I was reading the recent CIO article on 2007 predictions and thought these quotes were interesting. Link at the bottom.
I think this next quote really shows the importance of ITIL and the new customer and service orientation of IT. I completely agree with the direction and what it implies for IT careers.
“I believe we’re on the cusp of a huge IT jobs renaissance, with certain jobs taking on more importance in 2007 in redefining IT’s role in the business. One category targets business skills and includes project/program managers, business analysts, business process managers, strategist/internal consultants, internal relationship managers, IT finance specialists, vendor managers and IT human resource specialists.
A service catalog is critical to make these new jobs succeed. It is the central source of truth about what IT offers, IT has committed, and how IT operations relates to the services offered. Service Level Management is part of addressing this, but there's more to it. This trend also presages the appearance of the IT front office.
Next, I have written before about the "privacy catalog" -- a service catalog to specifically manage the policies, promises and requests about information that requires special "privacy" handling.
“Look for compliance requirements to become more stringent in the areas of privacy and protection of identifiable personal information. Information assurance will drive technology --
“Identity management will increasingly become the linchpin to both privacy and security compliance in 2007. But it will continue to be the golden goose that eludes the grasp of large enterprises because of the complexities of integrating high numbers of distributed databases and applications.”
-- Jay Cline, president of Minnesota Privacy Consultants and Computerworld’s privacy columnist
Identity management is hard to do from a vision point of view. But it's a lot easier if you think of it from the point of view of a catalog of self service requests as a first step. This gets you the benefits of self service, gets you a prioritized list of services, and it helps your catalog get a adoption. This catalog is the the number one catalog our customers deploy.
On the other hands, some things will remain the same: cost cutting, growing complexity forcing IT to become the enforcer of policies.
“2007 will be a critical year in deciding whether the CIO stands for ‘chief innovation officer’ or ‘cheap infrastructure officer.’ Growing preoccupation with security, ERP, compliance and other very real management issues raises the prospect that CIOs will become the evil half-sibling -- combining Dr. No and the cheap infrastructure provider of last resort.”
-- Lev Gonick, vice president and CIO, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland“The biggest IT for 2007 is conquering IT economics. In 2007, we will see companies leverage Moore’s Law instead of becoming victims of ‘Moore’s flaw’ -- ‘As unit cost goes down, business complexity goes up faster so that overall the total cost is higher.’ Those who can do this will have extreme competitive advantage.”
-- Howard A. Rubin, Gartner senior advisor, professor emeritus, Hunter College of CUNY, MIT research associate
This is a huge RED FLAG for your careers, ladies and gentlemen. It is extremely difficult (impossible I say) to be both a service provider and a policy enforcer. The result is usually a conflicted role. The only way to get out of it is to establish a service catalog that you and your customers agree upon. This project has to be a priority for your own mental and career health or you are not going to get a lot of love from your users.
Comments