Let Others Do The Work
Our survey also shows IT isn't taking advantage of third-party services, including outsourcers, SaaS and cloud providers, MSPs, and contract labor. When asked what percentage of their IT budgets are allocated to these providers, 36% of respondents say they spend less than 10%. And just 17% plan to increase their use of third-party services.
Lift your head up from the console and take a look at the rich ecosystem of cloud providers, managed hosting companies, and other services. These vendors are building massive facilities costing hundreds of millions of dollars, pushing the automation envelope to levels of sophistication few IT organizations even dream of.
If you can't beat them, join them. Put your entire service portfolio through some rent-vs.-own scrutiny by rating services in three areas: proprietary, regulatory, and security sensitivity; degree of complexity; and business value. Services that are common across industries or require highly specialized staff and training are top candidates for outsourcing.
Cut the waste. Look for ways to cut redundant apps. Nearly 640 business technology professionals took part in our InformationWeek Analytics Application Consolidation Survey; reducing the number of application service functions, like billing, human resources, or inventory management, delivered by pricey business software, such as CRM, ERP, or BI tools, is seen by many as a key tool for streamlining operations. In that survey, just 20% say they had not eliminated any applications over the past two years, while 70% say consolidation is as important or more important than other initiatives.
Finally, when choosing an automation suite, make sure it can handle off-site services--even if you don't employ cloud providers now, you likely will, so plan ahead.
Don't Reinvent The Wheel
57% of apps reside in automated private clouds
65% of Cisco's IT budget goes to "run the business" activities
35% of IT budget goes to "change the business" development
You can only optimize, automate, and outsource processes you fully understand, so a necessary prerequisite to bending the 80/20 ratio is applying rigor and formalism to IT governance.
The first step is recasting IT as a customer-focused business, and for most of us, that requires a change in perspective. Each IT activity must be seen as contributing to service delivery, not infrastructure operations. Now, mapping hardware and software to business services is hard work, but examining the various application, infrastructure, and support assets IT already provides, the so-called "keep the lights on" activities, itemizing their constituent dependencies and deliverables (such as applications or customer bases), and mapping these to end user services will uncover areas that can benefit from automation.
And you don't need to start with a blank sheet of paper. The IT Infrastructure Library offers a detailed, standardized service life-cycle template and a framework for service strategy, design, delivery, and operations. Alternative road maps are available from COBIT, ISO 20000, and ISO 38500. Many data center automation tools now embed ITIL processes within their workflows, meaning that adding structure and formality to service management needn't layer on bureaucratic overhead.
Bending the 80/20 barrier toward a healthy balance between service development and delivery is a way of life, not a one-time event. Such change can't be achieved with software alone --vendor claims notwithstanding. IT system management, automation, and orchestration products are valuable tools since they facilitate systematizing tasks into repeatable processes, thereby reducing errors and defects, operational costs, and execution times. But it's all predicated on defining a service catalog and understanding how process discipline can drive efficiency through automation.
Kurt Marko is an IT industry veteran.
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