IT service management: too important to leave to the IT department alone?

IT service management must become more focused on business needs if it is to facilitate the necessary combination of speed-to market, flexibility, control and improved efficiency required for enterprises to compete effectively in the marketplace.

The rising importance of IT in virtually every aspect of business has engendered a matching rise in the cost and complexity of the IT infrastructure. This has both made IT an easy target for cost cutting exercises and put pressure on times-to-market for new services delivered to the business.

The business function expects IT to tighten its belt and to streamline IT service provision, for improved responsiveness to changing business requirements. Simultaneously, the expectation is for higher resilience, control, availability and quality of service. The challenge for the IT organisation is to balance these potentially conflicting demands: high speed-to-market and flexibility versus auditable control and low costs.

Now that IT plays such an important role in the overall success or failure of any organisation, the business rightly expects the IT department to broaden its focus and to take a more mature and holistic attitude to IT service provision.

Read this white paper to see why the IT function needs to step out of the shadows and start taking responsibility for understanding and meeting the business requirements.