process that is responsible for generally keeping IT systems running. The System Administration SMF administers centralized and distributed processing environments and often spans several tiers of operations and support. System administration is often referred to as operations management, both of which are very broad terms that need to be clarified within the specific IT organization or technology platform. However, system administration typically means overseeing a larger, enterprise-level organization and the administrative duties performed with that kind of organization.

System administration includes responsibility for:

Security Administration

At the highest level, the Security Administration SMF is responsible for maintaining a safe computing environment. Security is a critical part of the IT infrastructure; an information system with a weak security foundation will eventually experience a security breach.

The primary goals of security administration are to ensure:

The Security Administration SMF deals specifically with the day-to-day activities and tasks related to maintaining and adjusting the IT security infrastructure. In general, this includes daily risk management and mitigation, security administration based on the platform and technology being used, patch management administration, security incident management, and auditing and intrusion detection. Defined in terms of security policy and planning, the IT security infrastructure is further discussed in the Security Management SMF in the Optimizing Quadrant later in this document.

Directory Services Administration

Directory services allow users and applications to find network resources such as users, servers, applications, tools, services, and other information. The Directory Services Administration SMF deals with the day-to-day operations, maintenance, and support of the enterprise directory. The goal of directory services administration is to ensure that information is accessible through the network using a simple and organized process by any authorized requester.

Directory services administration addresses:

In addition to the SMF guide for directory services, there is an extensively detailed operations guide for Microsoft Active Directory available on Microsoft.com.

Network Administration

Network administration is the process of managing and running all networks within an organization. The Network Administration SMF is responsible for the administration and maintenance of the physical components that make up the organization's network, such as servers, routers, switches, and firewalls. Network administration must ensure that the network operates efficiently at all times to avoid any negative impact to the operation of the enterprise. This SMF works closely with the Infrastructure Engineering SMF (in the Optimizing Quadrant), which defines the architecture, topology, and components of the IT infrastructure.

Network administration covers:

Service Monitoring and Control

Service monitoring allows the operations staff to observe the health of an IT service in real time. Within a distributed process environment, the accurate monitoring of a system is complicated by the integration of systems with partners and suppliers in automating a given company's value and supply chain. To ensure the IT service remains available, the Service Monitoring and Control SMF is typically responsible for monitoring the following system components:

However, knowing the current health of a service or determining where a service outage might occur is of little benefit unless the operations staff has the ability to resolve it, or at the very least notify the appropriate group that a specific type of reactive or proactive action needs to occur. This is what is meant by the term "control." When combined and implemented properly, the Service Monitoring and Control SMF provides the critical capability to ensure that service levels are always in compliance.

Storage Management

Storage management includes a great number of individual components such as servers, storage hardware, storage software, storage networks, tools, and operational processes that must be seamlessly melded together so that businesses can reliably safeguard their data while trying to realize cost and efficiency improvements. Businesses and organizations are also suffering from the tremendous data growth explosion as more and more information is stored electronically.

Ensuring that these systems, and their stored data, keep operating is a critical part of business planning. While the Storage Management SMF lies within the Operating Quadrant and now includes the Print and Output Management SMF, it is intricately tied with the Optimizing Quadrant SMFs of Capacity Management, IT Service Continuity Management, Availability Management, and Security Management.

Business continuance is the process of ensuring that critical data and systems remain available even if hardware, software, or environmental problems interrupt the primary servers' normal operation. Storage management also works with the other SMFs in the Operating Quadrant to ensure that operating level agreements are achieved for items such as recovery time objectives and availability metrics, which then enable the customer's SLA requirements to be met.  

Job Scheduling

Job scheduling involves the continuous organization of (batch) jobs and processes into the most efficient sequence, maximizing system throughput and utilization to meet SLA requirements. The Job Scheduling SMF is closely tied to the Capacity Management and Service Monitoring and Control SMFs.  

The goal of job scheduling is to ensure that:

Job scheduling entails defining:

Supporting Quadrant

Definition, Goals, and Objectives

The Supporting Quadrant includes the processes, procedures, tools, and staff required to identify, assign, diagnose, track, and resolve incidents, problems, and user/customer requests within the approved requirements delineated in the service level agreement.

The key goal of the Supporting Quadrant is the timely resolution of these incidents, problems, and inquiries for end users of the IT services provided. The SMFs within this quadrant achieve this goal through the following objectives:

The reactive functions depend on an organization's ability to respond and resolve incidents and problems quickly. The more desirable, proactive functions try to avoid any disruption in service in the first place by identifying root causes and resolving problems before any service levels are impacted. This is primarily achieved through effective monitoring of the service solution against predefined thresholds and by giving the operations staff time to resolve potential problems before they manifest into service disruptions. Clearly, although MOF defines these support processes in the Supporting Quadrant, they are in integral part of the daily functioning of every other quadrant, particularly the Operating Quadrant in tracing problems to their root cause.

Team Model Role Cluster

The Support Role Cluster in the MOF Team Model is the role cluster most closely involved in implementing and facilitating the Supporting Quadrant SMFs. However, with the addition of the Service Role Cluster (in MOF version 3.0), the two role clusters (Service and Support) could potentially both be involved in the Supporting Quadrant SMFs. For example, the Service Role Cluster owns the overall end-to-end management of a specific service, such as provision of a messaging service solution across the organization, which would include the operations representation in the design and deployment of the solution as well as the operations aspects of the solution. The Support Role Cluster would work closely with the Service Role Cluster in this case, and would focus specifically on the service level and user support of the messaging solution. (These role clusters are discussed in detail in the MOF Team Model for Operations paper.)

Operations Management Review

The SLA Review is the operations management review that assesses the effectiveness of the IT operations group in delivering the agreed-upon service levels contained in the mutually approved (by both the customer and IT) SLA. This review focuses its assessment on the delivery of services to the customer and end users and is complementary to the Operations Review discussed earlier. Whereas the Operations Review focuses on internal operational efficiencies, the SLA Review focuses on external end-user service levels and any changes required to address inadequacies in these services.  

MOF recommends that customers, end users, and the operations staff use the SLA Review on a regularly scheduled basis (for example, monthly or quarterly) to monitor service delivery and to identify changes required in service levels, system functionality, new business requirements, and/or key process changes.

The SMFs

The Supporting Quadrant includes the following service management functions:

MOF bases these SMFs on ITIL and extends them to include Microsoft-specific practices and additional industry best practices.

Service Desk

The Service Desk is the overarching service management function of the Supporting Quadrant, which is also reflected in how ITIL refers to the service desk as a "function" rather than as a process, the only exception of its kind in ITIL.

The Service Desk SMF provides guidance on setting up and running the organizational unit or department that is the single point of contact between the users and provider of IT services. It coordinates all activities and customer communications about incidents, problems, and inquiries related to production systems. Requests come to the service desk for help on solving issues and problems across a vast array of applications, communication systems, desktop configurations, and facilities.

The Service Desk focuses on two areas: execution of the Supporting Quadrant SMFs and optimization of the service desk processes.

Execution of the Supporting Quadrant SMFs includes:

Optimization of service desk processes includes:

Incident Management

Incident management is the process of managing and controlling faults and disruptions in the use or implementation of IT services, including applications, networking, hardware, and user-reported service requests.

The effective management of incidents is a complex process that requires interaction with many other service management functions, most notably the Service Desk, Problem Management, Configuration Management, and Change Management SMFs. Because of this complexity and the need for clear communication about an incident, a robust incident taxonomy has been developed to facilitate incident management. The following list provides the key definitions within this taxonomy as well as summarizes the principle activities within the Incident Management SMF:

Problem Management

The key goal for problem management is to ensure stability in service solutions by identifying and documenting errors from the IT infrastructure, and either creating a workaround or initiating a request for change (RFC) to resolve or eliminate the root cause (where supported by the business case for doing so). The Problem Management SMF takes the lead in structuring the escalation process of investigation, diagnosis, resolution, and closure of problems.

Problem management is closely interrelated with incident management performed at the service desk level. To better understand this interrelationship, it is necessary to understand the differences between incidents, problems, and known errors. The following table lists these key definitions.

Table 2. Comparison of Problem Management Terms

The following diagram depicts the interrelationship of these items and the resultant connection with the Change Management SMF.

Figure 4. Incident, problem, and change management relationship

An important aspect of problem management not to be overlooked is that problem management works proactively to prevent problems from occurring. For example, problem management works with availability management to ensure that increased redundancy is built into mission-critical systems and infrastructure components.

Optimizing Quadrant

Definition, Goals, and Objectives

The Optimizing Quadrant's activities entail planning and improving all aspects of IT service management, with a proactive, long-term holistic view of all the processes within the MOF Process Model. This quadrant's functions include review of outages/incidents; examination of cost structures, staff assessments, and availability; and performance analysis as well as capacity forecasting. The goal of the Optimizing Quadrant is to add value to the business through the optimization of cost, performance, capacity, and availability in the delivery of IT services.

The objectives of the Optimizing Quadrant include:

Team Model Role Cluster

Several role clusters could be actively involved with the SMFs in this quadrant depending on the organizational structure, size, geography, and business model. These include Security, Infrastructure, Partner, and Service role clusters. These are described in detail in the MOF Team Model for Operations paper.

Operations Management Review

The Change Initiation Review is the operations management review in which changes are evaluated for cost and benefits and in turn become the catalyst for the Changing Quadrant to begin executing the release. Changes may originate from anywhere: internal to IT, from the business, from supplies and partners, or any external source.  

The Change Initiation Review (formerly called the Release Approved Review) results in the formal approval of a proposed change, or set of changes, to be developed and packaged into a defined release. (The Change Initiation Review aligns with the change authorization process in ITIL.) This review is key to the operations environment because it begins the investment cycle for operations planning and deployment of a given release.

The goal of the Change Initiation Review is to ensure that due diligence is performed in the cost-benefit analysis of proposed changes. This is critical in deciding how best to spend the limited IT resources of any organization. It also ensures that the operations staff is appropriately represented in the decision-making process for these IT investments.  

In larger or more complex projects, this review corresponds directly to the MSF Project Plans Approved Milestone, which is the official approval to build the product/solution according to the defined specifications and timelines. It is at this point that money, people, and equipment now begin to come together to make the release a reality.

The SMFs

The following eight service management functions lie within the Optimizing Quadrant:

The first five SMFs are based upon ITIL and have been extended to include Microsoft-specific practices and additional industry best practices. The sixth SMF-Workforce Management-is based on industry and Microsoft best practices. The last two SMFs-Security Management and Infrastructure Engineering-are new in MOF 3.0. Identified as a content gap in earlier releases, they are based on experience with customers and partners using and implementing MOF.

Service Level Management

MOF advocates the best practices of IT service delivery, and the Service Level Management SMF specifically provides a structured way for consumers and providers of IT services to meaningfully discuss and assess how well a service is being delivered. The primary objective of service level management can be summarized as providing the mechanism for setting clear expectations with the customer and user groups about the service being delivered and then measuring performance against these requirements. Satisfied customers are a result of first setting clear expectations and then consistently meeting those expectations through execution.  

The key activities within the Service Level Management SMF include:

Financial Management

The MOF Financial Management SMF is based entirely on the ITIL process by the same name. Its importance lies in the large role that financial management plays in controlling the overall costs that business incurs because of IT. (Latest analysts' figures show that 50-60 percent, or more depending on which source is referenced, of an entire IT organization's budget is typically spent on IT operations.) The efficient and effective use of MOF and ITIL best practices and guidance help to reduce the percentage required by IT, thereby enabling the money to be allocated to other parts of the business, such as innovating new products and services.

Financial management activities include budgeting, IT accounting, charging (or charge back models), and system decommissioning.

Budgeting includes predicting and controlling the spending of money within the organization. Financial management ensures that any service solution proposed to meet the needs identified from a request for change is justified from a cost and budget standpoint. This is often referred to as a cost-benefit analysis and is included in an organization's forecasting as well.

The IT accounting process enables the IT provider to account for how its money is spent-for example, costs by customer, service, activity, organization, or any other of the myriad ways accounting is performed.  

Charging is the activity required to bill customers for services. In addition, many corporations today are utilizing cost allocation or charge-back models where business units are funding their own key IT projects. This places more accountability for the business value of IT projects in the hands of those who must justify the expenditure and prove the benefits. A consequence of these models is that they put more pressure on the IT groups to become more efficient and cost effective. With the surge in IT outsourcing, application hosting, and e-commerce, charging and charge-back models are becoming integral components of business operations.

One more activity within the Financial Management SMF addresses system decommissioning or retirement. Far too often, a system or application is deployed and continues to be supported far past its useful life span. It is critical that systems be assessed over time to consider not only upgrades and new functionality, but also replacement, outsourcing, or simple retirement. Financial as well as business intelligence must be considered when making these types of assessments.

Capacity Management

Capacity management is defined as the process of planning, sizing, and controlling business, service solution, and resource capacity such that it satisfies user demand within the performance levels established in the capacity plan and service level agreements. The Capacity Management SMF consists of the following three components:

Accomplishing these activities requires information about usage scenarios, patterns, and peak load characteristics of the service solution as well as stated performance requirements. Obviously, server and network capacity are key components to overall capacity and, based on the usage scenarios, the IT operations staff can set predetermined thresholds that will indicate when additional capacity is required.

In addition to system parameters, it is important to consider staffing levels in capacity planning. As a service solution is required to scale to larger and larger loads, the manual activities associated with the solution may require an increased number of resources to support the increased load. An obvious example of this would be the service or help desk. Increases in user loads will generally increase the number of incidents that must be addressed.  

An often overlooked element of capacity planning is the operational processes themselves. Many times the processes deployed to deliver a service solution are not reevaluated when user volume increases until process response times become problematic. Analysis typically discovers that the process, while perhaps adequate for low user volumes, could not scale to support the increased loads. Thus, "process scale" must be examined on a regular basis along with the more traditional system parameters.

Availability Management

The singular goal of the Availability Management SMF is to ensure that customers can use a given IT service when they need it. A goal of maximum availability (with total annual downtime measured in just minutes for most organizations) is a worthy objective for any operations staff to achieve.

Ensuring high availability for a service solution must begin early in the software or service development process. Here again, Microsoft frameworks add great value in that MSF is "operations aware," or in other words, is complementary to MOF, and is positioned to ensure that designing for availability, reliability, manageability, and maintainability occur and are documented in the specification of the product or service (beginning with the project's Envisioning Phase). Whether the service solution is an off-the-shelf package, custom application, or outsourced operation, high availability cannot be achieved without a solid technical architecture and system design. Assuming the service solution has been constructed to achieve high-availability requirements, it then becomes necessary to support the service with solid operational processes and skilled people. These latter elements are the key focus of this Availability Management SMF.

Availability is related to, but different from, reliability. Reliability, in statistical terms, measures how frequently and at what intervals the system fails, whereas availability measures the percentage of time the system is in its correct operational state.

The common method for calculating availability is to subtract downtime from total time and divide by total time. These numbers must be obtained from the service level agreement requirements in order to be accurate and meaningful. For example, downtime is defined as the occasions when users cannot utilize the service at the times prescribed by the SLA. For instance, if the SLA specifies six hours downtime every Saturday for maintenance on a reporting system, those hours do not become downtime that detracts from the availability of the service because it was originally agreed to in the user expectations. Total time is the number of hours that the service should be available for use as defined in the SLA. In this example, the weekly six-hour maintenance window would be subtracted from the total time.

So, the key question is, how do you improve your system's availability? The only variable in the equation that will affect this is downtime. Re-examine availability in the context of downtime. In looking at likely causes of downtime, the operations and support staffs require accurate configuration data as well as access to the incident and problem records. Changes may result from initiatives to improve service reliability and availability. The availability process manager must assess RFCs to establish their likely effect on reliability and availability and then review the implemented changes for their actual effect.

The ITIL book on availability management considers availability management processes in great depth and detail. It also provides additional resources and templates, such as how to create an availability plan and how to use the IT Availability Metrics Model (ITAMM). See the Resources section for the website for ITIL books.

IT Service Continuity Management

The IT Service Continuity Management SMF, which was previously known in ITIL as contingency management, focuses on supporting the overall business continuity management process by ensuring that in the event of a business interruption, required IT services can be recovered according to an agreed schedule.

The focus is on minimizing the business disruption of mission-critical systems. This process deals with planning to cope with and recover from an IT disaster. An IT disaster is defined as a loss of service for protracted periods, which requires that work be moved to an alternative system in a nonroutine way. It also provides guidance on safeguarding the existing systems by the development and introduction of proactive and reactive countermeasures. IT service continuity management also considers which activities need to be performed in the event of a service outage not attributed to a full-blown disaster.  

Many project methodologies, such as PRINCE2 and MSF, will refer to risk management as a critical area of managing a successful project. This is sound best practice, and the discipline of risk management applied to operations provides guidance in this area (see Resources section). IT service continuity management builds upon risk management principles and identifies key risks to service provision, assesses the likelihood of occurrence, determines the impacts, defines mitigation measures to reduce the probability of occurrence and/or reduce the impact of the risk condition, and provides contingency plans for business continuity in case the risk event actually occurs.

Objectives of IT service continuity management include:

Ideally, systems are designed to include sufficient levels of resilience, such as diversely rooted networks and geographically distributed servers, so that the design phase of the project addresses many of the requirements for sound IT service continuity planning. Again, MSF offers detailed guidance in these areas in designing for operations and infrastructure deployment.

Note that IT service continuity and availability management are significantly interrelated, but have different imperatives. Availability management is concerned with designing and building services with the appropriate availability characteristics under normal day-to-day operating conditions and expected downtime and maintenance. IT service continuity management is concerned with preparing for, preempting, and managing business interruptions-that is, not "business as usual" situations, but the unexpected and/or disasters. Risk management is heavily used in both SMFs.

Workforce Management

Achieving any of the objectives described in this paper requires an adequately skilled and trained workforce. It is important to put best practices in place to continuously assess changing economic conditions and impacts on the IT workforce and make the appropriate investments and adjustments. This includes recruiting, skills development, knowledge transfer, competency levels, team building, process improvements, and resource deployment.   

The Workforce Management SMF is unique to MOF. The Workforce Management SMF recommends best practices to recruit, retain, maintain, and motivate the IT workforce. Although ITIL emphasizes the need for good workforce management practices across all operations processes, MOF highlights workforce management by explicitly promoting it to the status of an SMF in the Process Model.

The Workforce Management SMF is complementary to the MOF Team Model in that the Team Model describes the core operations functional roles and their activities in enabling MOF Process Model activities, while the Workforce Management SMF focuses more on the human resource components of staff development, training, and so forth.

Security Management

Security management has been elevated to a new SMF in the Optimizing Quadrant in MOF 3.0 for a number of reasons. The existing Security Administration SMF addresses the routine daily tasks of the Operating Quadrant in administering and maintaining security across the services and systems, but no higher-level guidance was available that told which security policies and guidelines should exist in the first place. Additionally, since the initial release of MOF, ITIL has published a new book on security management, and Microsoft's own security group has conducted extensive work in creating process, policy, and technology guidance through the "Security Push" initiative of the past several years. Both of these resources are being used and referenced in the content guidance for the Security Management SMF.

The goal of the Security Management SMF is to define and communicate the organization's security plans, policies, guidelines, and relevant regulations defined by the associated external industry or government agencies. Security management strives to ensure that effective information security measures are taken at the strategic, tactical, and operational levels. It also has overall management responsibility for ensuring that these measures are followed as well as reporting to management on security activities. Security management has important ties with other processes; some security management activities are carried out by other SMFs, under the supervision of security management.

Infrastructure Engineering

The Infrastructure Engineering SMF is the second new SMF to be included in MOF 3.0. Again, this content was identified as a gap in the MOF Process Model and is based on experiences using MOF in both our internal IT operations as well as our customer environments with partners. Infrastructure engineering processes focus on ensuring coordination of infrastructure development efforts, translating strategic technology initiatives into functional IT environmental elements, managing the technical plans for IT engineering, hardware, and enterprise architecture projects, and ensuring quality tools and technologies are delivered to the users.

IT personnel responsible for implementing the processes contained in the Infrastructure Engineering SMF typically perform coordination duties across many other SMFs, liaising with the staffs who implement them. The Infrastructure Engineering SMF has close links to such SMFs as Capacity Management, Availability Management, IT Service Continuity Management, and Storage Management, as well as across ITIL functions such as Facilities Management. It provides a means of coordination between separate, but related, SMFs that was previously lacking in MOF.

The Infrastructure Engineering SMF includes the following activities:

Infrastructure engineering is, in several ways, an embodiment of MSF management principles within the MOF Optimizing Quadrant. The processes primarily involve project management and coordination, within an IT operations context. They are linked with nearly every other SMF in order to communicate engineering policies and standards and to ensure that they are included and adhered to when implementing projects and production functions. To accomplish this, those in the Infrastructure Role Cluster (of the MOF Team Model) work with management teams in each of the operations areas to apply guidance from the Infrastructure Engineering SMF. The MOF Risk Management Discipline is performed continually during this process to evaluate whether engineering standards and guidelines are helping to mitigate operations risks across the environment.

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Using the Team and Process Models Together

Overview of the MOF Team Model

The MOF Process Model and the Team Model are the two core models that define Microsoft Operations Framework. The Team Model provides a flexible set of guidelines for organizing effective operations teams and describes the key activities and competencies of each role cluster in running and operating distributed computing environments. The role clusters in the Team Model exist in synergy with the SMFs of the Process Model; the Team Model role clusters enable the SMF processes to be carried out.

A pointer to the online MOF documentation, including the Team Model, is listed in the Resources section of this paper. The diagram shown below displays the seven Team Model role clusters.

Figure 5. The MOF Team Model role clusters
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Mapping of Team Model Role Clusters with SMFs

It is helpful to consider where the ownership of SMF processes from the MOF Process Model resides within particular role clusters of the MOF Team Model. For example, if change management is to work well within an organization, then the ownership of that process should fall within the scope of a team whose mission of service or quality goal is aligned with the successful outcome of that process. The following table maps each Process Model SMF to the Team Model role clusters primarily responsible for it. Keep in mind that more than one role cluster can be involved in an SMF, and that a role cluster can be involved in many SMFs as well.

Table 3. Team Model Role Cluster / Process Model SMF Mapping

Notice that the Partner Role Cluster does not explicitly own any processes. This is because the Partner Role Cluster is specifically responsible for working with supplier or partner groups outside of IT operations to facilitate the delivery of service to IT operations. The partner groups will often have their own processes controlling how they deliver services.

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Where to Start?

Understand the Needs

If you have just started learning about MOF and ITIL, a common reaction after reading about the MOF Process Model is "Okay, interesting and helpful info, but what do I do now? How and where should I start?" It is beyond the scope of this MOF paper to go into great depth on implementing service improvement projects, and there are excellent resources listed at the end of this document for taking the next step. This section, however, will provide a few things to consider and some example "quick wins" that can provide a catalyst for future thought and action.

Each company has differing business goals that will affect how IT will be used to support the overall organization. In order for the business to meet the needs of its customers and shareholders while staying ahead of its competition, it must make the best use of its IT organization.  

Below are some current situations faced by many IT organizations. These scenarios provide some possible starting points for MOF to assist IT in meeting the goals of the business.