For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Driving Multitenancy In Your Virtual Environments

How To Get Business Units To Share Your Consolidated Infrastructure

by James Staten, November 18, 2009

As you continue to consolidate your server infrastructure and make it more cloudlike, a key hurdle you and most enterprises must overcome is the sharing of physical infrastructure between business units (BUs). While some organizations have a centralized . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

The Low-Hanging Fruit That Service Operations Teams Should Consider Now

by Evelyn Hubbert, November 13, 2009

Some IT organizations are confident that they can weather the storm of our current economic situation. Others believe they can maintain their current staffing level, and some are saying that they can maintain their current IT technology investment levels. . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Role Overview: Service Catalog Manager

by Evelyn Hubbert, November 6, 2009

Most IT organizations "get" the service management concept and many have implemented and improved their processes, and the interrelationships of these processes, to support and service the business. Many companies have implemented elements of ITIL as . . .

For CIOs

Catalog Of Technical Services  (66 KB XLS)

by Alexander Peters, Ph.D., Wolfgang Benkel, November 6, 2009

The workbook defines 10 generic profiles of technical services and associates provisioning processes and activities with each of them. The activity-based descriptions enable IT executives to establish the link between technology assets, resources, and . . .

For CIOs

A Catalog Of Technical Services Improves The Manageability Of The BT Service Portfolio

by Alexander Peters, Ph.D., November 6, 2009

Business technology (BT) changes IT's roles within the enterprise, forcing IT leaders to deploy business service processes and technology demand management. CIOs are embarking on the IT-to-BT journey by concentrating their efforts on the consolidation . . .

For CIOs

CIOs: Business Alignment And BT Enablement Require Business Capability Maps

At Your Level, You Can't Rely On Any Other Single IT Business Model

by Bobby Cameron, October 30, 2009

CIOs are aggressively tackling their planning and management challenges, deploying tools and building models to address a wide variety of functions like asset management, IT services management, application rationalization, business process efficiencies, . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Service Catalog — Your Prerequisite For Effective IT Service Management

Yes, They Can Help Connect You With The Business

by Evelyn Hubbert, Glenn O'Donnell, October 28, 2009

The vision and purpose of effective IT service management is to efficiently develop, operate, and deliver services with value and alignment to the business. To do this, IT must transform itself from an organization with many silos of technical and functional . . .

For Vendor Strategy Professionals

The IT Management Software Challengers

SWOT Analysis For ASG, Compuware, EMC, Quest Software, And Microsoft, Q3 2009

by Jean-Pierre Garbani, October 26, 2009

The 2009 IT management software (ITMS) market seems to favor smaller vendors to the detriment of larger ones. Preliminary results for the first three quarters of 2009 show that the megavendors' share of the ITMS market has again declined from 2008. This . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Service Catalog Manager — Job Profile And Description  (33 KB XLS)

by Glenn O'Donnell, Evelyn Hubbert, October 16, 2009

The service catalog manager plans, implements, configures, and maintains the catalog of available IT services.

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

A Sample IT Infrastructure And Operations Balanced Scorecard  (41 KB XLS)

by Rachel A. Dines, Evelyn Hubbert, October 1, 2009

The Balanced Scorecard is built around four dimensions that have been adjusted for use in information technology: the value perspective, the user orientation perspective, the operational excellence perspective, and the future orientation perspective. . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Building The IT Infrastructure And Operations Balanced Scorecard

The Eight Essential Metrics That Infrastructure And Operations Should Be Measuring

by Rachel A. Dines, Evelyn Hubbert, October 1, 2009

"You can't manage what you can't measure" is the stated adage, but when it comes to infrastructure and operations (I&O), what to measure is the first challenge. Many firms don't know which metrics to use, or how to collect the information they need . . .

For Vendor Strategy Professionals

The IT Management Software Megavendors

SWOT Analysis For BMC Software, CA, HP Software, And IBM Tivoli, Q3 2009

by Jean-Pierre Garbani, Peter O'Neill, August 12, 2009

The current recession and credit crunch deeply affected IT spending in the last quarter of 2008 and into 2009. Despite this bleak overall picture, Forrester forecasts 4% growth in nonapplication software products (e.g., storage management, middleware), . . .

For CIOs

Market The BT Service Portfolio To Fuel Innovation And Utility

by Alexander Peters, Ph.D., July 24, 2009

As businesses become infused with technology, CIOs are expected to provide portfolios of business technology (BT) services, which sustain the competitive advantage of their firms. To improve IT's responsiveness to this increasingly complex and dynamic . . .

For Enterprise Architecture Professionals

Next-Generation IT Requires Next-Generation EA

EA Makes The New Core Processes Of IT Work

by Alex Cullen, Gene Leganza, Jeff Scott, Jost Hoppermann, June 30, 2009

What business wants from IT is changing, and that means IT has to change how it manages itself and the IT-business relationship. Building on current project delivery and operational management competencies, CIOs are adding new core management processes: . . .

For Vendor Strategy Professionals

Inquiry Insight: IT Management Software

Sustained Activity In Spite Of The Economic Downturn

by Jean-Pierre Garbani, May 13, 2009

Forrester analyzed the IT management software (ITMS) inquiries received from vendors and end users in 2007 and 2008. Inquiries are a good indicator of the tactical issues faced by Forrester's clients and of the activity surrounding a given subject matter. . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Knocking The NOC: Enter The New Operations Center

by Glenn O'Donnell, April 30, 2009

The operational hub of any well-run and complex organization is a strong operations center. In IT, this function is often fragmented into pockets that tend to be too isolated. Such isolation is a principal cause of much of the chaos that characterizes . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Service Manager — Job Profile And Description  (28 KB XLS)

by Galen Schreck, April 1, 2009

Position overview: The service manager provides IT's face to the business, ensuring that customers receive value from IT.

For Sourcing & Vendor Management Professionals

TechRadar™ For Sourcing & Vendor Management Professionals: Software-As-A-Service

CRM And Collaboration Are Growing, And Many New Categories Are On The Horizon, Q1 2009

by Liz Herbert, March 12, 2009

As software-as-a-service (SaaS) becomes increasingly important to firms' application strategies, sourcing and vendor management professionals are taking ownership of the research, purchasing, negotiations, and ongoing vendor relationships for these solutions. . . .

For Vendor Strategy Professionals

Market Overview 2008: Automated Testing Software

by Jean-Pierre Garbani, November 7, 2008

Conventional wisdom says that the goal of testing is to find bugs in software, and that this should be achieved by running known usage cases that yield expected results. This opens the door to automation and automated testing solutions. New applications, . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Why IT Service Management Should Matter To You

Stop Running IT For The Geeks And Start Running IT For The Bill Payers

by Evelyn Hubbert, September 16, 2008

IT service management (ITSM) has made its way onto the agendas of both global businesses and large and medium enterprises. Yet there are many companies that don't fully understand what service management involves and what it can deliver to your entire . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Role Overview: Service Manager

Delivering Value To Your Business By Facilitating Outcomes And Managing The Service

by Evelyn Hubbert, September 3, 2008

Service management promises to reorganize IT to provide better value to their business customers, but only if that service is designed, transitioned, and delivered in such a way that the service consumer is satisfied. Several key ingredients such as the . . .

For CIOs

What Are The Hot Roles In IT?

by Marc Cecere, August 14, 2008

Near-term demand for hot roles in IT will be driven by the need for local and cross-discipline knowledge, changes in technology, greater emphasis on managing risk and the enterprise, and a limited supply of key roles. For example, business architects . . .

For CIOs

BT-As-A-Service Accelerates IT's BT Transformation

CIOs Should Exploit ITIL V3 And ITaaS To Change An Obsolete IT Delivery Model

by Alexander Peters, Ph.D., July 30, 2008

A new business-technology-as-a-service (BTaaS) model enables IT to get more involved with business innovation and less with pushing the IT machinery through the Sisyphean develop-to-operate technology cycles. BTaaS establishes a strategic framework for . . .

For Vendor Strategy Professionals

Tech Horizons: The IT Management Software Market In 2013

It's Not Business As Usual Anymore; A Paradigm Shift Is Coming

by Jean-Pierre Garbani, Thomas Mendel, Ph.D., May 2, 2008

Predicting the future is a perpetual human quest. Fortunately, market forecasts do not require the sacrifice of chickens or the messy reading of coffee grounds: They are based on simple and logical extrapolations of what we know today. Pending a revolution . . .

For CIOs

IT Governance For The New Ecosystem

Adapting To A Multisource Provider Model

by Craig Symons, April 23, 2008

Today's IT organization often finds itself to be an IT service provider in a competitive environment. Consumers of IT services, which now include both internal and external customers, have a growing range of options beyond the organization's internal . . .