Linking ITSM and SOA a synergetic fusion Dimitris Dranidis dranidis@city.academic.gr CITY College, Computer Science Department South East European Research Centre (SEERC)
CITY College CITY College Founded in Thessaloniki, Greece in 1989 Affiliated Institution of the University of Sheffield http://www.city.academic.gr/ Computer Science Department BSc in Computer Science MSc in Software Engineering and Telecommunications MSc in Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship 2/39
SEERC South East European Research Centre International, multidisciplinary, not-for-profit Jointly established by the Univ. of Sheffield and CITY College http://www.seerc.org Information and Communication Technologies research track Intelligent Systems Research Cluster Software Engineering Research Cluster Information & Knowledge Management Research Cluster 3/39
SoE Research Group Software Engineering & Service-Oriented Technologies investigation of software engineering methodologies and the development of tools that will support the engineering process of service-oriented applications. http://www.city.academic.gr/special/research/soe/index.htm 4/39
Presentation Outline IT Business alignment IT Service Management Service Oriented Architecture Business processes/services Comparisons: SOA Services and ITSM Services Service Catalogues and Service Registries Service Level Agreements IT Governance and SOA Governance Conclusions 5/39
ITSM & SOA IT Service Management Service Oriented Architecture Common cornerstone term: Service Common goal: Business/IT alignment 6/39
IT Business alignment IT helps business to meet its objectives operate IT is able to respond to changing business needs react IT provides new opportunities for future business strategic goals improve 7/39
Common goal: Business/IT alignment Both ITSM and SOA play a major role in aligning Business with IT ITSM provides a framework of best practices for effective service management SOA provides a methodology for business process design provides an architecture for deployment 8/39
What is ITSM IT service management (ITSM) Customer-centred and business-driven approach to managing IT services IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) set of best-practice recommendations giving guidance on the provision of IT Services defines processes and facilities needed to support IT services 9/39
What is SOA Architectural paradigm reusable loosely coupled components IT infrastructure for enterprise interoperability Methodology for systems development and integration 10/39
IT Architecture evolution (P2P Broker Bus) 11/39
SOA functional layers 12/39
SOA functional layers Operational systems existing IT assets Service components realize services Services deployed services Business Process operational business processes as choreographies of services Consumers access business processes, services, and applications 13/39
SOA non functional layers Integration: mediate service requests to the correct service provider. Quality of service: reliability, availability, etc. Information architecture: data, metadata, and business intelligence. Governance: business operational life cycle management in SOA. 14/39
Business Processes/Services A business process is a composition of services Orchestration or Choreography of services 15/39
SOA Service A service is a repeatable task inside a business process Service-orientation is a way of integrating your business as a set of linked services SOA is an architectural style for creating an Enterprise IT Architecture that exploits the principles of service orientation to achieve a tighter relationship between the business and the information systems that support the business. 16/39
Key concepts in SOA (1) Business alignment: Services are not based on IT capabilities, but on what the business needs. supported by service analysis and design techniques. Specifications: Services are self-contained and described in terms of interfaces, operations, semantics, dynamic behaviors, policies, and qualities of service. Reusability: supported by services granularity design decisions. 17/39
Key concepts in SOA (2) Agreements: between service providers and consumers based on services specification and not implementation Hosting and discoverability: services are hosted and are being discovered supported by registries and repositories Aggregation: Loosely-coupled services are aggregated into business processes or composite applications 18/39
Web Services (WS) 19/39
Service in ITSM context A defined capability or set of deliverables aimed at satisfying defined requirements, using resources (people, things and tools) and following a defined delivery process. 20/39
Service in SOA context A service is a discoverable resource that executes a repeatable task, and is described by an externalized service specification. 21/39
Service: ITSM vs SOA Not every IT function is a (SOA) service An IT service might be the aggregation of many SOA services or even many business processes SOA services are more granular than IT services 22/39
Other commonalities, differences Service Level Agreements Service Catalogue Service Registry IT Governance SOA Governance 23/39
WS Service Level Agreements WS SLAs between providers and consumers guarantee the required quality of services: performance (response-time constraints) availability reliability security compliance with standards 24/39
Service Level Agreements SLAs describe agreed levels of service delivery between a IT service provider and an IT customer Inside and outside an organization: SLAs OLAs: Operational Level Agreements UCs: Underpinning contracts 25/39
SLA integration in ITSM An IT service may be based on SOA (Web Services): SLAs, OLAs and UCs must integrate WS SLAs SLA monitoring at two levels: At the SOA level At the ITSM Level 26/39
Service Catalogue CMDB The Service Catalogue describes all IT services and SLAs that are offered by the IT department of a company. Configuration Item (CI): Any IT asset that needs to be managed in order to deliver an IT Service. Configuration Management Database(s) (CMDB) maintain CIs, dependencies 27/39
SOA Service Registries Registries allow publication and discovery of Web services Registry entries consist of provider information invocation protocols location of the service interfaces 28/39
CMDB-Registry Integration Web Services are considered CIs Dependencies between Web Services should be documented in the CMDB SOA registries should integrate with CMDBs 29/39
IT Governance (IT) Governance is the establishment of: Chains of responsibility to empower people Measurement to gauge effectiveness Policies to guide the organization to meet its goals Control mechanisms to ensure compliance Communication to keep all required parties informed 30/39
SOA Governance Governance is much more important for SOA than for other IT assets. Service consumers and service providers run in different processes Services are developed and managed by different departments Multiple applications need to share common services A SOA solution is not sustainable without governance. 31/39
IT/SOA Governance ITSM is considered a primary enabler of IT Governance. SOA governance should be considered as a subset of IT governance Therefore: ITSM is a SOA enabler 32/39
3 slides before conclusions (2 internal projects)
ITIL new process: Service Validation and Testing Ensure that a new or changed service will meet customer requirements and will be fit for purpose and fit for use. Even more important in a SOA environment due to: Third party services Dynamic reconfiguration 34/39
Enhanced Web Service publication and discovery framework Internal project of SoE research group: Broker-based verification of Web services via automatic test set generation upon publication Behaviourally-aware Web service discovery and selection 35/39
Semantics for Service Lifecycle Governance (SLG) Internal project of SoE research group: Developing a semantically-enhanced service registry & repository Utilising Semantic Web technologies, for modelling functional and non-functional properties of Web services. 36/39
Conclusions
Linking ITSM & SOA: A synergetic fusion? ITSM and SOA both support better ITbusiness alignment Towards an integrated ITSM/SOA service management approach? SOA introduces new challenges for ITSM Integrated CMDB/Registry Integrated SLAs SOA governance ITSM can be an effective enabler for SOA 38/39
Thank you! Questions? 39/39