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What's the Future of Corporate IT and ITSM? (Video)
Our headline is the title of a survey SysAid did at Fusion, a "gathering of seasoned IT directors, service management implementers, and business analysts" that took place in early November. As Sysaid's marketing VP, Sophie Danby was the person who designed and implemented the survey, which consisted of only three questions: 1) Where do you see the corporate IT department in five years’ time? 2) With the consumerization of IT continuing to drive employee expectations of corporate IT, how will this potentially disrupt the way companies deliver IT? 3) What IT process or activity is the most important in creating superior user experiences to boost user/customer satisfaction? || You can obviously follow the first link above and see the survey's results. But in the video, Sophie adds some insights beyond the numerical survey results into near-future IT changes and what they mean for people currently working in the field.
Is that like BDSM?
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Is that what I think it is?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Try and find the web site that has the tagline "News for managers of nerds".
please embrace technology and USE A HTML5 PLAYER!!! i dont have flash installed, so I won't watch your video.
So your saying that they aren't meeting your expectations as a customer.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I might as well mention predictions, that may be something that will be something IT shops have to deal with as well:
The main thing is the sea change of malware and active hacking from passive slurping of data to active destruction. This was shown in this past year by CryptoLocker, but driven home by the Sony malware. In the past, a company could just shrug, and continue with their policies because the leaked data didn't mean much -- their original data is still in place. However, if the bad guys start going in with destruction in mind... which is easy, we will start seeing companies actually start going bankrupt. A good example of this is the fact that a lot of businesses are SAN based. An attacker just has to go in on the tier 1 SAN, drop all LUNs, and in the case of a SSD based SAN, do a TRIM against all devices. Depending on how fast the garbage collector is on the controller, there is likely no way in Hell the data would ever be recoverable. Even SANs that replicate data will be affected, as they will just write over the good data.
A lot of companies use tier 2 NAS systems (Isilons, Avamars) for backups because of deduplication. Even though Isilons have SmartLock (for example), an attacker that manages to get root on a node can still do a lot of damage, usually a single command would purge the entire data stored on the cluster. Even with SmartLock, if the attacker gets root, that functionality can be bypassed and the drives zeroed.
In the past, tape drives were used, but because companies were focused on data loss due to hardware failure (which RAID, multipathing, replication, and snapshots help mitigate), backups to deduplicated disk arrays became the target of choice. Now, businesses may be forced to go back to tape in some way, just because it is harder for an attacker to zero out the contents. It can be done (purge a storage pool, tell it to zero out all media), but if there is media offsite, this can be mitigated, since the attacker can't "rm -rf" a tape sitting on a shelf at the local Iron Maiden warehouse.
So, there will be a change in IT so data is stored more robustly, so a purge of the company SAN doesn't kill the company.
On a smaller scale, CryptoLocker and such affect individuals. Again, malware use to "just" read data, now it is actively locked up and destroyed. On a SOHO/SMB scale, this is mitigated by a device that initiates backups, dumps the local desktops to a drive (or array) for backups. The reason it does the backups as opposed to dumping to a share is, again, ensuring that malware can't zero things out with a simple diskpart clean all command.
Another prediction I have is SANs actually using more features in SSD. With SSD moving from disk interfaces to SIMMS/DIMMS, RAID can be handled in a different manner, but still prove results. I saw Pure Storage's dog and pony show where they are running SANs, all on SSD. This is where mainline SAN storage is going to head for the most part (barring extremely large amounts of data that SSD is just too expensive for.) HDD will remain, but likely end up used for backups and archiving as opposed to primary storage.
Of course, the third prediction is that smartphones get enough capacity to be used as personal servers. I don't think the Motorola Atrix like functionality will come around for a number of years, but I wouldn't be surprised in the future that VMs can be stored on one's smartphone, and one's desktop be essentially a compute node, booting ESXi, and using the phone as a backing store. How will this affect IT? Apple and Google are going to have to crack some deals with MS to handle GPOs, perhaps allowing iOS and Android to join AD domains and be managed under SCOM/SCCM/etc.
They have this crazy idea that they can micro-manage every part of IT by using a single large process and a bunch of "services" that are internal.
So the main goal was to inventory the servers, the cards inside of them, their specs, which users use them, etc, into this big database called the "CMDB" or Configuration Management DataBase.
The CMDB is where they map these objects into a unit called a "CI" (configuration instance) and then eventually write fancy high level queries that return things that are "interesting".
A query may be for a single user account, which will then show all "assets" that user has used or needs. Dependencies can be drawn and queries can also just check for strange relationships. Like two servers that appear to be connected via a cross-over cable or a rogue MAC address (by scanning ARP tables and building CI's).
It actually sounds cool in practice but there is no usable CMDB in existance. HP has one that's very shiny but I can tell you it sucks and doesn't work. After asking and asking when I was at Ford if I could just freaking write one, I was told no. Then after a year and a half of downright failure, they switched from HP's crap to a different vendor and that later failed too.
It was instantly obvious that the discovery routines were seriously important, yet their frequency and limitations caused stale data. It was supposed to be a tool for us to discover things we didn't know about, but it just was an effort to bend the queries to look "real enough" when in reality any missing data (what you don't know) is what you're after.
Full of buzzwords and expensive software. I honestly think that just letting people be left alone at work on their computer is the best. Judge results, not time on facebook. Stop hiring people you don't trust which makes the trustworthy feel micromanaged. These tools won't help you learn anything you didn't already learn. The people who you force to install these discovery tools already know more than you will learn from the tools yet they are ignored while they scream the entire time you go through implementation.
In the end I left and got the hell out of doing any type of ITSM. Ford ruined me with their beaurcrazy and absolutely horrid management at the LL5/LL4 management levels. Pure idiots making high six figure salaries who take home 100K bonuses yet can't run a successful IT shop with virtually unlimited money and resources. I could have wrote a better tool in less than a year by myself without charging millions. NOPE. running to HP to get screwed which happened according to my predictions.
I already commented on SysAid's own page, but my feeling is this:
Consumerization of I.T. is generally a win-win for employers and employees, as long as it's done properly.
It's always a good thing when you can hire somebody who is used to using a particular service, technology or product, and they're able to use essentially the same thing as an employee. It's one less thing requiring training and adding complexity to doing the job.
I think BYOD (bring your own device) with cellphones and tablets was the initial driver of this discussion? But increasingly, we're seeing cloud services as another similar area. Plenty of people are familiar with DropBox for example, and often have a free DropBox personal account. With our corporate DropBox account, though, we're able to let people manage both their personal and their new corporate-issued one simultaneously, using one login. If they leave the company, we can instruct the software to auto delete the corporate data on their device(s) while reverting back to working as a free personal DropBox again, preserving their personal data.
By contrast, another cloud based product we use and like is CrashPlan for backups. Unfortunately, CrashPlan creates "islands" for personal accounts, standard business accounts, and enterprise-class accounts. If you upgrade a user from one "tier" to another, their backup history can't be migrated over. They're stuck doing a full, new backup from scratch under the new service class. That's a real issue for us, as we move to the enterprise version of the service. (What if someone's laptop drive crashes out in the field, after we upgrade their CrashPlan version and before it got a chance to back up everything successfully?) This could impact people who'd been using personal CrashPlan accounts and work for a company that decides to bring all of them under the fold of a business class backup account, too.
So in the next 5 years? I see I.T. departments needing to give more consideration to selection of business tools that play well with shared personal/business use.
It won't. Corporate IT and how it operates is driven by the people who sign the checks. That, BTW, is not the employees. The people who do have considerations other than employee expectations in mind when they decide on policies, and some of those things like compliance with laws and regulations aren't optional. Corporate IT will, as always, continue to be bound by what upper management decides on and the rest of the company will have to live with upper management's decisions. And no, IT isn't any happier about this than the rest of the company, because frankly their job would be a lot easier if upper management would stop telling them how to do things and just let them do whatever they needed to do to deliver what upper management needed. I don't see that happening any time soon.
Who talks like that? Just about every director I've ever met.
Most of them need to talk like that because they don't really know what's going on below them.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Download Chrome. Only way I use flash.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Personally, I blame Intitative 502. And the resulting cloud it produced.
Have gnu, will travel.
I'm on the "newest" team at HP, we ARE the ITSM people for our clients. I suppose customer experience is important, but it's mostly about proper documentation, change control, inventory, and so forth. I can't name the clients since I've already gotten in trouble for that via a post on the NYT, but we have mainframes at an airport in Oklahoma...I'm sure you can figure out the rest.
Luckily, we don't have to worry about "consumer devices". We monitor ESX, TPF transactions, LAN/WAN etc. ITIL is pretty important. If an ESX fails, we need to know exactly what apps will go down, who it will impact, where does it fail over to, etc. Usually any failures (CPU's going out, some fan on a switch dying and killing it, etc) aren't even noticed by our client which is the entire point. It's common for a single ESX to host 80-200 different VMs. I've been on many conference calls with people all over the planet. In five years we'll probably be doing the exact same stuff; mainframes don't really change much and once it works we leave it alone. Heck, we've got Cisco 5509s that have uptime of 10+ years.
And yes, I really don't like HPSM. Not because of what it does, it's just a resource hog running Java that is really complicated and not intuitive. And no one really knows all it's features...I've used it from both a help desk (incident management) and change control perspective now...personally I like Vitalize far better but some CEO a few years ago said soemthing about "eating your own dog food" so HPSM is it. Gawd, I still have a bunch of training to do on it like TONIGHT...lol
Sophie appears to be from a marketing background and is unlikely to understand the realities of a commercial IT department. This is evident from the "too much focus of tech from service desks" statement and "not focusing on the customer's 'feelings'", when in reality Services desks are the interface to the real technology people who own the systems and maintain uptime. Let's get this out of the way immediately, it is the marketing departments *JOB* to focus on the client, it is the IT department's *JOB* to focus on the technology.
Understand this Marketing people, Information Technology work is difficult, complex, intense, focused, time-sensitive, pressured work that *requires* a special kind of mind and skillset that few people can achieve. I've done your marketing job, it is not as hard as IT and no where near the pressure. Marketing people don't experience working back with the IT department to resolve an issue with the Accounts Department at 2am so that 30,000 people get paid on time. When they do that, then I will listen to their suggestions.
Generally the scenario from Marketing is; "continue to deliver on the expectations they set (updated for 2015) without consultation with IT department" and causing people to work back unnecessary so their boss doesn't get embarrassed about not delivering (the general state of affairs for IT) on the current fad. Whilst you see it as important, my actual customers - who generally answer directly to the board, see it as a distraction.
So let's address your, somewhat loaded, questions;
1) Where do you see the corporate IT department in five years’ time?
Exactly where they were 5 and 10 years ago with poorly defined OLA's. Marketing department that still don't meet with the IT department to get an understanding of the businesses core technology assets that drives the business whilst IT still puts out the fires they start. And with strongly defined SLA's and well understood penalty clauses from the people who actually maintain a professional and courteous relationship with the IT department because they have specific outcomes from their productions servers. Btw, what you call "the cloud" we call "a data center".
2) With the consumerization of IT continuing to drive employee expectations of corporate IT, how will this potentially disrupt the way companies deliver IT?
This is BAU. If you look to ITIL and get a better understanding of the transitional phases in the SLC you will realise that this kind of change is what IT departments deal with everyday. When you confuse the nomenclature as an objective it doesn't mean you understand IT, what it means is IT is still dong the thinking for you and anticipating the needs you aren't even aware you have yet. When there is a new business requirement IT professionals are involved first, not because it's sexy or a fad but because it's important. Technology professionals *create* cutting edge technology, we generally are prepared for your fad because we are already using it. Everyone else is a user.
3) What IT process or activity is the most important in creating superior user experiences to boost user/customer satisfaction?
The same as it always has been, availability first, response time second, optimisation third. Why, because we often service *thousands* of users. Users who cannot access their services generate a PIR. Individuals are not my concern because it interferes with my ability to do the really hard stuff that they need me to do.
Telling a techie to "have less focus on technology" demonstrates you have very little understanding of IT. Until you have experienced the pressure of IT work, say removing a core kernel module from a production system with unrelated failed hardware to maintain uptime until the end of the working day so that those 10,000 users can complete their work with reasonable response time before they go home replete with the knowledge that it can come down in a screaming heap at any time and cause even more work, you will *never* under
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
1) Some one says IT Costs too much
2) Underlings grab at current three letter acronyms and Cloud varietals
3) Loyal staff is marginalized and withers from relevance
4) Third parties that can (in theory) fill requirements are brought in.
5) formerly loyal employees cross train antiquated practices.
6) Responsibilities are transferred to Third parties. Staff turnover, savings!!! ???
7) Non-IT workers that rely on IT wonder what happened to the service level
8) Third parties run up their work to accomodate missed expectations.
9) costs surge to eclipse any savings.
10) Some one says bring it back in.
11) Chaos.finger pointing, staff turnover. (step 11 is always the best).
12) New consultants are brought in to get it back in house.
13) New SME's are installed and consultants exit.
14) Non-IT workers say What happened..We'll get shadow IT.