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 Vendor Strategy Professionals

Market Overview: Workload Automation, Q3 2009

Is BSM The Future Of Workload Automation?

by Jean-Pierre Garbani, November 9, 2009

Job scheduling is a necessary component of data centers. Without job scheduling, an enterprise could simply not execute long application processes that deal with massive amounts of data and are necessary to prepare for online and transactional processing. . . .

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 Vendor Strategy Professionals

Market Momentum: IT Management Software Market, H1 2009

Vendors Are Missing The Cloud And Virtualization Waves

by Peter O'Neill, November 5, 2009

Forrester's market momentum overview assists vendor strategy professionals in tracking the evolution of the IT management software (ITMS) market and in gathering intelligence about the major activities. In the first half of 2009, we tracked 165 different . . .

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

Q&A: IT Asset Disposition

What Infrastructure And Operations Professionals Should Know When Disposing End-Of-Life IT Assets

by Doug Washburn, Onica King, October 30, 2009

While all organizations dispose of IT equipment in some way, IT asset disposition (ITAD) has long been an afterthought. But recent changes — from increasing data security and environmental regulations to firms seeking opportunities to reduce costs and . . .

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

The Shifting Sands Of IT Compel A New Landscape For IT Automation Tools

by Glenn O'Donnell, October 16, 2009

Automation is critical to the efficient and consistent execution of nearly all businesses. Ironically, while IT is the organizational entity responsible for automating business execution, it remains woefully manual in its own internal execution. To attack . . .

For Vendor Strategy Professionals

Tech Horizons: OpTier, A Step Toward Business Service Management (BSM) 2.0

Is Business Transaction Management The New BSM?

by Jean-Pierre Garbani, October 5, 2009

BSM is firmly established now as a way to manage IT as a business tool rather than as a collection of fragile technologies. In this transformation of IT into a service provider, technology is only one element of the equation and is no longer the only . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

UK Firms Continue To Look To Green IT For Cost Reduction And Business Benefits

Findings From The UK Green IT 2009 Conference, May 2009

by Onica King, Doug Washburn, October 2, 2009

Findings from Forrester's second joint survey collaboration with Tech:Touchstone Events, organizer of the Green IT 2009 Conference in London, uncovered that after a year of economic turmoil, financial drivers and efficiency gains are still the core motivation . . .

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 Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Role Overview: IT Asset Life-Cycle Manager

Reporting To Both IT And Business

by Evelyn Hubbert, September 25, 2009

The effective and efficient implementation of an IT asset life-cycle management (ITALM) program requires an approach that is disciplined enough to enable the entire organization to maximize the value of its IT assets over the entire asset life cycle. . . .

For Vendor Strategy Professionals

The Tier One Middleware Vendors

A SWOT Analysis Of The Leading Business Process Platform Vendors: IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, And SAP

by Stefan Ried, Ph.D., September 4, 2009

The four largest traditional software vendors — IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP — compete around business process platform software. This broader software segment covers all the components that independent software vendors (ISVs) need to create a packaged . . .

For Vendor Strategy Professionals

Key Takeaways For IT Asset Life-Cycle Management

The Recent Forrester Wave™ Separates IT Asset Life-Cycle Management Vendors In A Cloud From The Rest

by Peter O'Neill, August 19, 2009

We published a Forrester Wave™ on IT asset life-cycle management (ITALM) in April 2009. It has generated a lot of interest in the topic among users and some interest among vendors. Users are downloading the Wave tool and adjusting the criteria weightings . . .

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 Vendor Strategy Professionals

Analysis Of IT Management Software Sales Deals

The Megavendors Are Missing Out On Smaller Deals

by Peter O'Neill, Thomas Mendel, Ph.D., August 3, 2009

IT management software (ITMS) is one of the most dynamic and complex IT markets, with more than 300 vendors competing for market share. Vendor strategists are increasingly looking for greater insights into the dynamics behind pure revenue by category, . . .

For Vendor Strategy Professionals

The IT Automation Imperative

Putting IT On The Road To Industrial Mass Production

by Jean-Pierre Garbani, July 30, 2009

Cost reduction is the universal 2009 battle cry. With 35% of a typical IT budget spent on personnel, staffing represents the heaviest IT financial burden. The way in which IT evolves in complexity and size, combined with the current inefficiency of many . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Market Overview: Client Management Suites

Evolving Computing Market Shifts Focus To Security And Virtualization

by Natalie Lambert, July 29, 2009

Desktop operations managers are watching their computing environment change. There are now more types of devices and more varieties of operating systems entering the enterprise than ever before. This is leading to an architectural shift, one that moves . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

IT Operations 2009: An Automation Odyssey

Prepare For The IT Automation Inflection Now

by Glenn O'Donnell, July 24, 2009

A combination of forces, including skyrocketing complexity and severe economic pressure, are radically and irreversibly altering the IT landscape. New methods, new functional sourcing, and new organizational structures are needed to address this onslaught, . . .