Service Management Functions

For the latest information, please see http://www.microsoft.com/mof

On This Page

	Overview
	Microsoft Operations Framework Overview
	MOF Process Model Quadrants and SMFs
	Appendix: Suggested Training and Reading

Overview

This chapter provides background information on the purpose of this guide, its intended audience, and its subject: Microsoft® Operations Framework (MOF).

Document Purpose

The intent of this document is to introduce service management functions (SMFs) and provide background information about their purpose and origin. SMFs provide operational guidance for Microsoft technologies employed in computing environments for information technology applications. SMFs are a core part of Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF), which provides guidance through courses, services, guides, and other means that enable organizations to achieve mission-critical system reliability, availability, supportability, and manageability of IT solutions.

The content of this document, and the SMF guides for which it serves as an introduction, draws from best-practice guidelines included in the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), which is documented and maintained by the Office of Government Commerce (OGC). Companies and organizations whose years of IT operations experience have contributed toward the guidelines documented in ITIL include Accenture, Avanade Inc., Fox IT, Hewlett-Packard Company, Lucent Technologies/NetworkCare Professional Services, Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS), and Microsoft Operations and Technology Group (OTG)—formerly known as Information Technology Group (ITG).

Intended Audience

This material is valuable to both internal staff and consultants. It is aimed primarily at two main groups: IT operations managers and IT professionals, as well as support staff (including analysts and service desk specialists) working in or supporting the operations of a production IT environment.

It is assumed that readers are fully conversant with the MOF Process and Team models and with the MOF Risk Management Discipline. These concepts are briefly reviewed in this document, but are described in greater depth in a series of technical papers, available at http://www.microsoft.com/mof.

How to Use This Guide

MOF SMF guides are standardized to ensure consistency across the guides. This document is intended to present background information that is common to all of the SMF guides.

All SMF guides follow this basic high-level structure:

Background

The OGC developed ITIL as a comprehensive and coherent code of practice to help organizations provide efficient and cost-effective IT services. The OGC is a United Kingdom government executive agency responsible for developing best practices 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 around the world to document and validate best practices in the disciplines of IT service management and operations.

Microsoft Frameworks

Microsoft Frameworks are bodies of knowledge pertaining to the development, deployment, and operation of software and infrastructure solutions. The Frameworks provide technical guidance built on proven practices for people, processes, and technology based on the IT life cycle. Frameworks content is distributed through a variety of mechanisms, including technical papers, courseware, and service offerings, generally associated with Microsoft Solution Offerings. A vital part of the Frameworks strategy is to address the dynamic, ever-changing nature of today's distributed IT environments. Microsoft Consulting Services, Product Support Services, and Microsoft partners deliver solutions through integrated frameworks and custom-tailored service engagements.

The Microsoft Frameworks draw upon the extensive experience that Microsoft, its customers, and industry partners have in deploying and operating mission-critical systems using Microsoft products and technologies. Frameworks principles for IT service management acknowledge and draw from the well-documented best practices within ITIL. The Frameworks provide a bridge between products and technologies on the one hand, and customer solutions on the other. They provide the managerial and technical knowledge that organizations need to get the most from their technology investment.

The IT life cycle contains four phases—planning, preparing, building, and operating, defined as follows:

Microsoft Frameworks consists of two components—Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) and Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF). These correspond to the building and operating phases of the IT life cycle, respectively. Each framework provides the information, tools, and resources related to the people, processes, and technologies needed to successfully complete their corresponding phase. Aspects of each of the frameworks are also incorporated into the Microsoft Solution Offerings, described below.

Microsoft Solutions Framework

Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) provides guidance in the planning, building, and deploying phases within a specific project life cycle. This guidance is in the form of white papers, deployment guides, tools, templates, case studies, and courseware in the areas of enterprise architecture, application development, component design, and infrastructure deployment. Many of these resources are available online at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/solutionaccelerators/msf/default.mspx.

Microsoft Operations Framework

Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) offers comprehensive technical guidance for achieving mission-critical production system reliability, availability, and manageability for Microsoft products and technologies. This direction consists of white papers, operational guides, assessment tools, best practices, case studies, and support tools for effective data center management within today’s complex distributed IT environment. Many of these resources are available online at http://www.microsoft.com/mof.

Top of page

Microsoft Operations Framework Overview

Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) is a collection of best practices, principles, and models. It provides comprehensive technical guidance for achieving mission-critical production system reliability, availability, supportability, and manageability for solutions and services built on Microsoft products and technologies. This guidance is presented in the form of white papers, service management guides, assessment tools, operations kits, best practices, case studies, and support tools that address the people, process, and technologies for effectively managing production systems within today’s complex distributed IT environment.

MOF Core Concepts

MOF directly addresses the two core concepts that IT organizations need to effectively manage in order to be successful. Those core concepts are service solutions and IT service management.

Service solutions include those business services that IT provides to customers and users. These may include line of business (LOB) applications, messaging, e-commerce infrastructure, print services, data storage, and others.

IT service management entails the IT functions or processes that must be performed in order to manage and maintain each of the aforementioned service solutions. These IT functions or processes are termed service management functions (SMFs) and include Configuration Management, Change Management, Service Desk, Capacity Management, and others. MOF currently recognizes more than 20 individual SMFs, each of which is thoroughly described in an SMF-specific technical document. A brief description of each of the SMFs is provided later in this overview.

MOF Core Models

MOF principles and guidance are also organized around three core models, which are each manifested within the individual SMFs. These three models—the MOF Team Model, MOF Process Model, and MOF Risk Management Discipline—are introduced in the sections that follow. In-depth discussions of each model are available through technical guides located at http://www.microsoft.com/mof.

The MOF Process Model

IT operations encompass a complex, dynamic set of procedures and processes that are extremely difficult to define and capture with a high degree of accuracy. Modeling such endeavors to an extreme level of precision would be cost-prohibitive and generally inappropriate since the processes must typically be adapted locally anyway.

MOF simplifies the approach to modeling this complex set of dynamics into an easy-to-understand framework, whose principles and practices are straightforward to incorporate and apply in the IT environment. The power of this simplified approach enables the operations staff of an enterprise of any size, regardless of maturity level, to realize tangible benefits to the existing, or proposed, operations.

The MOF Process Model supports the successful provision of IT services by addressing four key principles.

The Four MOF Quadrants

Applying these key principles, the MOF Process Model is divided into four highly integrated quadrants of operational activity. They are:

Each of the quadrants has a unique service mission that is related to specific aspects of the IT life cycle. Each quadrant’s service mission is accomplished by means of the implementation and execution of underlying SMFs. For example, in the Changing Quadrant, the underlying SMFs are Change Management, Configuration Management, and Release Management. Together, these SMFs support the Changing Quadrant’s service mission, which is to effectively identify, approve, control, and release changes to the IT environment. This integration of service function with operational process is replicated throughout each of the quadrants. Each of the SMFs is primarily associated with a particular quadrant (although overlap can occur); this association will be presented in a subsequent section.

MOF incorporates specifically tailored operations management reviews (OMRs) into the Process Model to assess the operational effectiveness of each quadrant, including the underlying SMFs.

The OMRs are:

The following diagram illustrates the MOF Process Model and the relationship of the life cycle quadrants with their respective OMRs and SMFs.

Figure 1. Relationship of MOF Process Model quadrants, OMRs, and SMFs

The MOF Team Model

The evolution of the MOF Team Model began with a review of the objectives of IT management and the best practices applicable to meeting those objectives. Quality goals were established to provide a means to measure an organization’s success in achieving the objectives. The goals are to establish:

As the quality goals, MOF Process Model, and associated personnel needs to achieve these goals and functions were synthesized, MOF developed seven specific team roles and responsibilities to efficiently address each of them. It is important to note that the team model that MOF developed for this environment looks and runs very differently from traditional, centralized-computing, hierarchical data center operations teams. A balance exists in suggesting process ownership and functional organization. For example, ownership of the change management process was much easier to delegate to a person in a centralized (mainframe) environment, where that person likely owned end-to-end change control for the system. Today, change management ownership crosses geographical, business unit, time zone, and even company boundaries and is therefore much more difficult to assign to any one person or group.

Organizational models are closely tied to the processes used within them. The process responsibilities must be shared, which is why it is key to evangelize standard best practices (such as ITIL and MOF) throughout the industry.

The MOF Team Model describes:

These principles, together with the quality goals noted earlier, combine to define the individual roles comprising the MOF Team Model. The seven roles of the Team Model should be interpreted as high-level operations “role clusters,” each of which is responsible for performing several core operations duties.

For each Team Model role cluster, the MOF Team Model defines the activities and processes with which they are involved, the typical ways in which these roles and responsibilities are identified in a production environment, and the common requirements for specialists within the role cluster. Note, however, that these role clusters do not imply or suggest any kind of an organization chart or a set of job titles since they will vary widely by organization and team. IT organizations will implement aspects differently, depending on the size of the group, the scope and boundaries of the systems, the geographic locations, the resources available to the team, and the specialties and experiences of the individual staff. Depending upon the size of the group, a single individual might perform the functions of several team clusters or, conversely, an entire team might be required to perform just a single function within a role cluster.

The following figure shows the seven roles of the MOF Team Model.

Figure 2. The MOF Team Model

The seven roles of the MOF Team Model correspond with the key quality goals detailed previously. Their correspondence is shown in the following table.

Most often, the roles will be distributed among different groups within the IT organization and, sometimes, within the business user community, as well as external consultants and partners. As a general good practice for any team structure, roles and responsibilities need to be carefully defined and explicitly communicated so that deliverables and expectations are clear to everyone, thereby creating an environment conducive for focused individual work and quality contribution to the team effort.

Detailed descriptions for each of the MOF team roles and responsibilities are provided in the MOF Team Model for Operations white paper available at http://www.microsoft.com/mof.  

The MOF Risk Management Discipline

MOF philosophy assumes that risk is inherent in every IT undertaking, whether or not an organization chooses to recognize and plan for it. With the current high degree of reliance that business places on IT (in some cases the business is wholly dependent on it), MOF has devised an entire discipline and set of processes and procedures to manage risk.

MOF recognizes that risks are implicitly neither “good” nor “bad.” They simply exist. For a business to progress and evolve, it must generally choose a path that takes some risks and avoids others. The MOF Risk Management Discipline (formerly known as the MOF Risk Model) provides a framework for organizations to identify, categorize, and manage risks proactively and continuously. The risk management process is formalized to some degree in order to ensure that team members are continually alert to the potential for risks that might result from IT activities. The MOF Risk Management Discipline prescribes several steps in the risk management process, as illustrated in the following figure.

Figure 3. The MOF risk management process

Risks are managed through a six-step process of identification, analysis, planning, tracking, controlling, and learning. Through identification and analysis, the team recognizes and evaluates risks to determine their potential impacts and priority for a response. In the planning step, the team determines a course of action to use in handling the risk. This course of action may involve complex actions, contingency plans, and mitigation steps, or it may involve simply tracking the risk to see if it manifests itself, depending on its severity and potential impact. Whichever course of action is selected in the planning step, the risk will be continually tracked by the team to determine if it has, in fact, surfaced or disappeared. Management of the risk takes place, following the predetermined plan, if triggered by the occurrence of the risk. Risks are retired when they no longer exist.

The MOF Risk Management Discipline uses formalized documents to aid in this six-step process. The risk assessment document is created early in a project and updated periodically to provide a centralized repository for the identified risks. The top risks list displays those risks determined to be of high priority. As risks are identified and managed, the team learns from experience and documents this learning for application to future projects. Retired risks are entered into a retired risks list; however, circumstances might reactivate them in the future.

Top of page

MOF Process Model Quadrants and SMFs

As shown in Figure 1 in the previous chapter, each of the quadrants in the MOF Process Model is associated with several SMFs, which in turn apply directly to the IT activities performed within the quadrant. This section provides an abstract of each of the SMFs within the context of its container quadrant.

Changing Quadrant

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

The objective 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.

SMFs within the Changing Quadrant include:

Change Management

Since most IT systems are heavily interrelated, any changes made in one part of a system may have profound impacts on another. The Change Management SMF is responsible for managing changes to ensure that all parties affected by a given change are aware of and understand the impact of the impending change. It is also responsible for minimizing or mitigating disruptions or adverse effects due to change. Change management should be applied to any asset in the environment that is necessary for meeting the service level requirements of the solution. The Change Management SMF utilizes such processes, artifacts, and authorities as change controls, requests for changes, and the change advisory board (CAB).

Configuration Management

The Configuration Management SMF is responsible for identifying, recording, tracking, and reporting of key IT components or assets called configuration items (CIs). The information captured and tracked depends on the specific CI, but often includes a description of the CI, the version, constituent components, relationships to other CIs, location/assignment, and current status. Configuration items typically correspond to each of the assets placed under the control of the Change Management SMF. CIs are typically recorded in a configuration management database (CMDB). The Configuration Management SMF is concerned with establishing, maintaining, and managing the CIs and CMDB.

Release Management

The Release Management SMF facilitates the introduction of software and hardware releases into managed IT environments. This SMF is the coordination point between the release development/project team and the operations groups responsible for deploying the release into production. Release management coordinates with the change and configuration management processes to ensure that the shared CMDB is kept up-to-date with changes implemented by new releases and that the software content of those releases is stored in the definitive software library (DSL). Release management builds and manages release rollout plans and works with development teams and the customer during planning and development in order to facilitate a smooth rollout.

Operating Quadrant

The Operating Quadrant includes the IT operating standards, processes, and procedures that are applied regularly to service solutions to achieve and maintain service levels within predetermined parameters. The goal of the Operating Quadrant is highly predictable execution of day-to-day tasks, both manual and automated. This is accomplished through the provision of detailed, prescriptive operating guides and references for each of the service solutions controlled by IT.

SMFs within the Operating Quadrant include:

System Administration

The System Administration SMF is responsible for keeping the enterprise systems running. System administration oversees the entire distributed processing environment. It coordinates the activities of the other SMFs within the quadrant and ensures that the SMFs are performed efficiently and effectively.  

Security Administration

Security administration maintains a safe computing environment, ensuring that all data within the system is secure and complete. The SMF is responsible for the six basic requirements that help ensure data confidentiality, integrity, and availability. These six basic requirements are:

Directory Services Administration

Directory services allow users and applications to find such network resources as users, servers, applications, tools, services, and other information over the network. 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 by any authorized requester by means of a simple and organized process.

Network Administration

The Network Administration SMF is the process of managing and running all networks within an organization. Network administration, a comprehensive discipline that must manage people, processes, and the technologies with which they interact, is responsible for the maintenance of the physical components (such as servers, routers, switches, and firewalls) that make up the organization’s network.

Service Monitoring and Control

Service monitoring allows the operations staff to observe the health of an IT service in real time. System components that are typically monitored to ensure that IT service remains available include process heartbeats, job and queue status, server response times and resource loading, and others. The control portion of the SMF refers to the notifications or actions that ensure that appropriate actions are taken in response to indicators of system failure or diminished performance.

Storage Management

Storage management deals with on-site and off-site data storage for the purposes of data restoration and historical archiving. The storage management team must ensure the physical security of backups and archives. The goal of storage management is to define, track, and maintain data and data resources in the production IT environment through appropriate planning, policy setting, and monitoring for the management of storage assets.

Job Scheduling

Job scheduling involves the continuous organization of jobs and processes into the most efficient sequence. The intent of this function is to maximize system throughput and utilization to meet SLA and user requirements, and optimize the use of available capacity. The Job Scheduling SMF is closely tied to the Service Monitoring and Control and Capacity Management SMFs.

Supporting Quadrant

Processes and activities found within the Supporting Quadrant are associated with resolving incidents, events, and requests in accordance with performance criteria contained in the SLA. The key objective of this quadrant is the timely resolution of incidents, problems, and inquiries for end users of the IT services provided. SMFs within the Supporting Quadrant utilize both reactive and proactive functions to manage services in accordance with SLAs.

SMFs within the Supporting Quadrant include:

Service Desk

The Service Desk SMF is the key SMF of the Supporting Quadrant. It coordinates all activities and customer communications about incidents, problems, and inquiries related to production systems. It is the single point of contact between service providers and customers/users on a day-to-day basis. 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 three primary areas within which the service desk operates are incident management, self-help, and customer relationship management. In particular, the service desk interacts closely with incident management in performing their respective functions and procedures.

Incident Management

Incident management is the process of managing and controlling faults and disruptions in the use or implementation of IT services as reported by customers or IT partners. The primary goal of incident management is to restore normal service operation as quickly as possible and minimize the adverse impact on business operations, thus ensuring the maintenance of the best possible quality and availability of levels of service within the limits of the SLA.

Problem Management

Problem management seeks to ensure stability in service solutions by identifying and removing errors in the IT infrastructure. Problem management is responsible for clearly defining the overall support model used, escalation procedures, incident correlation, root cause analysis, problem resolution, and reporting of incidents and their resolution.

Optimizing Quadrant

The Optimizing Quadrant includes the SMFs for managing (decreasing) costs while maintaining or improving service levels. This includes review of outages/incidents, examination of cost structures, staff assessments, and availability and performance analysis, as well as capacity forecasting. The optimizing functions described are typically performed in an iterative fashion over time: performing modifications, noting performance and cost, and then repeating the cycle.

The eight SMFs contained within the Optimizing Quadrant include:

Service Level Management

Service level management 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 is to provide a mechanism for setting clear expectations with the customer and user groups with respect to the service being delivered, as well as negotiating how to measure performance against these requirements. Activities completed under the auspices of service level management include creating a catalog of services, identifying requirements, negotiating SLAs, and managing service continuity, availability, capacity, and workforce.

Financial Management

Financial management ensures that any solution proposed by a foundational SMF (IT Service Continuity, Availability Management, Capacity Management, or Workforce Management) meets the requirements defined in service level management (SLM) and is justified from a cost and budget standpoint. This is often referred to as a cost-benefit analysis. Activities performed within the function include such standard accounting practices as budgeting, cost allocations, and others.

Capacity Management

Capacity management activities include planning, sizing, and controlling service solution capacity to satisfy user demand within the performance levels set forth in the SLA. This requires the collection of information about usage scenarios, patterns, and peak load characteristics of the service solution, as well as stated performance requirements. These data collection activities are included in the Capacity Management SMF.

Availability Management

The singular goal of availability management is to ensure that the customer can use a given IT service at any time. This requires heavy involvement through the requirements and planning phases of the project in order to carefully evaluate requests for change within the production environment and to minimize adverse effects on availability.

IT Service Continuity Management

IT service continuity management, also known as contingency management, focuses on minimizing the disruptions to business caused by the failure of mission-critical systems. This process deals with planning to cope with and recover from an IT disaster. 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 what activities need to be performed in the event of a service outage not attributed to a full-blown disaster.

Workforce Management

Achieving the objectives described for each of the SMFs requires an adequately skilled and trained workforce. The Workforce Management SMF implements best practices to continuously assess key aspects of the IT workforce and make appropriate investments and changes as necessary. Activities performed within this function include recruiting, skills development, knowledge transfer, competency levels, team building, process improvements, and resource deployment.

Security Management

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

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.

Next Steps

This document provided introductory-level information pertaining to the intent, organization, structure, and interrelationships of the Microsoft Frameworks (Microsoft Solutions Framework and Microsoft Operations Framework) and the underlying core models and principles of MOF.

Additional, detailed information on the frameworks themselves is contained in technical papers available at http://www.microsoft.com/mof.

For practitioners who want to learn more about specific SMFs, detailed guides have been prepared for each. These SMF guides provide prescriptive guidance for the processes and procedures required to fulfill each of the SMFs. In addition to this guidance, service offerings and training are also available for selected SMFs. These offerings are available through Microsoft Solutions for Management (MSM), either in combination or as stand-alone services or courseware. Further information is available at http://www.microsoft.com/mof.

Top of page

Appendix: Suggested Training and Reading

The following courses, books, and Web sites offer additional information about MOF, ITIL, and IT service management.

Courses

The following training resources represent a minimum level of prerequisite knowledge necessary to perform the tasks described in the MOF SMF guides.

Books

The following books serve as a bibliography for this introduction to the SMFs or as recommended reading to further understand the concepts contained in them.

The preceding ITIL publications are available from The Stationery Office Online Bookshop at http://www.tso.co.uk.

Web Sites

For more information on Microsoft Frameworks and its offerings, see:

For more information on ITIL, see http://www.itil.co.uk/

For more information on the Help Desk Institute, see http://www.helpdeskinst.com/

For more information on the Customer Operations Performance Center, see http://www.copc.com

Top of page

11 of 23