Time and relevance matter in this agile world!
Published:
September 29 2011, 09:36 PM
by
Robert Stroud
Sitting in the hotel on Monday evening I was on a conference call and suddenly the wireless network would not connect. Embarrassingly, on a conference call with my peers I could not collaborate and I realized at that moment that I “expect” connectivity anywhere, anyplace and anytime. 
This is not only true of wireless access, but also of access to IT enabled business services such as Internet Banking, booking a flight or even ordering and viewing the football on Sunday (I’m not American, so no helmets :-)). After calling hotel reception and eventually getting through to the service provider, I was told that the access required a technician onsite and that it would be several days before it could be scheduled and as access when I am remote is critical I left the hotel and checked into another, lost revenue for the hotel. Internet in the hotel reminds me of the complex IT supply chains that we now have to support. This mandates that we are to communicate, collaborate and resolve service outages in real or near real time and more importantly effectively communicate with the community. It’s especially important that we ensure we communicate the correct things to the correct people at the correct time. Speaking recently to a contact at a large manufacturing organization, he mentioned that he has outsourced the decision making for additional capability to the business. Using its monitoring capability, it identifies when capacity thresholds are being approached and escalates to the business manager who can approve or decline the request in real time on her mobile device and all the interactions are logged for audit purposes. This leads to an automated capacity increase process when approved. As the power is with the business they make the decisions and feel empowered and the consumption of technology to deliver business value can be justified at the monthly cost review.
This is one of the anecdotes that I will reference in my session at the “2011 Relevance Revolution” event in Chicago October 6 and 7. In my session “IT Service Management in the Cloud,” I will be talking about the trends in the industry including virtualization, cloud, BYOT, big data and the changing IT organizational structures, the changing role for service management and tips and techniques in this rapidly evolving world. For more information on the xMatters 2011 Relevance Revolution event, check the xMatters website.
Connect Four image used under Creative Commons License courtesy of amateria70.
By: Robert Stroud
Robert Stroud serves as VP and as Service Management, Cloud Computing and Governance Evangelist at CA Technologies. Robert also serves as an International vice president of ISACA, is part of the Framework committee and was the former chair of the COBIT Steering Committee. Robert also serves on the itSMF...
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