Where to Go from Here?
It's clear that technology is a cornerstone of success, enabling organizations as a whole to be more agile. Yet as technology increasingly drives business and business success, IT departments are caught between the proverbial rock and hard place. The necessity of attending to administrative tasks and dealing with day-to-day crises drains IT managers' time and energy, leaving them few resources with which to educate and work in partnership with executive management. As one LANDesk customer expressed it, "There are five fire hats hanging in my office, and the events of the day determine which one I'll be wearing."
I asked Dave about the conclusions LANDesk has drawn from its survey, and what IT managers can learn from it. Dave quickly replied, "Number one is that IT departments must become more proactive and less reactive." I asked how this was possible, given constraints on time and energy. Dave said that senior IT management needs to begin to focus on service level agreements—SLAs: "The only way to go is to wrap IT policy around IT processes, and you must develop a central, corporate-wide view of policy. IT needs to introduce and drive the view of itself as a service provider."
"So far so good," I said, "But how does being a service provider help you win a strategic role?" Dave responded by describing LANDesk's own evolution from being a vendor of tool-fixated software to becoming a provider of policy-driven solutions. "Effective, efficient, policy-driven IT is the goal," Dave said. "Our customers say to us that more efficient and easily manageable tools deliver them from 'administrative hell' so that they can focus on raising the bar for standards-based performance and delivery." In other words, with the right tools and a standards-driven approach to providing service, you can measure and improve your performance, which gives you the evidence you need to prove your value to executive management. Or, as one LANDesk customer has described the situation, "When our company sees my IT department as ahead of the game, then we win."
Dave concluded our briefing by saying, "IT owns the responsibility of positioning itself. Successful, high-growth companies are driven by IT innovation. An attitude of 'five 9s on our Web server is OK' just won't cut it. IT's battle cry now needs to be 'We drive business value.'"
For more information about the LANDesk survey and LANDesk's policy-based IT solutions, go to http://www.landesk.com.
—Dianne Russell
End of Article
Register
