IT Services and Systems Management

By Andrew Buss

KEY FINDINGS

The passive evolution of systems and tools has led to fragmented IT management

For many companies, IT has grown haphazardly, accumulating a patchwork of applications,
infrastructure and tools. The end result is that it takes a lot of time, money and resource to manage,
and change is difficult to implement. Many IT departments could realise significant improvements
and become more aligned to the business by judiciously investing in modern IT management tools
and implementing a more structured and integrated approach to IT systems management.

Implementing process is resource intensive with a lot of manual integration

Many IT departments have achieved good alignment with the business and have implemented
highly integrated IT systems management. However, this comes at a significant cost in resources,
particularly as companies increase in size. The number of IT management staff increases
dramatically as processes are tightened, requiring increased collaboration between staff. This
leaves the door open for efficiency improvements by increasing the level of automation.

Integrated tools are rated highly as they allow service quality to be managed

In many cases, IT systems management remains disjointed with many problems due to a lack of
integration between IT systems and associated management tools. Traditionally, product
enhancement has been to continually add new features, but this approach is not the preferred way
for IT systems management. Instead, improving the interoperability and openness of tools through
increasing the integration and ability to interact effectively is the way to go. Doing so has a big
impact on the ability to control the quality of IT service delivery to the business.

Best practice frameworks should be used to the extent they can solve real issues

ITIL® and other best practice frameworks are very broad. For many, investing in full adoption of the
framework will be a step too far. Instead, using it as a loose guide and implementing what makes
business sense can kick start the implementation of policy and process without becoming a burden
on the business.

More controlled IT organisations prefer to focus on a single IT management suite

Until recently, IT systems management ‘suites’ were in fact cobbled-together sets of distinct
applications brought together by acquisition. Times have changed and we have seen more tightlyintegrated
single suite solutions. Controlled environments tend to use a main suite and augment it
with best of breed tools to match their process needs. Such organisations see investment in IT
management tools not as a one-off, but rather as an ongoing, rolling investment programme.