February 27, 2020 46 min read

ITIL ITIL4 Practice Guides

Infrastructure and platform

management: ITIL 4 Practice Guide
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This document provides practical guidance for the infrastructure and platform
management practice.

Table of Contents
1. About this document

2. General information

3. Value Streams and processes

4. Organizations and people

5. Information and technology

6. Partners and suppliers

7. Important reminder
8. Acknowledgements

1. About this document

It is split into five main sections, covering:

general information about the practice

the practice’s processes and activities and their roles in the service value chain

the organizations and people involved in the practice

the information and technology supporting the practice

considerations for partners and suppliers for the practice.

1.1 ITIL® 4 qualification scheme

Selected content from this document is examinable as a part of the following syllabus:

ITIL Specialist High-velocity IT

Please refer to the respective syllabus document for details.

2. General information

2.1 Purpose and description

Key message

The purpose of the infrastructure and platform management practice is to oversee the
infrastructure and platforms used by an organization. When carried out properly, this
 practice enables the monitoring of technology solutions available to the organization,
including the technology and external service providers.

The infrastructure and platform management practice ensures that the organization has
a high-quality IT infrastructure that efficiently meets its current and anticipated needs. ‘IT
infrastructure’ as a concept includes all of the hardware, software, networks, and facilities
that are required to develop, test, deliver, monitor, manage, and support IT services.

Depending on the architecture of the organization’s IT infrastructure, this practice may

focus on the management of the physical environment, physical equipment, or digital
infrastructure solutions, which may be the organization’s own resources or services
provided by suppliers and partners. Often, IT infrastructure solutions are managed as
services; in these cases, the infrastructure and platform management practice may
include dedicated teams acting as service providers for the application and/or product
teams within the organization. If this approach is taken, it is important to ensure that the
infrastructure and platform teams are closely involved in the overall service delivery
activities of the organization and follow the ITIL principles focus on value, think and work
holistically, and collaborate and promote visibility. Members of these teams should
understand the wider context of the organization and its service value system (SVS).

This practice covers all stages of the infrastructure solutions lifecycle, from ideation and
gathering requirements to delivery and support. At every stage, it is used in conjunction
with other practices (including the business analysis, architecture management, service
design, availability management, capacity and performance management, service
continuity management, information security management, risk management practices,
and others). The importance of high-quality infrastructure and platforms for service
delivery cannot be overstated; this practice is vital for the success of the organization’s
digital services and digitized business processes.

2.2 Terms and concepts

The infrastructure and platform management practice provides the structure to deliver
and support stable and well-performing technology services. Infrastructure and platform
management is provided directly to the business, or supports the applications used by
the business. With a robust infrastructure and platform management practice, an
organization can enable value creation with the confidence that the underlying
technology will meet organization’s and service consumers’ needs.

Definition: IT infrastructure
 All of the hardware, software, networks, and facilities that are required to develop, test,
deliver, monitor, manage, and support IT services.

A wide range of activities are used to run and manage IT infrastructure effectively. These
activities range from understanding organization’s requirements and developing and
planning infrastructure and platforms, to performing routine maintenance and
overseeing infrastructure performance.

Definition: Operation

The routine of running and managing an activity, product, service, or other

configuration item.

A large portion of the operational activities can be automated. Automation tools can
monitor the environment, identify changes, distribute patches and other updates,
provide asset inventory, and schedule and automate jobs.

2.2.1 Business alignment for infrastructure and platform

solutions
Infrastructure and platform solutions are designed to meet specific quality criteria
defined to support the organization’s needs. The infrastructure and platform
management practice is closely connected with the architecture management practice,
ensuring that all infrastructure and platform solutions comply with the chosen
architectural approach, model and standards, as well as sharing knowledge on the
innovation available and feeding possible infrastructure and platform solutions into
architecture management. The infrastructure and platform management practice must
support application architecture, data architecture, and business architecture as well as
align to the organization’s overall vision and principles.

To ensure alignment to the overall architectural model, standardized infrastructure and

platform solutions are defined to meet the organization’s needs in a repeatable manner,
to simplify delivery and ongoing management for these services. Standardized services
allow for efficient provisioning through repeatability and automation. Many infrastructure
services are designed to enable speed and agility. Self-service capabilities leverage
automation capabilities to allow for users or other IT staff to request and receive items
without manual steps behind the scenes. This should account for the majority of the
services that are in utilized in the environment. Examples of standardized solutions may
include storage systems, application servers, database platforms, authentication systems,
single-sign-on, and others.

In integration with the architecture management the practice, the infrastructure and
platform management practice should ensure development or outsourcing and cost-
efficient operation of flexible and compatible core infrastructure and platform solutions,
that should be easily deployable and easily configured or merged to support the
organization’s services or products, serving as building blocks for the complex solutions,
products, and services. One of the examples of implementing such approach is usage of
microservices, that are “small in size, messaging-enabled, bounded by contexts,
autonomously developed, independently deployable, decentralized and built and
released with automated processes”1.

When the standard solution does not align with the business, a tailored or customized
solution must be developed. The selection of a non-standard service delays the delivery
of the solution and increases the ongoing effort and cost to the business for support for
the solution. These non-standard solutions should be deployed and managed as an
exception due to the additional overhead it requires.

In cases where the technology is not currently in place, the solution must be designed
together with the architecture management and service design practices for conceptual
and detailed design. During design, the infrastructure and platform management
practice, business, and technical requirements are aligned and the recommended
infrastructure and platform solutions are determined. As the solution is not currently
available within the environment, additional steps are taken to address the procurement,
build, sourcing, and support of the solution. The solution should be evaluated by
infrastructure and enterprise architecture to determine if this should be offered to
additional consumers or to remain as an exception to the existing documented
standards.

When an organization needs an infrastructure and platform solution, infrastructure and

platform management practice ensures that a solution is designed and delivered to
meet the organization’s requirements. There are several ways to provide a solution. For
requests that can be fulfilled using documented standard packages, the solution is
provided through defined provisioning methods.

2.2.2 Infrastructure and platform solution technologies –

physical and virtual
The technology used for infrastructure and platform solutions is either physical or virtual.
Physical resources run directly from the hardware, such as an operating system that is
installed directly on the hardware. This operating system can either host the application
or services directly or virtual systems can run on top of it.

Virtualization allows for additional systems to be built on the physical system.

Virtualization software runs on the hardware and allows for additional operating systems
that are isolated and separated to be installed, creating multiple servers residing on the
physical server. All virtual systems may run on the same or different hardware, but the
virtual capabilities allow for dynamic workload placement and other capabilities; it also
allows for better utilization of the hardware. The logical structure that connects the
virtual servers and the physical servers should be accounted for in the configuration
management database (CMDB). Additional capabilities that allow for dynamic moving of
workloads should also be represented in the data model.

Infrastructure technologies, such as software-defined networking, virtual servers, and

object storage, simplify the provisioning of infrastructure services. This allows the
organization to deliver services quickly through automation.

Virtualization has greatly improved provisioning, performance, capacity, and availability

for solutions. Further development in the virtualization direction is the usage of
infrastructure-as-code (IaC) solutions. IaC is a way of managing and provisioning IT
infrastructure and platforms by using machine-readable definition files rather than
physically configuring hardware components. IaC solutions significantly speed up design
(including hypothesis testing), development, building, provisioning and changing the
infrastructure and platform solutions. Such solutions also usually make the infrastructure
more reliable and fault resistant.

2.2.3 Infrastructure and platform solution delivery

models
Advancements in technical capabilities have changed how services are delivered. Service
providers have embraced the ability to scale services. As organizations move to services
offerings that allow for flexibility in terms of how the service is provided, the organization
can choose the model that best aligns to their strategic goals. Many times, the preferred
model is a combination of both internal and external provided services. This complexity
drives the need for a comprehensive management approach that ensures end-to-end
delivery meets customer expectations.

There are many models for providing infrastructure and platform solutions, ranging from
in-house dedicated data centres to fully out-sourced cloud environments. Many
organizations continue to provide and support infrastructure residing in their internal
data centres. They can also use solutions external to their organization. Cloud solutions
provide offerings that allow systems and applications to run in internal and external data
centres. Most enterprises use public cloud providers for at least part of their
infrastructure. Cloud providers offer many solutions based on the expected needs of the
business. An application may be accessed through the cloud, leaving infrastructure
management activities beyond connecting to the cloud to be done externally by the
application provider. Cloud offerings can include platforms for application development
and infrastructure specific services like storage or backup as a service.

There is usually a mix of public and private cloud services in any organization. Both cloud
services and outsourcing can provide infrastructure and platform services. Cloud services
provide technical capabilities whereas outsourcing performs IT functions in a similar
manner to internal teams. The contract defines the outsourcing scope and service levels.
Instead of managing technology directly, internal IT teams focus on managing the
contractual obligations and interactions with internal teams in an outsourced
environment.

2.2.4 Agile methods in infrastructure and platform

management
Recent technology innovations have enabled changes to how infrastructure is delivered
and supported. Development practices have been adopted by teams providing
infrastructure and platform solutions. Engineering and support functions rely heavily on
coding and other development capabilities for automation.

Along with a focus on development from a system perspective, many organizations have
also moved into models that blend development and infrastructure capabilities on one
team to provide coverage throughout the lifecycle. DevOps and site reliability
engineering (SRE) are examples of these models.

Specifically, DevOps brings a robust landscape of tools to automate the tracking,

building, and deploying of small, agile-based releases. Agile is a development framework,
but DevOps includes the infrastructure components and operational activities. DevOps
focuses on the opportunities across all technology components and drives automation to
enable rapid system updates. Infrastructure can now fully benefit from structured
development practices.

By accounting for the end-to-end development and management of the solution, this
approach allows for operational improvements to be included in the development
releases. Machine learning and AIOps leverages data collected on solutions to automate,
address issues, or manage requests without development. Through operational visibility
and development capabilities, the overall system is managed in a more comprehensive
and consistent manner through automation.

When using DevOps for infrastructure and platform management, special attention
must be paid to obsolete systems and monolithic solutions that require manual
operation and, therefore, slow down all management processes and changes. There
should be a clear roadmap of decommissioning and replacing such solutions or
replacing the manual activities with automation. One of the ways to do this is have an
SRE team to run operations.

SRE is a discipline that incorporates aspects of software engineering and applies them to
infrastructure and operations problems with the goal of creating ultra-scalable and
highly reliable solutions. SRE is an approach that tries to bridge the gap between
development and operations and find a consensus of their opposite objectives, which is
to develop and release solutions fast and have a stable solution to support. SRE teams
usually have software developers who must support the solutions they develop, and this
stimulates them to automate most of the manual support and management tasks (in
the course of reducing toil: manual, repetitive, automatable, non-creative work). With
this, infrastructure and platform solutions become more manageable, require less
manual work, and gain agility in changes, delivery, and support. Probably one of the
most important gains of SRE operations is that infrastructure scale-out doesn’t lead to
according linear growth of the team size, as it often happens in classical operations.

Key message

The practice is involved throughout the lifecycle of product and services. Figure 2.1
from “The Site Reliability Workbook” by Google, illustrates how SRE teams are involved
during the lifecycle. With minor variations, this illustration is applicable to other
approaches to infrastructure and platform management.
Figure 2.1 Infrastructure and platform management during product and service
lifecycle

2.2.5 Reliability and maintainability

Once the solution is in production, the primary focus of the team supporting and
operating the infrastructure is to ensure high-quality delivery through managing the
ongoing performance and functionality of the infrastructure and platform solutions. This
team may be a dedicated infrastructure team or a dedicated product team. The products
and services rely on the solution’s availability and performance to support them. In
production, the organization has high expectations for uptime and very little tolerance
for any impact of any type on service or product. To meet these demands, the solutions
must be reliable and maintainable. Beyond infrastructure and platform configurations to
support reliability and maintainability, the infrastructure and platform management
practice must ensure the solution is supportable. Supportability addresses the
organization’s requirements to ensure that the solution is functional and ready to
support products and services.

Reliability is designed with the system. Reliability requirements are aligned to the uptime
and performance requirements, defined by the capacity and performance management
practice. These requirements ensure the solutions are built in to support the
organization’s requirements. For example, this may include high availability or redundant
network connectivity.

Definition: Reliability

The ability of a product, service, or other configuration item to perform its intended
function for a specified period of time or number of cycles.

Maintainability of a system should be addressed during the design of a new system and
tested before being transitioned to production. There could be rules agreed for an
infrastructure and platform solution, ensuring maintainability based on the
organization’s requirements and industry practices. One example is the existence of a
monitoring tool to identify issues, or general monitorability of the solution planned at the
design phase. Other examples could be the existence of tools used to configure, deploy,
and provision the solutions. These rules could also be used to manage partners and
suppliers responsible for infrastructure and platform service components.

Definition: Maintainability

The ease with which a service or other entity can be repaired or modified.

If maintainability is not addressed during the initial design and as part of daily
operations, higher support costs, extended outages, and negative impacts to
performance will affect the production environment. Maintainability is improved through
appropriate monitoring configurations, automation, and utilization of standards.

Another aspect of maintainability involves ensuring the solution is recoverable to meet

availability targets. This aspect is tightly aligned with the service continuity
management. Maintainability ensures that infrastructure and platform solutions can be
recovered to meet availability targets. This may mean, for example, ensuring that the
hardware contract supports on-site replacements within a set timeframe. It may also
cover having on-site resources performing the repair. When committing to availability
targets, the parts and resources needed to restore service need to be factored in and be
in place throughout the solution lifecycle. The infrastructure and platform management
practice requires that the right pieces are in place to diagnose, repair, and recover in
order to restore services on time.

Automation is also used to improve a system’s maintainability. Repeatable actions are

excellent candidates for automation. Software development and management tools and
techniques, such as Agile and DevOps, can be applied to infrastructure and platform
management to drive frequent updates to systems and configurations. By addressing
opportunities as they are identified and implementing solutions in small releases,
benefits are realized quickly.

2.3. Scope
The scope of the infrastructure and platform practice includes:

activities used to plan, design, develop, deliver, maintain, and support infrastructure
and platform technology

infrastructure and platform technology including:

hardware (servers, desktops, routers, switches, storage, cabling, and data centre)

software (operating systems, desktop applications, and middleware)

management tools (monitoring, management tools, deployment, inventory)

web hosting

cloud infrastructure and platform

identification systems and single sign-on (SSO).

infrastructure and platform management skills, including:

technical architecture and engineering

technical administration and operations

 execution and enforcement of policies and procedures connected to
infrastructure and platform management (planning, decision making,
oversight).

integration with other practices

skills required for infrastructure and platform management, including infrastructure

architecture, engineering, and administration.

There are many activities and areas of responsibility that are not included in the
infrastructure and platform management practice, although they are still closely related
to infrastructure and platform management. These are listed in Table 2.1, along with
references to the practices in which they can be found. It is important to remember that
ITIL practices combine value chain activities through value streams to deliver value.

Table 2.1 Activities related to the infrastructure and

platform management practice described in other
practice guides

Activity Practice guide

Restoration of infrastructure and platform technology and Incident management

services including major incidents

Defining permanent resolution or workarounds for Problem management

infrastructure and platform known errors

Management of changes to the infrastructure and Change enablement

platforms

Tracking and management of infrastructure and platform IT asset management

assets

Tracking of infrastructure and platform configurations in Service configuration

 relationship to other configuration items (CIs) management

Monitoring, event management, and log management for Monitoring and event
infrastructure and platform technologies management

Infrastructure and platform design Service design

Defining requirements for infrastructure and platform Business analysis

solutions

Definition of standards and road map for infrastructure and Architecture

platforms management

2.4 Practice success factors

Definition: Practice success factor

A complex functional component of a practice that is required for the practice to fulfil
its purpose.

A practice success factor (PSF) is more than a task or activity; it includes components
from all four dimensions of service management. The nature of the activities and
resources of PSFs within a practice may differ, but together they ensure that the practice
is effective.

The infrastructure and platform practice includes the following PSFs:

establishing an infrastructure and platform management approach to meet evolving

organizational needs

ensuring that the infrastructure and platform solutions meet the organization’s
current and anticipated needs.
2.4.1 Establishing an infrastructure and platform
management approach to meet evolving
organizational needs
The needs of organizations and their customers are continually changing which leads to
the technology industry continually transforming. The changes may result from industry
trends, changes within organizations, business process innovation, or changes to
business volumes. The infrastructure and platform management practice ensures that
infrastructure and platform solutions are flexible and scalable so that they are aligned
with demand. Organizational infrastructure and platforms meet this demand through
optimized solutions that are designed for and used by all parts of the organization.

To properly design these solutions, teams delivering infrastructure and platform change
must be aware of new technologies and techniques. The evolution of technology can be
seen in examples like email, virtual server farms, storage arrays, single sign-on, and cloud
platforms. When solutions are identified based on requirements, requests are promptly
fulfilled. With virtual server technology that is used both internally and for cloud
offerings, the turnaround time for requests can be reduced to minutes. Technological
progress, such as virtualization, containers, continuous integration/continuous delivery
(CI/CD), and IaC, significantly impacts the rate of change and innovation.

Organizations that deliver and support infrastructure and platform solutions have
evolved through models, such as DevOps and SRE; they eliminate the use of traditional
waterfall techniques in favour of end-to-end development and management within one
team. Crucially, the organization’s structure and technology components must align with
its overall strategic direction in order to ensure the consistent delivery and support of
infrastructure and platform solutions. Components must align with the overall strategic
direction to ensure consistent delivery and support of infrastructure and platform
solutions.

It is important to plan how infrastructure and platform teams will identify, design, and
introduce innovation into the environment at the solution and strategic levels.
Depending on the current needs, infrastructure and platform management might need
initial research and testing so that, when the need is presented, there is a clear plan of
action. If the need is pressing, the technology may be selected, purchased, designed, and
configured before any official requests are received.

The infrastructure and platform management practice should ensure that the
infrastructure and platforms are built to promote experimentation, quick technology
adoption, the ability to test theories and hypotheses, change the infrastructure and
platform iteratively with feedback, fail fast, and learn from experience and errors in a safe
environment. Each organization should define its innovation and risk appetite and
consider their financial constraints for innovation in the infrastructure and platforms
areas.

2.4.2 Ensuring that the infrastructure and platform

solutions meet the organization’s current and
anticipated needs
The main focus of the infrastructure and platform management practice should be
ensuring that stakeholders receive value throughout the infrastructure and platform
solution lifecycle. Stakeholders must be engaged from the initiation of a request or
project until the solution’s retirement. Understanding stakeholder expectations, from
design to the ongoing management and support of the solutions, is an essential aspect
of delivering infrastructure and platform solutions. This ongoing relationship will drive
improvement opportunities and ensure value continues to be co-created as the solution
evolves.

When the organization needs a technical solution, requirements are defined in order to
ensure that the solution meets the organization’s needs. The solution design should
include technical and business requirements. The infrastructure and platform
management practice is involved in analysing requirements to create a high-level design
(in conjunction with the architecture management, business analysis, and service design
practices, and others).

The requirements for infrastructure and platform solutions may come from different
sources, including:

architectural standards and guidelines

compliance requirements, if the organization is subject to legislation

direct requirements from customers, if a solution is a service or service component

that will be directly released to customers.

Where possible, the infrastructure and platform management practice ensures that
standards can be defined and utilized in order to simplify the management of
infrastructure and platform solutions. The enforcement of these standards ensures the
reliability and maintainability of solutions. Standards enable efficient and effective
operations and may include the hardware and software versions, configuration settings,
management and monitoring tools, and support structures. Through standards,
solutions are easier to operate, monitor, and upgrade.
Designs should be assessed against current and planned standards and validated
against the current and anticipated levels of availability, performance, capacity,
information security, and so on. Management practices supporting these should have
active involvement.

Standard infrastructure solution packages should be utilized wherever possible. Any

portion of the solution that is not standard increases cost, delays delivery, and requires
customized support throughout the life of the solution. Exceptions to standards may
result in extended downtime or other impacts to the customer. They may also delay
teams responsible for performing other activities for other infrastructure and platform
solutions.

If there are multiple exceptions to a standard, a review should be conducted to ensure

that the standard still meets the organization’s needs. If it does not, a new standard
should be designed and its implementation should be planned. Retiring the standard
may include planning the removal of current systems that were installed as part the
retired offering in order to reduce technical debt and the potential risk to the
environment. The development and maintenance of the standards and standard
packages are also within the scope of the infrastructure and platform management
practice.

Part of the practice’s focus is to manage risk to the organization throughout the
infrastructure and platform. As part of this effort, input from practices such as
information security, service continuity, and risk management are taken to ensure that
risks are managed throughout the lifecycle of the solution. This ongoing management
includes, for example, ensuring that network devices are configured based on defined
security policies, controls are tested periodically, and risks are identified and effectively
managed. Requirements are handled on an ongoing basis to prevent adverse impacts,
such as extended service downtime or a security breach of confidential information.

The overall management of infrastructure and platform solutions often includes internal
and third-party solutions and components. Understanding the overall structure of these
solutions and ensuring that the overall level of service provided meets customer
expectations is critical.

Management need visibility to validate that solutions are performing at acceptable levels
and to highlight opportunities. These may include addressing any issues and identifying
areas that could be improved. The infrastructure and platform management practice
should provide visibility to stakeholders in performance and improvement plans. This
practice interacts with other practices to ensure that any issues or requests on solutions
are resolved promptly. For this reason, the practice participates in agreeing targets for
incident response, restoration, and request fulfilment times to align with customer
expectations. This practice may include managing and reporting on the ability of
solutions to meet targets. This visibility also provides an opportunity to improve
performance in this area through automation or process refinement.

This practice also contributes to ensure that the agreed-upon levels of service is met. The
scope of this effort includes any internal or external components used in the solution.
Third-party services must align with customer expectations, or the expectations must be
reset. External providers must meet the service levels in their contracts. By managing
performance levels across internal and external services, the practice is able to report
performance and other outcomes to the business.

The infrastructure and platform management practice ensures that solutions within its
scope effectively contribute to overall financial targets. Infrastructure and platform
solutions should be benchmarked against cloud offerings and external provider
solutions. From a technology perspective, automation, consolidation, and
standardization simplify the infrastructure and platforms and release resources, which
can then be used to drive value. The current and potential partnerships with external
providers can also be evaluated and existing agreements optimized.

2.5 Key metrics

The effectiveness and performance of the ITIL practices should be assessed within the
context of the value streams to which each practice contributes. As with the performance
of any tool, the practice’s performance can only be assessed within the context of its
application. However, tools can differ greatly in design and quality, and these differences
define a tool’s potential or capability to be effective when used according to its purpose.
Further guidance on metrics, key performance indicators (KPIs), and other techniques
that can help with this can be found in the measurement and reporting practice guide.

Key metrics for infrastructure and platform management are mapped to its PSFs. They
can be used as KPIs in the context of value streams to assess the contribution of the
practice to the effectiveness and efficiency of those value streams. Some examples of key
metrics are given in Table 2.3.

Table 2.3 Examples of key metrics for the practice

success factors

Practice success factors Key metrics

 Establishing an infrastructure and
platform management approach to
Stakeholder satisfaction with the
meet evolving organizational needs
approach to management of
infrastructure and platforms

Alignment of the infrastructure and

platform management approach with
the organization’s strategy and
architecture

Number and impact of deviations from

the organization’s strategy and
architecture road map

Level of benefits, costs, and risks

associated with the approach to
management of infrastructure and
platforms

Ensuring that the infrastructure and

platform solutions meet the
Stakeholder satisfaction with
organization’s current and anticipated
infrastructure and platform solutions
needs

Number and impact of infrastructure

incidents

Number and impact of constraints

imposed by infrastructure and platform
solutions

Number and impact of deviations from

the agreed approach

The correct aggregation of metrics into complex indicators will make them easier to use
for the ongoing management of value streams and for the periodic assessment and
continual improvement of the infrastructure and platform management practice. There
is no single best solution. Metrics will be based on the overall service strategy and
priorities of an organization, as well as on the goals of the value streams to which the
practice contributes.

[1] Nadareishvili, I., Mitra, R., McLarty, M., Amundsen, M., Microservice Architecture:
Aligning Principles, Practices, and Culture, O’Reilly 2016

3. Value Streams and processes

3.1 Value stream contribution

Like any other ITIL management practice, the infrastructure and platform management
practice contributes to multiple value streams. Remember, no value stream is made up
of a single practice. The infrastructure and platform management practice combines
with other practices to provide high-quality services to consumers. The main value chain
activities to which this practice contributes are:

deliver and support

design and transition

obtain/build

plan.

The contribution of the infrastructure and platform management practice to the service
value chain is shown in Figure 3.1.
Figure 3.1 Heat map of the contribution of the infrastructure and platform
management practice to value chain activities

3.2 Processes
Each practice may include one or more processes and activities that may be necessary to
fulfil the purpose of that practice.

Definition: Process

A set of interrelated or interacting activities that transform inputs into outputs. A

process takes one or more defined inputs and turns them into defined outputs.
Processes define the sequence of actions and their dependencies.

There are numerous models to structure activities of the infrastructure and platform
management practice. These span several decades and range from waterfall and manual,
to iterative and incremental.
This practice is one of the two ITIL practices (the other is the software development and
management practice) where activities do not always form processes that could be
described as sequences at the level of detail appropriate to this guide. This is because the
infrastructure and platform management activities are always performed in a context of
one or another value stream, and always in conjunction with other practices. However,
activities of this practice can be categorized in three groups:

technology planning

product development

technology operations.

3.2.1 Technology planning activities

Technology planning activities ensure that the organization has a technology
management approach and a roadmap for infrastructure development and
improvement. These activities ensure the organization’s financial, architectural, and
resource plans are aligned. With formalized and repeatable planning and effective
integration with other practices, infrastructure and platform solutions will continually
support alignment with the strategic goals of the organization. Table 3.1 shows how the
activities transforms the inputs into outputs.

Table 3.1 Inputs, activities, and outputs of technology

planning

Key inputs Activities Key outputs

Organization’s Analyse the Infrastructure and

principles, policies, organization’s strategy platform management
and vision and architecture approach and roadmap

Organizational Develop and agree the Improvement initiatives

strategy infrastructure and and requests for
platform management changes
Organizational approach
structure
 Product and service Review the infrastructure
portfolio and platform
management approach
Customer portfolio

Business analysis
records and review
reports

Audit reports

Figure 3.2 shows a workflow diagram of the process.

Figure 3.2 Workflow of technology planning

Table 3.2 provides an example of the technology planning activities.

Table 3.2 Example activities of technology planning

Activity Example

Analyse the IT Leaders of the organization analyse the organization’s

organization’s strategy strategy, architecture road map, and portfolios and define
and architecture requirements to the infrastructure and platform
management approach.

Develop and agree the Business analysts, architects, product owners, and
infrastructure and infrastructure experts agree and communicate an
platform management infrastructure and platform approach, including scope,
approach sourcing strategy, methods and techniques, procedures, and
responsibilities.

Review the Based on infrastructure review reports, periodic reviews, and

infrastructure and audit reports, product owners and infrastructure experts
platform management review the effectiveness of the infrastructure and platform
approach management approach and provide input to the analyse the
organization and requirements activity, and/or initiate
required changes.

3.2.2 Product development activities

In many organizations these activities are performed within product development value
streams in conjunction with other practices. The infrastructure and platform
management practice serves as a source of technical expertise and other resources to
support product ideation, design, development, and deployment. In other organizations,
infrastructure and platform solutions are developed in a separate value stream and
provided to as services to product teams and their products. The activities of the
infrastructure and platform practices are similar in these scenarios. In many cases,
infrastructure solutions are sourced from external developers; the activities of the
practice are focused on ensuring that the solutions meet the organization’s
requirements and constraints.

This group includes the activities outlined in Table 3.3 and transforms the inputs into
outputs.
Table 3.3 Inputs, activities, and outputs of product
development

Key inputs Activities Key outputs

Infrastructure and Create a basic solution Basic and detailed

platform design design
management
approach Create a detailed solution Agreed service level
design objectives
Solution
requirements Source/develop/configure Components and
the components solutions
Budget and other
resources and Source/build/configure the Solution
constraints solution documentation

Sourcing and Support validation and Setup in

supplier testing management tools
management including
policies monitoring, ITSM
Support deployment and
release tools
Sourcing and
build policies and Operational run
Review solution
guidance books
development and
implementation
Operational Reports and
standards scheduled reviews

Success criteria

Project structure
(schedule,
assignment,
methods)
The focus of technology delivery and engineering is on designing, building, and
transitioning infrastructure and platform services. These activities may vary, depending
on how the services will be delivered and how the organization applies these steps, as is
outlined in Table 3.4.

Table 3.4 Technology delivery and engineering activities

Activity Internal build Sourced

Create a basic solution Based on the requirements identified by business

design analysts and product owner, infrastructure specialists
agree service level objectives for the infrastructure
solution and create a basic solution design. The basic
design is approved by the product owner.

Create a detailed solution Infrastructure specialists and/or site reliability engineers

design creates a detailed solution design, ensuring its reliability,
efficiency, scalability, and other quality characteristics
required by the agreed SLOs and the organization’s
infrastructure management approach are met.
The resulting design includes a recommended sourcing
and delivery model for the components and the solution.

Source/develop/configure Agreed components are Agreed components are

the components developed and configured procured and configured by
by infrastructure a supplier according to the
specialists according to design; their work is
the design monitored and accepted by
infrastructure specialists

Source/build/configure Agreed solution/system is Agreed solution/system is

the solution built/configured by built/configured by a supplier
infrastructure specialists according to the design; their
according to the design; work is monitored and
their work is accepted by accepted by infrastructure
the product owner specialists and the product
owner
 Support validation and Infrastructure specialists Infrastructure specialists
testing participate in the participate in the validation
validation and testing of and testing of the
the components and the components and the
solution at all stages of solution at all stages of the
the solution development, solution development,
ensuring effective ensuring effective
integration with the integration with the service
service validation and validation and testing
testing practice practice and the supplier
management practice

Support deployment and Infrastructure specialists Infrastructure specialists

release participate in the participate in the
deployment and release deployment and release of
of the solution, ensuring the solution, ensuring
effective integration with effective integration with the
the respective practices supplier management
practice

Review solution Infrastructure specialists, Infrastructure specialists,

development and product owners, and product owners, application
implementation application developers developers, and supplier
review the infrastructure representatives review the
solution development infrastructure solution
activities and outcomes. development activities and
The resulting report is outcomes. The resulting
used as an input to the report is used as an input to
technology planning the technology planning
activities and other activities, supplier
improvement initiatives management
improvements, and other
improvement initiatives

Product development activities ensure the delivery of a supportable solution that meets
the organization’s needs and agreed SLOs. Even if an external provider provides a
solution, steps are taken to ensure it fits into the overall delivery and support model.

3.2.3 Technology operation activities

The technology operations activities are performed after the solution goes into the live
environment. These activities include planned maintenance and unplanned support
activities. Maintenance focuses on the normal operations of the solution, such as
administration and monitoring. Support focuses on addressing events, incidents, alerts,
and other areas that are not performing as planned. In an organization that is not
functioning well, the unplanned activities typically take most, if not all resource time. A
more mature organization will focus on planned activities that will result in less
unplanned work.

This group includes the following activities, and transforms the following inputs into
outputs:

Table 3.5 Inputs, activities, and outputs of the

technology operation

Key inputs Activities Key outputs

Solutions and support Manage queues Reports

documentation, such as of queries and
operational run books events Closed tickets and
events
Policies and guidelines Perform
scheduled tasks Scheduled job
Monitoring data completion
Patch and
Queries (incidents, problems, update the Backup completion
and so on) system
Updated solution and
SLAs support
documentation

Automation

Improvements
Table 3.6 provides example descriptions of the technology operation activities

Table 3.6 Technology operation activities

Activity Example

Manage Infrastructure management teams and tools process incoming queries

queues of and events, ensuring timely and successful resolution of detected
queries and incidents, alerts, and other events requiring a response. Logs and
events reports reflecting this activity are created as agreed in the infrastructure
and platform management approach and solution documentation.
Examples of this work include:

rolling back a bad software push

blocking or rate-limiting unwanted traffic

bringing up additional serving capacity

using the monitoring systems (for alerting and dashboards)

solving incidents

analysing problems

conducting post-mortems.

Perform Several actions are performed by infrastructure management teams or

scheduled tools on a scheduled basis, such as daily backups or a data transfer
tasks between systems. Logs and reports reflecting this activity are created as
agreed in the infrastructure and platform management approach and
solution documentation.
Examples of this work include:

administering production jobs

describing the architecture, various components, and

 dependencies of the services

testing back-up restoration

training users

reviewing supplier performance

reviewing solution performance.

Patch and Patches and system updates are released to the environment in a
update the structured manner. Typically, patches deployed to the lower
system environments for testing and then deployed to production. Despite this
structure, there are exceptions where systems are not patched as part
of this scheduled release due to an application incompatibility, business
usage of the solution, or issues identified through testing. It is
important to track the solutions that are not at current levels.
Completing these updates should be rolled out promptly to maintain
overall supportability. Up-to-date solutions reduce the risk of downtime
or security breaches.
There are also situations where system updates or patches are installed
to resolve an incident and then need to be rolled out to the rest of the
organization. The result of applying patches and updates reactively
creates a non-standard environment.
The infrastructure specialist manages these exceptions and identifies a
plan to address these exceptions. Understanding and addressing these
deviations is a vital part of technology management.

The technology operation activities ensure that solutions are available and functioning as
designed from acceptance into the live environment through retirements. Technical
experts and technical coordinators perform the activities in this process.

4. Organizations and people

4.1 Roles, competencies, and responsibilities

The practice guides do not describe the roles of practice owners or managers that should
exist for all practices. They focus instead on specialist roles specific to each practice. The
structure and naming of each role may differ from organization to organization, so any
roles defined in ITIL should not be treated as mandatory, or even recommended.
Remember, roles are not job titles. One person can take on multiple roles and one role
can be assigned to multiple people.

Roles are described in the context of processes and activities. Each role is characterized
with a competency profile based on the model shown in Table 4.1.

Table 4.1 Competency codes and profiles

Competency Competency profile (activities and skills)

code

L Leader Decision-making, delegating, overseeing other activities,

providing incentives and motivation, and evaluating outcomes

A Administrator Assigning and prioritizing tasks, record-keeping,

ongoing reporting, and initiating basic improvements

C Coordinator/communicator Coordinating multiple parties,

maintaining communication between stakeholders, and running
awareness campaigns

M Methods and techniques expert Designing and implementing work

techniques, documenting procedures, consulting on processes, work
analysis, and continual improvement

T Technical expert Providing technical (IT) expertise and conducting

expertise-based assignments

Table 4.2 Examples of the roles involved in

infrastructure and platform management activities

Activity Responsible Competency Specific skills

 roles profile

Technology planning

Analyse the organization’s Architects, TC

strategy and architecture business
Good knowledge
analysts,
of the organization
product
and its
owners,
environment,
infrastructure
portfolios,
specialists
products,
resources, and
customers

Understanding of
the current
infrastructure
architecture and
architecture
roadmap

Analytical skills

Good knowledge of
current and available
technology

Develop and agree the Architects, TLMC

infrastructure and business
Good knowledge
platform management analysts,
of the organization
approach product
and its
owners,
environment,
infrastructure
portfolios,
specialists,
products,
consultants
resources, and
customers

Excellent
knowledge of
current and
 available
infrastructure and
platform solutions

Good knowledge
of infrastructure
and technology
services suppliers
and market

Review the infrastructure Architects, TCA

and platform business
Good knowledge
management approach analysts,
of the organization
product
and its
owners,
environment,
infrastructure
portfolios,
specialists,
products,
consultants
resources, and
customers

Understanding of
the current
infrastructure
architecture and
architecture
roadmap

Analytical skills

Good knowledge
of current and
available
technology

Product development
Create a basic solution Solution TA
design architects,
Understanding of
infrastructure
the requirements
specialists, site
reliability
engineers, Good knowledge
product owners of the
infrastructure and
platform
management
approach

Expertise in the
available
technology

Create a detailed solution Solution TA

design architects,
Understanding of
infrastructure
the requirements
specialists, site
reliability
engineers, Good knowledge
product owners of the
infrastructure and
platform
management
approach

Expertise in the
available
technology and
services

Source/develop/configure Infrastructure TC
the components specialists, site
Technical expertise
reliability
engineers,
product Communication
owners, and collaboration
suppliers skills
Source/build/configure the Infrastructure TC
solution specialists, site
Technical expertise
reliability
engineers,
product Communication
owners, and collaboration
suppliers skills

Support validation and Infrastructure TC

testing specialists, site
Technical expertise
reliability
engineers,
product Communication
owners, and collaboration
suppliers skills

Support deployment and Infrastructure TC

release specialists, site
Technical expertise
reliability
engineers,
product Communication
owners, and collaboration
suppliers skills

Review solution Solution TCA

development and architects,
Good knowledge
implementation infrastructure
of the
specialists, site
infrastructure and
reliability
platform
engineers,
management
product owners
approach

Technical expertise

Good knowledge
of the organization
and its
 environment,
portfolios,
products,
resources, and
customers

Technology operations

Manage queues of queries Infrastructure TA

and events specialists, site
Technical
reliability
knowledge
engineers

Understanding of
business and
customer context

Communication
and coordination
skills

Perform scheduled tasks Infrastructure TA

specialists, site
Technical
reliability
administration
engineers
knowledge

Patch and update the Infrastructure TA

system specialists, site
Knowledge of
reliability
security policies,
engineers
standards, and
requirements

Technical
knowledge
4.1.1 Infrastructure specialist
The key role for this practice is infrastructure specialist. This is a generic term to describe
roles that can be specified either by the technology, like network, SRE, and so on (for
example, network specialist, site reliability engineer, or virtualization specialist) or by the
phase in product lifecycle, like design, testing, or operations (for example,. infrastructure
designer/development specialist, testing specialist, or operations administrator).

Those distinctions are defined by the organization’s size and structure, but the general
set of competencies are similar, and usually includes:

technology subject matter expertise

good understanding of the organization’s architecture

knowledge of the frameworks and techniques adopted by the organization

knowledge of organization’s products and services

service mindset

good knowledge of organization’s operating model and value streams.

Examples of other roles which can be involved in infrastructure and platform

management activities are listed in Table 4.2, together with the associated competency
profiles and specific skills.

4.2 Organizational structures and teams

Infrastructure and platform management specialists often form a dedicated team (or
teams). However, in some organizations they are included in product teams and focused
on infrastructure solutions supporting respective products. Regardless of the
organizational solution, it is important to maintain shared view and responsibility across
infrastructure and product teams.

Key message
 Rigid boundaries between “application development” and “production” (sometimes
called programmers and operators) are counterproductive. This is especially true if the
segregation of responsibilities and classification of ops as a cost centre leads to power
imbalances or discrepancies in esteem or pay
(…) Ideally, both product development and SRE teams should have a holistic view of the
stack—the frontend, backend, libraries, storage, kernels, and physical machine—and no
team should jealously own single components. It turns out that you can get a lot more
done if you “blur the lines”11 and have SREs instrument JavaScript, or product
developers qualify kernels: knowledge of how to make changes and the authority to do
so are much more widespread, and incentives to jealously guard any particular
function are removed.”
This quote from “The Site Reliability Workbook” by Google refers specifically to SRE
teams. However, it is valid for any other approach to infrastructure and platform
management.

The infrastructure and platform management practice needs to allow for organization
variations while ensuring some level of consistency across infrastructure teams. The
teams may be split by geography, type of technology, or business service. Having an
overall structure to manage practice changes and communication is important to keep
the overall service functioning in an optimal manner. This may be done with an overall
governance group or through representation in an infrastructure committee.

5. Information and technology

5.1 Information exchange

The effectiveness of the infrastructure and platform management practice is based on
the quality of the information used. This information includes, but is not limited to:

business services and processes

customers and users

partner and suppliers including contracts and service levels

SLAs

architecture and design documentation

portfolio and project management plans

 policies, requirements, and controls

change records

incident records

request records

problem records

release records

financial information

application development and testing information

system information (versions, baselines, configurations)

monitoring and event information

IT assets and inventory information.

5.2 Automation and tooling

In most cases, the infrastructure and platform management practice can significantly
benefit from automation. Where this is possible and effective, it may involve the solutions
outlined in Table 5.1.

Table 5.1. Automation solutions for infrastructure

platform management activities

Process activity Means of Key functionality Impact on

automation the
effectiveness
of the
practice
Technology planning

Analyse the Collection, High

organization’s strategy processing, and
Communication
and architecture presentation of
and
data from diverse
collaboration
sources
tools

Analytical
systems

Knowledge
management tools

Develop and agree the Communication and Collaboration and Medium

infrastructure and collaboration tools information
platform management sharing
approach

Review the infrastructure High

and platform
Communication Collection,
management approach
and processing,
collaboration and
tools presentation
of data from
Analytical diverse
systems sources

Reporting
Knowledge
engines
management
tools
Dashboard
systems

Product development
Create a basic solution Workflow tools Ability to assign High
design including task design tasks and
assignment, routing, approval for
approvals, tracking, planning
and notifications activities,
including status
tracking,
notifications, and
reporting to
ensure actions
are on task and
the design is
approved

Create a detailed solution Workflow tools Ability to assign High

design including task tasks and
assignment, routing, approval for
approvals, tracking planning
and notifications, activities,
contract including status
management with tracking,
templates, notifications, and
approvals, and reporting to
review schedules ensure actions
are on task

Source/develop/configure Automated Ability to receive High

the components provisioning, approved request
building, and and to build a
configuring tools solution with no
or limited manual
intervention
ensuring
consistent and
timely delivery

Source/build/configure Automated Ability to receive High

the solution provisioning, approved request
building, and and to build a
configuring tools solution with no
or limited manual
intervention
 ensuring
consistent and
timely delivery

Support validation and Automated testing Automated High

testing and defect tracking testing, reporting,
and logging into
the defect
management
system

Support deployment and Deployment tools Automated High

release deployment from
testing to
implementation,
including
submission of
change request

Review solution Dashboards and Medium to

development and reports, trend high
Workflow tools
implementation analysis
including task
assignment,
routing,
approvals,
tracking, and
notifications

System health
monitoring and
reporting tools

Technology operation

Manage queues of High

queries and events
Automated Ability to
request close repeat
provisioning, tickets
 automated automatically
resolution, and assign
ChatOps, AIOps, the tickets
automatically
Workflow tools to the correct
group
without
manual
triage steps

Task
assignment,
routing,
approvals,
tracking and
notifications

Perform scheduled tasks High

Job scheduling Automation
tools and scripts of scheduled
for backup, tasks
batch, and other including
automated notification
tasks on failures
reducing the
Vulnerability potential for
tools and report missed
and testing procedure
automation for execution
compliance,
automated Ability to
solution automatically
recovery, and verify and
testing test solutions
for security
TSM report and hardening,
dashboard recoverability,
automation and controls

Automated
report
 consolidation
and generation,
customer
feedback
surveys

Workflow tools
including task
assignment,
routing,
approvals,
tracking, and
notifications

Patch and update the System and security Ability to High

system patch deployment automatically
and inventory tools, deploy and report
software distribution on installation
and inventory tools status for patches
and system
updates

6. Partners and suppliers

Very few services are delivered using only an organization’s own resources. Most, if not all,
depend on other services, often provided by third parties outside the organization (see
section 2.4 of ITIL Foundation: ITIL 4 Edition for a model of a service relationship).

The infrastructure and platform management practice allows for many outsourcing
options both from an activity perspective as well as from a technology perspective. Table
6.1 provides examples of areas that are candidates for outsourcing.

Table 6.1 Infrastructure and platform management

sourcing considerations

Activity Opportunity Applicability

Provisioning Delivery of desktops, servers, Outsourcing is most effective
computer, network, and storage when standards are in place.
services or other technology Outsourcing may be selectively
services used for remote locations.

Support Restoration and prevention of Support for the entire capability

incidents for in-scope may be outsourced or focused
technologies on specific roles. Providers
should adhere to standard
service desk processes for a
consistent customer experience.
This works well for remote sites,
especially for desktop support.

Administration Performing routine tasks based Administrative tasks need to be

on operational procedures and well documented and sufficient
requests access must be provided.

Operations Outsourcing the operations This reduces internal staffing

centre centre function reduces the requirements. This function
need to ensure adequate must be well documented, have
coverage with internal staff, adequate access and frequent
especially if it is provided at all touchpoints are recommended
times. This function can provide to understand any open issues
monitoring, systems or improvement opportunities.
management, job scheduling,
or other activities

Backup/restore Provider configures and Providers may leverage internal

manages backup jobs and backup tools or may include
repositories, addresses backup backup solutions and storage as
failures, and restores files as part of the agreement.
needed

Systems Manage systems to keep up to Standards and configurations

management, date for versions, configurations, must be well documented, and
patching, or and patches access provided. Access to
other updates management tools is required.
 Technology Technology can be leased With cloud offerings, this is a
ownership through subscription services, prominent trend in the industry.
reducing the capital required to This allows for service levels and
implement and maintain capabilities to be delivered
technology without the overhead of
building and supporting
technology internally.

With a large amount of opportunity within this space, understanding and managing
outsourcing risks is an important activity to ensure that services meet customer
expectations. This should be done in a close conjunction with other practices, such as the
risk management and supplier management practices.

Some examples of these risks are:

loss of flexibility due to constraints of agreement

additional unplanned costs if the scope needs to be modified or if consumption

exceeds the contractual terms

contractual service levels may not align with customer expectations

security and policy adherence of providers

loss of internal talent as role moves from performing activities to oversight of those
activities

lack of visibility.

Although all functions can be outsourced, it is recommended to retain oversight and

architecture functions. Oversight ensures providers are delivering to their committed
levels and allows insight into potential improvements to the existing agreement. To
effectively support and continue to deliver services, the knowledge of how solutions
connect across providers must be well understood by the internal team. As the specific
knowledge in specific technologies moves to the provider, there should be an
architectural role internally that understands the design and operations of the
infrastructure environment.

7. Important reminder
Most of the content of the practice guides should be taken as a suggestion of areas that
an organization might consider when establishing and nurturing their own practices.
The practice guides are catalogues of topics that organizations might think about, not a
list of answers. When using the content of the ITIL practice guides, organizations should
always follow the ITIL guiding principles:

focus on value

start where you are

progress iteratively with feedback

collaborate and promote visibility

think and work holistically

keep it simple and practical

optimize and automate.

More information on the guiding principles and their application can be found in section
4.3 of ITIL Foundation: ITIL 4 Edition.

8. Acknowledgements

AXELOS Ltd is grateful to everyone who has contributed to the development of this
guidance. These practice guides incorporate an unprecedented level of enthusiasm and
feedback from across the ITIL community. In particular, AXELOS would like to thank the
following people.

8.1 Authors
Angie Pederson.

8.2 Reviewers
Dinara Adyrbayeva, Akshay Anand, Peter Farenden, Roman Jouravlev, Vernon Lloyd.

References
1. Nadareishvili, I., Mitra, R., McLarty, M., Amundsen, M., Microservice
Architecture: Aligning Principles, Practices, and Culture, O’Reilly 2016

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