Availability Management in ITIL

How many of you are aware of the term ITIL? Availability management and ITIL are not alien terms anymore, as they have become more mainstream these days. ITIL availability management is simply defined as an IT service to do some function. A major concern of the entity is to keep updated about the current and future requirements of the business.

IT Availability management takes form in different aspects of management and services. The fact that it can be useful in both the current and future services of a company make it an incredibly useful tool. Understanding the term and applying it to various business domains is one of the most advanced ways of management. According to ITIL 4, availability management is the ability of an IT service or other configuration item to carry out its intended function when necessary.

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What Is Availability Management in ITIL?

ITIL availability ensures that an application system is maintained and available for use. It ensures the system is up and about and, in a condition, to run. It also has an active role in the service delivery framework.

The process keeps all the IT assets organized so that anyone using them can have easy access. This process is done in a cost-effective way for every company. To know more, you can check out the availability management ITIL template.

Process Activities of Availability Management

Let’s check major ITIL availability management processes. There are processes outside of service strategy and processes of design strategy, which together bring about availability management.

The major components of the availability management process are as follows.

• Designing services: The project's main aim is to design protocols and other features to conduct the predetermined availability levels.
• Availability testing: The main aim of this process is to ensure that all the Availability, resilience, and recovery mechanisms are tested frequently for efficiency.
• Availability monitoring and reporting: This is a process where other management and IT management are provided with information about service and Availability. There is a comparison between achieved and agreed Availability. Areas of improvement are also identified in this process.

Availability management process policies include:

• Reactive activities.
• Proactive activities
• Service availability
• Component availability
• Identifying vital business function (VBF)
• Designing for Availability
• Service Failure Analysis (SFA)

Examples of Availability Management

Availability management can be applied in different fields and businesses. Let’s explore availability management ITIL examples. Some availability management example areas are:

• Architectural designs
• Problem management
• Strategy development for information security
• Information security management
• Data administration
• DevOps experts
• Site reliability engineer 

Regardless of your field, availability management will be an indispensable part of the job profile. A site reliability engineer is another common example.  

Important Concepts in Availability Management

Availability management metrics are the formally defined set of processes, tools, plans, and metrics for monitoring and reporting on Availability. An online course can help you understand the important concepts in the availability management process. It can be determined using concepts such as: 

• reliability 
• maintainability 
• serviceability  
• performance 
• security  

The basic ITIL availability management tools concepts are component Availability and service availability. Component availability involves every aspect of the availability management of ITIL components, and service availability revolves around every dimension of the actual and possible services included in component availability.  

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Availability Management Plan

The availability management plan includes comprehensive details on strategies to increase service and/or component availability and involves the work required to guarantee that newly created or modified operations can and will provide the agreed-upon levels of service availability. And that the requisite metrics are required to enable this work. The availability management definition plan would be a plan for ensuring that future and present availability demands for computer technology operations can be met by employing efficient cost controls.  

Objectives of Availability Management

The following are the goals or objectives of availability management: 

• Develop and oversee an availability strategy that reflects the company's and future needs. 
• Help the commercial and IT sectors with matters pertaining to Availability. 
• Make that the available accomplishments meet or exceed the predetermined targets. If the aims are not met, it must aid in diagnosing and resolving the incidents and issues that arise. 
• Evaluate each modification to see how it affects the availability plan, then take proactive measures to increase capability wherever possible and be cost-justifiable.

Challenges of Availability Management

A lot of different problems can affect the availability management process flow. The challenges faced by availability management ITIL components are described in this section.   

The IT corporation and supporting agency struggle to understand how Availability Management can make a significant difference, especially where the established standards of Managing Risk, Troubleshooting, and Strategy Implementation are already deployed. The IT organization views Availability as a commitment of all top executives and is hesitant to justify the costs of appointing one accountable individual for Availability.   

Other challenges include the following: 

• A scarcity of resources with the necessary skills and competencies to establish availability management.  
• A scarcity of resources with the necessary skills and competencies to establish availability management.  
• In the absence of suitable internal or market options, it will be necessary to design unique tools and reporting solutions. 
• Shortage of established service management procedures, such as Management Services, Performance Tuning, Emergency Preparedness, and Troubleshooting, which are essential inputs to Availability Management 

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Description of Capacity and Availability Management

Let’s understand capacity and availability management. Capacity management aims to offer resources to meet all the service requirements. Availability management is more based on providing sustained availability levels to meet service requirements.  

Yet, when discussing higher levels, many features overlap for capacity and availability management. They can also be combined or coupled as per need.  

Purpose of Capacity and Availability Management

Both capacity management and availability management comprise creating a service system of representations for several purposes, such as: 

• To support negotiations of service agreements 
• Plan management details 
• Make decisions about services, management, and implementation.  
• For corrective actions 
• Allocation of resources to meet service requirements.  
• Provide resources for future service requirements.  

Compare Capacity and Availability Management with Examples

Aspect of comparison	Capacity management	Availability management
Primary focus	Focused on providing the resources to meet service needs	Focused on providing sustained Availability of resources to meet requirements.
Challenges	Providing enough appropriate services without double bookings.	Delivering landscape services with well-maintained equipment
Challenges	Provide handles for travelers in a suitable number to meet the demand.	Monitoring reliability in the services
Challenges	Avoidance of excess or idle handlers for luggage	Determine the corrective action when the service goes below the agreement.

Process Area of Capacity and Availability Management

The important process areas in capacity and availability management are: 

• To establish a capacity and availability strategy and maintain the management of the strategy.  
• Provide resources and allocate them for current use as well as future needs.  
• Monitor and analyze demand trends in the present and future to understand the use of resources, performance, and service availability.  
• To determine corrective actions to balance capacity and availability management with their costs, resources, and demand.  

Benefits of Capacity and Availability Management to Businesses

The benefits of capacity and availability management can be found in many instances.  

The benefits of capacity management are: 

• Make informed decisions with appropriate data. 
• Create better budget plans. 
• Prevent burnouts.  
• No boredom  
• Always polish your skills to stay on top. 
• Hiring decisions made better. 
• Enough time to grow and become better.  

Availability management also has many associated values, like the services would match the present business requirements and take care of the prospects. It is known to influence satisfying a customer in a better way to improve the feedback. The company would have a good reputation, leading to growth and development. Planning the services can also provide a cost-effective way of services. 

Conclusion

Thus, this article explains availability management ITIL and its various aspects. Availability management has numerous advantages that can help a business focus on its services and needs. Not only does it help in meeting the current needs, but it also helps plan for the future.  

In a world where companies struggle to cut costs to make more profits, availability management helps ease the process. It has various concepts and components to focus on various parameters for maximum efficiency. You can opt for the KnowledgeHut ITIL foundation course online to help you understand the core concepts and definitions of ITIL 4. This comprehensive learning course will allow you to leverage ITIL to gain optimal value from IT and digital services so that you can steer the creation, delivery, and continual improvement of tech products and services.