Information technology infrastructure library (ITIL), a set of detailed practices for IT service management (ITSM) that focuses on aligning IT services with the needs of business, is now deeply entrenched in the South African market.
That's according to Hannes Botes, chief technology officer at MANXiT, a Johannesburg-based provider of ITSM solutions.
The company recently kicked off its Re-Imagine IT campaign, which it says aims to help companies focus on their core operations - growth and upping their service game - as opposed to worrying about internal IT.
"As far as ITSM is concerned, SA is a mature market; as mature as any across the globe," says Botes. "ITIL is an entrenched concept and well-supported for decades and as such we are not behind the rest of the world in this discipline. We even have local specialists who contribute to international standards associations with thought leadership and experience."
Botes points out that the application economy has changed lives and the business landscape forever.
He notes that traditional business channels are being usurped by online and mobile. Applications are the face of business and today's customer does not give second chances, he says.
One of the biggest growing ITSM trends in SA is that companies want to invest more time and energy on strategic projects to grow their market share and revenue, rather than spending time and resources on IT that is not part of their core business, Botes says.
"For example by outsourcing things like ITSM and infrastructure management to companies who specialise in this, and can do it better than anyone else can."
IT services company BCX, which recently achieved the ISO 20000-1 ITSM certification, says that in SA, a major challenge is the lack of highly skilled resources.
"When the business requires the maturity around ITSM to increase, skilled resources are key as well tools to enable the processes to mature. Compatibility across platforms is also an issue. ITSM tools have come a long way but each tool still operates in its own silo," says Jashwin Maharaj, managing executive of ITSM at BCX.
According to Maharaj, the current ITSM trends dominating the South African market are growth in the Internet of things and artificial intelligence.
"Both these technologies are becoming a part of day-to-day life in the businesses and industries that we work with. Automation and bots are being used more and more."
He adds that cloud computing has had a fundamental impact on internal ITSM divisions within companies.
"With cloud computing the customer consumes a service and the IT service management function is driven via the cloud service provider to enable contracted SLA [service level agreement]. This is a very different model compared to running IT in-house via internal ITSM."
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