The BT HP alliance — integrated service delivery

Abstract

The BT HP alliance was established to address the challenges that arise with global ICT outsourcing, bringing together the world-class capabilities of BT and HP to provide a full service outsource capability — where such an arrangement would yield benefit to BT, HP and clients. This paper will look at some of these challenges and in particular those which relate to the provision of ‘end-to-end’ service management. It describes the BT HP alliance’s approach to the delivery of an integrated service, and how the issues raised can be addressed using an integrated service architecture (ISA). The core components of the ISA, namely the customer portal, the service catalogue, the joint service delivery model (JSDM), the joint service delivery architecture (JSDA), and the supporting data storage, are identified and described. In order to describe the approach taken to develop the ISA, incident management is used as an example to show how the existing service delivery processes are aligned in the joint service delivery model. It is recognised that there are existing process standards and frameworks within both companies, and hence, in the early stages of establishing a joint service delivery capability, the approach is to rely on these existing processes and identify and harmonise the necessary interfaces between them. The overall effect of this is to provide a seamless view of service delivery from the customer perspective. As well as aligning these processes, in some cases they are also bonded together, where it is appropriate and where there is an identified benefit. The paper will also describe the infrastructure and systems that have been put in place in order to electronically bond and automate processes by using the JSDA, taking the incident management process as an example.