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CUSTOMER NEEDS AND STRATEGIES
Jan Duffy
Jacob Stoller, Consultant
IDC OPINIONAs organizations become more dependent on technology to conduct their day-to-day business, they are demanding a more responsive IT department and environment that reflect changing global conditions and deliver bulletproof reliability on a 24 x 7 basis. Professional management of the IT department and IT assets is of critical importance in addressing this need and in satisfying the need to align IT with business (even as needs change) without jeopardizing IT (and the company's) stability. Under pressure to do more with less, IT leaders have to find strategic ways to partner with both business-unit and end-user customers, address rapid changes in technology, and maximize their returns from IT supplier offerings. ITIL and other best practice frameworks purport to provide the necessary basis for delivering high-quality service management, but none of these frameworks provides a complete solution. Having a balanced view of frameworks and their capabilities is a key requisite to determining their potential value. In order to fully address the increased demands on IT, IDC suggests the following:
• Consider the benefits of adopting a framework such as ITIL as a corporate standard for infrastructure management, but recognize that other methods will also be required to fully manage IT personnel and assets.
• Identify where ITIL (or an alternate framework) needs to be complemented, and develop a strategy for the use of other IT guidelines, generic best practices, and vendor methodologies.
• Develop comprehensive sourcing and training strategies to ensure that the appropriate skill sets are in place to leverage the frameworks.
IN THIS STUDY
Executive Summary
This study deals with a specific issue: how the adoption of a formalized framework, ITIL in particular, can help a company manage its assets better with the ultimate objective of creating visible value for users and business customers. The issue of introducing an externally created standard into an organization is a complex one, especially in the IT world, where technology changes rapidly and business conditions are continually reinventing the rules. In order to make solid, well-informed decisions about investing in ITIL and/or other process frameworks, decision makers need to keep in mind the context in which the benefits, and the costs, will play out. Here are the essential facts:
• IT service management is not an isolated movement within IT but part of the quality revolution that has affected many industries. There are many parallels between IT quality efforts and those of other verticals, and these become relevant as companies align IT with business.
• ITIL is based on a centralized model of IT that existed in 1980. Since then, the advent of distributed computing and the Internet have expanded the requirements of service management, and ITIL has adapted accordingly. Today, ITIL is the de facto worldwide standard for managing infrastructure, with a supporting role being played by a growing number of new IT process frameworks that complement ITIL.
• ITIL is also the de facto standard for service management–related vendor offerings, and it forms the basis for service management methods used by a number of key IT and IT-related services suppliers. It is also the standard for automated network and systems management (NSM) tools from vendors such as CA, BMC, IBM/Tivoli, and HP/OpenView.
• HP and IBM have confirmed that service management will play a key role in their "adaptive enterprise" and "computing-on-demand" strategies, and that frameworks are being used extensively to develop and realize this capability. Both organizations use other industry bodies of knowledge and their own research and practices to expand and complement ITIL's capabilities.
• Frameworks, specifically ITIL, have proven to deliver short-term benefits in certain operational scenarios. These include help desk consolidation, combining IT departments in merger situations, and introducing round-the-clock or followthe- sun capabilities.
• Strategic benefits of frameworks can only be achieved as part of a contextual strategy that addresses all of the issues of IT/business alignment.
IDC concludes that there are excellent ROI opportunities in the implementation of ITIL and similar frameworks, and furthermore, that these initiatives can play a key role in IT/business alignment. However, this adoption cannot be an isolated action on the part of IT but must reflect a number of contextual issues within the enterprise.
To purchase this document (25 pages) please send an e-mail inquiry to:
info@Intervista-Institute.com
