ITIL® Can Help Companies Improve Storage Processes

ITIL Can Help Companies Improve Storage Processes
By Ann All

Lots of folks seem to have high expectations for the newly updated version of the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL).

In an interview with IT Business Edge, ITIL: Change Is Gonna Do You Good, Mark McManus of Computer Economics says that Version 3 of ITIL, released in late May, “provides a more practical approach to ITIL implementation” and one that should more clearly illustrate ITIL’s benefits to business folks.

Buy-in doesn’t appear to be as big of an issue for IT – though there are some interesting exceptions. For instance, a Forrester Research analyst notes in a recent internetnews.com article that there seems to be little interest in ITIL in storage circles, though the two are “an excellent mix.”

After all, the analyst says, storage often suffers from a lack of consistent processes – which is exactly what ITIL delivers. ITIL can help streamline storage management by eliminating the duplicative processes that are common in many organizations.

The key challenge in marrying the two, says another expert in the article, is that vendors typically market their products as standalone storage management solutions – while ITIL would likely dictate that storage management be integrated into Service Delivery and Service Support processes. This could change, however, as major storage vendors like EMC and CA move to incorporate ITIL into their products.

An InfoStor Magazine article notes href="http://www.infostor.com/display_article/300566/23/ARTCL/none/none/ILM-isn't-just-about-storage/" target="_blank">parallels between ITIL and information lifecycle management (ILM). ITIL’s Service Management components address several key storage concepts, including availability, capacity and performance.

Like ITIL, the toughest part of ILM is an upfront, business-focused analysis, the InfoStor article points out. Yet neither initiative is likely to be successful without it.

As McManus points out in his interview about ITIL:

You really need to sit down and do an assessment of where you are today. You can’t fix it if you don’t know where you are today. Companies that have been successful have done a good assessment of their current IT and business processes, and identified the most serious deficiencies so they can tackle those in a prioritized manner. Lacking that good planning and project management will be a killer.

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