Precise orchestration

The evolution of a standards-based approach to IT services and operations management enables IT service delivery to be broken up into modular parts. This provides users with more choices and enables them to inject flexibility and agility into their outsourcing model. Be mindful, however, that in modular service operations, orchestration among the different parts and players is key for the best performance.

There is a great deal more flexibility and choice associated with delivering services via outsourcing.

Brent Flint is services executive for Dimension Data Middle East & Africa.

Back in the 1980s, corporate payroll administration was among the first organisational functions to be outsourced. This was made possible by the fact that payroll systems and procedures had become standardised enough to allow third parties to deliver this function on an organisation's behalf. Today, a similar shift is under way in the realm of IT services and operations management.

Just as technology itself has become standardised, allowing systems and users to understand quickly and efficiently how to work together, so too has the management of IT operations begun a journey towards consistent definition of terms, processes and use.

The evolution of a standards-based approach to IT service management enables parts of the IT operations environment to be broken down into smaller units or modules, and consequently, there's been the development of a range of standards and good practice frameworks - such as the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) - that define how these pieces work together. Today, wider acceptance and adoption of these frameworks mean they've achieved the requisite level of critical mass to enable third parties to invest and bring to market a variety of service offers that can add tangible value to businesses of all kinds.

Widespread use of standards mean third parties can now perform operational management processes for organisations - either within their environment, or remotely. They're able to use frameworks like ITIL to create repeatable service capabilities that can be 'slotted' into an organisation's operational environment.

Today, there is a great deal more flexibility and choice associated with delivering services via outsourcing. This leads to greater agility: organisations can change and adapt their sourcing ecosystems 'on the fly', for example, moving from an outsourcing to an in-sourcing approach, or adopting a hybrid model - either for discrete areas, or entire technology domains. Adding or removing service providers, and the scope of what they deliver, to deal with capacity 'peaks and troughs' of resourcing needs, can be carried out fairly easily. The choices available to business are far-reaching.

As 'modularity' in service operations gains traction, interesting and innovative toolsets for managing IT infrastructure and services with less effort and more efficiency continue to emerge.

Remote infrastructure monitoring and management (RIM) platforms represent a case in point. With RIM, geographical boundaries become insignificant. IT assets, wherever they are located, can be monitored and managed from anywhere in the world. Use of built-in pattern analysis and complex algorithms to scrutinise trends within an organisation's environment can identify and alert operations staff and engineers to fix potential problems before performance is affected, facilitating business continuity. This automation helps reduce the risks associated with diagnosis and reduces or eliminates delay in addressing problems, ultimately lowering the cost of delivering services round the clock.

With the standardisation of IT management processes comes the benefits of scale. Apart from their expertise and engineering skill, service providers that invest in RIM platforms bring the advanced functional benefits of these to their client base at an attractive price point. It's the fact that they utilise the toolset across multiple client organisations that allows them to continue investment in features, functions and skills that would otherwise be unaffordable for organisations.

Bear in mind that the downside of this 'modularity' in service operations is the fact that the myriad new choices has the potential to lead to confusion and complexity.

There's always at least one area that requires a specialist or different technology set.

For example, rather than working with the prevailing heavyweights in the security technology landscape, an organisation may wish to work with a niche security partner that has a specific competence and has made a deep investment in that area. Or, an organisation may choose a diversified approach to avoid being locked in to a single technology or vendor - or to benchmark one against another.

Organisations will therefore need services for each technology and also for the management and aggregation across these different services. In this model, managing the interface points between the different 'modules' of service become a critical success factor. Sometimes the organisation will address this function in-house, sometimes it will outsource it to a third party, at other times it will assign one of the service providers this additional service aggregation responsibility.

Despite the increasing adoption of standards like ITIL, and the allure of a modular approach, the reality on the ground is operationally complex.

The option of managing technology services in a modular way gives organisations a wider range of choices and flexibility, which in turn translates into more agility. Buyers no longer need to feel 'shoe-horned' down one particular path or to discover themselves locked into long-term commitments that are no longer serving them well. For providers of services, modularity and standardisation present opportunities to drive scale and reduce the cost to deliver services.

But take into consideration, however, that whatever combination of in-sourcing, outsourcing, and modular services an organisation opts for, someone has to ensure the pieces are working together effectively to ensure business service levels are maintained.

Similar to a symphony concert, where all the different instruments play their assigned parts, a modular service operation requires careful orchestration among the players to ensure the best performance.