Thursday, February 7, 2013

Why does IT miss getting IT right?

Sally Sue has put in five requests (3 emails, 1 phone call and 1 request passing the IT Manager in the hall) over a 3 week period to fix her desktop that crashes each time she opens her accounting application. Her issue is not a lack of response or attention from IT. Each time she has submitted a request the help desk has responded and fixed her desktop using a variety of methods such as a reinstall of the application or a reboot of her machine. Her issue is the reoccurrence of the incidents, because no one has fixed the problem.

Overview

 IT misses getting it right because they focus heavily on technical support, that is responding to the incident and addressing the incident, but fail to fix the problem. So how does IT get IT right? Through the implementation of programs that help achieve operational excellence. Operational excellence can only be achieved when the IT department executes across all three pillars of an IT environment, People, Process & Technology. Let's examine how IT typically misses within each of these 3 pillars.

Challenging the need for "The Cloud"

Technology vendors, service providers and value-added resellers (VARs) are driving the value of the cloud hard. But will moving to the cloud really help your bottom line or does it only add to someone else’s?

Who needs the cloud?

The five essential characteristics that define the cloud (see prior post Why is "The Cloud" still unclear?) introduce added capabilities for an organization, but they also introduce added cost.