What is Driving the Need for ITSM Today?

Due to the IT portion of business budgets growing exponentially, it has become critical for business executives to get control over their IT spend and the value for their IT dollar.

To address this critical need a model must be put in place to enable business units to work with an IT service provider who makes available a range of standard IT service options that reflect business demand, have predictable outcomes, and can be purchased “by the drink”. And like any mature service in the marketplace, that cost per “drink” (referred to as unit cost) should be proportional to the level of service selected. This desired model must also provide a simple yet effective service selection process for matching the requirements of unique business requests to the standard service options which best deliver balance between cost, risk and quality.

I continually refer to this desired state as the “Service Provider Model (SPM)”. Businesses today need their IT suppliers to deliver the Service Provider Model. As business units recognize this need, they are then faced with the million dollar question: “Is the Service Provider Model available through our internal IT organization; or do we have to look to outsourcing; or is there some combination of the two?” The answer to this question is driving strategic direction for a rapidly growing number of IT organizations across the globe.

So what are the specific pain points within an IT organization that has not yet attained the SPM?

• Inability to "quantifiably" rationalize IT investment to business demand
• Poorly defined services or no defined services at all
• Lack of visibility into the true cost of IT services being delivered
• Inefficient process for aligning application requirements to the appropriate infrastructure solutions
• Lack of service performance monitoring and reporting
• Ineffective or non-existent IT service demand planning
• A lack of predictability for IT service delivery results
• Lack of mature policy and process pertaining to IT service delivery and support

In one of my next postings I will get into addressing these pain points. Before I do that I should probably put some scope around the broad topic of ITSM and the SPM.

Till next time...