Organisational IT structures are often characterised by many different siloed
teams of technical specialists, and these silos often drive the technology
selection process in organisations, which to a large extent is governed by the
existing skills within the IT department. This approach has created tensions
between the requirements of the business users and the capabilities to
manage the technology of the IT department. The result of this siloed
approach is that IT resources are locked-in to technologies, and organisations
face expensive retraining or new hiring costs if technologies new to the
organisation are selected. The new, more holistic approach to systems
management is that of simplification; so that the IT department can manage
the technology stack at a higher level, and therefore enable it to manage a
wider range of technologies more efficiently.
Business Issues
The overriding aspect of modern systems management is the need to become proactive rather than reactive.
This ties-in with the requirement of having a total understanding of how the IT infrastructure impacts the
strategic business imperative of the organisation, and how the two are inseparable. Systems management
has to be undertaken with the strategic imperative at the forefront, but likewise the limitations of the
technology infrastructure have to be made evident to the business units. This dual requirement means that
the traditional systems management tools have to be modified or extended to move beyond the purely
technical. The new era of systems management is more about helping the business adapt to changing
external conditions rather than simply reacting to internal changes.
Systems management has been around for a long time, but it faces new
challenges in respect of ensuring that it manages from the dual viewpoint of
the technical and non-technical. Modern systems management has to be more
than a way of ensuring that IT resource is available; it has to become the
central element of ensuring not only the well-being of the organisation but also
the control element for allowing structured change.
Giving due consideration to service management while discussing systems
management is important if systems management is to address the needs of
the organisation. Without an understanding of the synergy between the two
management disciplines, then both will ultimately fail to deliver on the full
capabilities of the IT function. What service management brings to the party
is an ability to measure the cost and value of the IT function in real terms that are understandable to
stakeholders. Although it is not always easy to apply fiscal measures to everything, an attempt at least has
to be made. Operationally, it is the financial aspect that has to take centre-stage. Even in Non-Profit
Organisation (NPO) environments there is a requirement to understand and report financial standing, and
to do this from a background of certainty.
Service management helps make the IT function more transparent to the organisation as a whole, both in
respect of the value it brings and the cost burden. By having a strong service management foundation in
place it becomes easier to allocate costs more directly, and this creates a more structured use of the IT
function.
Business Continuity (BC) and Disaster Recovery (DR) are aspects of systems management that are typically
forgotten about until they are needed. However, managing the production systems and the backup systems
as a single entity has significant benefits, as well as significant challenges. Technology advances have
created the position where BC/DR does not have to mean redundant and expensive capacity; the systems
can be used and proved as part of an active BC/DR plan. Butler Group considers that the management and
the technology combined represent a powerful combination in enabling organisations to make choices about
the type and coverage of BC/DR needed for their particular circumstances. However, we believe the thorny
issue of budgets, responsibilities, and priorities must be identified and resolved before any BC/DR plan is implemented
Technology Issues
Monitoring hardware and software within systems is essential. Audit and compliance obligations require careful
recording of systems activity, and monitoring also enables organisations to check whether systems are operating
as intended and, if not, initiate action to recognise and resolve problems affecting processes and users. The
acceleration of business and technology change, combined with the complexity of the modern IT environment,
drive the need for more advanced change management tools. Effective change
management can unify and automate change processes, therefore reducing costs,
implementation timescales, and risk.
Although ITSM is an area within which it is very important for alignment with
business requirements to be foremost as an objective, there remain some issues
around adoption and deployment of ITSM which are much more strongly in the
domain of IT experts. Organisations’ IT experts need to consider these matters in
the context of their existing and planned technology strategies. Butler Group
believes that BSM is a discipline that, if incorporated into the systems
management capabilities, enables this linkage between IT and business domains.
One example of the benefit of this linkage is the capability for managing in a
virtualised environment, which has a number of specific and unique challenges,
and these are as much about having a tool as they are about having well-defined
IT processes and procedures, and understanding the business priority and value of the service provided. The
implementation of virtual environments has been characterised as an ‘add-on’ deployment, creating the
impression that infrastructure management does not have a holistic capability. Butler Group believes that the
lack of a combined virtual and physical environment management solution was one reason for the reticence of
organisations to deploy virtualisation in production environments; in other words it is due to the historical lack
of the major systems management tool vendors to offer fully integrated physical and virtual systems management
within their existing tools and processes. However, systems management vendors have now begun to address
these concerns, but the solutions currently on offer are still additional modules that must be deployed, and are
not built-in core capabilities.
Market Issues
The market in systems management tools is a relatively mature one, which traditionally has been characterised
as being of interest only to enterprise-class customers with large data centres. The requirements of this sector
of the market drove the vendors to develop large framework-based solutions, which were functionally rich but
aligned to the siloed departmental structures that these large customers typically used to support the
infrastructure.
However, as the on-line business model became more and more accepted and integral to organisations of any
size, so the market for systems management altered. This new, more diverse group of customers bought with
them some specific requirements, while also needing the capabilities and functionality provided for enterpriseclass
customers. This shift in market dynamics caused a great deal of activity; as the larger established vendors
re-developed their framework solutions, and augmented them by acquiring many smaller vendors that not only
had a technology solution, but also a route to the Small- to Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) sector.
The market stabilised a couple of years ago when the Web-enabled, modular approach to systems management
had been adopted by most vendors. However, virtualisation created a significant disruption to the market and
was characterised by many new start-up vendors appearing that were offering specific virtual environment
management capabilities, which were often add-ons to existing management tools.
Currently the market has once again stabilised, with all major vendors providing fully-integrated virtual
management, but we are witnessing a new disruptive force as Microsoft enters the market with a clearly greater
ambition than it has shown in the past. Its Microsoft Systems Center and the philosophy that third-party
providers’ specialist capabilities will integrate seamlessly with the Microsoft command centre presents a
compelling argument; however, the proof will be in the ability of Microsoft to gather a sufficient range of
technologies that integrate with its Systems Center product.
Conclusion
More and more technologies have been developed and deployed, each with its own management capability,
these products are often add-ons to an existing complex data centre management picture. Consider clustering
technologies: each vendor has its own set of instructions and interfaces with which administrators control and
manage the operation. Butler Group believes that the time has come to think strategically about systems
management, and how it can be used in a co-ordinated and effective manner to deliver real business benefit.
As IT becomes ever more ingrained in the organisation, so the need to be responsive to business demand in a
controlled approach has increased in significance, in fact Butler Group believes that the approach to this problem
will differentiate the good IT departments from the average. In the current economic climate many organisations
are facing a tightening of financial controls and spending, IT is not immune from this recession; a recent Butler
Group survey found that 73% of respondents expect their IT budgets to be reduced or remain flat in 2008, as
compared to 2007. With this more prudent approach the allocation of IT resources becomes a major factor in
how IT departments are perceived.
Taking a holistic perspective to managing the organisation’s infrastructure requires a different approach and one
which many IT organisations are not yet equipped to adopt. The concept of business-driven demand is not new,
in fact IT has evolved based on this premise, but currently IT responds to the department/business unit that
either shouts loudest, or has the capital to invest in new projects. It is our contention that the landscape is
moving, and Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) are increasingly looking toward the Chief Information Officer (CIO)
as the guardian of business process prioritisation, which is asking the IT department to police the business units
based on corporate prioritisation, and this requires IT to deploy the tools to perform these new duties, hence the
growth in holistic systems management.
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