INTEGRATED SERVICE ARCHITECTURE FRAMEWORK (ISAF)

FOR ITIL V3

Akbar Nabiollahi

Faculty of Computer science and Information System

University Teknologi Malaysia

81310, Skudai, Johor nabi_ir@yahoo.com

Rose Alinda Alias Faculty of Computer science

and Information System University Teknologi

Malaysia 81310, Skudai, Johor

Rose@utm.my

Shamsul Sahibuddin Faculty of Computer science

and Information System University Teknologi

Malaysia 81310, Skudai, Johor

shamsul@utm.my

ABSTRACT

Enterprise Architecture is a framework for designing architectures and plans of IS and IT projects in an organization and aims to align business objectives with IT objectives. ITIL V3 as a public framework and a set of guidelines for IT service management (ITSM) also plans to align IT investments with business objectives through IT Governance. This research attempts to integrate EA framework into ITIL in order to design Integrated Service Architecture Framework (ISAF) for Service Design stage requirements of IT service lifecycle.

ISAF for IT services will facilitate and standardize utilization of EA in ITIL V3. Researcher believes conducting this research will have an important contribution to bridging computing and information system disciplines due to service-oriented technology and management aspects of the research. In addition, ISAF will extend EA framework with a new layer as service architecture layer which is one of concerns of EA practitioners for using service concepts in EA.

Categories and Subject Descriptors K.6 [Management Of Computing And Information Systems]

D.2.11 [Software Architecture]

General Terms IT Service Management, Service Design, IT Governance,

Keywords ITIL, Enterprise Architecture, Service Design, Service Lifecycle.

1. INTRODUCTION Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)

and Enterprise Architecture (EA) are both managerial frameworks, but they address different concerns. While ITIL is primarily focused on the IT service management, EA focuses on developing required architectures for defining priorities and projects of IS and IT for short, mid and long term in an enterprise.

In spite of some different goals for them, there are several common benefits and components which raise the issues of relationship and integration of these two areas.

1.1 Enterprise Architecture An Enterprise Architecture (EA) is a set of business and

engineering models, including text and graphical documentations that describes and guides the operation of enterprise-wide systems [7].

It is generally accepted in academic [4] and applied [5] researches that EA can be decomposed into EA layers in order to have a model for representing and demonstrating Enterprise Architecture. This model also shows layers of architectures that each organization should develop. Based on [7] these layers for EA can be more general and acceptable: • Business Architectures is the result of defining the

business strategies, processes and functional requirements.

• Information Architecture describes the required logical data for business requirements and management of data resources.

• Application Architecture is focused on developing and implementing applications to fulfill business requirements.

• Technical (Infrastructure) Architecture provides the foundation that supports the application, information and business processes.

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1.2 ITIL V3 Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) has

been introduced with Office of Government Commerce (OGC). After about ten years using of ITIL V2, ITIL V3 was introduced by OGC in 2007. The primary goal of ITIL is to provide a framework and a good practice in IT service management. Opposed to ITIL V2 which is focused on IT service delivery and support, ITIL V3 is concentrated on Service lifecycle management (figure 1).

Figure 1. ITIL V3: Service Life Cycle [1]

The ITIL books consist of five publications: • Service Strategy: This volume provides guidance

on how to design, develop, and implement service management as an organizational capability and as a strategic asset. Guidance is provided on the principles and processes which considering the practice of service management are useful for developing service management policies, guidelines and processes across the ITIL Service Lifecycle[1].

• Service Design: According to Service Design volume of ITIL V3 [3], this publication provides guidance for the design and development of services and service management processes. It covers design principles and methods for converting strategic objectives into portfolios of services and service assets.

• Service Transition: This volume provides guidance for the development and improvement of capabilities for transitioning new and changed services into operations. [1].

• Service Operation: This volume embodies practices in the management of service operations. It includes guidance on achieving effectiveness and efficiency in the delivery and support of services to deliver value for both customer and service provider[2]

• Continual Service Improvement: This volume provides instrumental guidance in creating and maintaining value for customers through better design, introduction, and operation of services. It combines principles, practices, and methods from quality management, Change Management and capability improvement [2].

As a simple comparison, ITIL V2 was focused on Service Delivery and Service Support but V3, as mentioned above, is concentrated on service lifecycle which is a comprehensive solution for IT Services. However, Service Strategy and Service Design are new stages that ITIL V3 has considered to resolve major weaknesses of ITIL V2. In this paper the focus is on Service Design to consider it as a main point to integrate ITIL and Enterprise Architecture.

2. BACKGROUND OF RESEARCH

2.1 Integration of IT Service Management into EA

Prior to publication of ITIL V3 (in March 2007), one research have been conducted on integration of ITIL V2 and EA. Braun and Winter(2007) have proposed an enterprise architecture expansion which integrates IT service management (ITIL), service orientated architecture (SOA).

In this paper, authors (Braun and Winter 2007) have focused on when EA is considered as pivotal concept for organization and ITSM is introduced as a dominant model for enterprise, so ITSM here was integrated into EA. Thus, a meta model was introduced to cover EA components as it can support IT services. This model integrates five essential layers of an EA framework (including business architecture, process architecture, application architecture, software architecture and technology architecture) with IT service as a new view for presenting IT service management in the EA model.

Braun and Winter, finally have mentioned that based on importance of EA for organizational engineering and the increasing importance of service orientation in IT Management, their paper aimed at integrating ITSM and SOA into EA.(Braun and Winter 2007)

2.2 Service Design in ITIL V3 As mentioned in subsection 1.2, one of the publications

of ITIL V3 is Service Design. In this volume, OGC suggests an approach to apply Enterprise Architecture in Service Design. In the following subsections we will review this idea.

Service Design is a stage within the overall service lifecycle and an important element within the business change process. OGC defines the role of Service Design within the business change process as [3]:

The design of appropriate and innovative IT services, including their architectures, processes, policies and documentation, to meet current and future agreed business requirements.

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Some of main goals and objectives of Service Design are to [2]: • design services to meet agreed business outcomes

• design processes to support the service lifecycle

• design secure and resilient IT infrastructures, environments, applications and data/information resources and capability

• produce and maintain plans, processes, policies, standards, architectures, frameworks and documents to support the design of quality IT solutions

It can be seen these goals of Service Design covers some objectives of Enterprise Architecture. The third goal states that design, developing and delivery of any IT service should lead us to prepare or produce required infrastructure, environment, applications and data/information resources. The fourth one focuses on designing, documenting and maintaining IT solutions (including plans, standards, architectures, frameworks and documents) which is one of the most important goals of Enterprise Architecture.

Service Design stage begins with a set of business requirements, and ends with the development of a service solution designed to meet documented business requirements and outcomes and to provide a Service Design Package (SDP) for handover into Service Transition (figure 2). Four individual aspects of Service Design are defined as following: • new or changed service solutions

• service management systems and tools, especially the Service Portfolio

• technology architectures and management systems processes, roles and capabilities

• measurement methods and metrics As it can be seen, one of these aspects, technology

architecture which is emphasized in service design, is part of EA concerns and deliverables. In addition, based on the figure 2, another important finding is the outputs of Service design which includes “Solution Design, Architectures, Standards and SDPs”. Here we notify that Service Design should produce some parts of outputs of Enterprise Architecture.

Service Design Package (SDP) defines all aspects of an IT service and its requirements through each stage of its lifecycle. An SDP is produced for each new IT service, major change, or IT service retirement [2].

Figure 2- ITIL V3: Service Life cycle Outputs [2]

2.3 Enterprise Architecture in Service Design We discussed major issues of Service Design (SD), but

main discussion of us is about relationship of EA and ITIL therefore in this section we will focus on Enterprise Architecture in Service Design and will discuss on our important finding regard to this issue.

In Service Design volume, OGC [3], has listed the deliverables of SD and one of these outputs called as “Technology architecture and management”. Based on this aspect of design and under the subsection of “Designing technology architecture”, the writer defines Architecture Design as:

The development of IT policies, strategies, architectures, designs, documents, plans and processes for the development and subsequent operation and improvement of appropriate IT services and solutions throughout an organization.

OGC [3] mentioned that all of these components should cover all aspects of IT including services, technology, architectures and frameworks, processes and methods. All areas of technology included infrastructure, applications and data must be covered by architectural design.

Then OGC relates architectural design with Enterprise Architecture and lists names of the most important frameworks of EA. The relationship of EA that is figured by ITIL V3, stated below:

An EA should show how all components of an enterprise are integrated in order to achieve the business objectives, both now and in the future… The complete EA can be large and complex so here we are interested in those architectures concerned with the business of the organization and the information systems that support it.

OGC suggested that EA should be an integrated element of the Business Architecture and should include the following major areas (Figure 3):

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• Service Architecture translates applications, infrastructure, organization and support activities into a set of services.

• Application Architecture provides a blueprint for the development and deployment of applications, maps business and functional requirements on to applications and shows the interrelationship between applications.

• Data/Information Architecture describes the logical and physical data assets of the enterprise and the data management resources.

Figure 3- ITIL V3: Enterprise Architecture [3]

• IT Infrastructure Architecture describes the structure,

functionality and geographical distribution of the hardware, software and communication components that underpin and support the overall architecture.

• Environmental Architecture describes all aspects, types and levels of environment control and their management.

Finally OGC notifies that: The real benefit and role of the Enterprise Architecture comes not from the architecture itself, but from the ability of an organization to design and implement projects and solutions in a rapid and consistent manner.

From above discussion, we realized that Enterprise Architecture has been considered as a complementary component for Service Design. In addition, ITIL suggests extending EA layers by service layer. These new layer should be designed to integrate EA framework to ITIL V3 framework which is our proposed framework and will be introduced in section 5.

3. MOTIVATION AND

OBJECTIVES Nowadays, IT services and IT service management is an important issue in computer science and information systems.

ITIL is an important and influential center of gravity in IT management [8]. As discussed earlier, ITIL V2 was published in mid ninety and has been applied in more than one decade. It mainly was focused on Service Delivery and Service Support and has not covered service strategy and service design. Recently, in 2007, ITIL V3 was released by OGC. In this version of ITIL, the focus is on Service lifecycle which means service needs a lifecycle from initiation trough retirement and it should be managed and controlled through whole lifecycle. This lifecycle includes five stages: Service strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service operation and Continual Service Improvement. Although there are few efforts on relationship of ITIL V2 and Enterprise architecture such as “Integration of IT Service Management into Enterprise Architecture”[6] which mentioned earlier, all of them are developed based on ITIL V2. Regard to previous discussion on Service Design phase of IT service lifecycle for ITIL V3, we need an integrated framework to develop service architecture of IT services. It means for designing IT service in service lifecycle, service architecture should be developed. This architecture integrates all information related to service design. This information includes applications, information, data and infrastructures that any IT service requires. These components leads us to Enterprise Architecture. Enterprise Architecture can be introduced as area which focused on enterprise planning for IT solutions in organizations. It has a vast use in information system planning. Recently, some efforts of EA are focused on using SOA in EA planning. As an example, Enterprise SOA is one of the results of influence of SOA on EA. This research hypothesis is to consider Service and service architecture as integration point for convergence of SOA, ITIL and EA. It’s because SOA is service based, ITIL designed for management of IT services and EA tends to use SOA for reusable architectures. Therefore, formulation of integration point of these three areas based on service architecture is the central point of this study. The research objectives that are defined based on the problem statement and research background are the following:

1. To discover architectural requirements of IT Service

2. To design an integrated framework to implement IT Service Architecture based on Service Design phase of ITIL V3

3. To extend architecture layers of EA to cover IT service architecture

It is important to note that main focus of this research is on ITIL requirements for service architecture design. Therefore firstly, I would like to analyze IT Service Architecture requirements and based on these requirements I will compare some closer frameworks to find or design proper target framework.

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4. METHODOLOGY Figure 4 outlines the stages involved for successfully completing this research. This research will be conducted in next stages: • Literature review: Literature review should be done to

identify the focus area of research and determine the scope of the research project. It will also formulate the research questions and the hypotheses.

• Research design: This phase will review research methods especially in computing and information systems and will consequently develop the research methods and timeline for completing the research. It will also develop the research proposal.

• Practical study: The next step in the research is practical study which focuses on doing survey, interviews, observations and document review on practices of ITIL and EA. This activity will start by survey and will be done through some selected case studies. This will lead researcher to primary framework of research.

Figure 4- Research Methodology

• Assess EA Framework is the final phase of literature

review which will be started by conceptualizing and designing Service Architecture Layer and will be followed by studying EA frameworks and comparison of these frameworks. The purpose of this comparison is to analyze strong compatibility of EA frameworks to

cover Service Architecture layer that is designed for ITIL/ITSM.

• Propose integrated framework: In this stage, based on artifacts of previous stage, i.e., service architecture and candidate EA framework, design and development of integrated framework will be lunched. In this process, other factors and requirements will be considered. Moreover, an automation tools for target framework will be developed.

• Evaluate the framework: In final stage, proposed framework will be instantiated to evaluate. Evaluation process could be done through candidate case study, survey or interview. By completion of validation, the conclusion will be done based on the results. Finally researcher would write up thesis and submit it for viva.

5. PROPOSED INTEGRATED

FRAMEWORK As mentioned earlier, ITIL V3 in Service Design phase

has been suggested using Enterprise Architecture for development of architectures needed for IT Service. This suggestion implies that EA should involve Service architecture layer in other EA layers. Therefore, in our framework we should design service architecture layer to integrate service with other layers such as application, data and infrastructure.

In order to design required model of EA for ITIL we need to integrate these two frameworks such that it covers requirement of ITIL V3. Although OGC proposed a meta model for using EA, there is not enough details and no specific processes to do this integration in Service Design. Therefore, we would design an integrated framework to fulfill requirements of service architecture of ITIL. In our framework, we should design new models, new service architecture and new process to do this integration. Figure 5 shows general view of proposed framework by this research.

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Figure 5 Integrated Service Architecture Framework (ISAF)

As shown in this figure, our proposed integrated framework includes ITIL V3, EA framework and SOA and two new processes, namely SAM and SIM. We call this framework as an Integrated Service Architecture Framework (ISAF) for ITIL. As it can be seen, the most important components of the framework includes:

• Service Design phase in ITIL V3 • Service Layer as a new layer for EA • Service Architecture Management as a new process

management of service architecture. • Service Integration Management as a new process

for integration of service architecture to other layers of EA.

6. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION In this paper, firstly, we dealt on our finding on the

integration of Enterprise Architecture and ITIL. Although few efforts have been done to do this integration, all of them have only been discussed on ITIL V2 which its focus limited on service delivery and service support.

By publication of ITIL V3 in 2007, OGC plans to cover whole lifecycle of service which included five volumes as five stages of service management: Service strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service operation and Continual Service Improvement. We found that in Service Design volume, ITIL proposed to use Enterprise Architecture in designing IT Service Architecture. This notification of ITIL remains at guideline level and there is insufficient information on how to design service architecture in practice and in detail.

On the other hand, there exists a tendency in academic discipline to integrate service-oriented technology and management in order to fill the gap of technology and management issues of IT services.

In addition, one of the benefits of this integration is to align objectives of business with all components of enterprise such as business processes, information systems or applications, information and data. Moreover, IT services and service architecture in ITIL at now needs enterprise architecture to support it.

Based on the gap which realized we proposed an integrated framework between ITIL V3 and EA, namely Integrated Service Architecture Framework (ISAF) to design service architecture for ITIL service design. This framework is founded on ITIL V3 Service Design, EA and SOA. We will design and develop ISAF to satisfy these objectives:

• Design service architecture for IT Service management.

• Integrates service architecture layer into enterprise architecture

• Fulfill requirements of IT Service management in ITIL Service Design

7. REFERENCES

[1] Office of Government Commerce (OGC), ITIL Core Books, Service Strategy, TSO, London, 2007

[2] Office of Government Commerce (OGC), ITIL Core Books, Introduction to ITIL, TSO, London, 2007

[3] Office of Government Commerce (OGC), Service Design, TSO, London, 2007

[4] Winter, R. and R. Fischer (2007). "Essential Layers, Artifacts, and Dependencies of Enterprise Architecture" Journal of Enterprise Architecture (May 2007).

[5] Susanne, L. and Z. Gregor (2006). Evaluation of current architecture frameworks. Proceedings of the 2006 ACM symposium on Applied computing. Dijon, France, ACM.

[6] Christian Braun and Robert Winter , “Integration of IT Service Management into Enterprise Architecture”, Proceedings of the 2007 ACM symposium on Applied computing , Korea, 2007

[7] Amborse Goikoetxea, Enterprise Architectures and Digital Administration, World Scientific, Singapore, 2007

[8] Charles T. Betz , Architectures and Patterns for IT Service Management, Resource Planning, and Governance, Morgan Kaufmann , USA, 2007

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