{"id":4640,"date":"2013-08-21T00:34:42","date_gmt":"2013-08-21T00:34:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/multiacademstg.wpengine.com\/20000academy\/blog\/2013\/08\/21\/availability-management-calculating-improvement\/"},"modified":"2025-05-27T16:00:30","modified_gmt":"2025-05-27T16:00:30","slug":"availability-management-calculating-improvement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/blog\/2013\/08\/21\/availability-management-calculating-improvement\/","title":{"rendered":"Availability Management \u2013 calculating for improvement"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By providing IT services, a service provider creates value that a <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/iso-20000-documentation-toolkit\/?rel=relationship-and-agreement-processes&#038;doc=customer-portfolio\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">customer<\/a> receives. To avoid a gap between (customer) expectations and <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/iso-20000-documentation-toolkit\/?rel=relationship-and-agreement-processes&#038;doc=service-report\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">reality<\/a> (of how services are provided), the value created should be measured. There are several ways, i.e. parameters, of how this can be done. Availability of the service is just one of them.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s simple \u2013 we agree with the customer as to a certain service level, which includes targeted availability, and then we <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/iso-20000-documentation-toolkit\/?rel=service-assurance-processes&amp;doc=availability-measurement-report\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">measure (availability) achievement<\/a>. Easy to say, but how does it work in practice?<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"padding-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px;\">In real wor(l)ds<\/h2>\n<p>It is important to say \u2013 availability of services significantly shapes customer <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/iso-20000-documentation-toolkit\/?rel=relationship-and-agreement-processes&#038;doc=customer-satisfaction-survey\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">satisfaction<\/a> (or <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/iso-20000-documentation-toolkit\/?rel=relationship-and-agreement-processes&#038;doc=customer-complaint-report\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">dissatisfaction<\/a>). I assume that I don\u2019t have to explain the negative effects of unavailable service. Therefore, both service providers and customers need plain numbers that will provide information about service availability. In addition to service availability, some components (or Configuration Items \u2013 CIs) that form the service will be measured, and their availability parameters analyzed and reported. All this implies that availability must be <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/iso-20000-documentation-toolkit\/?rel=service-assurance-processes&amp;doc=availability-plan\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">managed<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Availability management is about monitoring, measuring, analyzing and reporting of the following aspects:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Availability<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013the ability of the service or component to provide the agreed-upon functionality when required. You will find it expressed in percentage (%), e.g. service has availability of 99.95 %. It is calculated as follows:<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-10593\" src=\"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/sites\/6\/2015\/07\/Availability_formula1.png\" alt=\"Availability formula\" width=\"339\" height=\"45\" \/><\/div>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Reliability<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 expressed in hours (e.g. 2.600 h), it measures how long a service or component can fulfill its function without interruption. You will find two parameters that measure reliability:<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-10596\" src=\"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/sites\/6\/2015\/07\/Reliability_formula_11.png\" alt=\"Reliability_formula_1\" width=\"338\" height=\"51\" \/><\/div>\n<div><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-10600\" src=\"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/sites\/6\/2015\/07\/Reliability_formula_21.png\" alt=\"Reliability_formula_2\" width=\"500\" height=\"45\" \/><\/div>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Maintainability<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 measures how quickly a service or component can be restored to normal operation after a failure (e.g. 10 h). It is calculated as follows:<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-10603\" src=\"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/sites\/6\/2015\/07\/Maintainability_formula1.png\" alt=\"Maintainability_formula\" width=\"384\" height=\"52\" \/><\/div>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Serviceability<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 the ability of a third party to fulfill obligations expressed in agreed levels of availability, reliability and maintainability. Using these measurements, you can assure that your suppliers are performing as agreed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>My experience is that <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/iso-20000-documentation-toolkit\/?rel=relationship-and-agreement-processes&#038;doc=service-level-agreement-sla-\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Service Level Agreements (SLAs)<\/a> usually define only availability requirements, and rarely reliability and maintainability.<br \/>\n<div id=\"middle-banner\" class=\"banner-shortcode\"><\/div><script>loadMiddleBanner();<\/script><br \/>\n<div id=\"side-banner-trigger\" class=\"banner-shortcode\"><\/div><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"padding-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px;\">Integration with Incident Management<\/h2>\n<p>So, service incidents happen. Is that the end? It shouldn\u2019t be. One of the principles of Availability management is that customer satisfaction can still be achieved, even if incidents occur. How? By assisting\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/blog\/2013\/05\/21\/incident-management-itil-solid-foundations-operational-processes\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Incident Management<\/a>\u00a0to ensure that incidents are resolved as quickly as possible and that the impact of incidents is minimized.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-10606\" src=\"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/sites\/6\/2015\/07\/Incident_lifecycle1.png\" alt=\"Incident lifecycle\" width=\"622\" height=\"387\" \/><em>Figure: Incident lifecycle<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The above figure shows incident lifecycle, as seen from an availability point of view. Each stage can be measured to provide valuable information in incident management analysis. Based on this data, weak points, i.e. possibilities for improvement, can be pointed out. Here are more details about particular stages of the lifecycle, as well as few examples of how partial measurements during downtime detect weak points:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Incident detection \u2013 Service provider is aware of an incident. Measurement can point out that monitoring, i.e. event tools performance, is not appropriate.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/blog\/2013\/06\/19\/trip-1000-miles-begins-first-step-initial-diagnosis-incident\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Incident diagnosis<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 In this phase, diagnosis is completed to detect the cause of an incident. Time elapsed in this phase will depend on quality of diagnosis tools, scripts\u2026etc.<\/li>\n<li>Incident repair \u2013 The failure has been fixed. This measurement will test escalation procedures inside the organization or from external parties.<\/li>\n<li>Incident recovery \u2013 Component recovery has been completed. Efficiency of this phase depends on recovery and test plans and procedures.<\/li>\n<li>Incident restoration \u2013 Service is resumed. These measurements provide information about efficiency of the procedures, which verify that service has been restored.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>When such measurements are analyzed, they could result in detection of lost time, e.g. incident restore took 2 hours, but applying a resolution took only 15 minutes. Analysis of other measurements, like detection and diagnosis time, will answer the question.<\/p>\n<p>I have seen some examples of availability reports that concluded in event monitoring tool replacement (an event is one of the triggers of incidents) due to the fact that the detection phase took too long.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"padding-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px;\">Importance of Availability management<\/h2>\n<p>In case this has not been stated clearly enough, availability management supports and forms an integral part of many other processes in ITIL. That increases the importance of measurements on which availability management relies heavily. It is true that \u201cif you don\u2019t measure it \u2013 you can\u2019t improve it,\u201d but more interestingly, \u201cif you don\u2019t measure it \u2013 you probably don\u2019t care,\u201d which is dangerous from a revenue point of view.<\/p>\n<p><em>To implement ISO 20000 easily and efficiently, use our<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/iso-20000-documentation-toolkit\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ISO 20000 Documentation Toolkit<\/a> <em>that provides step-by-step guidance for full ISO 20000 compliance.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By providing IT services, a service provider creates value that a customer receives. To avoid a gap between (customer) expectations and reality (of how services are provided), the value created should be measured. There are several ways, i.e. parameters, of how this can be done. Availability of the service is just one of them. It\u2019s &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":4641,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[406,344,346],"class_list":["post-4640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-availability","tag-itil","tag-service-design"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4640"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18327,"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4640\/revisions\/18327"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}