=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=None
|storemode=property
|title=An Intelligent Approach to Increase Efficiency of IT-Service Management
Systems: University Case-Study
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1000/ICTERI-2013-p-048-063.pdf
|volume=Vol-1000
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/icteri/TkachukSG13
}}
==An Intelligent Approach to Increase Efficiency of IT-Service Management
Systems: University Case-Study==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1000/ICTERI-2013-p-048-063.pdf
An Intelligent Approach to Increase Efficiency of IT-
Service Management Systems: University Case-Study
Nikolay Tkachuk1, Vladyslav Sokol1 and Kateryna Glukhovtsova1
1
National Technical University “Kharkov Polytechnic Institute”
Frunze str., 21, Kharkov, Ukraine
tka@kpi.kharkov.ua, vladislav.sokol@gmail.com, kat_1109@mail.ru
Abstract. A comprehensive framework to increase efficiency of IT-services
management systems (ITSMS) is proposed, which resolves 3 interconnected
tasks in a target organization: 1) providing an effective configuration of ITSM-
modules according to their specific features and needs; 2) integration a given
ITSMS with existing enterprise architecture; 3) advanced incidents management
in ITSMS. The applicability of this approach was tested successfully on the
case-study at the National Technical University “Kharkov Polytechnic Institute”
(www.kpi.kharkov.ua ).
Keywords. IT-service management, effectiveness, multi-criteria ranking, data
integration, adaptive ontology, case-based reasoning, e-learning
Key terms. Academia, ICTInfrastructure, KnowledgeManagementProcess,
Model, SoftwareEngineeringProcess
1 Introduction: Problem Actuality and Research Objectives
Nowadays the concept of ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) [1] and the new kind of
computerized management systems, namely: IT Service Management Systems
(ITSMS) became a growing and perspective approach to solve very important and
complex technical problem and, at the same time, business-focused one: how to or-
ganize a well-structured and controllable IT-environment at an appropriate organiza-
tion?
According to ISO/IEC 20000 [2] an IT Service Management System (ITSMS) pro-
vides “…a framework to enable the effective management and implementation of all
IT-services”. Due to high complex and multi-dimensional nature of IT-services in
large modern business organizations, which ITSMS are dealing with, recent publica-
tions in these domain present some sophisticated approaches to design and to use
these facilities. One such important topic in ITIL-ITSM domain is the integration of
ITSMS functionality into enterprise architecture (see, e.g. in [3,4]). Another recent
trend in ITSMS-development is the usage of ontologies and model-driven architecture
An Intelligent Approach to Increase Efficiency of IT-Service Management Systems 49
(MDA) [5, 6] for knowledge handling and re-using. Their authors emphasize the ac-
tual need to elaborate and to apply several knowledge-oriented approaches to re-
quirements analysis within ITSMS-development, and to quantitative quality assess-
ment of appropriate project solutions.
Taking into account some ITSMS-issues mentioned above, the main objective of
the research presented in this paper is to propose the first vision for intelligent com-
plex approach to increase efficiency of typical ITSMS, with a proof of concept basing
on the ITSMS university case-study. The rest of this paper is organized in the follow-
ing way: Section 2 analyses some existing ITSMS, introduces our vision about their
typical functionality, and shows the list of prioritized tasks to be resolved to increase
an efficiency of an ITSMS. In Section 3 we present the method elaborated for effec-
tive ITSM-modules configuring in a target business organization, and Section 4 re-
ports the first version of ITSMS - ontologies to integrate the selected modules into
enterprise architecture (EA). In Section 5 the designing perspective for the combina-
tion case-based reasoning (CBR) with ontology-based approach to advanced incident
management it ITSMS is briefly outlined. In Section 6 we present the university case-
study for our method to estimate an effectiveness of different ITSMS configurations
and discuss the results achieved. In Section 7 the paper concludes with a short sum-
mary and with an outlook on the next steps to be done in the proposed development
framework.
2 Typical Functionality of ITSMS and the Complex of
Intelligent Tasks to Increase its Efficiency
In order to elaborate a way how to provide a complex approach to increase an effi-
ciency of ITSM-system operating, it is necessary to understand its typical functional-
ity and to analyze its specific features.
2.1 Overview of existing ITSMS
We have analyzed some already existing ITSMS [7-10], and the results of this study
is presented in the Table 1. Basically, all such systems can be divided into 3 groups,
namely: (a) advanced business ITSM-products; (b) open source ITSM-solutions; (c)
bespoke ITSM-systems.
To the group (a) belong such systems as, e.g., HP OpenView Service Desk [7] and
BMC Remedy [8]. The first software product is the absolutely leader in this market
segment, because the most part of organizations which prefer ITSM-business solu-
tions from the group (a), are using exactly HP-platform. The number of its running
installations is essentially less than HP, at least because of more expensive costs of
Remedy ITSM Suite.
50 N. Tkachuk, V. Sokol and K.Glukhovtsova
Table 1. Results of comparison for some ITSMS
OMNINET
HP Service
BMC Remedy Axios OmniTracker
Criteria / Systems Manager
ITSM Suite 7.5 Assyst 7.5 ITSM Center
7.10
2.0
Basic
5 5 5 4
functionality
Maintainability 5 4 5 4
Report generation 4 5 5 4
Scaleability 4 2 3 5
Web-interface 5 5 5 5
ITSM-solutions from the group (b) also are used in practice, but they definitely
have limited functionality and provide less level of IT-services management. The
typical open source ITSMS are, for instance, GLPI [8], OTRS [9], and some others,
which are listed at the Web-resource SourceForge [10].
And, objectively, the business organizations, which are not ready to buy advanced
software products from group (a), and which are not satisfied with functionality pro-
vided by ITSM-systems from group (b), because they have some specific IT-needs
and challenges, exactly these companies try to develop their own ITSM-solutions to
be considered as members of the group (c). The more detailed comprehensive study
of some existing ITSM-systems is presented in [11].
2.2 Typical ITSMS-functionality
Based on the given analysis of the real ITSMS (see above), we have elaborated the
following vision for their typical functionality (see Fig. 1).
There are 5 main subsystems (or packages) of system functions, namely:
1. IT Business Alignment: this subsystem is supposed to implement a ІТ-strategy in
given business organization with respect to its main goals and needs, and to pro-
vide a base for costs assessment to whole IT-infrastructure;
2. Service Operations: this facility is responsible for customer’s requests management
(regarding to a current incident and to a related problem), and for providing of
ITSM-support functions;
3. Service Delivery Assurance: this functional package implements a configuration
and change management of all ITSM-software tools thus is extremely important
for a stable IT-environment;
4. Service Design and Management: this ITSMS-functionality provides detailed in-
formation about new perspective IT-services to be designed with respect to their
availability and quality for IT-customers;
5. Service Development and Deployment: this subsystem allows to create and to test
new ITSM-services and appropriate IT-infrastructure solutions, including installa-
An Intelligent Approach to Increase Efficiency of IT-Service Management Systems 51
tion of new hard-ware components, development of additional software applica-
tions, and training programs for ITSM-staff’ and for end-users as well.
As we can see on the structure presented in Fig.1, each of these 5 subsystems is
built from several functional modules (they are depicted as UML-classes). The most
important of them are the following ones:
Module М1 =”Incident management”: it includes organizational procedures and
appropriate tools to resolve current incidents, which IT-service users are facing with
(hard-and software errors, network connection problems, request for consultations,
etc.);
Fig. 1. Typical functionality of a ITSMS
Module М2 = ”Problem management”: this facility provides tools to detect and to
eliminate any problem situation which is a reason for different incidents;
Module М3 = ”Configuration management”: this module supports all operating
sub-schemes in the IT-infrastructure of given business organization;
Module М4 = ”Change management”: it supervises and coordinates all changes
which arise in IT-infrastructure; .
Module М5 =”Service level management”: this unit is responsible for definition
and implementation of an appropriate level of IT-services to be provided for cus-
tomers.
In ITIL-best practice manuals (see e.g. in [12]) the following 3 main schemes are
considered to introduce these modules into IT-infrastructure of a target organization: a
classic scheme (S1); a contract scheme (S2); an infrastructure-centered scheme (S3).
52 N. Tkachuk, V. Sokol and K.Glukhovtsova
A classic scheme S1 is the most applied solution in the ITSM-domain, and it supposes
the following sequence of modules М1-М5:
S1 M 1, M 3, M 4, M 2, M 5 (1)
This approach quickly allows to resolve the most actual communication problems
between IT-service department and customers basing on incident management (mod-
ule М1), and it provides some tools for all IT-services support (the modules М3 and
М4), and after that a platform for future IT-infrastructure development is introduced
(modules М2 та М5 respectively). But in this case it has to be taken into account this
scheme is a most expensive way for a given business organization, and it requires a
lot of resources exactly at an initial phase of whole ITSM-configuring framework.
A contract scheme S2 actually aims to formalize a communication process between
IT-service department and customers, and it has the following modules-workflow:
S 2 M 5, M 3, M 1, M 4, M 2 (2)
In this case all customer requirements to IT-services have to be collected and
specified (in module М5), and appropriate IT-infrastructure sub-schemes can be built
(using module М3), in order to define prospective IT-strategy in the target organiza-
tion, next an operative ITSM-functionality is provided, including incident manage-
ment (in module М1), change management (in module М4), and problem manage-
ment (in module М2). Obviously, this scheme definitely has some risk factors regard-
ing its efficiency, if the initial IT-service specifications were done not correctly (in
module М5).
And, finally, an infrastructure-centered scheme S3 proposes the modules sequence
indicated as following:
S 3 M 3, M 4, M 2, M 1, M 5 (3)
that is, firstly, to provide tools for all IT-services support (modules М3 and М4 re-
spectively). Secondly, this approach allows to manage all typical problem situations
(in module М2), and already based on this one to detect and to resolve corresponded
incidents by IT-service customers (in module М1). Thirdly, it creates an opportunity
to define in computer-aided way the necessary composition and the IT-service level
management (in module М5).
It is necessary to note that besides some empirical recommendations concerning
the possible ITSM-modules configurations defined as (1)-(3), in the appropriate tech-
nical documentation there are no more or less proved suggestions about possible
quantitative estimations for effectiveness of these alternative approaches.
2.3 The complex of intelligent tasks to increase of ITSM-system efficiency
Taking into account the results of performed analysis (see above), and based on some
modern trends in the domain of ITSMS-development (see Section 1), the following
list of prioritized tasks can be composed in order to increase ITSMS-efficiency,
namely
An Intelligent Approach to Increase Efficiency of IT-Service Management Systems 53
1. to provide an effective configuring of ITSM-modules for a target organization,
taking into account its specific features and needs;
2. to elaborate an integration framework for a given ITSM-system’s configuration
and for an existing enterprise architecture (EA);
3. to support an advanced incidents management in the already installed ITSM-
system.
In our opinion, the task (I) can be resolved basing on some expert methods for
multi-criteria ranking, with respect to specific IT-infrastructure’s features and cus-
tomer needs in a concerned business organization [13,14]. The task (II) belongs to
already well-known integration issues in distributed heterogeneous information sys-
tems, and e.g. an ontology-based approach can be used for this purpose (e.g. in
[3,6,15]). And, finally, to solve the task (III) an additional decision-making function-
ality for typical ITSM-services (see Fig.1) has to be elaborated, e.g. basing on the
combination of case-based reasoning (CBR) approach with ontologies [16,17]. Below
these tasks and their possible solutions are presented and discussed in more detail.
3 The Method for Effectiveness Estimation of Alternative
ITSM-Module Configurations
To formalize the task (I) from their list considered in the Section 2.3, namely: to
provide an effective configuring of ITSM-modules for a target business organization,
the following factors have to taken into account: such a problem has a high
complexity grade and it is semi-formalized; estimation criteria for it are of different
nature and they are multi-valued; an information base to solve this task mainly can be
collected basing on expert data only; available expert data could be quantitative and
qualitative values both.
To solve this task we have chosen one of the multi-criteria ranking methods,
which is presented in [14]. Accordingly to this approach the following steps have to
be performed:
Step 1. A set of possible alternatives,
X { x1 , x 2 ,..., x n } { x i , i 1, n} (4)
and a set of global importance criteria to characterize these alternatives
K {K1, K 2 ,..., K m } {K j , j 1, m} (5)
have to be defined.
Step 2. Each global criteria K j is characterized by a subset of appropriate local crite-
ria
K j {k j1 , k j 2 ,..., k jQ } {k jq , q 1, Q} (6)
further, a set of membership functions according to all local criteria alternatives
54 N. Tkachuk, V. Sokol and K.Glukhovtsova
{ k j1 ( xi ), k j 2 ( xi ),..., k jQ ( xi )} { k jq ( xi ), q 1, Q, j 1, m} (7)
and the weight coefficients of their relative importance for these local criteria
{w j1 , w j 2 ,..., w jQ } {w jq , q 1, Q} (8)
have to be determined, where the following condition has to be fulfilled
Q
w jq 1 (9)
q 1
Step 3. To determine membership functions of alternatives { x i , i 1, n} to criteria
K j ,{ j 1, m} based on an additive convolution of their local criteria
Q (10)
k ( xi ) w jq k ( xi )
j jq
q 1
Table 2. Definition of membership functions for criteria to alternatives (fragment)
Alternatives Criteria K
K1 … KM
k11 … k1Q … kM 1 … k Mm
X x1 k11 ( x1 )
… … k1Q ( x1 ) … k M 1 ( x1 ) Mm ( x1 )
… … … … … … … …
xn k11 ( xn ) … k1Q ( xn ) … k M 1 ( xn ) … Mm ( xn )
… … …
Step 4. Taking into account the membership functions obtained { K j ( xi ), j 1, m} for
all alternatives xi ,{i 1, n} it is possible to determine a joined membership function for
a generalized criterion K :
m
K ( xi ) w j K j ( xi )
(11)
j 1
where w j , j 1, m are coefficients of their relative importance K j , j 1, m .
Step 5. Finally, an alternative with a maximum value of membership function for
generalized criterion K can be chosen as a target solution:
( x* ) max{ K ( xi ), i 1, n}) (12)
Below in Section 6 we present the case-study, which was performed to prove this
method, and we discuss the results achieved.
An Intelligent Approach to Increase Efficiency of IT-Service Management Systems 55
4 Ontological Specifications for ITSMS-EA Integration
Framework
As already mentioned above (see Section 2), any ITSMS has to be integrated into an
existing EA of a target organization. In our approach this task (II) has to be resolved
for an ITSMS-configuration defined with the method presented in Section 3.
This issue is already discussed intensively in a lot of publications, and their authors
consider both its conceptual and technological aspects. E.g., an ITSMS-EA integra-
tion based on well-known SOA – framework is presented in [3], and as the important
conceptual input for this issue the appropriate meta-model (actually, some kind of a
domain ontology) for IT services is designed. In [5] an approach to integration of
ITSM-services and business processes in given organization is elaborated, using onto-
logical specifications to formalize the good practice guidance for ITSM. An ontology-
based framework to integration of software development and ITSMS-functioning is
proposed in [15], thus resulting in enhanced semantic-aware support tools for both
processes. Even this brief overview allows us to conclude that exactly an ontology-
based approach is a most effective way to solve this problem. That is why, in our
opinion, to provide ITSM-EA integration effectively, it is necessary to combine the
following information resources (IR), namely: a) IR related to ITSMS – functionality,
b) IR concerned EA-domain, c) IR characterized a target organization (TO), which is
facing an ITSMS-EA integration problem with. Let’s define these IR (a)-(c) as: Onto-
ITSMS, Onto-EA, and Onto-TO respectively. Thus, the IR needed to provide an
ITSMS-EA integration should be specified using an appropriate joined ontology,
designated as Onto_ITSMS-EA.
Onto _ ITSM EA Onto ITSMS , Onto EA, Onto TO (13)
Obviously, some already existing ITIL / ITSM ontological specifications can be
used for this purpose, e.g.: Onto-ITIL ontology elaborated in [5] basing on OpenCyc
ontology (www.opencyc.org), Onto-SPEM (Software Process Engineering Meta-
model) ontology [18], and Onto-WF (WorkFlow) ontology [19]. Taking these re-
sources into account, we can represent the ontological specification for Onto_ITSM in
the following way
Onto ITSMS Onto ITIL, Onto SPEM , Onto WF (14)
There are also several ontologies developed to specify EA, and according to one of
recent and comprechensive researches in this domain presented in [20], we accept the
following 3-level definition for EA-ontology
Onto EA Onto BT , Onto AC , Onto RS (15)
where: Onto_BT is a sub-ontology of Business Terms (BT), Onto-SC is a sub-
ontology of Architecture Components (AC), and Onto-RS as a sub-ontology of
RelationShips (RS) among items of AC.
And finally, to define an Onto-TO ontology for target organization given in
expression (13), its specific features and needs related to ITSMS-usage within
56 N. Tkachuk, V. Sokol and K.Glukhovtsova
existing EA have to be taken into account. As a small excerpt of such domain-specific
Onto-TO, which is elaborated in our University-ITSMS case-study (see Section 6),
the following UML-class diagram in Fig. 2 is shown.
Fig. 2. Taxonomy of customers in a University-ITSMS as a part of a Onto-TO ontology
The proposed ontology-based approach for ITSMS-EA integration can also be used
to elaborate the solution for the task (III) from their list completed in Section 2.3.
5 Adaptive Onto-CBR Approach to Advanced Incidents
Management in ITSM
In order to solve the task (III), namely: to provide an advanced incidents management
in ITSMS, accordingly to our inter-disciplinary vision about the ITSMS-development
in general, we propose to amalgamate the following design-principles (i)-(iv) listed
below
(i) an incident management as a weak-formalized and complex task within the
ITSMS-support for its customers can effective be resolved using one of the intel-
ligent decision-support methods, e.g., using CBR-method;
(ii) to enhance a CBR-functionality, especially with respect to specific needs in a
target organization, an appropriate domain-ontology should be elaborated and
used combining with CBR;
(iii) because of the permanent changes in an IT-infrastructure of a given organization,
and of the changes arising in its environment as well, such a domain-ontology
has to be constructed as an adaptive ontology;
(iv) to provide a possibility for knowledge gathering and their reusing in ITSMS,
some e-Learning models and technologies can be applied.
There are already the approaches elaborated to combine a CBR-method with on-
tologies [16, 17], which allow to provide more efficiently a case-representation, to
enhance case-similarity assessment, and to perform case-adaptation process for a new
solution. From the other hand, an ontology-centered design for ITSM-services, and
An Intelligent Approach to Increase Efficiency of IT-Service Management Systems 57
especially, for Incident Management (IM), is also discussed in some recent publica-
tions in this domain. In particular, the proposed in [21] Onto-IM ontology is built
according to ISO/IEC20000 for ITIL/ITSM [2], it includes such concepts as Incident
Management, Incident Record, Incident Entity, etc. specified using OWL (Ontology
Web Language), and the small example of its notation is shown in Fig.3.
Fig. 3. The excerpt of Onto-IM ontology elaborated in [21]
These results provide a solution for the tasks (i)-(ii), but in our opinion to cover the
task (iii) in efficient way, with respect to permanent changes in IT-infrastructure of a
target organization, an appropriate ontology has to be constructed as an adaptive facil-
ity [22]. In this way the Onto-TO ontology given in Section 4 should be given as the
following tuple
Onto TO ( adapt ) C , R , P , W ( C ) , W ( R ) (16)
where, additionally to the basic components of any ontology, namely: C – set of con-
cepts, R – a set of relationships among these concepts, and P – a set of axioms (se-
mantic rules), the following ones have to be defined: W(C) is a set of weight coeffi-
cients for concepts of C, and a W(R) is a set of weight coefficients for relationships of
R respectively. Usage of these weight coefficients allows us, e.g., to take into account
an appropriate importance grade in several types of ITSMS-customers (see Fig. 2) to
provide IM - services for them.
In order to get all information resources needed for a completed solution of tasks (i)-
(iv), we propose to apply some e-Learning models and technologies within an
ITSMS, especially, for skills training and experience gathering by ITSMS-staff, des-
ignated in the Onto-IM ontology as Incident Manager, ServiceDeskEmployee, Spe-
cialist [21]. For this purpose an e-Learning ontology (Onto-EL) can be used, e.g., in
[23] the Onto-EL is elaborated to build for learners their personal paths in e-learning
environment, according to the selected curriculum (Incident Management in terms of
Onto-IM), syllabus (Incident Record) and subject (Incident Entity).
Summarizing aforementioned issues concerning the tasks listed in (i)-(iv), the
conceptual mechanism to provide an advanced incidents management (AIM) in
ITSMS can be represented at the high-architectural level as the UML-package dia-
gram shown in Fig.4.
Below the approach to resolve the task (1) from their list given in Section 2 is il-
lustrated using the real case-study within our research and practice activities to apply
ITSMS to manage IT-infrastructure of National Technical University “Kharkov Poly-
technic Institute” (www.kharkov.ua) referred in following as NTU “KhPI”.
58 N. Tkachuk, V. Sokol and K.Glukhovtsova
Fig. 4. The AIM – architectural framework (to compare with the scheme given in [24])
6 University Case-Study: Effective ITSM-Modules Configuring
It is to mention that exactly university- and /or a campus-domains are considered from
many authors as a suitable example of ITSMS-usage (see, e.g., in [25-26]), because
intensive research- and educational activities obviously require a modern and well-
organized IT-environment. That is why we also proved our approach to effectiveness
estimation of alternative configurations of ITSM-modules using the test-case data
collected at the NTU “KhPI”.
6.1 Application domain description: IT-infrastructure of NTU “KhPI”
The NTU “KhPI” is one of the largest technical universities of Ukraine located in the
city of Kharkiv, which is the important industrial and cultural center at the East of the
country. The university has about 22000 students, ca. 3500 of faculty members, and
accordingly there is the advanced IT-infrastructure to support all educational and
research tasks. The main characteristics of IT-operating at the NTU “KhPI” are sum-
marized in Table 3.
Table 3. Some technical data about IT-infrastructure NTU “KhPI”
Parameters Values
PCs in the network configuration 1525
User’s accounts 2700
Buildings 23
Servers 60
Routers 80
Peripheral units 6000
IT-specialists in the central office 11
Incidences per day (registered) 5-7
An Intelligent Approach to Increase Efficiency of IT-Service Management Systems 59
In cooperation with the IT-staff at the University IT control office we have
analyzed retrospective data about some typical problem situations occurred, and about
the corresponded incidents, which daily have been resolved within the direct
communication with IT-service customers. In this way the main types of ITSM-
incidents and their initial problem situations were identified, and they are described in
Table 4.
Table 4. Main types of ITSM-incidents and their related problem situations
№ Incident type Cause ( problem situation)
1 No Internet-connection at - router was turned off;
Dept or on local PC - network cable breaked or failure on router hardware;
- incorrect network setup;
- problems with software on local PC
№ Incident type Cause ( problem situation)
2 High-loading of PC processor - computer viruses
with a small number of active - high degree of PC hard driver’s de-fragmentation.
user’s programs
3 Installing problems for new - computer viruses
software - absence of additional (middleware) software needed
for installation.
4 Failure to send email -incorrect setup of local network server (proxy)
-problems with central e-mail server.
5 Troubles in the use of third- -lack of specific configuration,
party software - improper use of system services.
Basing on the analysis results obtained, we can apply the elaborated method to es-
timate alternative ITSMS-module configurations (see Section 3).
6.2 Customizing of the elaborated estimation method: alternative
configurations and criteria definition
According to the Step 1 of the method presented in Section 2.2, the list of alternative
ITSM-module configurations have to be defined, and in our case they are presented:
X 1 = Service Desk subsystem (SDS) and Incident Management Module
X 2 = SDS, Incident Management Module and Configuration Management Mod-
ule
X 3 = SDS, Incident Management Module and Change Management module
X 4 = SDS, Incident Management Module and Problem Management Module
On the next Step 2, according to the formulas (4) - (10), we determine the criteria
for the quantitative evaluation of the proposed alternatives and their performance
indicators, which are shown in Table.5. These criteria and their indicators (metrics)
are taken from [35], and they are recommended to evaluate effectiveness of IT-
infrastructure in any business organization.
60 N. Tkachuk, V. Sokol and K.Glukhovtsova
Table 5. List of values for global and local criteria (fragment)
Global and Semantics performance measurement Insecure Effec- Scope of
local criteria criteria and target values value tive values
value
K1 Effectiveness of incident management
k11 Average time incident resolution →min >30 15 9999min.
min. min.
k12 Percentage of incidents resolved proac- 0% 15% 0-100%
tively →max
Global and Semantics performance measurement Insecure Effec- Scope of
local criteria criteria and target values value tive values
value
k13 Percentage of incidents resolved at the <65% 85% 0-100%
first level of support →max
k14 Percentage of incidents that have been <75% 90% 0-100%
resolver from the first time →max
K2 Effectiveness of problem management
k 21 The ratio of the number of solved prob- <10% 35% 0-100%
lems to total problems (%)→max
…….. ……….
For example, a value of 10 for an alternative X 3 to criteria k14 (see Table 5) means,
that the implementation of Service Desk and Incident Management Module will help
to increase the ratio of incidents, which are resolved successfully, to its effective
value of 90%, etc. The obtained in this way results are given in Table 6.
Table 6. Estimated values for the alternatives with respect to the defined criteria (fragment)
K1 : Effective incident management → opt
k11 (opt =20м) k12 (15%) k13 (85%) k14 (90%)
X1 5 5 5 6
X2 6 7 6 6
X3 5 5 5 6
X4 7 6 8 7
… ……………
… … …
In order to implement the elaborated method with customized data introduced
above, the special software tool was developed.
6.3 Results of estimation and their analysis
To continue the usage of our method presented in Section 2.2 (Step 3 and Step 4 re-
spectively) using the pair-wise comparison the weight coefficients of relative impor-
An Intelligent Approach to Increase Efficiency of IT-Service Management Systems 61
tance (WCRI designated as w( ki , j ) ) for the local criteria regarding their global ones
were determined:
The WCRI values of the local criteria for the global criterion K1 : w(k11 ) =
0,239458, w(k12 ) = 0,239458, w(k13 ) = 0,432749, w(k14 ) = 0,088335
The WCRI values of the local criteria for the global criterion K 2 : w(k 21 ) =
0,68334, w(k 22 ) = 0,19981, w(k 23 ) = 0,11685
The WCRI values of the local criteria for the global criterion K 3 : w(k31 ) =
0,332516, w(k32 ) = 0,527836, w(k33 ) = 0,139648
The summarized WCRI values for the global criterion K i : K1 = 0,527836, K 2 =
0,332516, K 3 = 0,139648
And finally, according to Step 5 of this method (see Section 3.2), and using the
multi-criteria ranking formulas (11) - (12), we obtain the following ultimate results of
the effectiveness assessment for the considered alternatives (see Table 5), namely
X 1 0.537, X 2 0.671, X 3 0.578, X 4 0.727 (17)
To confirm the reliability of the results given in (17), the comparative analysis with
some "best practices" in ITSMS implementation was carried out, using the data of
IDC-company [28]. In particular, IDC has reviewed approx. 600 organizations
worldwide, which used ITSM for over a year, and in this study especially the prioriti-
zation issues of different ITSM-modules implementation were analyzed. In Fig. 5 the
result of the performed comparison is shown.
Fig. 5. Graphical representation of the obtained results
62 N. Tkachuk, V. Sokol and K.Glukhovtsova
As we can see, to provide Change Management and Configuration Management is
necessary to have within an IT-infrastructure database (DB) of IT-configurations, and
DB of problem situations as well, these facilities are rather costly for the University,
and therefore the implementation of these modules is not a priority task. The most
effective ITSM-modules configuration for NTU "KhPI" includes an Incident Man-
agement module and a Service Desk subsystem.
7 Conclusions and Future Work
In this paper we have presented the intelligent approach to increase efficiency of
ITSMS, which has to resolve 3 interconnected tasks for its effective usage in a target
organization: 1) providing an effective configuration of ITSM-modules according to
its specific features and needs; 2) elaboration an integration framework for a given
ITSMS with existing EA; 3) advanced incidents management in ITSMS. To solve
these tasks in a comprehensive way the interdisciplinary framework is elaborated,
which includes: the expert method for multi-criteria ranking of alternative ITSM-
modules configurations, the ontological specifications for ITSMS-EA integration, and
the approach to enhanced incident management based on the combination of adaptive
ontologies and CBR-methodology. To implement the first part of this approach the
appropriate software tool was elaborated, and its applicability was tested successfully
within the case-study at the NTU “Kharkov Polytechnic Institute”.
In future we are going to implement and to test the appropriate software solutions
for other tasks in the proposed framework, using such technologies as OWL, BPMN,
XML /XLST, and Web-services.
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