ITSM upgrades a necessity in the digital age

As the world moves into a digital age, the old methods of IT service management (ITSM) are out of date and ineffective, according to UXC Consulting.

In order to remain successful in this technologically focused world, organisations must inspect their changing ITSM requirements, the company says.

Michael Billimoria, UXC Consulting innovation and market development director, says, "Organisations need to be flexible and adaptable to manage this change.

"Most companies have a number of IT and line-of-business staff who can help bridge the gap between technology and customers, and prepare their organisation for new approaches to ITSM, unfortunately many of them are currently underprepared.

According to UXC Consulting, there are five key areas organisations can focus on when transforming ITSM:

1. Service integration and management

The shift to multi-supplier integration has its benefits such as: reduced operational risks; costs shared with suppliers; freeing up internal IT to focus on key business; providing the right sourcing at the right time; and letting organisations scale up and down as required, says UXC.

However, it also has some serious challenges, particularly around getting suppliers to work well together so stakeholders see IT as one cohesive group, the company says.

Service Integration and Management (SIAM) lets organisations manage service providers consistently and efficiently.

It ensures that performance across a portfolio of multi-sourced services meets business needs, UXC says.

SIAM also opens the doors for new discussions within the organisation related to innovation, according to UXC.

2. User and customer experience

Organisations need to spend more time looking at customer experience than the processes that make things work.

Improving customer experience is critical to success and encouraging brand loyalty - technology is a key driver of customer experience, says UXC.

IT teams need to prove to the organisation that they can deliver a great customer experience internally, so that the business trusts them to take it externally.

Organisations should work out ways to become more flexible by starting some discussion with key business units and customers around pain points, according to the company.

3. Multi-modal delivery

Many organisations have one method of implementing new technology but using a mix of methods helps ensure better service delivery.

Balancing the speed of delivering technology for legacy equipment and new agile processes is key.

Continuous release delivery is not a pipe dream; it's happening in many organisations, UXC says.

UXC recommends businesses to break away from traditional service transition and consider how parts of the IT services can be deployed rapidly.

4. Cyber resilience

With all the best security controls already in place the probability of a company having a data breach is 22%, according to the Ponemon Institute Global Cost of Data Breach study.

This is leading organisations away from traditional cyber security to cyber resilience, which is the ability to take a holistic view to security including incorporating people factors, which are often neglected.

Information security management, aside from being a process in itself, is key for all ITSM processes, the company says.

5. Software-defined everything

With software-defined everything, the computing infrastructure is virtualised and delivered as a service.

In a software-defined everything environment, management and control of the networking, storage, and/or data center infrastructure is automated by intelligent software rather than by the hardware components of the infrastructure, says UXC.

The next step is Service Ecosystem-as-a-Service (SEaaS) where complete application environments including all their information can be implemented at the click of a button, the company says.

Organisations may already have the technology in place for this but may not have the architecture, processes, understanding of the requirements, change management tools, and cost analysis.

Despite strong hype about what can be delivered, not everything is immediately possible. Organisations need to come up with a feasible yet aggressive path to SEaaS, UXC says.

Billimoria says, "Organisations should be openly talking about these trends, looking at other industries and case studies, and consulting with partners to craft a plan to move forward.

"Those that don't embrace this new world of service management risk rapidly becoming uncompetitive.