Corporate IT departments are failing to follow
ITIL-based standards and provide a service that supported business
aims, research has shown.
A survey of 147 IT directors and managers by IT service
management specialist Axios Systems found that improving IT service
delivery (43%) and aligning IT to the business (37%) were felt to
be the two most important challenges facing IT departments.
But when questioned about their actual roles, 38% of the IT
managers cited ensuring IT systems worked, while 30% said their
role was to react to IT incidents. Only 53% felt that IT
departments should proactively work with the business.
Axios said the discrepancy highlighted the need to deploy best
practice and follow ITIL-based standards to help IT become a
service to the business.
But the research showed that few departments had adopted
ITIL-based standards for IT service management. Only 25% of those
surveyed said they used an ITIL-based Configuration Management
Database (CMDB) to provide an accurate inventory of IT resources
and the relationships between them.
Less than a quarter of those surveyed were seeking to gain
accreditation for meeting the ISO/IEC 20000 IT service management
standard. More than four out of 10 said they had no plans to secure
the accreditation.
Axios chief executive Tasos Symeonides said IT departments must
“break the shackles of the past and find ways to ensure that they
are no longer simply the ‘IT help desk’ but a service to the
business”. Implementing IT service management was “the antidote”,
he added.
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