The IT asset management and maintenance associated with a business is a complex but very strategic task. Companies need to modernize equipment, adapt to new business needs, and integrate updates and technological developments as the computer park is constantly evolving, whether it is hardware or software and applications. There are, therefore, many challenges including facilitating user troubleshooting, and controlling IT security while managing operating and investment budgets to keep equipment up to date.
But if the change is inevitable, the question is, “how to better manage it”? The thing is, whatever the company’s size, poorly managed IT changes can have significant consequences for users and the IT department. It is, therefore, fundamental to control the life cycle of equipment and understand the changes with minimum disruption. A computer software maintenance services by Diceus can help lead this change management.
The Nature Of Changes Related To IT Maintenance In Business
In terms of IT maintenance, the ITIL® repository defines a change as “the room, change or deletion of anything that may change IT assistance”.
Concretely, this corresponds to everything relating to the configuration elements of the IT infrastructure: physical assets (servers, network assets), virtual assets (virtual servers, virtual storage), software or applications, documentation, processes, or others.
When we talk about change in the IT park, the concept of risk is therefore essential: it must be known and controlled because any IT maintenance intervention constitutes a risk for the company: interruption of service, disruption of activity, decreased user satisfaction, security risks, IT budget overruns, etc. Discus can help with software support and maintenance
The first challenge for the IT department will be to identify all the changes as early as possible to process them to minimize the impacts and risks. For example, a change request from a corrected anomaly during a troubleshooting computer maintenance, the ISD should seek to identify all similar configurations to anticipate change and avoid meeting again this failure … For this Having a comprehensive repository of configuration items for the complete and up-to-date IT infrastructure is a huge advantage.
IT Maintenance Software Provides A Global View Of All IT Equipment
Computer maintenance software precisely integrates a CMDB ( Configuration Management Database ); this database brings together all the elements specific to the computer park and the company’s information system as a whole, whether it is hardware, software resources, or applications.
Thus, the CMDB makes it possible to have an integral view of all the information system elements. Its great strength is to expose the IT support and the connections between its different parts. For example, it makes it possible to identify a weakness in the infrastructure quickly, assess the failures it could cause, and the impact on users and the associated maintenance costs.
Thanks to CMDB, IT maintenance software enables companies to adopt proactive management to simplify and anticipate changes.
Best Practices For Change Management In Companies
Therefore, the IT department’s fundamental challenge in terms of change management is not to be surprised. There is nothing like a documented change management process based on ITIL® best practices. The main objective is to ensure that all changes are reported, assessed, approved, prioritized, designed, tested, completed, written and reviewed in a controlled manner.
A good change management process must therefore allow:
- to use standardized and reusable methods and procedures,
- to ensure that these methods are known to all,
- save all changes,
- take into account the risks and impacts.
Establishing a change approval committee, also known as CAB ( Change Advisory Board ) in the ITIL® standard, is undoubtedly a good practice. Its role is to assess and prioritize changes and then participate in their approval. It thus sets the changes according to their technical and operational impact and their level of urgency.
To constitute the CAB, the important thing is to identify the right players and the right hierarchical level to involve technicians and IT managers, “internal customer” users, or even contacts among partners and external support providers. The IT maintenance software can then serve as a framework for the CAB to help it categorize changes more quickly and trigger the appropriate procedures.