- Infrastructure management is facing challenges in keeping up with user expectations of 24/7 availability as well as new technologies like virtualization.
- There is a growing need for sophisticated IT service management solutions to handle asset/change management, service level monitoring, root cause analysis, and reporting to both support processes and demonstrate business value.
- While systems management tools are developing rapidly to address these needs, effective implementation of the new solutions also requires advancement of support processes.
26. What degree of co-ordination exists within your IT management environment? Positively, we find that most IT departments report at least a co-ordinated approach to IT management, but this is hiding a multitude of sins
27. Do you try to maintain a clear view of how the various parts of your IT infrastructure relate to each other, e.g. which parts are dependent on which other parts? Few organisations have full capability here yet – half the challenge is in being able to articulate the need for it, the other half actually doing it.
28. How well do you think IT helps the business achieve its strategic and operational goals in the following areas? Contrary to some opinion, IT today does a pretty good job. That’s not to say it can’t do better, but in the main, things are ‘ok’ Figure 1
29. To what degree does your organisation define SLA’s at an IT component or infrastructure level, e.g. for servers, the network, etc? Having taken most of the last 5 to 10 years to become mainstream, most organisations now track IT performance at component level.
30. What issues and challenges does this ‘fragmentation’ cause you? Fragmentation causes multiple headaches, not only within the IT department on a day to day basis, but it also limits the effectiveness to which IT can demonstrate its value
31. Does the organisation measure and report on the following in business terms, i.e. in a way designed for business people to understand? The game has changed. At a time where incremental gains separate performers from also rans, the current set-up is not conducive to allow IT to make its full contribution
32. To what degree does your organisation define SLA’s at a business service level, e.g. end-to-end SLAs for the performance and availability of applications? The game has changed from monitoring at component level to reconciling their performance against elements that have a business impact.
33. Does your organisation recognise the concept of “services” in relation to the delivery of IT? Freeform Dynamics projects have measure a constant upwards shift in the volume of organisations which are taking a services approach to IT – Freeform sees this as a key mainstream market shift that shouldn’t be ignored.
34. How well does IT help the business meet the following goals? ( IT management fragmentation levels 1 to 4, sum of scores 3 and 4) We see ITs ability to assist the business increase in a stepwise fashion as the degree of fragmentation in the IT management environment is reduced.
Virtualisation = RealityFrom ‘data storage’ to ‘information management’There is a need to discover completely the data that is heldAdd meta data to “classify” data in terms of its information value and how it should be accessedTiered Service is happening – ILM to manage data in relation to its “business value” not just its agePerformance, Security, Accessibility, ComplianceAcross heterogeneous drive arrays and tape systemsArchive and Backup are both requiredAccess to information at all times, from all locations, from the entire history of the organisationAgain costs are becoming more visiblePower, People, Media, AccessArchive functionality will grow in importance, rapidly