New IDC PlanScape outlines framework for mature business-oriented service management strategy

International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts that by 2016, 65% of global competitive strategies will require real-time 3rd Platform IT as a Service (ITaaS). The ability of CIOs and IT organizations to grasp how business wants services that serve actual business needs, not traditional IT components, is significantly altering the ways in which service management is defined as successful. A new report, IDC PlanScape: Accelerating IT's Progress to Business Maturity (Doc #253401) offers clear guidance about the business justification for creating a more mature, business-oriented service management strategy.

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3rd Platform technologies are fundamentally altering how IT organizations function, how business is conducted, and how enterprises compete. This demands restructuring IT to deliver ITaaS 3rd Platform services that are focused on realizing the enterprises' competitive strategies. The ability of IT to immediately achieve a maturing business focus within its strategic planning and execution process is now an imperative. In this IDC PlanScape study, IDC explores a planning framework that enables CIOs and IT organizations to prepare for and respond to these transformative 3rd Platform imperatives. Moreover, the document details the key stakeholders and their roles and responsibilities in creating a more mature, business-driven IT organization to deliver service innovation to customers.

Additional key findings from this PlanScape include the following:

• Without question, maturing the IT business dimension requires the active participation of top IT management. Equally imperative is to ensure all stakeholders and beneficiaries of IT within the enterprise are kept abreast of the business dimension maturity process and actively solicited for feedback whenever possible.
• Service innovation demands a multifaceted approach that seeks to ensure that all five maturity dimensions are simultaneously addressed, continually focusing on the least mature process or the bottleneck that is holding up all other maturity dimensions.
• Rather than tackle IT business-facing objectives through massive project implementations, IDC recommends companies take a "theory of constraints" approach, frequently used within IT as a Service to quickly identify, analyze, and resolve a prioritized impediment (constraint) to IT-business alignment, thereby empowering subsequent energy and action for a second and third IT-business alignment constraint.
• IT organizations that achieve long-term success will be characterized by a service-centric culture that tracks effectiveness through an "outside in" or customer-focused perspective, rigorous IT competitive analysis, and business-oriented service metrics.

"Creating a mature, strategic business alignment between IT and its customers requires a clearly defined end-state vision, an empowering IT culture capable of initiating rapid change, and an increasing focus on the financial costs and benefits as measured from a consumption basis versus the traditional cost-budget basis," says Bill Keyworth, vice president of Research at IDC. "A method of assessing service innovation maturity is needed as a planning tool and source of guidance to prioritize and evaluate the progress of an IT organization in adopting to the true customer (business) perspective of IT 3rd Platform services."

For additional information about this new offering or to arrange a one-on-one briefing with Bill Keyworth, please contact Sarah Murray at 781-378-2674 or sarah@attunecommunications.com. Reports are available to qualified members of the media. For information on purchasing reports, contact insights@idc.com; reporters should email sarah@attunecommunications.com.

About IDC PlanScape

IDC PlanScape reports help to assure business value is recognized from technology by developing a technology initiative that is aligned with business goals, scoped to succeed, and properly resourced. By helping technology leaders make the case for a technology initiative, recognize unique resource requirements, and identify risk factors, IDC PlanScapes mitigate the greatest risks associated with technology initiatives.