[ieee 2010 international symposium on information technology (itsim 2010) - kuala lumpur, malaysia...

Abstract — ITIL V3 could be introduced as a governance

framework for IT service management (ITSM) and attempts to align IT investments with business objectives. Enterprise Architecture (EA) is also referred as a general framework for designing business and IT/IS architectures of organizations and it also attempts to align these architectures with business strategies. Our research tends to provide a service based framework for EA in order to meet IT Service Architecture requirements of ITIL V3. Regard to this issue our Integrated Service Architecture Framework (ISAF) is outlined here to be developed through main research. One of our goals is to provide a solution for practitioners in utilization of EA architectures in ITIL V3. Authors also hope this study would contribute in academic domain through bridging computer science and information system disciplines due to service-oriented technology and management aspects of the research.

Keywords: ITIL; Enterprise Architecture (EA); Service Oriented Architecture; Service Design; Integrated Service Architecture framework (ISAF)

I. 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[1], EA focuses on developing required architectures for defining priorities and projects of IS and IT for short, mid and long term in an enterprise. This paper will focus on common issues and goals.

There are several common benefits and components which raise the issues of relationship and integration of EA and ITIL although they have different concerns on IT service provision. In this paper we will briefly concentrate on background of the research, literature review, methodology and roadmap of this study and also initial practical (qualitative) fining to show how we are motivated and encouraged to integrate ITIL V3 and EA.

A. IT Infrastructure Library V3 ITIL V3 could be introduced as a governance framework

for IT service management (ITSM) and attempts to align IT investments with business objectives[2]. Office of Government Commerce (OGC) has published ITIL V3 after more than one

decade successful usage of ITIL V2. The primary goal of ITIL is to provide a framework and a good practice in IT service management. Opposed to ITIL V2 which was primarily focused on IT service delivery and support, ITIL V3 is extended to cover whole Service lifecycle management including following five stages (publications)[3]:

• Service Strategy: This volume provides guidance on how to design, develop, and implement service management as an organizational capability and as a strategic asset.

• Service Design: According to Service Design volume of ITIL V3, this publication provides guidance for the design and development of services and service management processes.

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

• 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.

• Continual Service Improvement: This volume provides instrumental guidance in creating and maintaining value for customers through better design, introduction, and operation of services..

We compared ITIL V2 and V3 in detail in our literature review. The main changes of ITIL V3 can be summarized as: • Primary focus of ITIL V2 is on Service Delivery and

Service Support while ITIL V3 deals on Service Lifecycle which is a comprehensive framework.

• ITIL V2 only includes Tactical and Operational processes but ITIL V3 involves processes in all levels including Strategy, Tactical and Operational.

• Totally ITIL V2 consists of 15 Processes but V3 introduces 26 processes which 11 processes in V3 are new. Also the other processes has changed (in minor or major scale) to align with service lifecycle requirements in ITIL V3.

• Service Strategy and Service Design are new stages that ITIL V3 has introduced to resolve major weaknesses of ITIL V2.

978-1-4244-6716-7/10/$26.00 ©2010 IEEE

A Service Based Framework for Integration of ITIL V3 and Enterprise Architecture

Akbar Nabiollahi, Rose Alinda Alias, Shamsul SahibuddinFaculty of Computer Science Information System

Johor Bahru, Malaysia

nabi_ir@yahoo.com, Rose@utm.my, shamsul@utm.my

TABLE 1. ITIL V3 SERVICE LIFECYCLE AND PROCESSES Service Lifecycle Stages (Volumes) and Processes

a. Service Strategy a.1 Service Portfolio Management a.2 Financial Management a.3 Demand Management a.4 Strategy Generation

b. Service Design b.1 Service Level Management b.2 Cataloge Management b.3 Capacity Management b.4 Availability Management b.5 Service Continuity Management b.6 Information Security Management b.7 Supplier Management

c. Service Transition c.1 Transition Planning and Support c.2 Change management c.3 Service asset and configuration management c.4 Release and Deployment Management c.5 Service validation and testing c.6 Evaluation c.7 Knowledge Management

d. Service Operation d.1 Event Management d.2 Incident Management d.3 Request Fullfilment d.4 Problem Management d.5 Operation Management

e. Continual Service Improvement e.1 Service Measurement e.2 Service Reporting e.3 Service Improvement

Main point of this paper is based on Service Design stage of ITIL V3 in order to formulate an integration point between ITIL V3 and EA. All stages and their related processes of ITIL V3 have been summarized in Table 1.

B. Enterprise Architecture and SOA 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 [4]. It is generally accepted in academic[5] and applied[6] researches that EA can be decomposed into EA layers model for representing and demonstrating Enterprise Architecture. EA layers can be considered as[4] :

• 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.

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) can be defined as a framework for integrating business processes and supporting IT infrastructure as secure, standardized components-services [7] One of the main point of SOA is to bridge the gap between the business process layer and the application layer[8]. The service layer can be considered for this purpose. Meersman et al. suggest that integrating the SOA effort into the ongoing EA activities is a best practice that will greatly benefit all business units of enterprise [9]. The core of both Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) and SOA is the delivery of services. The opportunity here is to enable full realization of SOA benefits by its integration with ITIL. Wikinson [10] mentioned that SOA is useful for integration of layers and models of services in an enterprise. Based on above discussion, the roles of SOA in our target framework might be defined as

• Integration of IT service and its information such as application, data and infrastructure.

• A tool for Integration of service architecture[11] and other related architectures.

• A paradigm for designing services at different levels including business services and IT services.

II. LITERATURE REVIEW This section will review previous works on defining

relationship or integration of ITIL and EA. As it can be seen all of these practical are concentrated on ITIL V2 and thus they only cover service delivery and support. Second sub section will explore Service Design stage of ITIL to find a baseline for relationship of ITIL V3 and EA. We have suggested our framework by comparing previous works, considering guidelines of ITIL, interviewing in practical case studies and documenting experiences of the researchers and other specialists.

A. Analyzing Efforts on Relationship of ITIL V2 and EA

One research have conducted on integration of ITIL V2 and EA. Braun and Winter[12] have proposed an enterprise architecture expansion which integrates IT service management (ITIL). They concentrated 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 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.

Thorn [13] discusses how each enterprise can use ITIL and The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) together,

with a detailed comparison and mapping between these two. In this effort, Thorne explained that “ITIL and TOGAF are both architecture frameworks, but they address different concerns. ITIL is primarily focused on the delivery of IT services, and TOGAF is a methodology and set of tools for developing enterprise architecture. TOGAF should be considered as being on top of ITIL as it covers the product conception lifecycle, and ITIL as the way product services are managed for users and customers”[13]. TOGAF is a framework which consists of a detailed method and a set of supporting tools for developing enterprise architecture. The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) is probably the most widely accepted framework [14]. TOGAF needs an enterprise architecture repository while ITIL requires a Configuration Management Database (CMDB). The suggestion here is to integrate Enterprise Architecture Repository and CMDB of ITIL. This paper also shows the necessity and complexity of integration of ITIL V2 and TOGAF as an Enterprise Architecture.

In a practical effort, the BMW Group has defined an integrated IT Governance framework [15]. This framework suggests integrating TOGAF (as an enterprise architecture), ITIL V2 and COBIT into a new IT Management Framework in order to use these implemented IT management processes at BMW more effectively and efficiently. Like many other enterprises, The BMW Group started to utilize the advantages of the centralized and decentralized approaches in the IT organization structure.

B. Enterprise Architecture in Service Design We have introduced Service Design (SD) stage of ITIL, but

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

In Service Design volume, OGC defines Architecture Design of IT services as[16]:

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[16] 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 as 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.

OGC suggested that EA should be an integrated element of the Business Architecture and should include the following major areas (Fig. 1):

Figure 1- ITIL V3: Enterprise Architecture in Service Design [16]

• 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.

• 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.

From above discussion, we realized that Enterprise Architecture can be 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 concern in this research[17].

III. MOTIVATION AND OBJECTIVES

Firstly, the experiences and observations of researchers in different organizations (small, medium or large size and service or industrial) have shown that in IS/IT delivery projects, IT service consumers encounters with some quality issues such as lack of integration in data and information systems and unsuccessful efforts in design, development or maintenance of IT Services.

Secondly, through qualitative data collection in practical study phase of the research on implementation of ITIL and EA in several case studies, these important issues have been discovered:

• Some of organizations which have developed their EA programs, planned to implement IT service management (ITSM) or ITIL as their future projects.

• It was investigated through several interviews in two national IT provider, organizations often tend to implement EA and ITIL in order to promote quality of proposed IT solutions in different stages including design, transition and maintenance.

Finally, the background of the research in previous section has shown that for design of IT service architecture according of ITIL V3, using of Enterprise Architecture is suggested. These three factors have led us to plan this research and start to design and develop an integrated framework to overcome mentioned issues. Following objectives have been defined for the research:

1. To discover architectural requirements of IT Service (qualitative study)

2. To design a model for IT service architecture based on requirements. (Ontology model[18])

3. To develop an integrated framework for using Enterprise Architecture in ITIL V3 through IT service architecture model. (Design research[19])

IV. METHODOLOGY This research was outlined the stages involved for

successfully completing this research. This research will be conducted in next stages:

• Literature Review (LR): Literature review has been done to identify the focus area of research and determine the scope of the research project. It has formulated the research questions and the hypotheses.

• Research Design (RD): Researchers have done this phase through review on research methods[20] especially in computing and information systems[21] and consequently have outlined the research methods and timeline for completing the research. The research proposal has been submitted and confirmed in the beginning of 2009.

• Qualitative Study (QLS): The next step of the research namely practical (qualitative) study has been started in mid of 2009. The practical study was benefited by various inquiry methods including interviews, observations and document review on practices of ITIL and EA. This activity now is in analyzing and coding of collected data through selected case studies. This stage will conceptualize service architecture model.

• Design Integrated Framework (DIF): In this stage, based on artifacts of previous stage, i.e., service architecture model and candidate EA framework, design and development of integrated framework will be lunched.

• Evaluate Proposed Framework (EPF): In final stage, proposed framework will evaluated through one candidate case study, a survey and several interview. By completion of validation, the conclusion will be done on the results.

TABLE 2. RESEARCH SCHEDULE 2008-2010

Researchers have outlined this study for three years which has started in 2008 and they hope to complete by end of 2010 (As shown in Table 2).

V. PROPOSED INTEGRATED FRAMEWORK As mentioned earlier, OGC in Service Design stage has

suggested using Enterprise Architecture for development of architectures needed for IT Service. This suggestion implies that EA should been extended to involve Service architecture layer. Therefore, we outlined our research to provide a framework for this issue. Although OGC has mentioned some guidelines for using EA, there is not enough details and any specific processes to do this integration in Service Design. Therefore, we attempt to design an integrated framework to fulfill requirements of service architecture of ITIL. In our framework, we are designing an architecture model for IT services while providing it as a service layer for EA. Figure 3 shows general view of proposed framework by this research.

Figure 2 Integrated Service Architecture Framework (ISAF)

Year / Month

2008 2009 2010

Stg. 2 4 6 8 10

12

14

16

18

20

22

24

26

28

30

32

34

36

1 LR

2 RD

3 QLS

4 DFW

5 EFW

As shown in this figure, our proposed integrated framework involves ITIL V3 (service design stage), EA framework (novel service layer) and SOA (as a paradigm). We called our framework as Integrated Service Architecture Framework (ISAF).

VI. 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.

In ITIL V3, OGC attempts to manage whole lifecycle of service including five stages of service management: Service strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service operation and Continual Service Improvement. Our investigation has shown in Service Design volume, ITIL proposed to use Enterprise Architecture in designing IT Service Architecture. This notification of ITIL remains at guidance level and it should be designed and developed on how to design service architecture in practice and in detail.

On the other hand, there is 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 (service science).

Based on the gap which we realized, an integrated framework between ITIL V3 and EA has been proposed. Integrated Service Architecture Framework (ISAF) as our target framework aims to design service architecture model for ITIL V3 framework in practice. This framework is founded on ITIL V3 Service Design, EA (novel service layer) and SOA (paradigm). Through this research we are designing and developing ISAF to satisfy following objectives:

1. To discover architectural requirements of IT Service (qualitative study)

2. To design a model for IT service architecture based on requirements. (Ontology model)

3. To develop an integrated framework for using Enterprise Architecture in ITIL V3 through IT service architecture model. (Design research)

To conclude, first point of this research is to provide a solution for practitioners to employ EA architectures in ITIL V3. Authors also hope this study would contribute in academic domain through bridging computer science and information system disciplines due to service-oriented technology and management aspects of the research. In addition, one of the benefits of this integration could be to align objectives of business with all components of enterprise such as business processes, information systems or applications, information and data.

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