Business priorities must drive IT processes

The only way to ensure that the speed of change does not outpace the ability of information technology (IT) infrastructures to deliver new applications and modify processes is by aligning IT with business priorities.

This is the view of Peter Armstrong, corporate strategist of BMC Software. Speaking at the BMC SA Forum in Johannesburg last week (26 October), Armstrong said research shows that two-thirds of executives are dissatisfied with their companies' ability to change.

"The single biggest cause of chaos in the heart of the IT organisation is change. If you can't control change, the result will be chaos."

BMC is the eighth largest global independent software company, with 15 000 customers in 116 countries. The Forum attracted more than 300 delegates - 15% up on the previous year, and seven business partners participated in the event.

Jorge Dinar'es, vice-president of worldwide growth and emerging markets, said BMC Software was the first company to develop enterprise management solutions at a corporate level. "With our business service management (BSM) strategy, BMC Software is the only company that can deliver on its promise of closing the gap between IT and the business."

There is growing pressure on IT managers to be flexible in doing their jobs so as to meet the challenges of rapid change, according to Arjen Wiersma, country manager of BMC Software. "BSM provides a unified, integrated approach for managing IT assets, processes and functions on an enterprise-wide basis.

"Human resources can amount to as much as 80% of total IT spend, and the biggest savings opportunity is the automation of IT processes in support of the business."

According to Armstrong, business priorities must drive information technology, but too often it's the other way around. "The starting point of BSM lies in determining the needs of the business and deciding what service level agreements you need in place.

"From there you move to asset management. Next is the creation of an intelligent data repository - or configuration management database - that provides a working model of the enterprise IT infrastructure.

"If a problem occurs, its solution should be driven from the point of view of business priorities and its impact on business services."

The most critical part of incident management is problem management at the service desk. Proactive problem management means identifying a problem before it is reported, and identifying the root cause, so as to stop problems recurring again and again.

"The root cause of most problems is change," said Armstrong. "Casual change control is disastrous. Anyone who still belongs to the 'reboot control/alt/delete' school of IT, should not be in the business. Controlled change management and software configuraton is vital.

"New business needs will change service requirements, and IT capacity management and provisioning should be driven by business reasons, not simply by what is technically possible."

"Finally, you need to make sure that strategic business information is secure and that you have identity management and access controls in place."

However, cautions Armstrong, an organisation can align IT and the business and still have chaos. Conversely, it can implement global standards such as the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), and still have no business perspective. "So you have to do both: align IT and the business based on the implementation of ITIL and other standards.

"So as to comply with regulatory frameworks such as Sarbanes-Oxley, Basel II and - in South Africa - PASA and Cobalt and King II, companies have to run their IT infrastructure in an effective and transparent way, and ITIL standards provide a methodology for doing this.

"However, conformance with ITIL standards on the technology side should not be regarded as an end in itself. It should lead to better business performance.

"Just because something can be done by IT doesn't mean it should be done by IT. Don't do it unless you can quantify the value to the business. Don't do it without a ROI justification. Any IT spend must either increase revenue or decrease cost. That's fundamental. Business and IT alignment can take place only in the context of conversations about why IT really matters to the business and why it should be managed in a different way."