This project report explains the usage of operation management in the Information Technology industry.

1. An Interim Project Report
On
Role of Operations in IT Industry
Submitted By
Soumya Tiwari
In partial fulfillment of
PGDOM
Symbiosis Institute ofBusiness Management
Pune
(2017-18)

2. Introduction:
Operation Management:
Operations management is an area of management concerned with designing and controlling the
process of production and redesigning business operations in the production
of goods or services. It involves the responsibility of ensuring that business operations
are efficient in terms of using as few resources as needed and effective in terms of meeting
customer requirements. It is concerned with managing an entire production system which is the
process that converts inputs (in the forms of raw materials, labor, and energy) into outputs (in the
form of goods and/or services), as an asset or delivers a product or services. Operations produce
products, manage quality and creates service. Operation management covers sectors like banking
systems, hospitals, companies, working with suppliers, customers, and using technology.
Operations is one of the major functions in an organization along with supply chains, marketing,
finance and human resources. The operations function requires management of both the strategic
and day-to-day production of goods and services.
IT Industry:
Information technology (IT) is the application of computers to store, study, retrieve, transmit and
manipulate data, or information, often in the context of a business or other enterprise. IT is
considered a subset of information and communications technology (ICT). In 2012, Zuppo
proposed an ICT hierarchy where each hierarchy level "contain some degree of commonality in
that they are related to technologies that facilitate the transfer of information and various types of
electronically mediated communications".

3. Role of Operation Management in IT:
Information technology operations, or IT operations, are the set of all processes and services that
are both provisioned by an IT staff to their internal or external clients and used by themselves, to
run themselves as a business. The term refers to the application of operations management to a
business's technology needs.
The definition of IT operations differ throughout the IT industry, where vendors and individual
organizations often create their own custom definitions of such processes and services for the
purpose of marketing their own products. Operations work can include responding
to tickets generated for maintenance work or customer issues. Teams can use event monitoring to
detect incidents. Many operations teams rely on on-call responses to incidents during off-hours
periods. IT operations teams also conduct software deployments and maintenance operations.
Definitions:source (Wikipedia)
Joe Hertvik defines IT Operations as being "responsible for the smooth functioning of the
infrastructure and operational environments that support application deployment to internal and
external customers, including the network infrastructure; server and device management;
computer operations; IT infrastructure library (ITIL) management; and help desk services for an
organization."
Gartner defines IT operations as "the people and management processes associated with IT
service management to deliver the right set of services at the right quality and at competitive
costs for customers."
IT operations is generally viewed as a separate department from software development. It can
include "network administration, device management, mobile contracting and help desks of all
kinds."
Ernest Mueller defines IT operations as "a blanket term for systems engineers, system
administrators, operations staff, release engineers, DBAs, network engineers, security
professionals, and various other sub disciplines and job titles."

4. Need/Significance:
When people tell they work in IT Operations, they sometimes get a blank stare. While IT
Application programmers are well understood, people are a little fuzzier on what an IT
Operations department does. To clear up any confusion, here’s my take on what IT Operations
is, how it differs from IT Applications, and how IT Operations can be managed in an overall IT
department.
Responsibilities
Systems administration
A system administrator, or system admin, is a person who is responsible for the upkeep,
configuration, and reliable operation of computer systems. Database administrators (DBAs) are a
type of system admin.
Network administration
A network administrator maintains infrastructure such as network switches and routers. They use
technologies such as firewalls to prevent unauthorized network access.
Help desk
Many IT operations teams are responsible for running a help desk. Help desks provide
general technical support for both hardware and software issues.
IT Operations:
Every organization that uses computers has at least loosely-defined IT operations, based on how
it tends to solve internal and client needs. Elements of IT operations are chosen to deliver
effective services at the required quality and cost. IT operations are usually considered to be
separate from IT applications. In a software development company, for example, IT operations
include all IT functions other than software development and management. However, there is
always some overlap between the departments.
IT operations determine the way an organization manages software and hardware and includes
other IT support, such as network administration, device management, mobile contracting and

5. help desks of all kinds. IT operations management (ITOM) and IT operations analytics (ITOA)
help an organization refine the way that IT approaches services, deployment and support and
help to ensure consistency, reliability and quality of service.
Current IT trends affecting IT operations include cloud computing, machine-to-machine (M2M)
communications and the Internet of Things (IoT). The efficiency of cloud computing typically
means that IT operations for a given organization require fewer administrators. The increasing
interconnectivity and automation of M2M and IoT require adaptations to the traditional IT
operations skill sets and business processes.
Different organizations define IT operations in various ways; the term is also used to describe the
department that manages IT operations as well as the collection of services and processes and
how the department operates as a standardized procedure.
Vendors that offer IT operations management (ITOM) platforms and related services include
IBM, HP, BMC Software and CA Technologies.
Redefining IT Operations:
First, we start with what IT Operations is not.
1. IT Operations is not IT Applications
• IT Operations generally does not deal in programming activities. Going from that, we can
refine IT Ops as follows:
• IT Operations generally covers everything (all IT functions) outside of Application
programming and management
• By doing this, the IT Operations and IT Applications relationship becomes a Venn
diagram that doesn’t overlap, like this.

6. This is interesting but unrealistic, as there are many areas where IT Operations and IT
Applications do intersect. Generally speaking, IT applications is usually in charge of business
analysis, design, coding, testing, and custom software deployment and IT Operations is not.
But it’s also important to realize that the two functions overlap in the following areas:
▪ Off-the-shelf software installation and configuration for business applications support
▪ Database maintenance – Applications and users maintain the database from a database
integrity viewpoint; Operations maintains it from an efficiency and processing viewpoint
(cleaning up deleted records, re indexing, creating new indexes and views, backing up, etc.)
▪ Troubleshooting applications
▪ Monitoring application performance and issues, and alerting emergency resources when a
problem occurs (call trees)
▪ Telecom configuration for communication with business partners, customers, and other
entities (ex., FTP, EDI, e-commerce connections for ordering, copying data between servers,
etc.)
▪ Help Desk – Help Desk duties are sometimes split between an IT Applications Help Desk
and an IT Operations Help Desk
▪ Job scheduling management to insure that all required jobs run according to schedule on all
platforms
▪ Financial system auditing – Insuring financials are secured according to regulatory and
security requirements (including Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, auditing, and other requirements)
▪ Integrating specialized equipment with particular applications – This may include scanners,
industrial printers, display terminals, thin clients, tablets, cell phones, etc.
If we take the common areas into account, our IT Operations-IT Applications diagram morphs
into this:

7. The shaded area here defines the first part of what IT Operations does. To complete the list, we
have to add those areas that IT Operations is responsible for that have nothing to do with IT
Applications.
In general, the rest of IT Operations tasks fall into three areas: Computer Operations & Help
Desk; Network Infrastructure; and Server and Device Management. So here’s what our Venn
Diagram looks like, if I break down IT Operations into these areas.
Here’s a list of what IT Operations deals with that fall into these three sub-areas.

8. Network Infrastructure
▪ Infrastructure – All networking functions for internal and external IT communications
(router, hubs, firewalls, DNS servers, file servers, load balancing, etc.)
▪ Telecommunications – Managing and configuring all internal and external communication
lines so that customers, employees, vendors, and other interested parties can access
applications.
▪ Port management – Opening and closing ports on the firewall to allow the network to
communicate with outside servers.
▪ Security – Insuring the network is secured only to authorized users and to prevent/counter
attacks from outside sources
▪ Remote access to the network for users – Setting up access from outside the network using
techniques such as VPN, two-factor authentication, etc.
▪ Internal telephone system management – Managing the company phone system
▪ Monitoring network health and alerting network personnel when an issue occurs with
network resources (including storage, services such as email or file servers, application
servers, communications, etc.)
Server & Device Management
▪ Server management for applications and infrastructure – Set up configuration, maintenance,
upgrades, patching, repair, etc.
▪ Network and individual storage management to insure that all applications have access to the
storage requirements they need for disk, memory, backup, and archiving
▪ Email and file server configuration and folder setup and authorization – I classify this as a
separate area because outside of order taking & fulfillment and customer service, email and
file server management are two of the most important IT functions in a company
▪ PC provisioning – Acquisition, configuration, management, break/fix, applications
installation & configuration, upgrades of company approved desktop and laptop devices
▪ Mobile device and cell phone telecommunications management – Provisioning, assigning,
managing, cell phone contracts, and phone numbers. Provisioning for mobile device
approved by the organization. Providing for BYOD access to the network.
▪ Desktop, laptop, and mobile device software application licensing and management

9. Computer Operations & Help Desk
▪ Data Center management – Management of the physical locations where the equipment
resides, including floor space, electricity, cooling, battery backups, etc.
▪ Help Desk management – Level 1 support for IT Operations with responsibility for
escalating issues to and following up on issues with Level 2 and Level 3 support.
▪ User provisioning – Creation and authorization of user profiles on all systems. Also includes
changes to user profiles and the procedure for deleting old user profiles
▪ Auditing – Proving to outside entities (corporate auditors, the government, regulatory
agencies, business partners, etc) that your network is correctly configured and secured
▪ Communications with network users when a major incident occurs impacting network
services
▪ High availability and disaster recovery – Providing capabilities to insure your application
servers and network can function in the event of a disaster
▪ Backups management- Instituting and running daily, weekly, monthly, yearly backups to
insure data can be recovered, if needed
▪ Computer operations – Printing and distributing reports, invoices, checks, other outputs from
a production systems, such as an IBM i
▪ Maintain, manage, and add to the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) for the organization
Items All Areas are responsible for
▪ Vendor and contract management – Responsible for working with vendors, negotiations, and
paying bills for all hardware, software, and services employed by the network and its
applications
▪ Outside contractor management – Working with outside resources that provide services for
the network
▪ Break/fix and repairing problems that occur
▪ Project management and deployment – Deploying improvements and fixes to the network
and applications infrastructure
Organizing your IT Operations department
The IT Operations sub-areas defined above along with shared functions between IT Operations
and IT Applications, are one way of organizing the operations group in an overall IT
organization. Different IT organizations will organize their departments in different ways,
depending on their own needs and resources. The idea behind documenting these functions is to
provide a template for Data Center planning, organization and talent acquisition.

10. It’s also important to note that whether you run an in-house Data Center, run your IT
environment in a managed or hosted environment, or move your applications to the cloud, an IT
Operations department will have to deal with these functions, regardless of where your physical
network is located. Most of these functions are universal; it’s only their implementation that
varies in different environments.
So what’s a good definition of IT Operations, anyway?
When I put it all together, here’s the definition of IT Operations I like best.
IT Operations is responsible for the smooth functioning of the infrastructure and operational
environments that support application deployment to internal and external customers, including
the network infrastructure; server and device management; computer operations; IT
infrastructure library (ITIL) management; and help desk services for an organization.
This isn’t to say this is the only way to define IT Operations (see the Wikipedia definition at the
beginning of the article for another example). It’s merely the definition I feel most comfortable
with based on my own experience, and how I would think about organizing an IT Operations
department if I were building that department from scratch.