Due to the rapidly changing demand for IT services Capacity Management is a very important ITIL discipline.  If there were no financial restrictions capacity management would be easy however in the real world financial constraints and the need to leverage investments in legacy systems continue to make Capacity Management a challenge.

ITIL defines Capacity Management in a straightforward way – "To ensure the cost justifiable IT Capacity always exists and that it is matched to the current and future identified needs of the business."

The Capacity Management Function is responsible for meeting user requirements for transaction throughput and response times. They must provide the IT resources to support new applications or systems as they evolve and they need to make sure the IT Capacity is right for the business and ensure that it is being used effectively.

The main tasks in Capacity Management are:

• Creating the capacity management database – this will include information relating to workloads, performance and usage information
• Produce reports – A key aspect in allowing Capacity Management to be planned and will cover how resources are used, trends, forecasts of resources needed by new applications and allowing evaluation on how to improve performance for a particular user.
• Produce capacity plans – predicting upgrades or additional equipment to meet Service Level Requirements, size new systems and reflect cost constraints and availability or reliability requirements.
• Monitoring performance – make sure agreed service levels are met and carry out performance tests on new systems.
• Managing resources – identifying and understanding applications and the IT resources they use, making the best use of resources (i.e storage management), assessing new technology for performance and cost and recommending tuning to maximise resources.
• Managing demand – advise IT service management on when to use demand management, be aware of future demands for IT services (and their effect on service levels) and influence users' demands for IT.
  

With the threats to IT services growing daily, IT Service Continuity Management (ITSCM) has become strategically important to businesses.  It does not only cover Disaster Recovery but also the impact technology failures have on business.  The latter has become even more important with the massive growth of on-line processing on the Internet where failures can have a significant revenue and reputation cost.

ITIL defines the goal for ITSCM as "to support the overall Business Continuity Management process by ensuring that the required IT technical and services facilities (including computer systems, networks, applications, telecommunications, technical support and Service Desk) can be recovered within required, and agreed, business timescales."

The main role of the ITSCM process is:

Planning - for the impact of disaster or major failure on the business and what counter measures are justified.

Implementing - through producing the contingency plan

Reviewing - by regular testing and reviewing

Service Level Management (SLM) is an ITIL key discipline because it defines the levels of service that other processes must strive to deliver.  SLM is primarily concerned with setting the goals for Service Management in conjunction with the customer community.

The goal for SLM is "to maintain and improve IT Service quality through a constant cycle of agreeing, monitoring and reporting upon IT Service achievements and instigation of actions to eradicate poor service – in line with business or Cost justification."

The SLM process can help develop a better relationship between IT and its customers.

The main tasks of SLM are:

• Creating a service catalogue - a record of key features of all services
• Identifying Service Level Requirements (SLR) from users
• Negotiating Service Level Agreements – this will involve discussions with users, evaluating cost and impact of SLRs and agreeing boundaries of the SLA (i.e transaction volumes)
• Reviewing support services – review maintenance contracts and agreements, reviewing monitoring facilities which provide service measurements and making sure supporting processes are suitable
• Monitoring and reviewing services – planning improvement to provide quality service at the optimum cost, planning for changes, monitor service levels and producing reports, holding regular service review meetings and review SLAs regularly
  

It is very important to understand the financial information relating to IT services to allow for a cost effective operation and budgeting.

The levels of financial management will vary depending on the type of organisation and the service being delivered.  The focus for in-house organisations is to provide cost-effective stewardship of the IT assets and resources used in providing IS services.  The aims for IT Service organisations should include being able to account fully for the spend on IT Services and to attribute these costs to the services delivered to the organisation's customers and to assist management decisions on IT investment by providing detailed business cases for Change to IT Services.

The main responsibilities for Financial Management are:

Costing - knowing what the cost of providing IT services are

Charging - recover costs from users (if appropriate)