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Enterprise Integration & IT Strategy Blog

IT Capacity - Do more with less

Ashu Bhatia, Director of Delivery  :  23 February 2010 / 4:22 PM  :  0

I was talking to an IT executive and he was chatting about how difficult it was to raise awareness within the business side of what IT capacity he has and how much his organization can really take on. He mentioned that despite some IT demand management processes, it was tough to set expectations. I guess these days IT Operations faces a number of opposing priorities:

• Increasing demands on IT staff to “fight fires” vs. provide value add services
• Addressing the increasing rate of change spawned by business needs
• Improving IT’s business value
• “Doing more with less”
• Measuring end-to-end quality of service

But the real essence comes down to 3 things:

• Do things Effectively - Business partner mindset i.e. do only the right things
• Do things Efficiently - Reduce cost; Lean and Agile
• Be Adaptable - Change Management for changing internal and external ecosystems

And moving to service-oriented operations can be accomplished in three phases that address immediate needs and lay the underpinnings for managing a dynamic and virtual environment.

Phase I – Industrialize Processes & Standardize Tools

• Address critical areas of operational instability. Implement formalized service management processes. Focus on establishing foundations for standardized tools for availability management and problem resolution, asset and configuration management.

Phase II – Business Alignment

• Develop service catalog to define IT services.  Migrate processes and tools toward services orientation (business process vs. technical component). Tool focus is on integration and shared operational data store to improve IT intelligence

Phase III – Convergence with Utility Computing

• Leverage automation of processes to reduce cost and improve efficiency. Focus is on provisioning and orchestration tools to automate dynamic recovery and availability management. 

Posted in Enterprise Integration & IT Strategy on 23 February 2010
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Tagged: Business Architecture   IT Planning  IT Strategy  IT to Business Alignment  IT Value  

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