OVSD for HPO

In a large Czech financial institution with foreign participation we implemented HP OpenView Service Desk 4.5 as a replacement for existing obsolete ITSM system Remedy ARS.

According to the agreement with the customer a method of "gradual transition" was chosen.  Starting from a specified date new requests were recorded into HP OV SD and all the old requests were solved in the original system. The advantage of this variant was that complex data migration of requests was eliminated.

The implementation project was divided into several phases, the first phase was to define the processes and implementation of the following modules: Service Desk, Incident Management and Service Level Management together with the fundamentals of Configuration Management module.

In the first phase (along with the HP OV SD implementation) the project of outsourcing IT services started. It brought the need for accurate measurement and evaluation of agreed contractual criteria. In order to measure response time and the time to solve the end user requests, customizations were made to provide online time calculation (according to defined criteria) while processing particular end user requests. These times were then used as input data for monthly evaluation of the performance of outsourced IT services.

Another requirement was adjustment of the web interface for end users of IT services - SSP (Self Service Pages). It meant especially the breakdown of SSP to a multi-level structure of dynamic forms (according to the type of request) so that users would be able to specify their request as simply as possible, and they would be able to provide the system with all necessary information required for automation and effective solution of their request.

At various stages of HP OV SD implementation and continuous improvements, the following integrations were developed:

• e-mail integration with a banking subsidiary, used for automated online exchange of user requests between two HP OV SD systems (one in the controlling company and the other in the subsidiary)
• e-mail integration with an external company providing facility management services, in analogy to the previous integration, the integration is used for automatic online exchange of user requests between HP OV SD and the internal system operated in the facility management company
• integration with the monitoring  tool HP OpenView Operations. Selected events detected by the monitoring system are solved using HP OV SD

The next phase improved the Configuration Management process and its implementation in HP OV SD.  Integrations of CMDB with the following primary data sources were defined and implemented in this phase:

• the tool for automated software distribution and inventory
• the tool for recording network components managed by a supplier of computer network services
• the tool for server performance monitoring
• the tool for recording network printers
• the UPS register
• site register
• the HR system (import of people including their organization membership, import of organizations - including their structure)

The last phase was the implementation of Problem Management and Change Management. The Change Management module was implemented including integration to an existing, up and running tool called the Change Manager (which supports Change Management process). Integration to an external company operating network infrastructure was developed in this phase using Web services.