Microsoft Operations Framework

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Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) provides operational guidance that helps organizations to achieve mission-critical system reliability, availability, supportability, and manageability with Microsoft products and technologies.

1 Overview
2 The MOF components
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Overview

MOF is based on an internationally accepted set of IT service management best practices called the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) from the UK government’s Office of Government Commerce (OGC). MOF can be viewed as a superset of the ITIL standards.^{[citation needed]}

MOF provides operational guidance in the form of white papers, operations guides, assessment tools, best practices, case studies, templates, support tools, courseware, and services. This guidance addresses the people, process, technology, and management issues pertaining to complex, distributed, and heterogeneous technology environments.

Microsoft created MOF by using lessons learned through the evolution of Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF), building on top of ITIL’s best practice for organizational structure and process ownership, and modeling the critical success factors used by partners, customers, and Microsoft’s internal Operations and Technology Group (OTG).

[edit] The MOF components

MOF comprises several components: core knowledge provided through white papers, prescriptive guidance presented through SIPs, SMFs and Solution accelerators, and training made available through network of qualified training partners.

All these components are based on these foundation elements of MOF:

The Process Model
The Team Model
The Risk Management Model

The MOF Process Model provides the description of processes that operations teams perform in order to manage and maintain IT services. It is organized around four quadrants and twenty Service Management Functions. The Team Model simplifies the view of team roles and helps management focus on organizing people effectively. It supports the Process Model by providing guidelines for organizing people into operational teams, or role clusters, and describes the key activities within each role cluster. The MOF Risk Model helps organizations manage risk while running their business. It is composed of a set of guiding principles and a risk management process.

Microsoft has released an updated version of Framework -- MOF 4.0