IT Service Management in the Cloud

When most CIOs start to think about their cloud strategy, the thought of "losing control" of their IT environment is usually the first big concern.  Most are not comfortable with handing over control of the services they deliver, primarily because they don't have a clear understanding of what services they deliver and therefore cannot look for the right opportunities to use the cloud as an advantage.

This makes a good IT Service Management strategy ever more important.  Instead of the older ITIL V2 methods which manage specific assets, you need to be focused more than ever on IT Service delivery whether that service is managed in-house or some mysterious location in the cloud.

Before moving your infrastructure to the cloud and realizing the potential savings of doing so you really need to have your IT service management in place and running smoothly.

A mature ITSM practice will have a good understanding of what services are being provided, exactly how they perform, how much it costs to deliver the service and, most importantly, exactly what is required to deliver the service with the quality expected by your customers.

Knowing how much the services cost and what is required for them to be considered of value to the business puts organizations in an excellent position to move parts of their platform to the cloud.  Vendors you deal with for any cloud solution can then be held accountable for ensuring the service delivery by your own internal IT Service Management team.

Your ITSM team should know how to measure the delivery, how to ensure costs are in line with expectations and that the vendors are capable of delivering consistently or held accountable when they don't.

So the operational role of IT is changing from managing all the nuts and bolts required to support your business to managing the vendors and support processes required to ensure consistent service excellence.

For more information on how Tony Denford can help your organisation manage it's IT Service Management practice, contact tony@tonydenford.com.