DCV has been monitoring for many years the infrastructure of Information Technologies (IT) that support the business, but only since 2011 and as part of the IT strategic plan, work began on a plan aimed at the automation of monitoring and providing them with an approach which enables them to view the health status of the services. To this end, it is essential to have a very clear idea of which are the components that affect each service and what is their relationship with it.

 
Thus, we began work on a project of Business Service Management (BSM). At first, the main beneficiary of this project was the Services Management of DCV, which receives information to evaluate the status of services and the components that are affected if there is any incident, allowing timely decisions for the benefit of customers. However, it is possible that these monitors may be shown to customers through DCV’s website, and to have in this way a “thermometer of critical services” which will allow the customers to have direct information from the company on availability and processing times, among other things.

 
“In 2014 we hope to achieve the consolidation of the Business Service Management model”, stated the Head of IT Services, Santiago Peric. He also stressed that “the strategic plan of BSM is a model which reflects how infrastructure affects the business, i.e., IT provides value to the business through metrics and indicators”.

In 2012 we started implementing the BSM model, adding new tools, renewing the monitoring system and implementing a database of components and relationships (Configuration Management Database). This entire process of the initial collection of information, involving many areas of DCV, was completed in early 2013 and throughout that year, new information, monitors and processes were incorporated.

Project Goals

“The main purpose of BSM is to inform the company about the health of DCV services, reporting promptly if there are problems in the services that are being provided, particularly to the Services Management. We want to ensure that this management is the first to know of any incident affecting the service, before the customer service desk and the clients call to ask us”, the executive said.

 
On the other hand, it is helpful for IT Services to know the impact of infrastructure on service delivery; those working in this area may give them priority over other incidents and increase understanding of the business. “We definitely want it to become a valid source of information for incident management and incorporate all the new services that will be put into production”, stressed Peric.

 Challenges

“Such a system needs to feed on all the relevant information to the service so as to have the health and quality indicators which will allow us to know whether the service is being “correctly” provided, according to the standards sought by DCV and required by the market. To achieve this, it is necessary to perform a thorough survey of the indicators of each service. In this context, the feeding process of the model is work that is still being developed and that has been divided into several stages. All of the equipment is already covered, the part of IT services is in the process of being completed and, finally, the service layer is what we will attend to throughout this year, although we have made good progress with the services that are defined as critical for everyday use, or those that require regulatory quality standards that have to be complied with”, concluded the executive.

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