ITIL DISASTER RECOVERY
Failure to meet with mobile phones for a while after the recent natural disasters brought up measures that can be taken to ensure communication between citizens or institutions after natural disasters. Mapping your disaster recovery plan to ITIL processes can help create a more business-driven dr plan and improve your dr plan performance. ITIL processes can also assist in maintaining your disaster recovery plan.The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a library of volumes describing a framework of best practices for delivering IT services.
ITIL determines how you take action in emergency moments!
Everything in IT Service Management is a change, and the goal of Change Management is to ensure that standardized methods and procedures are used for efficient and prompt handling of all changes. This is in order to minimize the impact of change-related incidents on service quality , and consequently, to improve the day-to-day operations of the organization. But, there is one type of change that requires swift reaction and prompt implementation with little or no time for in-depth impact analysis or testing: the Emergency Change.
Disaster recovery is an incredibly important part of modern business planning. Companies without effective disaster recovery plans often struggle to cope with a cyber attack , fire, flood or loss of connectivity.
The better your disaster recovery plan, and the more familiar your staff are with implementing it, the easier it will be for your business to recover quickly after an emergency. ITIL can help businesses of all sizes get back on track following a disaster. If your company doesn’t yet have a disaster recovery plan in place, or if your current plan needs updating, creating an ITIL could help your business become even more prepared.
It is clear that due to the nature of the Emergency Changes, there is no time to devote to an official Exchange Advisory Board meeting, or even an impromptu meeting. However, Emergency Changes should not be implemented without a Change Management decision. According to ITIL, the Emergency Change process should still retain high authority and control. However, these processes may not be as official as a normal change process. Changes to be implemented in the Emergency should be at a minimum. After each Emergency Change application, it is necessary to determine whether the applied one is really an Emergency Change. If the application is not an emergency change, what needs to be done should be decided so that these changes are not considered an Emergency Change in the future.
Roles in the Emergency Change process
1. Change Manager – primarily responsible for the lifecycle of all changes, allowing beneficial changes to be made with minimal or no disruptions to the service. For Emergency Changes, the Change Manager is responsible for forming the ECAB in order to discuss the proposed Emergency Change, and to decide whether it should be implemented as such, or if it can be re-categorized as a Normal Change. The Change Manager has to ensure that all necessary preparations are made before change implementation.
2. Change Advisory Board (CAB) – advisory group consisting of representatives from all areas within the IT organization, business, and third parties with the goal of aiding the Change Manager in change assessment, prioritization, and scheduling. The CAB is not impacted by Emergency Changes, other than the fact that some members may also be a part of the ECAB.
3. Emergency Change Advisory Board (ECAB) – specific type of CAB, responsible for making decisions regarding Emergency Changes. ECAB membership may be decided at the ECAB meeting and depends on the Emergency Change nature. The Change Manager can appoint anyone who may help with knowledge, experience, and expertise to the ECAB.
4. Others – e.g., Configuration Manager , Application Analyst , Technical Analyst , or others as appropriate for any given situation.
5. IT operator – person(s) who are responsible for operating the underlining technology of a system (e.g., networking, storage, operating system, etc.). During an Emergency Change, the IT operator may be involved, depending on his/her technical skills, for Emergency Change testing, implementation, and performing the back-out plan if implementation fails.
6. Change Requester – person who triggered the Change Management process.
What savings can I expect?
Corporations and public sector organizations that have successfully implemented ITIL best practices report huge savings.For example, in its Benefits of ITIL paper, Pink Elephant reports that Procter and Gamble saved about $500 million over four years by reducing help desk calls and improving operating procedures . Nationwide Insurance achieved a 40 percent reduction in system outages and estimates a $4.3 million ROI over three years, and Capital One reduced its "business critical" incidents by 92 percent over two years. After three years of ITIL implementation, forest products company MeadWestvaco claimed to have eliminated more than $100,000 annually in IT maintenance contracts and recognized a 10 percent gain in operational stability thanks to ITIL.
Without buy-in and cooperation from IT staff, however, any implementation is bound to fail. Bringing best practices into an organization is as much a PR job as it is a technical exercise.
Other criticisms include the fact that it’s impossible to plan for every failure, event or incident so it’s not an exact science. In reality, you won’t know the exact ROI on ITIL until you implement it within your organization and use it effectively. Ultimately, since ITIL is a framework, it can only be as successful as corporate buy-in allows. Embracing certifications, training and investing in the shift will help increase the chances of success and savings.