Foster-Melliar focuses on achieving 'invisible IT`

The ultimate aim of any IT service provider, whether internal or external, should be to create "invisible IT" yet an alarming 44% of IT departments surveyed in a recent BMC report say they are there "just to keep things ticking". It is a shocking indictment that almost 50% of IT department personnel do not believe their role is to optimise IT to deliver outstanding service.

This is the opinion of Conn Wood, Training Director at Foster-Melliar, a leading local provider and pioneer of ITIL and IT service management in SA driven towards optimising IT services within organisations.

Quoting from a recent Gartner study, Conn adds that IT management is in for a dramatic shake-up over the next three years because of new styles of organisations, new roles for IT services businesses and new challenges for CIOs.

"According to Gartner, IT leadership teams must change from a cost-containment orientation to revenue enhancement and growth. One of the key drivers of this shake-up is business pressure for consolidation and federalisation, which will increase IT technical and relationship complexity. Application integration and architecture are vital inside and outside the enterprise - this is in essence the drive for `invisible IT` to enhance bottom line business objectives," says Conn.

According to Conn, invisible IT is the attainment of seamless, effortless IT services that enable business processes - and this can only be achieved through excellent IT service management.

"Gartner predicts that businesses that understand how to generate real business advantage from fusing technology, business process design and business relationships will outperform those that do not by at least 15% per year," warns Conn.

"Currently most IT specialists do not understand how their IT infrastructure should be enabling and impacting on the broader business strategy because it intimidates them. They adopt tunnel-vision or a silo approach and concern themselves with only ensuring their side of the business is upheld, rather than adopting a solutions-based approach. The bottom line is that many IT people do not understand the greater business strategy and how IT can act as a powerful enabler - either by their own exclusion or by senior management`s failure to bring business strategy and IT together," he adds.

"Invisible IT can easily be related to electricity. As consumers we are not concerned with the many intricate processes involved when we switch on a light or appliance. But if the light fails to come on due to a power failure we are suddenly rudely reminded of how reliant we are on the electrification process for our very livelihood. The same goes for IT. It`s "invisible" power. The minute it doesn`t work it suddenly becomes very visible, sometimes with disastrous consequences," says Conn.

The key requirement for achieving `invisible IT` is excellent IT service management. IT service management is best defined and practised using the ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) framework. This framework provides context, structure and uniformity to end-to-end IT service provision from the IT customers and users, through to an IT department and out to a single or numerous third-party service providers. The ITIL best practice approach also underpins and supports the many quality, security and governance initiatives such as BS15000, COBIT, ISO and KING II that most organisations are striving to achieve or forced to take into account. The ITIL process forms the foundation layer within IT on which these initiatives are accomplished.

"Adopting an ITIL-based approach to IT service management requires a commitment from senior executives of the organisation as ITIL is planned from the top but implemented from the bottom. Adopting ITIL involves the whole of IT and needs to be entrenched as a lifestyle within the entire IT organisation, fully supporting the provision of superior 'invisible` IT services," says Conn.

As ITIL is a process-based framework, it is easy to have external consultants create process, which on paper looks wonderful, is well documented and nicely presented. "Unfortunately often this approach doesn`t work as ownership exits the organisation when the consultants leave - if it was as easy as this ITIL would have a set of templates that would be easily adaptable and usable. The problem with using templates is that they stifle thinking and creativity, and narrow the usage to what is contained in the template," adds Conn.

When striving to provide "invisible IT", Foster-Melliar believes it is fundamental to establish who the IT service process owners, managers and workers are by determining the RACI matrix: Who is:

* Responsible
* Accountable
* Consulted
* Informed on IT service delivery

"Considering that the adoption of ITIL must be established as a lifestyle - the IT organisation`s way of providing service - it`s vital to ensure the quality and effectiveness of IT service is owned and managed. It is common to find in the upper echelons of IT management a CTO (chief technology officer), a CSO (chief security officer) and a COO (chief operations officer).

"The focus of these roles is apparent in the names they have been assigned; however, our question is where is the SMO (service management officer)? To ensure the focus remains on "invisible IT" someone senior in the IT organisation must own and focus on this vision," he adds.

To put the process into context, Conn refers to the following example: "Mrs Smith is responsible for printing cheques. To achieve this she requires a number of items - cheques, a printer connected to a workstation, workstation software and probably a LAN, WAN connectivity to a financial program supplied by a third-party vendor and an information database housed on a host containing customer information. In the background she also needs to link into the financial systems, part of the ERP package to update cheque printed information that includes payee, cheque number and amount, date issued and reason for issue.

"At this point it seems easy to provide Mrs Smith with the business service she requires. However, we haven`t even started to define and identify who delivers what IT services. This starts to complicate the issue. Who and how is all this IT co-ordinated to ensure it all comes together at the correct time and place so that Mrs Smith can print her cheques. Do you have a service level agreement with Mrs Smith that identifies her requirements - printing times (Monday to Friday 08h30 to 16h00), printing volumes (400 cheques per day except for the two days preceding month-end and the day after where volume increases to 700 per day), do you know that as a rule she doesn`t work outside of normal business hours?

"At this stage you will also have reciprocal agreements in place with internal IT and other third-party IT suppliers (hardware, application and software) to ensure they are all aligned to meet Mrs Smith`s business service requirements. It may sound simple; however, If you want to provide "invisible IT" then you definitely need to know this right down to the finest detail.

"In addition to the above, we have co-ordinated all activities that support all of these activities and manage all changes to the IT and third-party environments. The processes must be in place to manage all IT change, software development, upgrades and new roll-outs so they don`t negatively impact on Mrs Smith`s ability to print cheques and impact the SLA that has been signed with her. Remember that our role is to provide a service that technically speaking has no meaning to Mrs Smith - remember the light switch?

"Each month a service level representative from the IT department gets together with Mrs Smith after gathering all the relevant service information and statistics, including those from internal or external third-party suppliers to discuss how they met or breached the SLA. If the SLA was breached how does IT intend for this not to happen again? At the same meeting they find out if Mrs Smith has any new or changing requirements - does she have a need to increase the number of cheques she is printing, is normal growth as she indicated earlier in the year still on track and so on. Mrs Smith is directly IT`s customer and indirectly a third-party vendor customer. Internal IT talks to her in business language to know what her requirements are, they show her how the SLA has been met over the past review period and get a handle on any new items she requires so IT can control and co-ordinate themselves and third-party providers to provide, develop and deliver IT systems and components without disrupting her existing business service - this is invisible IT!

"To Mrs Smith we make her IT 'invisible` - she doesn`t know it`s there and that there is this complicated intertwined, interrelated web of IT components (hardware, software, applications and support services supplied from various sources that together enable her to print cheques). All she knows is that it works and she can print her cheques on time."