Evelyn Hubbert, an analyst with Forrester Research, believes he has seen the future of IT management. And it is Business Service Management (BSM).
“We only reach a state of maturity if we approach IT in a holistic way,” she said. “BSM (the concept of dynamically linking business-focused IT services to the underlying IT infrastructure) provides a holistic approach to the management of IT with regards to the business and its priorities.”
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Forrester numbers reveal that less than 20% of U.S. enterprises currently implement BSM. However, this is expected to surge to almost 50% within two years. The underlying driver is an effort to make IT processes effective and efficient.
Hubbert urges IT to harness this trend to become more involved in the decision-making process. But that means gaining a seat at the table of top executive.
“Competition is no longer a matter of technology but a matter of service availability and performance,” said Hubbert. “IT operations now must enable enterprise business functions, not just keep the lights on.”
The wrong way to proceed is to throw people at the problems of runaway technology growth. Yet that is exactly what is happening in many organizations. Forrester studies show a widening gap between the cost of IT salary/benefits and software/hardware.
“IT salaries have soared from $100 billion to almost $250 billion annually in North America,” said Hubbert. “Unfortunately, much of that increase is due to adding more people, not due to raises.”
The problem is compounded by growing complexity. This results in various challenges. Unanticipated infrastructure effects, for example, are being experienced due to consolidation initiatives and the addition of new applications. Further, unplanned infrastructure changes frequently result in downtime.
BSM and the Road Ahead
The road ahead, she said, is via BSM. Instead of isolated silos of information which is managed at a device level, she sees IT processes being aligned to the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) concept of the configuration management database (CMDB). The goal is to align IT products with processes in a rules-based framework and to automate many routine functions and support decision making.
Hubbert lays out a BSM maturity curve showing the way companies tend to evolve as they move toward a BSM design. Initially, they begin with IT asset management before implementing some basic ITIL functionality.
With this in place, they can then upgrade to service level management followed by auto-discovery and mapping, the addition of a CMDB to enable the deployment of all ITIL processes, and then end-to-end business process mapping.
By traversing this path, the company can finally institute true BSM and become an integrated IT environment in the fullest sense of the words. “All ITIL processes need to be implemented before BSM can be reached. The introduction of the CMDB is the catalyst for change.”
For those who would hesitate before moving forward on this path, Hubbert suggests they ask themselves four questions:
Hubbert believes that ITIL gives hope to those that struggle to answer those questions positively. It improves processes and eases the administrative burden by automating many functions. It’s surging popularity, she said, is a major step in the evolution of growing IT maturity.