As the Global Business Head of Cloud, Infrastructure & Security in Persistent, one concern I never see going away with customers is the need to provide operational excellence in a cost-effective model. It’s particularly acute in IT service management (ITSM), with some common sources of frustration.
Many find they are unable to bring ITIL-driven streamlining, automation, and orchestration to the organization or to reach a single source of truth. Instead, they face high costs and complexity in running operations. Monitoring is siloed, making it near impossible to connect the dots for a complete picture while they deal with tool sprawl and the need for integration to pinpoint root causes.
The Struggle to Rise beyond “Business as Usual”
IDC research even shows that on average, about 85% of IT organizations’ time is consumed by just making IT systems run as they are supposed to — business as usual. This squeezes time for innovation and can make internal customers skeptical of the services provided by IT departments.
Those who have tried to get ahead of the deadlock also feel frustrated. Many have invested in ITSM tools, often to find them even more expensive to upgrade. Those organizations taking the leap with artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) to jumpstart automation often find they have fallen short of optimization.
To compound the problem, many customers feel that their contract with their existing service providers does not allow for operational transformation. Their providers have stopped short of exploiting opportunities to consolidate, automate, orchestrate, and streamline processes and instead settled for the status quo – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
But business, as usual, doesn’t cut it anymore. Even before the challenges of 2020, an organization must reflect on the new normal, even as it keeps changing. Nothing remains static.
“How do we de-risk our landscapes?”
“How do we do more with less?”
“I want to reduce manual intervention and increase automation and orchestration but fear I am just adding more tools to the mix.”
“I tried AI and ML but have yet to see any real impact on operational excellence.”
So, what’s an enterprise organization to do?
The first question is: what has my service provider done for me lately? If your current partner has not delivered productivity benefits in the last 12-24 months (or if you are not contracted for that model), chances are they aren’t going to. It’s probably time to rethink your partnership.
Enterprise customers must also focus on outcomes – what does success look like? For ITSM, it’s an improved customer experience both for end-users and the IT service teams. This also means faster response/resolution times, end-to-end ticket ownership, proactive/pre-emptive problem resolution, and continuous service improvement using automation and orchestration.
Persistent Intelligent Operations
Persistent has created a CoE (center of excellence) focused on this issue for IT operations at the intersection of people, processes, and technology. It houses expertise to streamline processes, consolidate tools, and bring in automation and orchestration using a service management platform as a transformational enabler.
Persistent Intelligent Operations provides multi-skilled 24x7x365 support using our intelligent service management framework. It can reduce OPEX by ~50% and go live in just four to eight weeks for simple to medium complexity deployments. We provide out-of-the-box integration of the ITSM platform with infrastructure, application performance monitoring and collaboration tools, and active directory integration to converge into the single source of truth – a configuration management database (CMDB).
What differentiates Persistent is the expertise we bring to the table around delivery excellence and identifying the “art-of-the-possible.” Business as usual is not an option in our line of work. Customers don’t come to us seeking to maintain business as usual – they seek transformation.
For example, we worked with independent financial services firms in the United States, servicing 100K+ savings and health plans through various partnerships with major brand funds as its clients.
We put together a multi-year digital transformation program that fulfills key strategic goals for the organization by enhancing operational excellence while providing market-leading end-user experiences. In this instance, it’s an ongoing true digital transformation, integrating siloed operations for service desk and network operations (NOC) respectively to improve business operations.
We take the pressure and annoying nuances off day-to-day IT operations, allowing the customer to focus on strategic initiatives. It’s gratifying for me to see the impact of operational and digital transformation on our customers not only in terms of user experience but also reduced OPEX through increased automation and orchestration.
To learn more about Persistent Intelligent Operations, click here
