The thorny path of ITSM in Russia
March 20, 2015 was another solar eclipse. Office workers in central and northwestern Russia tried to discern it: through sunglasses, tinted car, beer bottle. And only cunning, thrifty administrators pushed the shutter of the floppy disks away and with pleasure passed the saving film from hand to hand. But just recently signed floppy disks were one of the most important information carriers - they were handed over their course papers, they carried reports and uploads from department to department, programs were loaded from them. With floppy disks in their hands, recently Soviet Russia discovered capitalism. Ahead were networks, accessible Internet, external hard drives, flash drives and an incredible amount of related problems. Today we indulge in nostalgia, and at the same time we will remember how IT asset management systems have evolved.
The network IT infrastructure of a modern enterprise has long been not networks and data transmission channels. Office networks have become smarter, overgrown with virtualization capabilities and have become software-configurable (we are talking about Software Defined Networks, SDN, when network management and data transfer levels are separated by transferring management functions (routers, switches, etc.) to applications running on a separate server (the so-called controller). IT vendors offer countless tools, the most complex architectures and at the same time software for monitoring and controlling the entire set.
')
In the pre-perestroika period, monitoring tools were not required as such: computers were widely used only in large organizations, where each employee was responsible for his actions, and there simply was no temptation in the form of the Internet or the desire to install an unlicensed Photoshop. All hooliganism was reduced to innocent jokes like printing pictures on industrial printers (remember "Dzhokondu" above the table of the secretary Verochka from the movie "Office Romance"?). In earlier periods this was not the case.
The development of the first small electronic counting machine in the USSR began in the autumn of 1948. December 25, 1951 MESM was adopted by the Commission of the USSR Academy of Sciences under the chairmanship of the legendary academician MV Keldysh and transferred to the operation. In December 1951, the first two electronic digital machines were manufactured and put into operation almost simultaneously and independently in the Soviet Union: the automatic digital computer ATSVM M-1 in Russia and the small electronic counting machine MESM in Ukraine. ATSVM M-1 and MESM opened the beginning of the practical implementation of the creation of digital computers in the USSR:
In the spring of 1952, the development and production of the high-speed universal computer M-2 began, and in 1953 the high-speed general-purpose electronic computing machine BESM-1 appeared (average productivity - 8000-10000 operations per second). Machines were delivered without system software and were used by enterprises and computer centers first for computational operations (these were scientific research and accounting of national economy indicators). Later, Soviet-designed machines, and then the first IBM computers in the USSR, were used in the defense, space field, for recording data, and even for launching and using the first automated control systems (ACS). The computers were controlled by the operators and, unlike our contemporaries, you did not have the opportunity (and needs) to connect the carrier with infected files to the computer or to do something, except, for example, to print your dissertation. At that time, the printing of any book or reproduction (as in the example from the film) was the only illegal use of the office computer.
One of the first problems that the USSR encountered in the last years of its existence (approximately since 1988) and which the newborn Russian Federation inherited was the problem of using unlicensed software (in other words, piracy). Along with piracy, companies and universities came under the threat of being infected with viruses, and manufacturers were faced with issues of copyright protection and unauthorized copying. Even then, the first defense mechanisms began to appear. Some of them have survived a good 25 years and have been successfully used so far, others cause a smile to modern developers. (The section on protection methods was written using information from the BIT collection, issue 3, M .: InfoArt, 1991 - ed.)
Protection by serial number. A unique number is provided in each copy of the program. When copying a program to a carrier (and at the beginning of the 90s these were mostly floppy disks), a serial number is entered into it, which is then affixed to the specific buyer on the sales registration card of this program. When a copy of the program is found with an unregistered user, you can find the source of the program’s abduction and even trace the chain. I am sure many of you still managed to register such cards for legal and accounting systems. In its original form (the presence of a unique number in each copy), this method is not used by anyone since the instances of the program have ceased to be manually recorded on magnetic media.
Protection by the counter of installed copies (and again we can see the legacy of this method among some vendors, but adjusted for electronic delivery). Companies supplied media with a pre-negotiated number of copies that can be obtained from a distribution (distribution) floppy disk. As a rule, for such a product, there is a wired installation program (installation), which during the next copying reduces the number of copies. If the main program is copied without the installation program, then such a copy, at best, will not work. It is also impossible to copy the entire diskette with the installation program, since the installation program checks the originality of the diskette on which it is written. Basically, such protection is used on gaming programs. This type of protection is sometimes combined with protection by serial number. This method can be remembered by fans of the legendary game Ice Hockey.
In its pure form, the serial number is a bygone technology and an insanely primitive mechanism that is easily broken using reverse engineering. Actually, this is exactly how key generators were created for popular user applications (keygens).
But the ability to make good protection based on the serial number is preserved. Today, programs are activated using a different model: the number of installations for each license is counted on the software manufacturer’s server, for which you must go through the online activation procedure when entering the serial number. For example, so does Microsoft.
Software protection from disassembling. Virtually any protection can be removed or circumvented: in the 90s and in 2016. Therefore, it is necessary to take measures to hack the program required serious costs comparable to the purchase. Moreover, in Russia there were precedents associated with expensive hacking - attempts to break 1C, protected by a hardware key (dongle). But these are isolated cases.
However, buying a license often turned out to be cheaper, safer and more expedient.
Using technical differences in a machine for software protection is another remarkable and very intelligent way to protect software. As a rule, each model of PC (computer) has its own individual characteristics. This could be used to verify the uniqueness of the computer on which the program is installed.
The use of software and hardware protection. It is similar to the software, but requires great effort when removing.
All described methods of protection belong to the end of the 80s - the beginning of the 90s, and are not used in the modern world.
The only thing that is relevant today is the binding of the software to the uniqueness of iron, namely, to the models and serial numbers of the components. As you can see, the problem of software protection was quite extensive, since such a number of methods to solve it were created. But it was still half the trouble.
The main source of problems of IT infrastructure management was not so much the increase in the volume and diversity of software, as the intensive expansion of the number and names of hardware. Very quickly, a personal computer appeared in every employee of companies and enterprises, servers, office equipment, and peripheral equipment began to be purchased. With the spread of the Internet and network technologies, additional problems have emerged. These were tasks of a completely different level, many of which are still difficult to solve.
The first full-fledged network solutions began to appear in the early 90s, almost immediately after the collapse of the USSR. The state's approach to the economy has changed: the command economy has gone into the past, when the state was afraid that scientists or business leaders would have access to undistorted statistics. In addition, foreign computer manufacturers came to the market. On the other hand, business began to develop, numerous firms appeared - personal computers were in demand. A large number of PCs required a change in the approach to managing user interaction — workstations needed to be merged. There was growing demand not only for PCs, but also for software, and for services, and for large-scale projects from which today's system integration has grown. The pioneers of the Russian network market remained in history. Perhaps someone else remembers such names as SCO Unix, Cabletron, Novell Netware, Wellfleet. Now few people remember them, but then they carried network technologies to the young Russian business. Cisco came a bit later.
Here we must stop and say that in the companies of the late USSR and Russia of the early 90s, standards for building the X.25 network and Frame relay were used (both are the data link layer of the OSI network model). X.25 allowed to organize global computer networks on the basis of telephone networks, worked with establishing a connection: an external physical environment was used in the form of digital transmission channels connecting the switching nodes with each other and with subscriber terminals on a point-to-point basis. When using this standard, the error rate was high, so I had to develop numerous error correction mechanisms. However, the standard was reliable and affordable (it worked on top of telephone networks), so it was widely used in the corporate sector. X.25 networks are capable of working on low-quality channels, but at low speed (talking about tens of kilobits per second). The lack of a standard is the impossibility of interactive work in real time.
On point-to-point switching is built and the Frame relay protocol, designed to replace X.25 and common until now. This is the E3 channel with a maximum speed of 34.368 megabits / sec. Frame Relay was originally conceived as a protocol for use in ISDN interfaces and was intended for the dynamic separation of physical channel resources between user data transfer processes. The protocol provides multiple independent virtual channels in one communication link identified in the FR network by connection connection identifiers. A Frame Relay network is a frame-switched network or a frame-relay network oriented towards the use of digital communication lines. Frame relay was used and is used to build geographically distributed corporate networks as channels for data exchange between remote local networks (in corporate networks) and channels for data exchange between local and territorial (global) networks. The protocol is good for high network reliability and provides traffic that is sensitive to time delays. But Frame relay does not provide accurate delivery of personnel and requires high-quality communication channels (which, however, is not a problem in the corporate sector today).
However, market conditions dictated increasingly new requirements for networking: the oil industry grew at a tremendous pace, banks and financial institutions developed, paging operators appeared, and cellular communications came a little later, which at that time simply imposed space requirements on IT infrastructure management. All these companies could not do without a large number of PCs, reliably and quickly exchanging data over the network, and without order in the IT department. For many, this has become a matter of business survival.
Already in the late 90s - early 2000s, IT asset management acquires the features of foreign practices and ITSM (IT Service Management, IT service management) comes to the country, that is, IT service management ideas came to Russia 10 years late . For this assessment, we take the point of the end of the 80s, when the first volumes of the Best IT Infrastructure Management Library ITIL (IT Infrustructure Library) library were developed under the auspices of the UK government, which became the response of the IT community to the need to manage complex IT infrastructure.
By the way, about what happened abroad
The first interest in studying ITIL was shown by the structures of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation back in 1998. It was then that Hewlett-Packard began to market its IT-service management methodology to ITIL. HP knew what it was doing - at that time it had programs in its portfolio that were developed thanks to the acquisition at that time of the leading developer of automation tools for technical support services and other processes ITIL / ITSM, the Dutch company Prolin. ITSM was popularized and introduced through fashionable and to this day marketing tricks - free training seminars.
And even the default of August 1998 was played by HP and its emerging competitors on hand. Frightened business representatives tried to survive in the ruins of the economy and sought to save literally everything. Free seminars allowed HP to demonstrate “face to face”. Entrepreneurs carefully studied the offer before the purchase and made deals in an atmosphere of relative calm. Courses and workshops at the training center were gradually commercialized, and HP gained its share in the Russian ITSM market.
It was not by chance that we made a reservation that cellular companies needed to manage their IT infrastructure. Imagine: a huge operator with a mass of servers in geographically-distributed buildings, hundreds of employee PCs, a billing system (this is a separate infrastructure within the company), then thousands and hundreds of thousands of subscribers, service engineers with portable laptops. Against the background of the proliferation of internal corporate networks and external Internet, the whole colossus was difficult to manage and inventoried by the IT department or even the entire IT department. The phones of the system administrators were torn from the calls of the employees, the urgency and the priority of the tasks were determined at random, brotherly or “for beer”. It was time to end this.
So, at the peak of the boom of GSM mobile technologies and the jump in the development of telecom operators in Russia, ITSM practices began to be widely used. It was about 2004. Following the cell phones in the direction of ITSM, banks and financial corporations began to look. Such demand from the solvent sector could not but generate the supply of consulting services first, and then automation services for all IT infrastructure management processes.
Already in the early 2000s, there were two types of companies in Russia with two different approaches that still persist.
The first is the component approach. The company has an IT department and it provides the rest of the company with components: automation equipment, software and hardware systems, peripherals, software, and consumables. The IT service maintains a fleet of vehicles and fulfills internal requests upon request. By the way, the general use of 1C accounting tools became an incentive for the formation of such services in Russian companies: organizations needed configuration and system administration, and third-party services for maintaining and setting up accounting software were too expensive. So there were IT services inside companies that implement the component approach. There are not so many drawbacks to such an approach - basically, it all comes down to the human factor and carrying out some works for show. An indisputable advantage is the formation of a controlled IT service within the business, from among the employees, and therefore, people who thoroughly know the processes in the company.
The second is a service approach. IT service is a full-fledged service within the company, a kind of internal contractor. Professionals in the service supply the same components, but provide a full service. Most often, the relationship with the IT department is carried out through ticketing systems (applications, incidents). In contrast to the component approach, business owners do not delve into the details of the work of the IT service, but only embed its strategy into the overall business strategy and processes. , , . - , , . , ITSM — Alloy Navigator Alloy Discovery .
-, SAM (Software Asset Management, ), . Alloy Software , -.
, ITSM ITIL — -, , . Alloy Software IT-. ITSM . , , , . , , , . , .
Complete calm
The network IT infrastructure of a modern enterprise has long been not networks and data transmission channels. Office networks have become smarter, overgrown with virtualization capabilities and have become software-configurable (we are talking about Software Defined Networks, SDN, when network management and data transfer levels are separated by transferring management functions (routers, switches, etc.) to applications running on a separate server (the so-called controller). IT vendors offer countless tools, the most complex architectures and at the same time software for monitoring and controlling the entire set.
')
In the pre-perestroika period, monitoring tools were not required as such: computers were widely used only in large organizations, where each employee was responsible for his actions, and there simply was no temptation in the form of the Internet or the desire to install an unlicensed Photoshop. All hooliganism was reduced to innocent jokes like printing pictures on industrial printers (remember "Dzhokondu" above the table of the secretary Verochka from the movie "Office Romance"?). In earlier periods this was not the case.
The development of the first small electronic counting machine in the USSR began in the autumn of 1948. December 25, 1951 MESM was adopted by the Commission of the USSR Academy of Sciences under the chairmanship of the legendary academician MV Keldysh and transferred to the operation. In December 1951, the first two electronic digital machines were manufactured and put into operation almost simultaneously and independently in the Soviet Union: the automatic digital computer ATSVM M-1 in Russia and the small electronic counting machine MESM in Ukraine. ATSVM M-1 and MESM opened the beginning of the practical implementation of the creation of digital computers in the USSR:
In the spring of 1952, the development and production of the high-speed universal computer M-2 began, and in 1953 the high-speed general-purpose electronic computing machine BESM-1 appeared (average productivity - 8000-10000 operations per second). Machines were delivered without system software and were used by enterprises and computer centers first for computational operations (these were scientific research and accounting of national economy indicators). Later, Soviet-designed machines, and then the first IBM computers in the USSR, were used in the defense, space field, for recording data, and even for launching and using the first automated control systems (ACS). The computers were controlled by the operators and, unlike our contemporaries, you did not have the opportunity (and needs) to connect the carrier with infected files to the computer or to do something, except, for example, to print your dissertation. At that time, the printing of any book or reproduction (as in the example from the film) was the only illegal use of the office computer.
Pirates of young Russia - software protection methods in the late 80s
One of the first problems that the USSR encountered in the last years of its existence (approximately since 1988) and which the newborn Russian Federation inherited was the problem of using unlicensed software (in other words, piracy). Along with piracy, companies and universities came under the threat of being infected with viruses, and manufacturers were faced with issues of copyright protection and unauthorized copying. Even then, the first defense mechanisms began to appear. Some of them have survived a good 25 years and have been successfully used so far, others cause a smile to modern developers. (The section on protection methods was written using information from the BIT collection, issue 3, M .: InfoArt, 1991 - ed.)
Protection by serial number. A unique number is provided in each copy of the program. When copying a program to a carrier (and at the beginning of the 90s these were mostly floppy disks), a serial number is entered into it, which is then affixed to the specific buyer on the sales registration card of this program. When a copy of the program is found with an unregistered user, you can find the source of the program’s abduction and even trace the chain. I am sure many of you still managed to register such cards for legal and accounting systems. In its original form (the presence of a unique number in each copy), this method is not used by anyone since the instances of the program have ceased to be manually recorded on magnetic media.
Protection by the counter of installed copies (and again we can see the legacy of this method among some vendors, but adjusted for electronic delivery). Companies supplied media with a pre-negotiated number of copies that can be obtained from a distribution (distribution) floppy disk. As a rule, for such a product, there is a wired installation program (installation), which during the next copying reduces the number of copies. If the main program is copied without the installation program, then such a copy, at best, will not work. It is also impossible to copy the entire diskette with the installation program, since the installation program checks the originality of the diskette on which it is written. Basically, such protection is used on gaming programs. This type of protection is sometimes combined with protection by serial number. This method can be remembered by fans of the legendary game Ice Hockey.
In its pure form, the serial number is a bygone technology and an insanely primitive mechanism that is easily broken using reverse engineering. Actually, this is exactly how key generators were created for popular user applications (keygens).
But the ability to make good protection based on the serial number is preserved. Today, programs are activated using a different model: the number of installations for each license is counted on the software manufacturer’s server, for which you must go through the online activation procedure when entering the serial number. For example, so does Microsoft.
Software protection from disassembling. Virtually any protection can be removed or circumvented: in the 90s and in 2016. Therefore, it is necessary to take measures to hack the program required serious costs comparable to the purchase. Moreover, in Russia there were precedents associated with expensive hacking - attempts to break 1C, protected by a hardware key (dongle). But these are isolated cases.
How were programs opened using disassembling?
- Direct construction on the load module of the program text in assembly language or another language. After that, the subroutines are checked from the text and the boot module is rebuilt. Agree, labor-intensive and requires the work of a well-paid professional.
- The debugger traces the protection system in the boot module, and then changes are made to the module so that the corresponding subroutine can no longer be activated.
- Using the debugger, the program is loaded into the RAM, all the protection steps are traversed, and at the moment the protection program completes, a copy of the RAM is written to the disk so that in the future you can load the program with the passed protection step from the disk.
- Hardware tracing using in-circuit emulators or logic analyzers with tracing units.
However, buying a license often turned out to be cheaper, safer and more expedient.
Using technical differences in a machine for software protection is another remarkable and very intelligent way to protect software. As a rule, each model of PC (computer) has its own individual characteristics. This could be used to verify the uniqueness of the computer on which the program is installed.
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- When copying the program was recorded in an arbitrary place on the floppy disk (for MS-DOS). If you do not know which physical sectors are recorded, it is almost impossible to transfer the program to another disk. This protection was used to combat black copying during the late USSR, and died with floppy disks.
- Special processing of a specific bit on a disk (we are talking exclusively about floppy disks (diskettes)), the surface of which was accessible and which could be arbitrarily affected. In the case of a normal reading of a disk, an analysis takes place: if there is a magnetic signal, - 1, no - 0. And if the signal is weak? Then reading ten times gives, say, three times 1, and seven times - 0. You can record such a weak signal, and then check it.
- Laser burning (or piercing) of the hole in the original diskette at a predetermined address. During the check, an attempt is made to write 1 to that address and read it. If it was considered 1, then this is a copy, not the original.
- The password is polled when the program is loaded, the password itself is not stored in the program, but the entered string is processed and the next executable subroutine is called at the received address. In the event of an error, the probability of correct entry is negligible.
The use of software and hardware protection. It is similar to the software, but requires great effort when removing.
- Installation on the port of a special plug containing a microcircuit and, possibly, a battery. The program checks for the presence of this stub using a special protocol for the exchange between them. Deprotection consists either in imitation of a stub, or in its reproduction, or in the detection and neutralization of a subprogram to check its presence. This method is progressive due to the possibility of using customized LSI.
- The presence of the protection board inserted into the PC slot. This protection is almost impossible to circumvent, but this fee is too expensive for widespread use and is used exclusively in expensive corporate software.
All described methods of protection belong to the end of the 80s - the beginning of the 90s, and are not used in the modern world.
The only thing that is relevant today is the binding of the software to the uniqueness of iron, namely, to the models and serial numbers of the components. As you can see, the problem of software protection was quite extensive, since such a number of methods to solve it were created. But it was still half the trouble.
The main source of problems of IT infrastructure management was not so much the increase in the volume and diversity of software, as the intensive expansion of the number and names of hardware. Very quickly, a personal computer appeared in every employee of companies and enterprises, servers, office equipment, and peripheral equipment began to be purchased. With the spread of the Internet and network technologies, additional problems have emerged. These were tasks of a completely different level, many of which are still difficult to solve.
Corporate sector hit the net: first standards
The first full-fledged network solutions began to appear in the early 90s, almost immediately after the collapse of the USSR. The state's approach to the economy has changed: the command economy has gone into the past, when the state was afraid that scientists or business leaders would have access to undistorted statistics. In addition, foreign computer manufacturers came to the market. On the other hand, business began to develop, numerous firms appeared - personal computers were in demand. A large number of PCs required a change in the approach to managing user interaction — workstations needed to be merged. There was growing demand not only for PCs, but also for software, and for services, and for large-scale projects from which today's system integration has grown. The pioneers of the Russian network market remained in history. Perhaps someone else remembers such names as SCO Unix, Cabletron, Novell Netware, Wellfleet. Now few people remember them, but then they carried network technologies to the young Russian business. Cisco came a bit later.
Here we must stop and say that in the companies of the late USSR and Russia of the early 90s, standards for building the X.25 network and Frame relay were used (both are the data link layer of the OSI network model). X.25 allowed to organize global computer networks on the basis of telephone networks, worked with establishing a connection: an external physical environment was used in the form of digital transmission channels connecting the switching nodes with each other and with subscriber terminals on a point-to-point basis. When using this standard, the error rate was high, so I had to develop numerous error correction mechanisms. However, the standard was reliable and affordable (it worked on top of telephone networks), so it was widely used in the corporate sector. X.25 networks are capable of working on low-quality channels, but at low speed (talking about tens of kilobits per second). The lack of a standard is the impossibility of interactive work in real time.
On point-to-point switching is built and the Frame relay protocol, designed to replace X.25 and common until now. This is the E3 channel with a maximum speed of 34.368 megabits / sec. Frame Relay was originally conceived as a protocol for use in ISDN interfaces and was intended for the dynamic separation of physical channel resources between user data transfer processes. The protocol provides multiple independent virtual channels in one communication link identified in the FR network by connection connection identifiers. A Frame Relay network is a frame-switched network or a frame-relay network oriented towards the use of digital communication lines. Frame relay was used and is used to build geographically distributed corporate networks as channels for data exchange between remote local networks (in corporate networks) and channels for data exchange between local and territorial (global) networks. The protocol is good for high network reliability and provides traffic that is sensitive to time delays. But Frame relay does not provide accurate delivery of personnel and requires high-quality communication channels (which, however, is not a problem in the corporate sector today).
However, market conditions dictated increasingly new requirements for networking: the oil industry grew at a tremendous pace, banks and financial institutions developed, paging operators appeared, and cellular communications came a little later, which at that time simply imposed space requirements on IT infrastructure management. All these companies could not do without a large number of PCs, reliably and quickly exchanging data over the network, and without order in the IT department. For many, this has become a matter of business survival.
Internet, local networks and the first steps of ITSM in Russia
Already in the late 90s - early 2000s, IT asset management acquires the features of foreign practices and ITSM (IT Service Management, IT service management) comes to the country, that is, IT service management ideas came to Russia 10 years late . For this assessment, we take the point of the end of the 80s, when the first volumes of the Best IT Infrastructure Management Library ITIL (IT Infrustructure Library) library were developed under the auspices of the UK government, which became the response of the IT community to the need to manage complex IT infrastructure.
By the way, about what happened abroad
The mid-70s was a revolutionary, turning point in the world of information technology. The invention of microprocessors and the creation of compact computers led to the fact that computer technologies became available to a large number of companies, and the range of tasks was no longer limited to computing functions. Already in the late 80s, companies, holdings, corporations, and government agencies faced the intensive development of IT infrastructure. Giants Microsoft, IBM, HP demanded IT service management methodologies. Need a point of inspiration.
As you know, if there are no ideas, they need to be sought in other industries, “to steal as an artist,” to adapt and implement. And so it happened - experts inspired the conveyor, which began to be used by Henry Ford in the automotive industry. The IT industry was satisfied with the advantages: minimization of the human factor, reduction of routine, automation, growth of quality and productivity. Following the discussion in 1989, the first volumes of the ITIL library appeared. In 1991, the itSMF non-profit forum was organized, which became a place for discussion and continuous development of methods and practices. ITIL quickly gained popularity and became the standard.
Note on ITIL. We, Alloy Software, are often asked if we need ITIL to use Alloy Navigator and Alloy Discovery. We answer unequivocally: no, do not. Yes, when developing our services, we were guided by the best practitioners and created software on the basis of their ITIL provisions, but at the same time the interface and logic were built in such a way that it would be convenient for customers to use software without knowledge or even the slightest understanding of ITIL.
The first interest in studying ITIL was shown by the structures of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation back in 1998. It was then that Hewlett-Packard began to market its IT-service management methodology to ITIL. HP knew what it was doing - at that time it had programs in its portfolio that were developed thanks to the acquisition at that time of the leading developer of automation tools for technical support services and other processes ITIL / ITSM, the Dutch company Prolin. ITSM was popularized and introduced through fashionable and to this day marketing tricks - free training seminars.
And even the default of August 1998 was played by HP and its emerging competitors on hand. Frightened business representatives tried to survive in the ruins of the economy and sought to save literally everything. Free seminars allowed HP to demonstrate “face to face”. Entrepreneurs carefully studied the offer before the purchase and made deals in an atmosphere of relative calm. Courses and workshops at the training center were gradually commercialized, and HP gained its share in the Russian ITSM market.
It was not by chance that we made a reservation that cellular companies needed to manage their IT infrastructure. Imagine: a huge operator with a mass of servers in geographically-distributed buildings, hundreds of employee PCs, a billing system (this is a separate infrastructure within the company), then thousands and hundreds of thousands of subscribers, service engineers with portable laptops. Against the background of the proliferation of internal corporate networks and external Internet, the whole colossus was difficult to manage and inventoried by the IT department or even the entire IT department. The phones of the system administrators were torn from the calls of the employees, the urgency and the priority of the tasks were determined at random, brotherly or “for beer”. It was time to end this.
So, at the peak of the boom of GSM mobile technologies and the jump in the development of telecom operators in Russia, ITSM practices began to be widely used. It was about 2004. Following the cell phones in the direction of ITSM, banks and financial corporations began to look. Such demand from the solvent sector could not but generate the supply of consulting services first, and then automation services for all IT infrastructure management processes.
Approaches to the organization of IT services: the Russian mentality and adapted ITSM
Already in the early 2000s, there were two types of companies in Russia with two different approaches that still persist.
The first is the component approach. The company has an IT department and it provides the rest of the company with components: automation equipment, software and hardware systems, peripherals, software, and consumables. The IT service maintains a fleet of vehicles and fulfills internal requests upon request. By the way, the general use of 1C accounting tools became an incentive for the formation of such services in Russian companies: organizations needed configuration and system administration, and third-party services for maintaining and setting up accounting software were too expensive. So there were IT services inside companies that implement the component approach. There are not so many drawbacks to such an approach - basically, it all comes down to the human factor and carrying out some works for show. An indisputable advantage is the formation of a controlled IT service within the business, from among the employees, and therefore, people who thoroughly know the processes in the company.
The second is a service approach. IT service is a full-fledged service within the company, a kind of internal contractor. Professionals in the service supply the same components, but provide a full service. Most often, the relationship with the IT department is carried out through ticketing systems (applications, incidents). In contrast to the component approach, business owners do not delve into the details of the work of the IT service, but only embed its strategy into the overall business strategy and processes. , , . - , , . , ITSM — Alloy Navigator Alloy Discovery .
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/305516/
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