Business Service Management: Early Birds Are Catching The Worm, But IT Still Doesn't Get It

Forrester surveyed 10 companies in 2006 as best-practice examples of business service management (BSM) projects after leading BSM software vendors identified these companies as pioneers in this respect. The survey reveals that the established Forrester definition of BSM is well accepted and that these companies are following it. They are each achieving early success, but they all know that there is still a long way to go to complete BSM in their organizations. ITIL best practices and autodiscovery and CMDB technologies are important prerequisites for BSM success. The firms also report that an IT organization requires a high level of maturity regarding process automation and service orientation. The greatest inhibitor named in the survey is the reluctance of IT staff to change their modus operandi to become more business-centric. When planning their BSM projects, IT infrastructure and operations professionals must allow extensive time and effort for communicating the reasons for BSM within the IT organization in order to guarantee success.