| Change, Change, Change. What needs to change as | | | | Gartner Conference was: Who in your organization is |
| IT organizations move towards sophisticated virtualized | | | | responsible for critical problem processes and |
| infrastructure? Event/Incident and Problem | | | | resolution? IT Service Desk 13%. IT Operations 49%. |
| Management integration of course! | | | | Process Team 12%. Other 9%. Responsibility not |
| We have been conducting polls of our customers and | | | | formalized 17%. |
| of IT professionals at technology trade shows for the | | | | Virtualization adoption and the speed with which things |
| past two years and the results are in: Pulling together | | | | change in a virtualized environment require automation |
| all of the management pieces and processes is even | | | | and will transform Incident and Problem Management. |
| more crucial in a virtualized environment. | | | | Clearly with this new technology we are required to |
| So what does this mean for you? You will need to | | | | re-think Organizational, Behavioral and Cultural |
| refine your incident and problem management | | | | Challenges required to take advantage of the |
| processes with new technologies in order to reduce | | | | opportunities that virtualization provides. |
| downtime and maintain end user performance. But of | | | | Incident and problem management processes and |
| course even the most basic technologies are not well | | | | metrics must bridge organizational silos that have been |
| integrated even in today's world. | | | | the norm within IT. With virtualization, people have to |
| I recently participated in a Gartner Conference and | | | | work more closely together in the different silos than |
| watched to my amazement a real-time electronic | | | | ever before. IT leaders need to break down the walls |
| survey of the audience. To my disbelief, the audience, | | | | between the technology-centric silo mentalities. |
| filled with 300+ people from Fortune 2000 companies | | | | Business Imperative Action Plan: |
| provided real-time responses to the question: | | | | What can you do today? Understand the impact of |
| What level of integration does your IT org have | | | | virtualization on incident and problem mgt. workload, |
| between event management and service desk | | | | provide technology training for helpdesk/service desk |
| applications? None: 10%. Manual Phone call from IT ops | | | | staff. |
| to IT service desk staff member: 46%. Manual click | | | | What can you do in the next 12 months? Formalize |
| button on event manager to open trouble ticket: 20%. | | | | problem management processes, metrics and |
| Automated event management system automatically | | | | personnel. |
| opens trouble ticket without requiring human oversight | | | | Invest in tools and processes for systems on |
| or approval: 24%. | | | | virtualized servers. Long term: On the Radar |
| Unbelievable - still very few of the survey respondents | | | | Screen!Instill teamwork into all groups responsible for |
| have yet to formalize problem management systems | | | | the virtualized environment service and support. Map |
| with event management systems. For 56% of the | | | | components and configuration items directly to end |
| audience the process is still manual! | | | | user services. |
| Another interesting real-time survey question at the | | | | |