Enhancing service uptime: The power of Virima Service Mapping and ViVID™ with Jira Service Management
Table of Contents
- Service uptime and SLAs: What are they?
- 4 ways Virima Service Mapping and ViVID™ maximize service uptime for Jira Service Management
- Choose Virima Service Mapping and ViVID integration to Jira Service Management for improved service uptime
Jira Service Management offers capabilities that add speed to ITSM processes. There’s automated incident creation from alerting tools. In change management, you get automated change request creations as deployments happen. Then, there are corresponding accelerated approvals. The platform offers a multi-channel approach that makes coordination by diverse IT teams easier.
All this adds to the efficiency of ITSM processes that in turn help maximize service uptime and improve or exceed SLAs. But there’s a limit to what Jira Service Management(JSM) as a stand-alone platform can do.
In this blog, we’ll explore how Virima Service Mapping and the exclusive ViVID™ (Virima Visual Impact Display) integration for Jira Service Management maximize service uptime and improve SLAs.
Service uptime and SLAs: What are they?
Service uptime means how long a service or application is up and running without any interruptions or outages. Measured in the percentage of the time, it indicates the availability of services or applications to users.
SLAs (Service Level Agreements) are contracts that define the minimum level of service uptime. The contract is made between service providers that also defines the consequences for not meeting the agreed service uptime levels.
Improving SLAs means enhancing the agreed-upon levels of service quality. Even better, meeting or exceeding the specified uptime requirements outlined in the SLA.
What it means is to take steps to enhance processes that minimize downtime and expedite recovery. The steps can entail the following:
- Implementing preventative measures to reduce the mean time between failures (MTBF). ‘
- Identifying and fixing issues quickly to minimize the mean time to repair or resolve (MTTR).
- Reducing change-borne disruptions, speeding up change timelines
- And being proactive with problem management.
4 ways Virima Service Mapping and ViVID™ maximize service uptime for Jira Service Management
1. Monitoring through JSM to a new level
What if you could view near real-time monitoring data on dynamic visual maps? What if an alert notification shows the exact affected component and all other things dependent on it? This means less time in correlations and more time in actions.
Near real-time monitoring data from Jira Service Management overlaid through ViVID on Virima Service Maps enables visual correlation of the data with their infrastructure topology, applications, and business services.
Quick response to alerts
The correlation allows for quick identification of issues or abnormalities. For example, a system monitoring tool can provide data on various network components, such as routers, switches, and firewalls. Virima’s ViVID feature overlays this monitoring data on the Virima Service Map.
If there is a sudden spike in network latency or packet loss, the overlay on the Service Map can highlight the specific network component that is causing the problem. This allows the IT team to quickly identify the defective component and take appropriate actions to resolve the issue, such as isolating or replacing the faulty network device.
Proactive response to alerts
Alerting mechanisms in monitoring tools detect potential issues based on predefined thresholds or anomalies in the data. The monitoring data overlays on service maps help respond to alerts before they’re turned into service disruptions. The dynamic visual service map gives vivid context to the relationships the CI (Configuration Item) in question has with others. Thus it helps when proactively responding to alerts.
2. More velocity in incident management through Jira Service Management
The Jira Service Management platform offers centralization of alerts, categorization, and prioritization of issues, and powerful routing rules to make incident management efficient. But there’s a limit to speeding up your issue resolution through Jira ITSM. That’s where Virima’s ViVID and service mapping integration to Jira Service Management comes in.
Handling change-born incidents
Changes in the IT environment cause many incidents. ViVID™ overlays Jira ITSM data on service and application dependency maps allowing incident management teams to easily identify the change status of infrastructure components related to the service disruption. This information helps teams quickly understand what changed and which change is responsible for the issue at hand.
More effective stakeholder collaboration
When incidents occur, multiple teams are often involved in resolving them. When you integrate Jira Service Management with Virima, its ViVID™ feature identifies stakeholders and provides a clear understanding of the impacted infrastructure. By visualizing ownership details and dependencies, ViVID™ facilitates effective collaboration among teams and enables a shared view of dependencies and relationships.
Root cause identification
Resolving incidents requires identifying the root cause. Service mapping provides vivid pictures of the affected components and their dependencies. Additionally, ViVID transforms CMDB data into actionable insights, allowing incident responders to identify recent incidents on dependent CI that may be associated with the current outage.
3. Adding speed to change management timeline for the JSM platform
Inefficient changes lead to disruptions. Disruptions affect service uptime. An excellent change management process means a lesser likelihood of change-led disruptions. As a result, achieving better service uptime and improved SLAs.
Available Jira ITSM features
Normal changes require following certain pre-defined workflows. With the deployment tracking feature of the Jira Service Management platform, you can automate change request creation. The platform uses accelerated approvals to add speed to the change management workflow. However, there is a limit to these accelerations and automation.
Enhancement by Virima
Virima’s ViVID and service mapping integration speed up normal change timelines and reduce change-led disruptions.
Speeding up normal change timeline
The Speed of a normal change depends on two things–first, a holistic understanding of dependencies, relationships, and potential impact, and second, the ease of stakeholder identification and collaboration. ViVID overlays of the near real-time incident, change, vulnerability, and alert data on Virima Service Maps provide both.
To understand the second case, take the example of network change. The ViVID overlays can identify teams responsible for administration, security, and application support. Along with the change calendar from Jira Service Management, the combination fosters collaboration and communication for the upcoming change.
The comprehensive understanding and collaboration speed up the timeline for normal changes that lead to lesser downtime.
Reducing change-led disruptions with better change impact assessment
The same service mapping insights that help in root cause finding, also make it easier to assess the potential impact of change on the entire IT ecosystem.
For instance, the overlaid incident data on a server hosting critical applications can highlight previous incidents related to that server. So when a change is planned on that server, the historical impact of incidents on the application allows for better change impact assessment.
Combined with the automated change risk assessment from Jira Service Management, this allows IT teams to plan for contingencies and minimize the risk of service disruptions during change deployment.
4. Efficient problem management through Jira Service Management
Efficient problem management has a direct impact on maximizing service uptime. Jira Service Management comes with a default problem management workflow. As per the ITIL recommendations, it involves problem investigations, workaround identification, and known error recording.
Problem Investigations with ViVID and Service Mapping
The combined feature allows IT teams to visualize the relationships between different IT elements, including applications, servers, databases, and networks. This visual representation helps in identifying potential root causes and dependencies related to a problem.
IT teams can map out the affected areas, view associated alerts and incidents, and investigate the impact of specific components on the overall system. This comprehensive view aids in identifying the key factors contributing to the problem and expediting the investigation process.
Workaround Identifications
The ViVID and Virima Service Mapping enable IT teams to identify alternative paths or systems to use as temporary workarounds until a permanent solution is implemented. The ability to quickly assess the impact of potential workarounds and identify suitable alternative resources helps minimize downtime and reduce the impact of the problem on service availability.
Choose Virima Service Mapping and ViVID integration to Jira Service Management for improved service uptime
Maximizing service uptime translates into improving the efficiency of ITSM processes that keep business services and applications up and running. When you’re using the Jira Service Management platform to handle your incident, change, problem, and monitoring, Virima Service Mapping and ViVID integrations enhance efficiency.
With Virima’s deep out-of-the-box integration to Jira Service Management, you can set up the enhanced capabilities with a few steps.
Provide your IT teams with the necessary tools to maximize service uptime and improve or exceed the SLA.
Book a demo today to learn more about Virima’s ViVID and service mapping integrations to Jira Service Management.
