Closed loop performance management for service delivery systems

IT service delivery becomes an increasingly challenging business as customers demand improved quality of service while providers are driven to reduce the cost of delivery. While effective service delivery requires advances in many areas including workload management and workforce optimization, in this paper we focus on service request dispatching decision-making. Specifically, we propose a closed loop performance management solution that leverages feedback controllers to dynamically adjust the priority of service requests considering both (static) contractual service attainment targets and (dynamic) attainment levels achieved. We demonstrate the applicability of the proposed approach in a simulation testbed that models a large IT service delivery environment, and compare its performance with two open loop dispatching policies. © 2012 IEEE.