IT Service Management for
Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)

Change Control - Help Desk - Service Requests
Blog - Personal Web Site - Sensitive Information

Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, and ITIL Compliant

Your company can not afford to waste any IT infrastructure investment, but you probably can't afford to hire expensive consultants to develop an IT infrastructure to fully support your Service-Oriented Architecture efforts either. Fortunately, you can now use proven ITSM best practices while developing your own infrastructure. The IT Service Management for SOA is a best practices methodology from Janco Associates that provides predefined standards, policies, and procedures for an enterprise to support its efforts as it begins the implementation of a Service-Orient Architecture.

The Template come in following versions:

Standard Edition - ITSM Service-Oriented Architecture Template (WORD)
Silver Edition - ITSM Service-Oriented Architecture Template (WORD) and 14 key Job Descriptions (WORD)
Gold Edition - ITSM Service-Oriented Architecture Template (WORD) and over 230 Internet and IT Job Descriptions (WORD Format).
Platinum Edition - ITSM Service-Oriented Architecture Template (WORD), over 230 Internet and IT Job Descriptions (WORD 2007 Format), Internet and IT Positions Descriptions HandiGuide (over 600 pages PDF format), Security Audit Program (Excel format), PLUS up to 5 custom job descriptions when Job Content forms are provided to us within 30 days of purchase.

The IT Service Management SOA Policy Template is a 150 page document that contains policies, standards, procedures and metrics that comply with the ITIL Standard. Included in the template are:

Service Requests Policy

Service Request Standard

Help Desk Policy

Help Desk Standards

Help Desk Procedures

Help Desk Service Level Agreement

Change Control Standard

Change Control Quality Assurance Standard

Change Control Management Workbook

Documentation Standard

Application Version Control Standard

Version Control Standard

Internet, e-Mail and Electronic Communication Policy

Blog & Personal Web Site Policy

Travel and Off-Site Meeting

Sensitive Information Policy

Sample Service Level Agreement with Metrics

In addition, the ITSM SOA template includes the Business and IT Impact Questionnaire, a Change Control Request Form and an Internet Use Approval Form. The document conforms with ITIL and has been updated to focus on supporting the the development, implementation and operation of a Service-Oriented Architecture.

The template can be purchased by itself or with supporting job descriptions. We do provide an update service for the template as it is modified. You can see a full table of contents and some sample pages by clicking on the link below.

The ITSM Job bundle contain the following 14 job descriptions:

1. Director Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance
2. Manager Change Control
3. Manager Customer Service Center
4. Manager Help Desk Support
5. Manager Metrics
6. Manager Quality Control
7. Manager Service Level Reporting
8. Manager User Support
9. Capacity Planning Supervisor
10. Change Control Analyst
11. Change Control Supervisor
12. Help Desk Analyst
13. Metrics Measurement Analyst
14. Quality Measurement Analyst

This template comes in Word and PDF Formats. In addition the Silver version include the 14 job descriptions listed above (PDF and Word format) and the Gold version includes the 204 job from our Internet and IT Position descriptions HandiGuide.

Latest ITIL ITSM SOA News

Disaster recovery and business continuity still a struggle for many CIOs

02/02/2012

Organizations of all sizes are struggling with getting some of the basics of disaster recovery and business continuity right. They still need support in obtaining executive buy-in, managing resources and implementing easy to use and reliable technology. To some extent, there is still a lack of best practices being provided by vendors, and many SMBs rely heavily on their channel partners to be their best practices advisors to help them make the right choices.

What has made the world more complex is the fact that organizations are now presented with three different platforms for their disaster recovery strategies: physical, virtual and cloud. Each platform has its own unique challenges and benefits. Some organizations will opt to keep purely physical, others will add virtualization while many will embrace all three.

Ultimately the success of any company's backup and DR is based on the availability of its systems and data and the impact that downtime has in terms of lost revenue and lost customers, regardless of the environment data and systems are held in. Using multiple different solutions to manage data across physical, virtual and cloud environments makes this process unnecessarily complicated and risks wasting valuable time and resources.

For most small to medium size businesses, a service's success is underpinned by its ability to deliver ease of use, cost effectiveness and flexibility, and by its ability to implement measures quickly enough to affect a near immediate positive impact. Both cloud services and virtualization can do this, so the future is bright. Managed in the right way, from one central, easy to use solution, they can offer businesses the ultimate backup and disaster recovery protection, ensuring that business continuity becomes easier to manage.

For IT managers, Janco encourages them to compare their backup and DR practices against their counterparts.
- more info

Mobile devices are the bane of many CIOs concerns

01/27/2012

As more companies embrace the broad usage of individually-owned mobile devices for access to corporate applications and data, CIO are asked for guidance on the establishment of an associated device usage policy.

Every organization needs to identify and develop mobile security policies to be deployed which will provide adequate protection. The level of protection has to be aligned with the level of risk that your organization is willing to accept. These policies should ensure that the many regulatory or compliance concerns that might be applicable are addressed.

Only by a partnership of information technology (IT), human resource (HR), finance, and legal teams - working closely with your executive team and business unit managers - can determine the exact corporate liable and/or individual liable policy that best fits your company, meets its financial goals and objectives, and takes into account security, legal, regulatory, tax, or other requirements and considerations that may uniquely apply to your company and its operations.
- more info

Will IT spending increase in 2012

01/14/2012

IT spending is expected to increase in 2012. After years of budgets crimped by the economy, there is significant pent-up demand at companies around the globe to drop some extra cash for the products and services theyve been waiting for to drive business forward. But weve heard this song before. One research fiorm that was bullish on IT spending last year, said that it could rise somewhat significantly in 2012, yet in its latest report the research firm acknowledges that its estimates might have been too optimistic. Global spending on IT spending will still be up, the company says, but dont expect it to rise too quickly.

Janco has found that consultants and contractors are starting to be hired again.

The salary survey is updated twice a year; once in January and then again in July. You can get a free copy of the full survey if you provide 10 valid data points and use a corporate email address. Free email accounts like gmail or yahoo do not qualify as we have no way to verify the accuracy of the data provided.

The report is updated twice a year, once in January and second time in July. The unemployment data on this page is updated at least once a month and is based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

- more info

New Facts of Life For the CIO and IT Management

01/08/2012

The world has changed and the CIO and IT managers need to face the new realities. They include:

iPhone and Tablet are here to stay

CIO and IT department no longer are in control of how technology is used by you enterprise

There will always be some downtime

Systems will not be 100% compliant all of the time

The cloud will not be the solution for all problems and will case new ones

There will never be enough capital and staff to get what needs to be completed done

The network has already been compromised

Social networking use risks all of your company's secrets

Users will always need your support even for technology that you have not implemented

IT will continue to be viewed as a service organization
- more info

Compliance Best Practices

01/04/2012

Security compliance best practices include:

Combine written content, usage, and retention policies with a Hosted Managed Email Archiving Service to ensure an organization's ability to preserve, locate, and produce legally valid email evidence. Unmanaged email and other record management solutiond can trigger financial, productivity, and legal issues for your organization when it a finds itself in a workplace lawsuit. The cost and time required to produce subpoenaed email, retain legal counsel, secure expert witnesses, mount a legal battle, and cover jury awards and settlements is ver costly. Best practices call for a proactive approach to email and business records management.
Utilize a proven archiving technology to ensure forensic compliance. For example, by encrypting and archiving a copy of every business record and internal and external email sent or received and across the organization, a Hosted Managed Email Archiving Service solution guarantees that your email is secure and tamperproof. Nothing in your archive can be deleted or altered. Everything in your archive is legally compliant.
Ensure that financial data and related documents are effectively protected from malware, viruses, and other malicious intruders - and are preserved in a legally compliant manner in order to maximize SOX, GLBA, SEC, FINRA, and PCI DSS compliance. This includes having solutions in place to manage messaging threats and compling with regulatory requirements including Email Anti-Virus, Email Archiving, Email Continuity, and Email Content Control.
Meet HIPAA requirements by using formal policies, employee training, and technology including email
Archiving, Anti-Virus, Continuity, and Content Control Services to ensure compliant use of email to transmit and store HIPAA-regulated patient information.
Safeguard personal or sensitive data whose transmission falls under state encryption laws or other privacy acts by deploying proven solutions that are designed to effectively identify personal information in any electronic transmission and, if necessary, block or encrypt the transmission.
Reduce business and security risks associated with electronic communication by implementing a formal electronic communication policy that combines a written policy with employee training.
- more info

Where not to hide your password and user ids

12/23/2011

With dozens of logins and passwords spread out across an equal number of sites and apps, it's no wonder the average user tends to forget them. Even with a tried and true system for generating memorable but complex passwords, the formula could easily fall apart if you just can't remember it.

So rather than continually clicking the "Forget Your Password?" help link, folks are readily hiding login information around their computer station.

And given that there's little variety in those secret locations, "hiding" might be a stretch. The most common locations where folks hide their login info are:

Under the keyboard

Under the phone

Under the mouse pad

On the monitor

In the top drawer

Under the desk
- more info