Centralization of information systems infrastructure. Optimal IT infrastructure: centralize or distribute

The transfer of all regional banks to a single IT platform started in 2011 and was completed in the summer of 2015. Its goals were: reducing the time it takes to bring banking products to the market, creating qualitatively new conditions for further centralization and unification of operational and business functions, and reducing Sberbank’s IT costs.

German Gref's assessment: As soon as we built our super data-center, we came to the conclusion that we are absolutely uncompetitive

Results of the centralization program

Unified IT platform

Before the implementation of the program, each macroregion used its own set of main banking platforms from different developers; there were seven billing systems alone. As part of “Centralization 2.0,” a centralized IT platform was created at Sberbank: the “zoo” of automated systems of territorial banks was replaced with a number of unified systems.

Within the framework of the project, in particular, the following systems were created:

• Automated system "Branch-Sberbank" (AS FS). It employs more than 80 thousand users in all territorial banks of Sberbank.

• Unified corporate system (UCS). At the time of completion of the program, it contains data from 2 million accounts legal entities, 400 thousand loan agreements for legal entity clients, 250 microbusiness loan agreements. The system processes up to 7 million settlement documents for legal entity accounts per day.

• Unified loan portfolio for private clients. It stores data from more than 60 million contracts, of which 15 million contracts are valid. Using the system, about 80 thousand loan disbursements per day and 600 thousand loan repayments per day are carried out.

• Single deposit processing center individuals(AS eDPC). Contains data from 630 million accounts, of which 425 million accounts are active. About 290 million account transactions are carried out through the system daily.

• Unified payment service (AS UPS) for making billing payments. Interacts with more than 100 thousand providers of various services (utilities, kindergartens, energy companies, etc.), in relation to which about 6 million payments are made per day.

• Unified cash center (UCC), which is used by about 400 cash centers Sberbank throughout the country.

All systems are based in a single data center “South Port”. Sberbank branches work with them through a thin client.

In addition to centralizing the IT infrastructure of regional banks, Sberbank also standardized and unified business processes.

Scope of the program

The centralization program at Sberbank is called unprecedented in its scale. According to the vice president and chief IT architect of Sberbank Andrey Khlyzov, more than 700 major implementations were carried out within its framework.

The creation of a centralized IT platform was carried out by Sberbank Technologies, and in total more than 32 thousand people were involved in the implementation of the program.

As for financing, in one of the issues of the newspaper for Sberbank Technologies employees - SBT Vision, Andrei Khlyzov reported that the program budget is more than one billion dollars.

The program reached the finals of the IPMA International Project Excellence Award 2015 in the “Mega-Sized Projects” category, the results of which will be summed up at the end of September.

Andrey Khlyzov emphasizes that with such a scale, the program was completed in record time: the project was completed in four years, while on average the development and implementation of similar programs in the world takes 10-12 years.

Effects of the program

Sberbank cites the acceleration of the introduction of new products to the market as one of the most important results of centralization: if previously their circulation took an average of a week, now in many cases it takes one day.

Speaking about the economic effect of “Centralization 2.0”, the bank cites data that the net present value (NPV) of the program amounted to about 8 billion rubles. It was achieved by optimizing costs in the implementation of core business processes and reducing IT costs. Wherein economic effect almost doubled the plan: initially, Sberbank expected to receive 4.6 billion rubles.

An important result was the reduction in technological downtime of IT systems at Sberbank. During the implementation of the program, a technology for online data migration without interrupting bank services and flexible management of the load on the system was developed.

As a result of centralization, the productivity of the bank’s IT systems has also increased significantly, Sberbank notes. For horizontal scaling of data processing, Oracle RAC technology was introduced, which made it possible to distribute the processing of regional banks' data across several nodes based on three high-end IBM Power 795 systems.

Project difficulties

The transition of regional banks to a single platform was not smooth. One of the problems during the implementation of the program was the unpreparedness of the megadata center itself to “fill in” the systems and the limited space. Andrey Khlyzov talked about this in corporate publication for SberTech employees – SBT Vision. Problems also arose at the program level: for example, when creating a centralized IASK (integrated automated system lending) to individuals on the Oracle platform.

An error in IBM software slowed down the Sberbank program for 9 months

In September 2015, Andrey Khlyzov told TAdviser that when implementing the eKS (unified corporate system) Sberbank identified a serious error in the IBM AIX OS used in the project, due to which the pace of program implementation slowed down.

The implementation of the eKS began in 2011. New powerful IBM p795 servers were chosen as the computing platform for it. This server model was released at the end of 2010 and has not yet been “tested” on projects of a scale comparable to the Sberbank project.

An error in the software made itself felt when the load on the machine increased in SMT4 mode (SMT - simultaneous multithreading, SMT4 - 4-threaded SMT per core). For eKS it was planned to use three IBM p795 machines. At first, at the end of 2011, SMT4 mode was launched on only one of them, and the system worked normally, says Khlyzov. At that time, three banks were connected to the system - West Ural, West Siberian and Siberian banks. However, after another bank, Ural Bank, was connected to the machine, serious problems: the system began to crash, and, as it turned out, to crash at the OS level.

“In fact, we encountered an undocumented error at the level operating system AIX. We finally resolved this problem only after about nine months,” says the chief IT architect of Sberbank.

According to him, since this was a nuclear OS problem, it was solved jointly with IBM specialists, including American ones, as well as with Oracle and Symantec specialists, whose software is also involved in the system, and bank specialists. Against this background, a special regulated sub-organization was even created within the bank - CritSit (short for critical situation) - which brings forward problems associated with external vendors and which sorts them out at the level of Sberbank's leading engineers.

According to Andrey Khlyzov, the bank was confident that the problem could be overcome, but this story slowed down the pace of implementation of the centralization program: “We removed the SMT4 regime, and the situation stabilized, after which we did not add anyone else to the system for almost nine months.”

After the problem at the OS level was resolved and the bank installed all the updates, including updates to Oracle, Symantec and application software, the SMT4 mode was turned on again and the banks continued to connect to the system, Khlyzov said.

Barkovskaya T.A.
MBA Group CIO-28
School of IT Management
RANEPA under the President of the Russian Federation

Introduction.

The financial performance of a large bank largely depends on the efficiency and quality of work information systems and information services. For any large financial institution one of main tasks is the fast and uninterrupted processing of significant flows of information.

In this regard, the tasks of properly organizing the work of the IT department and information technology management acquire particular importance.

By investing in software, computer and telecommunications equipment, developing information systems and creating a base for the transition to new computing platforms, banks, first of all, strive to reduce the cost and speed up their work.

High-quality and stable IT services can significantly reduce operational risks, increase the profitability of the bank, increase its market value and capitalization of the bank.

Tasks of a multi-branch retail bank.

The range of tasks solved by a multi-branch bank, whose main strategic direction is the development of retail business, is quite wide. First of all this:

• scaling uniform technologies throughout the bank’s territorial structure,
• reducing costs per operation, ensuring the safety and controllability of operations.
• the ability to quickly introduce new products to the market, create and develop the most effective product range
• maximum reduction of time and reduce the size of investments associated with opening points of presence of the bank,
• reducing the cost of maintaining your geographically distributed structure
• supporting the widest possible range of sales channels for services and customer service, including both traditional “personal” sales and innovative channels for the promotion and sale of banking products.

Centralized resource management

The ideology of resource centralization is a general trend in the organization of information and technological support banking business.

A centralized approach to management allows you to reduce the risks associated with fraudulent transactions, increase the efficiency of financial flow management, and accurately and quickly evaluate the achieved results. financial results, provide customers with a banking service that is invariant with respect to their location at a modern level, reduce costs for technical support, including the maintenance of technical personnel.

ITSM concept

The main idea of ​​ITSM (Information Technology Service Management) is the need to move from the traditional model, when main goal IT services are the support of the IT infrastructure itself, a scheme focused on servicing the company’s core business.

This scheme is based on 2 premises:

• the results of the IT department's work are provided as a set of services
• The main form of organizing the work of an IT service is a set of processes

Service refers to the primary form of delivering value to customers. The services meet the requirements set by the customer. Products created as a result project activities or purchased on the market, replenish the resource pool of the IT service and are used in the future to provide services.

The history of the development of ITSM as a concept and the main methods created to implement this concept are considered:

• CobiT (Control Objects for Information and Related Technologies)
• USMBOK
• MOF, Microsoft approach
• ITUP, IBM approach
• FITS, a simplified version of ITIL for teaching in universities
• eTom, which is a standard model for telecommunications companies

Techniques for managing IT activities.

In the theoretical part of the work, portfolio management techniques and ITIL techniques as libraries were considered as the main techniques best practices to implement the ITSM approach.

Object of study.

The object of study was a large bank with a geographically distributed structure, represented in 48 Russian regions, the priority direction of development of which was retail business and work with small and medium-sized businesses.

In addition to the active development of the retail business, one of the main tasks set by management is to reduce operating costs. In this regard, the task has been set to consolidate branches - most of branches change their status and become operational offices, which makes it possible to concentrate part of the business and accounting processes in the remaining branches.

At the same time, business plans for retail development do not imply a reduction, but, on the contrary, an increase in the total number of service points - additional offices or mobile points of sale.

Due to the location of bank service points in different time zones, information systems must be available almost around the clock.

Tasks of IT service centralization

Based on the research, the main tasks facing the IT department were formulated:

• Achieving an organization of service for business users in which IT activities become measurable and controllable. To do this, first of all, it was decided to formalize the incident management process and introduce change management. At future stages it is planned to consider the possibility of introducing configuration management; this aspect is not considered in the work.
• Centralization and virtualization of server equipment and minimizing the cost of staffing regional IT specialists. The advantage of the solution is that it simplifies the allocation of support personnel and their work on deploying and managing systems, and reduces the degree of duplication of experienced personnel. Centralization also makes it easier to use standardized configurations and management processes, creating cost-effective systems Reserve copy to recover data after a failure and maintain business connectivity. Network security can also be improved because servers are protected by a single, centrally managed firewall
• A project to centralize information systems, which involves the abandonment of separate databases servicing private loans in branches, which will increase system productivity and reduce operating costs.
• Business process reorganization project to support branch consolidation. It should be noted that changes in business processes are required not only in terms of IT, but this task goes beyond the responsibility of IT specialists. IT in this project mainly performs a service function and aims to build interaction with business within the project in such a way as to minimize on its part the time it takes to close the FCB and open a new dependent additional office.

Incident management and change management.

Two processes from the ITIL approach are considered - incident management and change management. The purpose of developing the change management process was, first of all, to introduce a release approach to setting new tasks and extend this approach to updating all the bank’s information systems. Incidents at the start of the project were recorded in a special system, but this only concerned the occurrence of problems with equipment, and not in all cases, and problems in some information systems. It was necessary to formalize the existing process and extend it to all information systems of the bank.

Practical steps were taken - employee work processes and regulations were formalized and revised, new employee roles were formed and old roles were clarified, new ones were allocated structural subdivision IT department responsible for release management. The existing automated Service Desk system was improved, new routes for processing requests were developed, formalized and configured. Overall, the first stage was successful.

It should be noted that in the process of project implementation, in addition to organizational and technical problems, it is necessary to overcome psychological barrier. Moreover, this applies to relations within IT departments, relations between departments within the IT department and, first of all, between the IT department and employees of business departments, since it was customary in the bank to work “on call”.

As a result of the equipment centralization project, it is planned to reduce IT staff in centralized branches and the second phase of the project is the organization of an additional unit of 1 support line in the branch in Novosibirsk, to support business users in other time zones.

The required number of employees was calculated based on the statistics of incidents that occur.

Server centralization and virtualization project.

The existing equipment in the branches is physically and morally outdated, does not support remote management and is not unified - it consists of different models of servers and system units, which complicates monitoring and troubleshooting.

4 solutions were developed:

• Moving equipment from branches and placing them in a single data center. The current space is insufficient to accommodate existing equipment.
• Moving equipment from branches and placing them at a remote site. The scope of work for this option includes moving servers from branches to a remote data center and purchasing and implementing terminal access equipment for branch users.
• Renting virtual servers and terminal access servers for regional users from an external data center provider. This option involves a complete abandonment of existing server equipment in branches and a transition to leased computing power.
• Transfer of the server park in the regions to virtual servers based on our own computing power and placement of equipment in an external data center. This option involves purchasing necessary equipment for virtualization of regional servers, virtualization of regional servers using purchased equipment with subsequent transfer of the solution to a remote data center.

For each option, a cost calculation and comparison of parameters were made.

Evaluation parameter	Option 1	Option 2	Option 3	Option 4
Capital expenditures	RUB 29,502,240.00	RUB 16,743,440.00		35,394,000.00 rub.
Operating annual costs		27,000,000.00 rub.	58,404,000.00 rub.
Consolidation of equipment on a single site
fault tolerance
Scalability
Centralized management
Equipment unification
Novelty of equipment

As a result, the 4th option was recognized as optimal, since it further reduces operational costs to support the solution to a minimum.
The VMware platform was chosen as the platform for virtualization.

A specific feature of a multi-branch bank, represented in all Russian regions, is the operation of service points in different time zones, which requires almost round-the-clock availability of information systems. The solution to this problem could be the construction of a second data center beyond the Urals.

In addition, additional detailed study of the risks associated with communication channels is necessary.
It is also noted that one of the most important tasks of any financial company is the provision high level information security, since the bank’s infrastructure must meet the standards required by international payment systems and legislation regarding the security of personal data.

In connection with the change in the structure of the branch network, the plan for virtualization and implementation of terminal access equipment must be drawn up taking into account the branch consolidation plan provided by the business.

conclusions

The goals of centralization in a bank can only be achieved by carrying out a set of measures, including centralization of equipment, centralization of information systems, centralization organizational structure and reorganization of business processes. Moreover, the tasks go far beyond the IT department and require the full inclusion of the business.

The trend towards building centralized systems reflects the strategic direction of development information technologies V banking business and will prevail for the foreseeable future.

Virtualization allows you to create a manageable, scalable, centralized infrastructure solution.

When building a data center, special attention should be paid to information security issues.

After the development and formalization of incident management and change management processes, the downtime of business units associated with malfunctions of the bank’s information technology structure decreased, user service improved, and the practice of regular reporting to bank managers was established.

However, it should be noted that the lack of involvement of the business customer in ITSM implementation projects in terms of describing the coordination of IT services is the reason that it is still too early to say that the IT department has become a service organization.

| 27.04.2015

Under the influence of the economic crisis, almost all giants of the metallurgical industry are working to optimize and reduce costs. The Novolipetsk Metallurgical Plant is no exception. We asked a few questions to Vadim Uryas, Vice President of Information Technology at NLMK.

What are the most interesting IT projects implemented at NLMK last year?

Last year, organizing an IT service was on the agenda. The NLMK-IT company, part of the NLMK group, began operations back in 2012, and by 2014 it included the IT services of all Russian enterprises NLMK: from the Novolipetsk Iron and Steel Works to Altai-Koks. We have done a lot of work to improve internal efficiency, optimization of business processes and management of a new company, as well as centralization of infrastructure. After all, business benefits from well-coordinated and efficient work IT. Last year will also go down in our history as the year of introduction of cloud technologies. We virtualized the entire infrastructure, making it more reliable and cost-effective. The private cloud we use allows us to save about 25% of physical servers. Another completed task is the migration of the ERP system to the SAP HANA platform. Working on the new database will expand the range of opportunities that we are now able to provide to the NLMK group. Having completed the reorganization at Russian enterprises, we began it at European

How did it affect economic crisis on NLMK IT projects?

Our company feels quite good and confident. We haven’t changed our plans or stopped our projects yet. We continue to develop in accordance with the previously developed strategy, but at the same time we are developing a new one for the next three years.

So you're not cutting your IT budget?

One of its main goals of the NLMK Group strategy is leadership in production efficiency. IT is an important tool in achieving this goal, and its development should not stop. Let me give you an example. In order to monitor the stability of the units and identify deviations, we use control charts - graphs that describe certain technological parameters processing of the product on each unit. The system collects data from control cards, and if a deviation occurs, shows what exactly happened - thus building a chain feedback technological and maintenance personnel. This allows you to speed up diagnostics, reduce repair time and, accordingly, save resources and increase the productivity of units.

What was the process of centralizing IT assets?

Centralization was carried out in two stages. At the first stage, which unfolded in 2013, we united the IT services of all Russian enterprises of the NLMK Group: Stoilensky GOK in the Belgorod region, Novolipetsk Iron and Steel Works, VIZ-Steel in Yekaterinburg, NSMMZ in Sverdlovsk region and others. But gathering everyone into one structure is not enough; you also need to provide management tools, and they also need to be centralized. At the second stage, we concentrated the entire infrastructure in a finite number of places so that there was no need to maintain a staff of administrators at each of the plants. Administrators needed to be given “eyes,” that is, provided with monitoring systems.

After all, what is IT infrastructure centralization? This means, for example, that out of 20 mail systems you need to leave one. This is convenient for users, since they can come to another enterprise or to another city and they will not need to receive a login and password. It’s also convenient for IT specialists, because the management and monitoring process is simplified. Finally, the reliability of the systems itself increases - let’s not forget that the weakest link is always the human factor. An IT specialist says that an ideal system is one in which there is not a single user, and the user considers an ideal system to be one in which there is not a single IT specialist.

What changes to the infrastructure were made during centralization? What systems or solutions had to be abandoned?

We didn't give up anything. Centralization is about services, not systems. The systems worked and remained the same. There are two centralized systems: SAP - for large ones and 1C for small ones. Among the next level systems is MES. I cannot centralize them, since they are tied to specific units. But I can unify the platform to some extent, although this doesn't always make sense - that's why MES systems are local to each enterprise. However, it is possible to centrally manage servers. Services are a completely different matter; they can and should be centralized. This is a communicator, email, corporate portal, online document management package, etc. Historically, every enterprise deployed its own own services, and we collected and centralized them. One third of the infrastructure is spent on information systems, and about two thirds on services, since they are more resource-intensive. Take the same mail: the volume of its storage is measured in hundreds of terabytes.

Is this due to the fact that people store a lot of unnecessary information in their email account?

All people are different. Some have a completely clean desk, while others have it littered with papers. At the same time, it cannot be said that someone whose desk is cluttered works worse or incorrectly. It's just more convenient for him. The situation is similar with mail. Our task is to make it work for all users under any conditions. If a person has a lot of papers on his desk, buy him a large desk. If he has accumulated a lot of letters, expand his mailbox, and do not tell him that he can store no more than a certain number of gigabytes.

Question on decluttering your desk: Have you considered using cloud-based tools for collaboration with documents?

We are ready for implementation Microsoft Office 365. This system helps solve the problem of individual "clutter". However, they have not yet launched it for internal reasons.

How relevant is the topic of import substitution in IT now for you?

The question of replacement imported products Russian analogues are not an issue for us, but at the same time, due to the devaluation of the ruble, many software products and equipment have become more expensive, the import share of which is about 90%. Therefore, we proceed from the following positions: if there is a full-fledged alternative on the market Russian production, then we are considering it. At the same time, we are communicating with a number of foreign manufacturers about the price.

Are you able to agree on fixed prices with all vendors?

Not with everyone. According to my observations, European suppliers have a more reasonable policy than their American colleagues.

How is the relationship between IT and business in your company today?

As Vice President of Information Technology, I oversee the project and operational work of NLMK-IT. Relationships with business are built at the level of project activities. First, joint plans and needs are discussed, later they are transformed into projects that must have two managers - from IT and business. We are implementing projects in finance, sales, supply, production, repairs - in short, almost all topics are present.

Are they used in production processes at NLMK mobile solutions?

Yes. For example, we have been using so-called mobile repairs for a long time. For now they take place in cold rolling shops. Center duty teams Maintenance and repairs are equipped with mobile devices for data collection. Maintenance specialists, bypassing the units, record the presence or absence of deviations, and repair teams They quickly see where their intervention is required. This project made it possible to reduce emergency equipment downtime by 20%. This year we plan to implement a mobile intranet in production and involve workers in information exchange processes. People are ready to use mobile devices in production. The current generation has grown up in the computer era.

Has a shop floor worker with a tablet already become a reality at your enterprises?

Yes, sure. Of the 18,000 information system users, 12,000 are workers. Computer knowledge is a mandatory element that is included in all worker training programs. A shop foreman is absolutely nowhere without a computer.

Are the IT people themselves also involved in production processes?

We have educational program“Metallurgy for non-metallurgists”, which all IT employees should master. There are some IT specialists involved in the automation of metallurgical processes itself, but they are more production workers and technologists than IT specialists. But those who work in the office must know the specifics of production.

And the last question: for what period is the IT strategy in your company designed?

For three years. It is difficult to focus on a longer period, since technology is developing very quickly.

06/11/2014, Wed, 17:06, Moscow time

Reliability, security, manageability, flexibility and efficiency - these are the five parameters that determine the IT infrastructure. They are usually not disputed. There can be very different approaches to creating an IT infrastructure and its management. Discussion current problems, characteristic of the market of infrastructure solutions, was devoted to the conference “IT Infrastructure: Optimal Development”, organized by CNews Conferences and CNews Analytics. It took place on June 10, 2014.

IT infrastructure is not only data centers and clouds, which many companies are building today. Infrastructure IT solutions include a structured cabling system, data storage networks, telephony, automated workstations, and even personal devices of users, which they use as part of the BYOD concept. Data centers usually involve the centralization of resources, however, according to Marina Anshina, Chairman of the Standards Committee of the Union of CIOs of Russia, centralization is not always good. In IT, there is also a rule not to put all your eggs in one basket. In the absence of a competent organizational and functional business structure, centralization of IT infrastructure is simply ineffective.

The infrastructure is influenced by a huge number of indicators - from the current state of the company and its market position to the budget and the “technologies” of both IT and business employees. Requirements for IT infrastructure and IT in general are multi-level SLA (service level agreement). Business is only interested top level, that is, interaction with IT services, for more low levels SLA exists in the “services – software” or “application platforms – system software” bundles.

Average and big business Quite often he prefers to develop his own infrastructure rather than migrate to the cloud. The reasons lie not only in the field of security (today this is no longer the main problem), but in geopolitics, taxation peculiarities and the rather difficult question of what to do with the existing infrastructure. If, nevertheless, a decision is made to move to the cloud, then both in Russia and in the neighboring countries, according to cloud providers, there is already an infrastructure that can be quite easily integrated with internal corporate systems. Maxim Berezin, head of the virtual data center at Croc, in particular, refuted the idea that cloud resources are used only for test environments. According to the company’s internal statistics, up to 80% of the resources of Croc data centers serve the so-called Production environment. The main cloud users are financial and retail companies (they account for 50%). Croc's immediate plans are related to the transition of storage systems to flash memory, hourly pricing and a new billing system that allows generating detailed reports on consumed resources.

I agree that the cloud approach (IaaS) provides better management of financial and organizational risks. Stanislav Spirkov, DEAC Lead Manager. He is confident that IT management receives the necessary resources on demand, financial director manages and controls operating expenses more effectively, and business management shifts the emphasis from capital expenditures to development and ensuring the continuity of business processes. Just such a scheme, according to Maria Shilina, Head of the Directorate for Housing and Communal Services of the Analytical Center under the Government of the Russian Federation, is needed in the housing and communal services of our country so that residents, authorities, and businesses rely on a stable, reliable information base. However, today cloud providers do not see the participants in the housing and communal services market (and this is over 200 thousand organizations) as a partner, but meanwhile, this market also needs help from IT specialists in developing uniform functional requirements for IT systems and the formation of uniform rules and standards, similar to those adopted by the American national institute standards and technologies (NIST).

Committee economic development, Industrial Policy and Trade (KERPPiT) is one of the key executive authorities of St. Petersburg that regulates the city’s economic development policy. His tasks include resolving issues related to various areas of life in the northern capital: from organizing government orders to developing foreign economic activity and supporting work to provide various services to the city population.

Tasks

The activities of KERPPiT are directly related to the active use of information technologies (IT). Currently, the organization has officially registered 18 large information systems (IS) included in the citywide Register information resources and information systems.

The IT infrastructure of KERPPiT includes several dozen servers located at three sites geographically distributed throughout the city. The total number of users is currently about 350 people. The most in demand in the work are information systems for government procurement, monitoring of socio-economic development and consumer market, electronic document management, personnel and accounting. Support and development of IT infrastructure is carried out by employees of the IT department.

In 2007, the leadership of the Committee assigned the IT department the task of increasing the level of availability of controlled information systems, their fault tolerance, the reliability of the functioning of the IT infrastructure as a whole, as well as increasing the efficiency of the information department without increasing the staff and changing the composition of employees. To achieve these goals, it was decided to create a centralized IT infrastructure management system and reorganize the work of the IT department taking into account the best world practices.

Among the factors influencing the choice of solution, the following were identified:

• demanding attitude of users to IT, due to the active use of information systems and high requirements requirements for the quality of provided IT services and timeliness of technical and consulting support;
• variety of PC fleet, software established in the divisions of the Committee;
• severely limited IT budget.

To solve the assigned tasks and organize implementation work, the Committee’s management decided to engage a third-party consultant. The result of the tender was cooperation with the Jet Infosystems company, whose specialists were assigned the following tasks:

• automate basic operations for monitoring and managing IT resources;
• provide the ability to proactively detect and localize problem situations;
• implement a service approach to IT infrastructure management.

Jet Infosystems specialists conducted a survey of the existing IT infrastructure and studied approaches to operating the system. The main monitoring objects were identified: servers, active network equipment, uninterruptible power supply systems, as well as OS, DBMS, applications (Lotus Notes, Citrix, etc.).

As part of the IT management system, subsystems were identified that solve the following tasks:

• monitoring active network equipment;
• monitoring servers and applications;
• workplace management.

The IT management system provides the following functions:

monitoring the health and performance of active network equipment:

• identification of emergency situations in the network infrastructure;
• providing the ability to graphically display the network topology;
• collection and aggregation of data on the values ​​of monitored parameters of active network equipment;
• accounting and inventory of active equipment;

control of servers and applications:

• monitoring the availability and performance of server hardware, OS, DBMS and applications;
• correlation processing of monitoring parameters at the level of software agents (for servers), in order to exclude insignificant, duplicate information;
• performing automatic corrective actions, including running programs, on control object,
• graphical display of a tree of services in the form of a map of interconnected objects of all elements of the IT environment (network, servers, applications, databases) that ensure the functioning of a given IT service (i.e. assessment of the availability of IT services and prioritization of work depending on the degree of impact of the problem on IT service);
• generating reports on the operation of the IT infrastructure, which are presented in the form of reports themselves (in the form of tables or texts) or in the form of graphs (graphical representation of indicators of the functioning of monitoring objects);

All major information systems are included in the server and application management system.

server and workstation management:

• accounting (inventory) of hardware and software resources of the IT infrastructure;
• control of remote installation and installation of software;
• remote control of computers (Remote Control function).

Access to monitoring information is provided from a single operator console.

To build a centralized monitoring system, specialists from KERPPiT and Jet Infosystems selected software from Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft.

Currently, monitoring of the IT infrastructure of KERPPiT is carried out around the clock. Organized control of the data transmission network, server equipment, software and software systems, deployed at remote sites. The preparation of daily reports is automated, which reflects data on the operation of equipment, in particular, information about the unavailability of certain services and failures in the operation of subsystems. Report data is stored on the system server and is available for any period of time from the beginning of its operation. The system regularly generates reports on the composition of equipment and software, which is necessary when planning changes, upgrading equipment and introducing new IT services.

The project began in May 2007. The work was scheduled to last six months, but the interest of KERPPiT managers and IT specialists in the results of the project and active participation in its implementation made it possible to complete the project two months ahead of schedule - in August 2007.

Particular attention was paid to training specialists from the Committee's IT department. It was carried out in two stages. At the first, on the recommendation of the Jet Infosystems company, department employees were trained in specialized courses for software manufacturers. And on the second - specialists from the Jet Infosystems company who carried out the installation software products, during the project, they organized practical training in the basic methods and methods of working with the system.

Work on setting up and testing the system was carried out by IT department specialists simultaneously. This made it possible to quickly make necessary changes at all stages of work, and, therefore, reduce the time for implementing the solution.

As a result of the project, the customer received an effective IT management system, which allows you to control and visually evaluate the current state and operation of all elements of the organization’s IT infrastructure. Its implementation allowed us to achieve the following results:

1. increase the stability of the organization’s information systems;
2. automate the activities of IT department personnel in monitoring and managing the configuration of the IT infrastructure;
3. reduce the time for localizing and eliminating problem situations;
4. receive consolidated reports on the functioning of the system and ensure the safety of this information for a long time;
5. carry out reasonable prioritization of work performed;
6. provide the management of the IT department with operational and statistical information on the operation of the IT infrastructure.

Within the framework of the project, the problem of increasing the security of IT users' workplaces was solved through the centralized distribution of “authorized” software and update packages intended for it. This significantly reduced the workload on IT department staff.

After completion of the project, Jet Infosystems specialists provided service support for the IT management system KERPPiT: work was carried out to check, evaluate the functioning, and also, at the customer’s request, “adjustment” of the deployed system.

Project development

Specialists of the Jet Infosystems company conducted a survey of the organization of activities for the management and operation of the IT infrastructure of KERPPiT. As a result, an assessment was made of the current level of maturity of activity processes in accordance with the CobIT standard, and the main directions were identified further development as part of the implementation of a service approach to IT management. In particular, a conclusion was given about which IT management processes are basic, critical for the work of the Committee and require attention and support. It was determined which of the processes and to what extent need to be implemented and detailed to ensure the functioning of the IS in the conditions of system development, load changes, and increasing user requirements for the quality of its work.

In 2008, KERPPiT of the Government of St. Petersburg and the Jet Infosystems company plan to continue cooperation. Currently, the following tasks for the development of the organization’s IT infrastructure have been identified:

• development of an IT management system in terms of IP monitoring and service provision;
• creation and integration of the automated Service Desk subsystem into the IT management system;
• optimizing incident and work management activities and increasing the level of maturity of IT management processes in general,
• creation and implementation of an IT infrastructure accounting subsystem.