IDC conducted and published (September 2008) a survey about IT service management needs and adoption trends.
The purpose of the survey was to identify issues confronting IT departments that are adopting service models and to better understand the status and priorities of key functions and processes that underlie successful implementation of IT service management.
IT organizations are moving from traditional, stove piped technology-centric orientations to becoming service providers to the business. Typically, transforming IT to a service model requires significant changes in organization and changes in the supporting infrastructure – people, processes and technology – to better align with business needs and respond quickly to required changes in service. IDC found IT executives and managers are working through a variety of service initiatives.
Top Three Reported Challenges
How do your challenges compare to others surveyed in the Americas?
1. Lack of alignment to the business received a 26% response.
2. Limited visibility into service performance received a 24% response.
3. Service delivery issues received an 18.8% response.
Transition from Reactive to Proactive
With virtual infrastructures becoming prevalent in production environments and often supporting critical business services, the second phase of virtualization is here. In Virtualization 2.0, it's all about manageability.
The shifting emphasis to business service management rather than just virtual machine management means that it is no longer sufficient to simply monitor the uptime or resource usage of virtual machines and servers and believe that the entire IT infrastructure is working well.
With the arrival of Virtualization 2.0, administrators have a choice of virtualization technologies, and the much-researched hypervisor is now almost a commodity. Faced with shrinking budgets, administrators are looking for ways to achieve the maximum with limited hardware and software resources through optimal resource allocation techniques, and to plan proactively for future demands. Over provisioning of virtual infrastructures is therefore a thing of the past.
Conclusion
The IDC survey points to the most common challenges reported and Virtualization 2.0 identifies fundamental changes that are needed in terms of how virtualized environments can be monitored most effectively and efficiently. If you seek a better return on investment for virtualization technologies, plan to deploy more complex applications inside virtual environments and/or would like to reduce finger pointing, we should discuss plans to overcome your challenges. To begin a dialogue regarding your needs, EMAIL us or complete the RFI form with your request.
About Assurance Group
Assurance Group, Inc. is a business and information technology consulting firm that improves an organization's ability to achieve its objectives and function more efficiently and more profitably through the better use of technology and processes.
About eG Innovations
eG Innovations, Inc. is a global provider of performance monitoring and triage solutions for both virtual and physical IT infrastructures. The company's patented technologies provide proactive monitoring of every layer of every tier in the infrastructure, thereby enabling rapid diagnosis and recovery in enterprise and service provider networks. By ensuring high availability and optimum performance of mission-critical business services, eG Innovations' solutions help enhance customers' competitive positioning, lower operational costs and optimize the performance of their infrastructures. The company has customers in 14 countries, including organizations of all sizes in government, banking/finance, telecom, healthcare, manufacturing and service industries.