»  Search

To stay relevant with customers, businesses must drive continual productivity gains. And that means finding new ways to remove inefficiencies from the equation. Yet it's hard to innovate when basic operating costs consume the majority of your budget. Welcome to the paradoxical world of modern IT.

Business changes, increasing regulation, new technologies and global competition may demand more from IT than the infrastructure and systems in place can deliver. How should enterprise IT organisations respond? Run the IT department like any business that offers services to customers – according to basic market principles and proven business models. In this view, each service, from consumer credit checks to employee expense reports, becomes an economic unit that IT "sells" and business users "buy."

"Instead of thinking about the technology that you are making available to end users, think about the business activity that the technology will enable them to perform," says Leah Palmer, president of the U.S. chapter of the ITSM Forum and associate director, employee services, P&G. "And then be sure that the benefits you're delivering are worth the cost of the service."

The concept of continual improvement isn't new. But today more than ever, it's an imperative that transcends industries and cultures, from consumer products to banking and from the United States to the Netherlands. Once you've embraced it, the challenges lie in determining how to make a successful transformation in your own environment.

Read more on how to transform IT into a service-driven organisation

You hear a lot about delivering IT like a service these days. But what does that really mean? Jeroen Bronkhorst, HP's chief strategist for infrastructure practices and an Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) v3 authoring team member, explains what it means to become a service-driven IT organisation. 

On the same topic:

So many decisions, so little time
Defining "service-driven"
Virtualisation without fear
Set IT free: automate business services
Six tips for better business performance