Because business success is tightly fused with technology, IT costs are rising, and this trend is expected to continue. As a result, businesses are demanding that IT be more than a static resource. IT is expected to deliver business results with a measurable contribution to the organization's bottom line. These expectations are driving a new performance management paradigm as traditional methods of managing technology performance cannot ensure maximized business use, let alone drive business results.
IT2020: The New Performance
Management Paradigm
a white paper
b y P a t r i c i a K e l l y , A S GIT2020: The New Performance Management Paradigm
management teams are being challenged to demonstrate industry thought-leaders their contributions to the bottom line, customer and end-user benefits, and revenue. This amounts to a new paradigm: IT2020."Over the next five years, business will become so deeply embodied in technology, and the technology so To successfully move to IT2020, organizations must embrace deeply embedded in the business, that IT will need to the BT concept in support of business service management (BSM). BSM dynamically links business-focused IT services to 1be managed quite differently." the underlying IT infrastructure, creating a singular BSM model. A business-focused IT service can be quite simple, or highly complex, but either way, it must support significant business Executive Summary metrics and be visible to stakeholders outside of IT. Because effective IT performance management is crucial to the success How is business? This question is quickly becoming the of business service initiatives, it must be BSM-based.only relevant metric for IT performance. IT performance Performance Management Todaymanagement used to be the exclusive domain of system administrators who focused solely on IT stability, with more informationlittle or no understanding of business impact. Now, with multi-dimensional business models, on-demand Traditional methods of managing technology business services for both internal and external performance cannot ensure maximized business use, customers, and with the pervasive use of complex Web- let alone drive business results.enabled applications, businesses are realizing that the performance and availability of their technologies are critical to their growth and competitive advantage. Current performance tools already provide IT departments with excellent performance information on their platforms, Because business success is tightly fused with systems, and applications, so why re-engineer something technology, IT costs are rising, and this trend is that works? The emergence of BT and BSM is dramatically changing the IT picture. In the recent past, IT infrastructures expected to continue. As a result, businesses are and business processes were essentially linear:demanding that IT be more than a static resource. IT is expected to deliver business results with a measurable contribution to the organization's bottom industry thought-leaders
line. These expectations are driving a new performance "Forrester calls this new state, built on and emerging management paradigm as traditional methods of from today's IT, business technology (BT), defined managing technology performance cannot ensure as 'pervasive technology use that boosts business maximized business use, let alone drive business results. results'.the emergence of BT will be characterized IT2020: The New Performance Management Paradigm by transformations in technology management The change in expectations does not mean that IT can stop organizations, technology use, and the technology focusing on delivering high availability and reduced costs. All 1industry"organizations expect IT management maturity, providing quality computing environments at ever-decreasing costs. What it does mean is that IT must build on this maturity, aligning closely with business units to fuse IT performance with business performance.
Business managers now insist on understanding how their IT performance enables their business services, and performance 1more information
Even a simplified IT infrastructure involves multi-threaded business processes. Applications are housed on multiple platforms, and users can be customers, partners, contractors, and employees located anywhere.
Performance data used to make complex operational decisions comes piecemeal, or simply arrives too late. So-called "enterprise solutions" involve a complex structure of vendor products, custom applications, and middleware that produce highly technical, partially-integrated views of operations, lacking any business Figure A. Yesterday's IT Infrastructure service framework. Too often, IT support teams do not even know that they have a business problem until someone complains, Applications were housed on single servers, and network or they get a negative report on a service-level agreeme... [download for more]
