What is IT Operations Control in ITIL ITSM?
IT Operations Control is one of the sub-functions of IT Operations Management under ITIL’s Service Operation process group of IT Service Management (ITSM) framework. This function is responsible for executing the routine tasks required to manage and control the IT Infrastructure and Application. It is the function which takes care of the day-to-day IT activities of an organization. This sub-function mainly executes the activities related to Event Management process and acts as an initiator of Incident Management process and Technical Management Function.
ITIL IT Operations Control Objective:
As defined by ITIL v3, The primary objective of IT Operations Control function is to monitor and control the IT services and their core infrastructure. This ITIL function executes day-to-day tasks supporting the operation of infrastructure components and applications. Those tasks include component monitoring, job scheduling, backup and restore, routine maintenance etc.
ITIL IT Operations Control Activities:
Below lists the type of activities done by this function:
- Console Management: This includes monitoring the IT infrastructure services and components by use of various IT control tools and real-time reporting engines. This activity directly relates the IT Operations Control function to the Event Management process.
- Job scheduling: This refers to fixing a schedule for executing numerous scripts and batch jobs, and then trigger them manually at that scheduled times. A good example of this is middleware activity for transferring data between mainframe applications. Scheduled database and temporary files cleanup scripts are also an example of this.
- Print Management: This originally relates to managing centralized printing facilities, where the IT Operations team was the authorizer for taking printout. But at present days, with the growth of distributed printing facilities, the responsibility of IT Operations is now shifted to the maintenance of printing solutions.
- Backup and Restore: The IT Operations Control is the function responsible for monitoring (and doing) the backup and restore activities. Backup activities are generally done by automated scheduling but still, this function has to look after some activities like checking backup status restarting failed jobs, media exchange etc. And Restoring backups are still performed manually (as restoring often required approvals) and done by this function.
- Maintenance Activities: Infrastructure maintenance activities are one of the main jobs of this function. This includes maintenance on received request from Application Management and Technical management Function, or it may be a periodic preventive maintenance job done by this function.
Important Roles in ITIL IT Operations Control:
IT Operations Manager: Along with the Event Management Process, this role is also the Process Owner (Functional Owner) of IT Operations Control function. Within this function, An IT Operations Manager is responsible for taking the overall charge for ensuring that all day-to-day operational activities are executed in a timely and reliable way.
IT Operator: IT Operators are the technical staffs who execute the day-to-day operational activities. They are typically responsible for Monitoring Infrastructure components, performing backups, monitoring and performing scheduled jobs, installing standard equipment or components in the data center etc.
Do you Know !!!
We have High-Quality Training Videos (English & Hindi) for most of the training topics. Just look for the Video or its Link at topic page.
