How to get IT right
Next-generation IT is all about blending business, process and technology, says BMC strategist Mark Stabler.
By Beth Schultz, Network World, 08/22/05
Business service management has become a much-talked-about enterprise management scheme. BSM is meant to prove IT's value
by linking business and technical information in a logical whole - one of the goals of the new data center. Mark Stabler,
vice president of corporate strategy for BMC Software, says that BSM best practices could make the difference in whether a
company succeeds or fails with the next generation of IT. Stabler shared his views in this recent interview with Signature
Series Editor Beth Schultz.
What makes adoption of IT best practices more of an imperative today than in the past?
The best practices from even 20-plus years ago really haven't changed. What has changed is the complexity of the infrastructure
and how you go about managing what needs to be cobbled together to deliver high-level applications.
The vast majority of companies have not kept pace with all the IT assets they have because purchasing has been decentralized.
They've maintained asset data in different stores, in different spreadsheets, in SQL servers, in Visio files - they've had
it inside of Bob's head. So IT is playing catch-up so it can implement the best practice of maintaining an asset store or
a configuration management database - a CMDB. That is going to be difficult for companies to achieve, which is why they have
to start thinking about business service management. Best practices are only so good. If you don't have the tools, technologies
and the solutions in place, then a best practice is just a piece of paper with a set of recommendations written on it.
How is the BSM approach different from what enterprises are doing now?
What's critical is figuring out how to implement and maintain that one place, where everything is orchestrated from that CMDB.
Companies shouldn't have multiple repositories, or 15 databases to maintain. They shouldn't have siloed areas of management
- here's my network manager, here's my application manager, here's the person who manages security, storage, databases. This
model has to be thrown out and instead management should be looked at from a business perspective - 'If I do not have this
application available to the business, or I'm unable to transact X amount of transactions per minute and therefore drive home
some margin or revenue, what is the impact on the business?'
I harp on building a CMDB and on asset management because those are core. Industry analysts say that 80% of the problems that
happen inside the infrastructure occur because of inadequate or improperly managed change. Somebody changed something without
understanding how it was going to impact the business - 'But it was the fifth router I changed. I didn't realize the fifth
router would ....' 'Yes, but it's the 14th of the month and quarter to 5 in the afternoon; didn't you realize the impact on
the business?'
How does a formal best practices framework, such as the IT Information Library, fit in?
Companies take those best practices, build out the infrastructure around a CMDB and then think about what they have 
[do a layer of discovery]; how to manage the things they've just discovered [asset management]; how to control changes that
may affect these things [change management]; and how to determine, measure and manage the infrastructure components like hubs,
switches, speeds. Then they have to determine what the impact is on the business or the business importance or relevance,
so that's building out a service model. Now, what are end users expecting? Well, that's service level management surrounding
a service desk or help desk initiative. And how well do they perform against that? That's performance management, capacity
management. They've got to embark on this journey because IT literally is the business nowadays. IT has to get it right this
time.
How long will it take for the typical company to get from where it is today to the best practices and BSM ideal?
Hopefully, in the next three to five years, companies will not be measuring IT based off of response time and availability.
They'll be measuring IT off of revenue generated by the company that day. Think of technology at the bottom, the business
at top and in the middle, the process. I think the IT shift will be predominately focused on enabling the business at the
top and feeding a business score card approach. So the data - feeds, speeds, alarms, alerts ... whatever is going on in IT
- will only be important if it's measured out by revenue earned by the company. The question becomes, 'How is IT enabling
the business to achieve its maximum goal?' BSM is what will enable that blend of business, process and technology.
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