Effectively Controlling IT ChangeeBook

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It is often claimed that "80% of unplanned outages are due to ill-planned changes made by administrators or developers” 1

Considering that an average IT organization makes 11-100 changes every week, it is well understood that change management has become a daunting task.

This e-book highlights key points necessary for effectively managing IT changes and visually explains the benefits that Neebula ServiceWatch can add to the process without disrupting any existing change procedures.

1 The IT Process Institute's Visible Ops Handbook

(source: Juniper Networks)

Reasons for device downtime

Planned Maintenance

Hardware and software upgrades

Unplanned Events

Hardware and software events

Human Factors

Configuration changes causing outages

Introduction

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Change management

IT change management is one of the most studied and implemented ITIL disciplines in IT Service Management.

But if you ask IT infrastructure managers, you’ll find that the majority admit that their processes of handling change are far from effective.

As seen on the right, change management procedures can be quite complex and are often bypassed for lack of time or discipline.

Organizations find that many IT changes are not logged and change notifications are frequently made after the fact.

challenges

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Configuration management plays a key role in the

effort to effectively manage change.

Change managers and change advisory boards

(CABs) must understand the exact application

configuration and its dependency on the

infrastructure to be able to evaluate the impact of

proposed changes.

Yet in most organizations, up-to-date configuration

maps – either contained in the CMDB or outside

the CMDB - are not available. (It has been

estimated that only 1%-2% of IT organizations have

updated configuration maps of their services.)

Instead, ad-hoc configuration data only exists as

“tribal knowledge” in individuals’ heads, which can

be difficult to extract when time matters –

particularly if an employee has left the company.

Change management

Configuration management

Releasemanagement

impact analysis release approval

change update

Change and configuration management

Common misuses of event consoles

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Effectively Controlling IT Changeto download the eBook in its entirety and learn:

• How to track changes• How to pinpoint topological changes• How to identify changes across business

services• How you can take control of change

management