IT As Just Yet Another Shared Service

The ability for IT organizations to deliver strategic business value to their organizations depends on the operational integration among the still "siloed" sections in IT, which are the development, administration, and operation groups. To drive the shared ownership and the long-awaited — and vendor-touted — IT and business alignment, the quality, speed, and effectiveness by which IT groups deliver, manage, and update services need to be aligned with the demands from the business. IBM continued its path of IT service management to one of service management, which is different than anything else currently out there. IBM's goal is to truly manage the IT service, with the focus on providing the company with a strategic advantage and using its supporting technology to do just that. Its integration efforts and acquisitions (e.g., MRO) focus on a new face of IT service management — much aligned with the ITIL V3 just recently introduced. IBM is also promoting the integration of IT and other enterprise shared services.