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IT Service Optimization (ITSO) is aimed at optimizing the planning and delivery of IT services. The goal is to consistently meet IT service levels while minimizing infrastructure costs and mitigating risks. This increased efficiency makes it easier to manage IT resources, adapt to business changes, and align with business unit objectives.

TeamQuest ITSO processes can be classified into four core areas:

• Event Monitoring
• Performance Management
• Capacity Planning
• Performance Reporting

Event Monitoring
Event monitoring allows IT to react to performance problems before the damage is extensive. At a more advanced level, event monitoring identifies adverse trends in performance and notifies IT before service levels are impacted, allowing IT to be more proactive.

Performance Management
Reactive and proactive performance analysis are the two principal activities behind performance management.

Reactive analysis of an adverse event includes activities such as:

• Correlating performance data to locate the IT component that is the root cause
• Drilling down from an anomalous point on a performance graph to determine who or what is responsible
• Visually comparing current performance with past performance in an effort to understand the cause of an event

• Watching trends and cycles in system performance and projecting future performance levels as compared to service levels specified in the service definition
• Analyzing trends to determine how best to ensure that service levels will be met in the future
• Identifying underutilized capacity for potential redeployment

Capacity Planning
The key to an efficient, smooth-running data center is capacity planning. Without it, IT organizations cannot accurately predict performance, allowing services to be provisioned with just the right hardware configuration to accommodate forecasted changes or spikes in business workloads.

Capacity planning helps IT organizations to:

• Accurately and efficiently provision new applications
• Reduce, delay and sometimes completely avoid costs
• Justify upgrades with objective analyses
• Optimally configure systems to accommodate forecasted changes in business
• Migrate systems to take advantage of new technology
• Consolidate servers to simplify management and gain economies of scale
• Mitigate risk by playing out potential scenarios in advance and then preparing for them

Performance Reporting
Tracking performance against service levels is one important aspect for measuring the effectiveness of an IT organization. It is important to provide timely reports with the appropriate level of detail to various levels in the organization. Financial reports can demonstrate IT’s contribution to organization goals and IT resources consumed by various departments.

TeamQuest On the Web provides in-depth web-based reporting to help IT leaders make effective decisions regarding goals and resources.