Video What's the Future of Corporate IT and ITSM? (Video) 50
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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.
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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.
What's ITSM? (Score:4, Funny)
Is that like BDSM?
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Information Technology Services Management.
It's what your boss does.
-Rick
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does he know that?
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I recently switched from being responsible for EDI and scripting functions to ITSM. I absolutely despised it at first. It seems like bureaucratic bullshit, but after a few months of experience, I am totally on board. There *must* be order and structure. I have switched from chaotic neutral to lawful evil, and I completely support that.
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So make sure you're the one designing the process. Keep bullshit out of it. I do ITSM-based infrastructure change management. On paper my job is to bust the admins' balls. In reality I ask them what they're trying to do, make sure they write up a rollback plan (even if it is just 'restore from backup'), and make sure the server guys aren't planning to do something that needs the network on the same day that the network team is planning an outage. That generally takes about a half hour of everyone's time onc
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close his tabs and clear his browser history when you walk in the room?
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ITSM? (Score:2)
Is that what I think it is?
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Wrong audience (Score:2)
Try and find the web site that has the tagline "News for managers of nerds".
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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.
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Download Chrome. Only way I use flash.
I'll toss in some predictions myself... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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That change should have happened in the 1980s in any place that cared what they have on disk.
Ford was all over this crap when I worked there (Score:2, Informative)
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 "int
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running to HP to get screwed which happened according to my predictions.
You're missing the kickbacks those mgmt gets for going to HP in the first place.
It's how upper IT works. Which is, of course, why lower IT doesn't (usually) work.
Consumerization of I.T. and so on.... (Score:2)
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 initi
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how do you audit what is uploaded or downloaded form DropBox to corporate assets and vice versa? Do you have HIPPA or any other regulations to comply with?
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No.... our company does advertising/marketing related work, so there's no HIPPA or other compliance regulation to worry about with the content that goes to DropBox.
In our case, we have a highly mobile workforce already, including a lot of freelance workers (some of whom are freelance status, yet essentially work with us on every project to the point where they're a "permalancer" ... and in at least one case, one of these people even employes a freelance worker underneath them). We needed a way for these peo
It mostly won't change anything (Score:2)
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
And their answer ..... (Score:2)
Personally, I blame Intitative 502 [wikipedia.org]. And the resulting cloud it produced.
ITSM's focus isn't the customer experience (Score:2)
Luckily, we don't have to worry about "consumer devices". We monitor ESX, TPF transactions, LAN/WAN etc. ITIL is pretty impor
Marketing department's expectations of ITSM (Score:3)
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
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The Cycle (Score:2, Insightful)
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 ex