Why Is ITOM Important?
Every business is increasingly reliant upon available, reliable, secure, highly performant IT to do business. The ability to deliver “business-class” IT is directly and completely reliant on the ability of an IT team to manage its operations effectively. Specifically, that team must be able to identify, prioritize, effectively execute, and manage the processes that drive operational tasks and activities. Effective ITOM processes and solutions enable IT teams to achieve those goals efficiently and consistently.
ITOM: Benefits to the Business
Effective ITOM offers multiple important benefits to any IT-powered business. ITOM can help optimize the delivery and maximize the quality of business and IT services, by improving the processes that drive those efforts. ITOM can improve the ability of IT teams to monitor the health of business IT estates. ITOM can help those teams anticipate and prevent unplanned outages and resolve problems rapidly with minimal disruption of business operations. ITOM can also help reduce business risk and improve governance and compliance with regulations and business requirements.
ITOM: More Process Visibility, Better Process Execution
ITOM can deliver these and other business benefits because it extends visibility into the IT estate and how it functions. ITSM, ITAM, and other IT management functions enable visibility into IT resources and the relationships that link them to each other, the services they enable, and users. ITOM extends that visibility into underlying operational processes and the connections between those processes and the IT estate itself.
ITOM can also improve the execution of key operational processes. By automating repetitive elements of process execution, ITOM solutions can reduce or eliminate inconsistencies and errors that bedevil manual practices. As it also benefits ITSM, ITAM, and other functions, ITOM automation can extend the reach of scarce, expensive human experts, and free staffers for reallocation to more complex or higher-value tasks.
ITOM: A Foundation for Digital Transformation
Every business is pursuing or considering some form of digital transformation. This is a business imperative because digital technologies are transforming how almost everything is built, bought, and sold, and how customers and partners expect to do business.
IT leaders and teams are the primary “feet on the ground” for these efforts. And in many ways, IT service desk teams are the primary interface between IT users and IT operational processes.
In March and April of 2018, the Service Desk Institute (SDI) surveyed a number of service desk professionals about digital transformation at their organizations. Nearly half of all respondents (43 percent) said their service desk teams had undertaken at least one digital transformation project. An additional 26 percent said they had plans to pursue such an undertaking “in the near future.”
When asked where the push to undertake a digital transformation project came from, 43 percent of respondents cited their service desk teams, second only to “Management” (70 percent). More respondents cited their service desk teams than “The Business” (41 percent) or “The Customers” (30 percent).
Respondents were also asked how they prepared for their digital transformation projects. Notably, the most popular response, cited by more than two-thirds of respondents (67 percent), was “Reviewed and/or refined processes.” Process review and refinement was cited by more respondents than discussing needs with customers (65 percent).
ITOM and Cloud Computing
An April 2018 Grand View Research study predicts a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for the cloud managed services market of 15.4 percent through 2025. If that projected growth rate is fully realized, the cloud managed services could exceed $80 billion by that year, according to the study.
The benefits of cloud computing make such growth easy to understand. Cloud computing makes a variety of valuable business computing resources available as pay-as-you-go, pay-as-you-grow services. This can shift often prohibitive capital expenses to more manageable and predictable operating expenses, and extend IT resources without creating additional management or maintenance burdens. But cloud computing is challenging to integrate with and manage alongside incumbent premises-based IT resources. And cloud computing services come in multiple versions from multiple vendors with multiple types of licensing schemes.
All of this places new and more complex demands on those responsible for managing and executing operational IT processes.
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