"IT alignment" may be an over-used phrase, but it packs a punch when IT Operations gets an unexpected call from senior management, important customers or the help desk asking why a service is down or slow.
Industry research shows that majority of IT departments first find out about service problems when users call to complain. Most IT departments still operate in the "break-fix" mode, fixing problems after things break versus predicting when they will break and fixing them beforehand. As well, there's a lack of easy to use IT management tools that map IT assets to services and accurately analyze service impact.
The problem gets worse: IT departments commonly admit they spend more of their time (up to 66%) trying to manage problems and less time (as little as 34%) adding new value to their business. That's because productive work regularly grinds to a halt as support staff across all silos rush to troubleshoot the same problem.
Unfortunately, most are hunting down symptomatic alarms from a root cause in "somebody else's silo."
Ultimately, this is the result of the traditional, outmoded approach to IT management, an approach that focus on managing technology in silos, not services end-to-end.
To solve this dilemma, both enterprise and government IT executives are looking to transform their operations from traditional technology monitoring and management to delivering IT and business services and proactively managing service quality. Enterprises call this "aligning IT with the business," and the government agencies call this "aligning IT with the mission."
No matter, as IT belts are tightened and stakeholders demand more services, the traditional methods of managing in silos cannot satisfactorily protect the quality of services or satisfy service level agreements.
A New IT Mind-Set for an Increasingly SLA-Oriented World
Transforming IT from a technology-orientation to a service-orientation requires a new mind-set that emphasizes four key "service assurance" principals:
To explore how well they can achieve these goals, IT management needs to ask themselves several key questions about their operations staff:
How do we define and visualize services -- and know what infrastructure and application components comprise them?
- How do we ensure that staff always prioritizes work on components that support the most important services?
- Do we really understand service quality from the end users' perspective?
- How do how we understand if an alarm impacts quality or just puts it at risk?
- How do we weigh risks to service quality and focus staff on the greater risks?
- How long does it take to determine root cause of quality issues on average?
- Are we spending more time troubleshooting and managing problems versus adding value?
From Mind-Set to Action
Analysts at the 2008 Gartner, Inc. Infrastructure and Operations Symposium predicted that IT organizations will move toward a service delivery mind-set and that new IT jobs, such as Service Delivery Managers who represent the needs of specific users and stakeholders, will arise. In fact, new titles like Service Delivery Manager, Service Assurance Manager, Director of Services, are appearing across many industries and government agencies.
Whether or not your organization has yet created these new positions, you should be establishing a service assurance mind-set and game plan for transforming your organization from traditional technology monitoring and management to delivering services and managing their quality.