The IBM IT Service Management Roadshow

For CIOs, today's foremost issue is how to demonstrate that IT is functioning as effectively as the other lines of business within their company. These hard-pressed CIOs, however, have little time for theory and an immediate need for an actionable plan to begin implementing IT Service Management (ITSM). To meet that need, the IBM IT Service Management Roadshow will be laying out a roadmap to a practical ITSM transition in over 50 cities worldwide between May and September 20th. At each event, IT practitioners are led through four critical business scenarios and learn to:

• Maintain application service levels;
• Dynamically manage IT change;
• Ensure quality production application rollouts; and
• Address compliance requirements.

IT credibility is the cornerstone on which every IT initiative, from operational cost cutting to strategic line-of-business development, will rise or fall. Unfortunately, IT credibility remains shrouded by the age-old problem that many business managers see IT only as a cost-generating black box The seriousness of this problem hit home in a 2001 Gartner Research Note, "Key Competencies for Service-Based IS Organizations," which warned that IT departments were gradually "losing their franchise to deliver IT solutions" to a variety of specialized consulting and outsourcing firms.

The lack of IT understanding among line-of-business managers is made even more critical today by misconceptions of simplicity fostered by the desktop PC as a sole frame of reference. The complexity of the infrastructure required to scale out applications over multiple servers not only augments IT spending, but significantly contributes to the inability to identify and resolve the root causes of IT problems. How does a CIO deliver improved levels of service when an end-to-end transaction may follow a different path each time it is executed?

That puts IT under a very unflattering corporate spotlight. In primary research on IT as a service provider, 85% of corporate IT problems were associated with changes in the existing environment caused by IT itself. Worse yet, 80% of all problems are discovered by end users. As a result, the general consensus among end users is that they are the IT "test team."

Further complicating IT organizational issues is the growing trend to fund IT capital growth out of savings garnered by making IT operations more efficient and cutting costs. The modest 3% growth in overall IT budgets projected for this year by the global IT practice of McKinsey & Company, Inc. may appear to be a light at the end of the tunnel, but there is a much darker side. Further reductions in IT operating costs from process improvements will be needed to mask capital expenditures, which are expected to increase by 13%. That leaves today's CIO with the mandate to do more with less; cut costs, while at the same time drive new capabilities for mission-critical applications such as ERP.

To succeed at this task, James M. Kaplan, Markus Löffler, and Roger P. Roberts posited in the article "Managing next-generation IT Infrastructure" for The McKinsey Quarterly, February 2005, that IT cost transparency would be a critical success factor in managing the next-generation of infrastructure. Their premise is based on the notion that cost transparency will provide the business with three things:

1. A catalog of IT products that specifies features, prices, and service levels;
2. Bills showing corporate IT infrastructure assets that are consumed by these products and the cost of that consumption; and
3. Management reports that roll up total costs by product type and business.

The immediate goal of such a program is to allow line-of-business executives to understand how user demand for IT drives costs through the consumption of corporate assets. This information enables more accurate forecasting of future needs by each line-of-business unit and more thoughtful choices.

Conversely, greater cost transparency helps IT improve asset management and asset tracking in order to meet user demand. Armed with this information, IT is better able to identify both the overall and the unit costs that are out of line with market benchmarks. Authors Kaplan, Löffler, and Roberts conclude that this combination of demand-side management and supply-side cost control can deliver corporations an annual savings of 5-10% on their IT budget. What's more, they maintain that once managers understand what they are paying for, their focus shifts toward high-value projects that deliver real business value.

The end goal for IT is clear: it must be transformed from an opaque, reactive, technology provider into a transparent, strategic, service provider. Even more remarkable, the launch pad for transforming IT from a technology manager to a business enabler through a governance process dubbed "IT Service Management (ITSM)" is equally well understood and agreed upon: the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL).

ITIL is considered the most comprehensive and respected source of information about IT processes needed to implement IT Service Management (ITSM). Its genesis was a project that the government of the United Kingdom assigned to the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA) to develop innovative ways to improve IT service efficiency. A team of consultants, vendors, and users documented a set of best practices using a common glossary of terms, which were recently updated and repackaged as seven books, and which have been utilized by successful companies and governments worldwide. In addition, consulting and educational firms around the world now offer ITIL training and certification programs for IT professionals.

While theory is important, the IBM IT Service Management Roadshow focuses very specifically on how to break down the barriers between customer service, networking, and server management in order to create the optimal intersection of people, process, information, and technology. For CIOs, this means practical information on how to automate and integrate IT processes aligned to their business at a pace that they can control . The focus is on how to take what you have today, how to integrate it, and then how to fill any gaps that may exist.

To learn how to run your IT organization as a business, focus the critical areas of people, process, information, and technology, and bring them together to drive IT to the next level of infrastructure, register now to attend an upcoming Roadshow.