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Agile is the ticket to the game

Attaining service velocity in the application economy is the name of the game


Johannesburg, 22 Feb 2016

The forthcoming CA IT Management Symposium, taking place on the 25th February at Vodaworld, Johannesburg,* will reveal how Agile has become incredibly relevant for the IT Service Management industry.

CA Southern Africa's business development manager, Heidi Ziegelmeier, says in the past IT service management was ring-fenced to manage only the services that supported IT. "In those days IT made the decisions as to what could be provided and business had to operate within that scope," says Ziegelmeier.

"Business was aware that IT had struggled for years to provide what was needed and make it stable. Frequent calls to the helpdesk were the order of the day. While over the past five years IT has moved closer to rectifying these problems with today's systems and infrastructure, provided by IT, looking more like a well-oiled machine. But this can be a mere illusion perceived only by outsiders looking in at the processes - the picture can be somewhat different for those on the inside."

Ziegelmeier adds that the sad truth is that behind this facade can be a labyrinth that is often comprised of many systems patched together with code and infrastructure running on a wing and a prayer.

"The user experience and interfaces can appear to look solid and efficient but making them work demands a huge investment of time and resources from IT. Although processes and tools help to have an appropriate IT Service Management System in place - it is the people who design, build, run and continually improve IT Services who make it work, or not.

She says today there are tools capable of not just monitoring business services operations but also of making them more visible. "If correctly configured, these tools can identify failure points - sometimes even before the failure occurs - and also quantify the impact on a system or user. Application performance management and customer experience manager are good examples of this.

"The lofty ideal of business/IT alignment begins to become a reality when IT management service delivery (ITSM) enters the arena. The goal is to transform the IT department from managing technology to delivering innovation whilst concurrently optimising mainstream ITSM. The latter brings business into an era where IT becomes part of the business team and collaborates on achieving common goals." Ziegelmeier says the ITSM track in the Symposium will explore these issues in depth.

*Link to the event: http://www.itweb.co.za/event/ca/it-management-symposium-2016/

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CA Southern Africa

CA Southern Africa is the leading provider of IT management and security solutions in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Through the use of technology it assists its customers to transform and seize the opportunities of the application economy. Software is at the heart of every business in every industry in the application economy. CA Southern Africa are IT management experts working with customers across Sub-Saharan Africa to change the way we live, transact, communicate, across: mobile; private and public cloud; distributed and mainframe environments.

For further information log on to: www.ca.com/za

Editorial contacts

Deirdre Blain
Blain Communications
(+27) 83 230 5522
blain@iafrica.com
Joanne Cawrse
CA Southern Africa
(+27) 11 417 8645
joanne.cawrse@caafrica.co.za