Few industries have grown as rapidly or as widely as that of Information Technology (IT). What began as an infant offshoot of the accounting profession just a few generations ago has since matured into a prevalent and compelling force in nearly every segment of business, industry, and society in general. IT is the latest, and most significant, of cultural revolutions.

Futurist author Alvin Tofler, in his book on cultural phenomena, The Third Wave, describes three significant movements in American social development. These were the agricultural revolution of the late 1800s; the industrial revolution of the early 1900s; and the information revolution of the last two decades of the 20th century.

Some 40 years ago, Tofler correctly forecast many of today’s social and technological trends. But even he could not predict the rapid rate of progress which the IT industry would sustain, nor its profound impact on living standards and business practices.

Much has been written about the various IT breakthroughs involving chip technology, compiler designs, hardware components, and programming languages. But little has been written about how to effectively manage the environment in which IT entities coexist and thrive. This environment is commonly called the IT infrastructure, and the process of managing the many attributes that contribute to a stable, responsive IT infrastructure is known as systems management.

This book offers an in-depth technical treatment of the various disciplines of systems management, from the prospective of people, process, and technology. The people discussion shows the importance of executive support, customer service, and other management aspects of delivering and supporting IT services. The process discussion of each discipline shows how to implement and manage each one effectively, regardless of the size and types of platforms or the complexity of environments. For the first time, systems management is shown as it applies to mainframe data centers, mid-range shops, client/server environments, and web-enabled systems alike.

The 12 disciplines of systems management are presented in the approximate order in which they became prevalent and integral to an infrastructure’s operation. Obviously this prioritization varies slightly from enterprise to enterprise, depending on the emphasis of applications running at a particular center. The technology discussion describes several key developments that enable these disciplines to be implemented more productively. As a final discussion, three appendices offer an historical perspective of the various disciplines of systems management and an in-depth technical treatment of each of them. The historical background explains the when and why of each discipline to better explain its purpose and evolution.

When the first edition of IT Systems Management came out a few years ago, I could not predict what type of reception it would receive. Fortunately, thousands of readers found the book to be a practical and helpful guide for managing IT infrastructure processes. As a result, it has landed on several best-selling lists and has been translated into four languages.

During the past few years it has been in publication, a number of suggestions have been offered by readers for a possible second edition. Chief among these suggestions was to make it more university-friendly in the form of classroom materials for instructors and end-of-chapter materials for students.

This formed the primary motivation for writing a second edition. There were a number of other reasons that led to the decision to produce another version, including:

The second edition of this book differs in several ways from the first edition. First, two new chapters have been added. The first chapter deals with three timely and related topics of ethics, legislation, and outsourcing. The privacy of personal information, identity theft, falsifying financial records, and high-level corporate scandals surrounding unethical accounting procedures and over-inflated stock valuations all led to a variety of new legislation in the United States that related directly to IT. This chapter describes the ethics and legislation that resulted from these activities. It also presents the factors that lead many companies to outsource portions of their IT organization as well as the advantages and disadvantages of doing so. This chapter is inserted as the new Chapter 5, “Ethics, Legislation and Outsourcing,” at the end of Part One: People.

The second new chapter describes the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and how the various processes it comprises align themselves with the 12 processes covered in this edition. Many of the ITIL methodologies are similar to, but not identical to, the processes explained in Part Two of this book; any significant differences are explained in this chapter. You will find this supplement as Chapter 6, “Comparison to ITIL Processes,” and it is a fitting introduction to Part Two: Processes.

IT is a rapidly changing industry and there have been a number of advances in technologies and methodologies in the six years since the first edition came out. As a result, I have updated several of the original chapters from the first edition. The first three chapters in the first edition served as an historical reference for IT infrastructures. Although many readers found these chapters interesting, they did not directly relate to infrastructures of today. As a result, these first three chapters have been dropped from the printed book but are available online at www.informit.com/title/0137025068. The topic of staffing in Chapter 3, “Staffing for Systems Management,” now includes a discussion of career-pathing and suggestions on how to prepare for advancements in the field of IT.

The chapters in Part Two that have been revised include:

Two other chapters in Part Two have been modified extensively. Chapter 9, “Production Acceptance,” now contains a major case study in which I compare how seven clients of mine dealt with their own versions of production acceptance. I also significantly expanded Chapter 11, “Problem Management,” now includes its closely related process of incident management and the critical function of the service desk. This area was not included in the first edition because, strictly speaking, it is not truly an infrastructure process but rather an organizational function. But the function of the service desk in any of its various forms (such as the help desk, the trouble desk, and the Customer Service Center) has become such a vital component of problem management that it warrants being included here.

One of the most popular features of the first edition, among IT practitioners and university students alike, are the numerous real-life experiences I include in several of the chapters. In this second edition, I expand the number of these experiences throughout the book and highlight them in separate sections. Each chapter also contains terms and definitions as they occur in the text, also highlighted in separate sections.

This edition also features a number of enhancements at the end of each chapter. These include a few true and false questions to enable students and other readers to test their knowledge and understanding of the material. There are also one or two essay-type questions to provoke deeper thought and discussion about a specific aspect of the chapter topic. Finally, there are sources of further readings to provide additional perspectives and more detailed information about topic at hand.

One of the most frequent requests surrounding the first edition concerned the assessment worksheets used to evaluate the quality of infrastructure processes. Many readers were disappointed that these useful charts were not available in electronic form. This edition affords readers the opportunity to download electronic copies of all 24 non-weighted or weighted assessment worksheets. Go to www.informit.com/title/0137025068 to download the worksheets.

Another request for electronic material often was made by professors who developed courses around the first edition. Many instructors asked for PowerPoint slides of each chapter to use in classroom presentations and for electronic versions of quizzes and essay-type questions with answers provided. This edition provides these types of materials for credentialed instructors. A test bank containing more than 400 questions and answers is also available for credentialed instructors. The questions are in the forms of true or false, multiple choice, fill in the blank, and essay-type. The requesting procedure is similar to that used to request the assessment worksheets. Lastly, this edition corrects a small number of minor typographical and formatting errors present in the first edition.

This book is intended for IT professionals who are involved in designing, implementing, and managing parts or all of the infrastructure of an IT environment. It is also intended for teachers, instructors and university professors who are involved with the development of courses or the conducting of classes that focus on the topic of IT infrastructure management. An infrastructure usually consists of departments involving data and voice networks and communications, technical services, database administration, computer operations, and help desks. While the structure and composition of infrastructure groups may vary, the previously mentioned departments represent a typical organization in a medium-sized to large IT department.

Most of the concepts presented here are based on experiences with infrastructure groups varying in size from 50 to 150 individuals, but the underlying principles described here apply equally well to all sized groups. Smaller shops may have less need for implementing all of the disciplines of systems management and should focus only on those which most apply to their particular environment.

The format and content of this book are based on a fundamental belief that people, process, and technology are the three key ingredients in any successful implementation of systems management. A section of this book is dedicated to each of these three key ingredients, with primary and secondary audiences intended for each segment.

Infrastructure managers, directors, and CIOs are the intended audiences for the People part of this book. For purposes of brevity and simplicity, this group is referred to as managers.

The Process part of this book is especially intended for senior analysts, leads, senior systems administrators, and supervisors who are typically involved with designing and implementing systems management processes and procedures. This group is called leads.

The Technology part of this book is primarily intended for technical professionals such as systems programmers, database administrators, operations analysts, and systems administrators who are responsible for installing and maintaining systems management products. Once again, for purposes of brevity and simplicity, this group is called technicians.

Secondary groups of audiences will benefit from the parts of the book that are outside their primary areas of interest. For example, people issues will be of interest to technicians for topics such as communication and will be of importance to leads for the emphasis on teamwork.

The efficiency and cost savings of process improvements will be of interest to managers, while the eliminating of duplicate work should be of interest to technicians. Each chapter of the technology section contains an introduction and a summary to facilitate time-saving skimming for managers. Leads will find these chapters cross-referenced to corresponding chapters in the process section.

The term systems management as used in this book refers to the 12 specific processes of IT infrastructures that I have found to be the most prevalent and significant in relation to managing a world-class IT organization. As with virtually any business organization within American industry, few infrastructures are organized exactly the same. Some companies may include in their own infrastructures more or less of the 12 functions that I describe within these chapters. So it is worth noting those related areas of the infrastructure that I chose not to include in this book.

Asset management is not included here. Asset management is primarily a financial and administrative function; it isn’t normally an integral part of an IT infrastructure. While it is closely related to infrastructure management, particularly in the area of desktop hardware and software, most IT organizations view it as a procurement responsibility. Some companies have their corporate procurement departments, which are outside of the IT organization, managing their IT assets. Others have a separate procurement department inside of IT, but outside of the infrastructure, to manage IT assets.

Similarly, the infrastructure functions of systems administration, network administration, and database administration are not covered here since any meaningful discussion of these important topics would require technical details that would go beyond our intended focus. Elements of systems administration are touched on in Chapter 7, “Availability,” and in Chapter 8, “Performance and Tuning.” Some fundamentals of network administration are covered in Chapter 13, “Network Management,” and some of the basics of database administration are mentioned in Chapter 12, “Storage Management.”

Desktop support is usually an infrastructure activity but it is not discussed here due to the day-to-day details of hardware and software maintenance that go beyond the emphasis of process design and management. Another more timely reason for excluding this area is that many companies are now outsourcing their desktop-support functions.

Three areas of traditional computer operations are not included because of their reduced emphasis due to automation, distributed processing, and the use of the Internet. These include batch scheduling, console operations, and output processing. Finally, I do not cover voice networks in this book in detail due to this function’s highly technical nature. I do include a brief discussion of voice over Internet protocols (VoIP) in Chapter 13.

This book can be used for an upper-level undergraduate course for technology, science, or business majors or as a first-level graduate course for business majors and management majors. Courses are structured in a variety of formats, such as 12-week quarters, 15-week semesters, or six-week summer school sessions. As a general guideline, a 12-week quarter that meets three times a week (36 hours total) could develop the following course based on this book. The nine chapters that comprise Part One and Part Three could be allotted one hour each. The 13 chapters of Part Two could be allotted 1.5 hours each due to the more complex nature of the process material. This totals 28.5 hours (9 + 19.5) with 7.5 hours left for quizzes, tests, a mid-term exam, and a final exam. For courses comprising slightly more or less hours, slight adjustments to the times allotted for Part One and Part Three could be made. Homework can be assigned from the material at the end of each chapter, and quizzes, tests, and examinations can be developed from a test bank of questions provided for instructors.

IT practitioners can benefit from all three parts of this book. It is intended to be informative reading for any IT professional desiring a basic understanding of systems management.

The three major parts address the issues of people, process, and technology. Part One discusses various people issues such as executive support, staffing, retention, organization, budgets, communication, customer service, supplier partnerships, and service level agreements (SLAs). All IT professionals should read these chapters. While the emphasis is on traditional management topics, leads, technicians, and even desktop users should benefit from this enterprise-wide view of systems management. Students of business should find this section especially relevant to their field of study.

Part Two focuses on the process issues of systems management. This part consists of 13 chapters, an initial one that discusses the IT infrastructure library (ITIL) processes, and one for each of the 12 separate disciplines covered in this book. Each of these 12 chapters defines what the discipline is, which technologies within the infrastructure are involved, and what types of technical tools are commonly used to manage it.

Technicians and leads should thoroughly read all of these chapters with particular attention to the disciplines for which they are directly responsible. Managers should read the introduction and summary of each chapter to gain a basic understanding of systems management and then select those chapters which most apply to their enterprises to read more fully. Technology students should gain valuable insights from Part Three into the complex management of a modern computer center.

Part Three describes how to use technology to develop and integrate robust, bulletproof processes to support any of the disciplines of systems management. Understanding how these processes integrate with each other is critical to the success of any systems management implementation. One of today’s greatest challenges is to apply the tried and true processes of traditional systems management to an open systems environment and to web-enabled applications. These topics should be of particular interest to those involved with client/server systems and Internet applications, as well as to students who may be pursuing a career in these fields.

Some of the techniques presented here are based on proven Baldrige National Quality Award (BNQA) methodologies. I became very involved with these methods and their practical applications while serving as an internal Baldrige examiner at a major aerospace company. While the emphasis on the BNQA has diminished a bit in recent years, the effectiveness of its process-improvement techniques is without question.

Leads for any of the disciplines of systems management should read all of the chapters of Part Three. This information provides them with a sound basis for applying technology tools to process improvements and communicating these improvements in detail to technicians and in summary form to managers. Technicians who are assigned responsibilities for either tactical or strategic disciplines should read those chapters applicable to their involvement. Managers should skim all these chapters to gain a good understanding of the important role of processes in managing a world-class infrastructure organization.

Because some chapters are intended to be skimmed by some readers to determine their applicability, I have prefaced each chapter with a short introduction. There is also a brief summary at the end of each chapter to capture its essential highlights.

The terms process, function, and discipline are all used synonymously throughout this book, as in a systems management function of availability being compared to the systems management discipline of security. Similarly, the terms infrastructure and systems management are used interchangeably when referring to the above three terms, as in the infrastructure process of availability being compared to the systems management process of security.