THE BUSINESS ISSUE

Today’s information services must meet criteria related to cost control and user satisfaction, as well as new quality and security standards. Recommendations for best practices (e.g., COBIT, ITIL, and CMMi) that address these needs have gained much attention in recent years. From among various frameworks, you can choose the one that best supports your objectives for improving your organization, solutions, and services.

Moving your company to use best practices is a lot of work. However, the good news is that applying these frameworks helps move IT into the automation age. IT managers appreciate the value that standards add in terms of improved quality and reliability. The obvious additional benefits that software tools offer in this scenario will help you convince your management that SCM, documentation, and help-desk solutions are a good investment.

STANDARDS, FRAMEWORKS, AND ARCAD

ARCAD follows the concepts and the best practices of COBIT, ITIL and CMMi.

ITIL
ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library)is based on 10 key processes. It recommends that you define service levels and have formal service level agreements. It then proposes a set of best practices that will help you fulfill these agreements. Among the domains that ITIL covers, you will find operation and production services together with some issues handled by the engineering department, such as change management. You can read more about ITIL on the www.itsmf.com Web site.

 

Our ARCAD-Skipper, ARCAD-Observer, and ARCAD-Customer software suites are a perfect fit for a company adopting an ITIL approach. These solutions cover the following aspects of ITIL:

• Service desk
• Incident management
• Problem management
• Configuration management
• Change management
• Release management, and
• Service level management

ARCAD manages all software changes within an organized and secure process through a clearly identified version, thus preserving the knowledge of previous versions. Our solutions allow you to establish a solid and secure architecture in which all software changes are archived and tracked, a basic requirement of a quality process. This approach will help you reach the quality level your users require.

CMMi
CMMi (Capability Maturity Model integration) is a process improvement approach that helps you to improve your performances. It is based on best practices from various companies, which is the source of its worldwide success. You can find more information on the CMM site: www.sei.cmu.edu/cmm

Here again, adopting CMM presents an opportunity to improve your organization, to enter the automation age with clearly established processes, and to enhance productivity.

COBIT
CobiT (Control Objectives for Information and related Technology) was created in 1996 as an IT security and control framework. It is published by ISACA (Information Systems Audit and Control Association), an international association whose aim is to improve the processes and methodology of IT audits.

CobiT bridges the gap between control requirements, technical issues, and business risks. The framework also provides performance indicators that enable you to evaluate your situation vs. best practices (by level of maturity). The Sarbanes-Oxley legislation has widely popularized CobiT. If you must face auditors, in CobiT you will find the subjects on which they will judge your information system and your organization.

Although the original objective of the ARCAD tools is to guarantee the quality of applications, they bring substantial, practical capabilities that help you address many of the CobiT objectives:

• ARCAD tools make it possible to attain a better level of controls maturity for more than half of the hundreds of CobiT control points, and for nearly one out of three, our tools are indispensible.
• ARCAD tools have an important role in the audit phase because they provide the auditor with the information that he is seeking

ADVANTAGES

Considering the work needed to comply with standards initially – and on an ongoing basis – implementing tools is justified. Adopting the right tools is the way to guarantee long-term efficiency. By protecting your software assets, securing components, protecting your environment, and ensuring traceability in the change process, ARCAD solutions present an essential methodological foundation. Futher, our consultants help you to implement  the concepts and the best practices defined by CMMi, ITIL, and CobiT.