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Optimize the IT Operations Center

Stop burning budget on non-value adding activities.

  • Your team’s time is burned up by incident response.
  • Manual repetitive work uses up expensive resources.
  • You don’t have the visibility to ensure the availability the business demands.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

  • Sell the project to the business.
  • Leverage the Operations Center to improve IT Operations.

Impact and Result

  • Clarify lines of accountability and metrics for success.
  • Implement targeted initiatives and track key metrics for continual improvement.

Optimize the IT Operations Center Research & Tools

Start here – read the Executive Brief

Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should Optimize the IT Operations Center, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

Optimize the IT Operations Center – Executive Brief
Optimize the IT Operations Center – Phases 1-4

1. Lightning Phase: Pluck Low-Hanging Fruit for Quick Wins

Get quick wins to demonstrate early value for investments in IT Operations.

Optimize the IT Operations Center – Lightning Phase: Pluck Low-Hanging Fruit for Quick Wins

3. Define accountability and metrics

Formalize process and task accountability and develop targeted metrics.

Optimize the IT Operations Center – Phase 2: Define Accountability and Metrics
IT Operations Center RACI Charts Template

5. Launch initiatives and track metrics

Lay the foundation for implementation and continual improvement.

Optimize the IT Operations Center – Phase 4: Launch Initiatives and Track Metrics

Member Testimonials

After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this blueprint and what our clients have to say.

Client

Experience

Impact

$ Saved

Days Saved

Nexteer Automotive

Guided Implementation

7/10

N/A

N/A

Workshop: Optimize the IT Operations Center

Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

Module 1: Check Foundation

The Purpose

  • Ensure base maturity in IT Operations processes.

Key Benefits Achieved

  • Verify that foundation is in place to proceed with Operations Center project.

Activities

Outputs

1.1

Evaluate base maturity.

  • IT Operations Center Prerequisites Assessment Tool

Module 2: Define Accountabilities

The Purpose

  • Define accountabilities for Operations processes and tasks.

Key Benefits Achieved

  • Documented accountabilities.

Activities

Outputs

2.1

Pluck low-hanging fruit for quick wins.

  • Project plan
2.2

Complete process RACI.

  • Process RACI
2.3

Complete task RACI.

  • Task RACI

Module 3: Map the Challenge

The Purpose

  • Define metrics and identify accountabilities and gaps.

Key Benefits Achieved

  • List of initiatives to address pain points.

Activities

Outputs

3.1

Define metrics.

3.2

Define accountabilities.

3.3

Identify gaps.

  • IT Operations Center Gap and Initiative Tracker

Module 4: Build Action Plan

The Purpose

  • Develop an action plan to boost KPIs.

Key Benefits Achieved

  • Action plan and success criteria.

Activities

Outputs

4.1

Prioritize initiatives.

  • IT Operations Center Initiative Prioritization Tool

Module 5: Map Out Implementation

The Purpose

  • Build an implementation plan for continual improvement.

Key Benefits Achieved

  • Continual improvement against identified metrics and KPIs.

Activities

Outputs

5.1

Build implementation plan.

  • IT Operations Center Continual Improvement Tracker
Unlock This Blueprint

Optimize the IT Operations Center

Stop burning budget on non-value-adding activities.

ANALYST PERSPECTIVE

The Network Operations Center is not in Kansas anymore.

"The old-school Network Operations Center of the telecom world was heavily peopled and reactionary. Now, the IT Operations Center is about more than network monitoring. An effective Operations Center provides visibility across the entire stack, generates actionable alerts, resolves a host of different incidents, and drives continual improvement in the delivery of high-quality services.
IT’s traditional siloed approach cannot provide the value the business demands. The modern Operations Center breaks down these silos for the end-to-end view required for a service-focused approach."
Derek Shank,
Research Analyst, Infrastructure & Operations
Info-Tech Research Group

Our understanding of the problem

This Research Is Designed For:

  • IT Operations Managers
  • IT Infrastructure Managers
  • CIOs

This Research Will Help You:

  • Improve reliability of services.
  • Reduce the cost of incident response.
  • Reduce the cost of manual repetitive work (MRW).

This Research Will Also Assist

  • Business Analysts
  • Project Managers
  • Business Relationship Managers

This Research Will Help Them

  • Develop appropriate non-functional requirements.
  • Integrate non-functional requirements into solution design and project implementation.

Executive Summary

Situation

  • Your team’s time is burned up by incident response.
  • MRW burns up expensive resources.
  • You don’t have the visibility to ensure the availability the business demands.

Complication

  • The increasing complexity of technology has resulted in siloed teams of specialists.
  • The business views IT Operations as a cost center and doesn’t want to provide resources to support improvement initiatives.

Resolution

  • Pluck low-hanging fruit for quick wins.
  • Obtain buy-in from business stakeholders by speaking their language.
  • Clarify lines of accountability and metrics for success.
  • Implement targeted initiatives and track key metrics for continual improvement.

Info-Tech Insight

  1. Sell the project to the business. Your first job is a sales job because executive sponsorship is key to project success.
  2. Worship the holy trinity of metrics: impact of downtime, cost of incident response, and time spent on manual repetitive work (MRW).
  3. Invest in order to profit. Improving the Operations Center takes time and money. Expect short-term pain to realize long-term gain.

The role of the Network Operations Center has changed

  • The old approach was technology siloed and the Network Operations Center (NOC) only cared about the network.
  • The modern Operations Center is about ensuring high availability of end-user services, and requires cross-functional expertise and visibility across all the layers of the technology stack.
A pie chart is depicted. The data displayed on the chart, in decreasing order of size, include: Applications; Servers; LAN; WAN; Security; Storage. Source: Metzler, n.d.

Most organizations lack adequate visibility

  • The rise of hybrid cloud has made environments more complex, not less.
  • The increasing complexity makes monitoring and incident response more difficult than ever.
  • Only 31% of organizations use advanced monitoring beyond what is offered by cloud providers.
  • 69% perform no monitoring, basic monitoring, or rely entirely on the cloud provider’s monitoring tools.
A Pie chart is depicted. Two data are represented on the chart. The first, representing 69% of the chart, is: Using no monitoring, basic monitoring, or relying only on the cloud vendor's monitoring. the second, representing 31% of the chart, is Using advanced monitoring beyond what cloud vendors provide. Source: InterOp ITX, 2018

Siloed service level agreements cannot ensure availability

You can meet high service level agreements (SLAs) for functional silos, but still miss the mark for service availability. The business just wants things to work!

this image contains Info-Tech's SLA-compliance rating chart, which displays the categories: Available, behaving as expected; Slow/degraded; and Unavailable, for each of: Webserver; Database; Storage; Network; Application; and, Business Service

The cost of downtime is massive

Increasing reliance on IT makes downtime hurt more than ever.
98% of enterprises lose $100,000+.
81% of enterprises lose $300,000+ per hour of downtime.

This is a bar graph, showing the cost per hour of downtime, against the percentage of enterprises.

Source: ITIC, 2016

IT is asked to do more with less

Most IT budgets are staying flat or shrinking.

57% of IT departments expect their budget to stay flat or to shrink from 2018 to 2019.

This image contains a pie chart with two data, one is labeled: Increase; representing 43% of the chart. The other datum is labeled: Shrink or stay flat, and represents 57% of the chart.

Unify and streamline IT Operations

A well-run Operations Center ensures high availability at reasonable cost. Improving your Operations Center results in:

  • Higher availability
  • Increased reliability
  • Improved project capacity
  • Higher business satisfaction

Measure success with the holy trinity of metrics

Focus on reducing downtime, cost of incident response, and MRW.

This image contains a Funnel Chart showing the inputs: Downtime; Cost of Incident Response; MRW; and the output: Reduce for continual improvement

Start from the top and employ a targeted approach

Analyze data to get buy-in from stakeholders, and use our tools and templates to follow the process for continual improvement in IT Operations.

This image depicts a cycle, which includes: Data analysis; Executive Sponsorship; Success Criteria; Gap Assessment; Initiatives; Tracking & Measurement

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

DIY Toolkit

"Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.”

Guided Implementation

“Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track."

Workshop

"We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place."

Consulting

"Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project."

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

Optimize the IT Operations Center – project overview

Launch the Project

Identify Enterprise Services

Identify Line of Business Services

Complete Service Definitions

Best-Practice Toolkit

🗲 Pluck Low-Hanging Fruit for Quick Wins

1.1 Ensure Base Maturity Is in Place

1.2 Make the Case

2.1 Define Accountabilities

2.2 Define Metrics

3.1 Assess Gaps

3.2 Plan Initiatives

4.1 Lay Foundation

4.2 Launch and Measure

Guided Implementations

Discuss current state.

Review stakeholder presentation.

Review RACIs.

Review metrics.

Discuss gaps.

Discuss initiatives.

Review plan and metric schedule.

Onsite Workshop Module 1:

Clear understanding of project objectives and support obtained from the business.

Module 2:

Enterprise services defined and categorized.

Module 3:

LOB services defined based on user perspective.

Module 4:

Service record designed according to how IT wishes to communicate to the business.

Phase 1 Results:

Stakeholder presentation

Phase 2 Results:
  • RACIs
  • Metrics
Phase 3 Results:
  • Gaps list
  • Prioritized list of initiatives
 Phase 4 Results:
  • Implementation plan
  • Continual improvement tracker

Workshop overview

Contact your account representative or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

Pre-Workshop Workshop Day 1 Workshop Day 2 Workshop Day 3 Workshop Day 4
Activities

Check Foundation

Define Accountabilities

Map the Challenge

Build Action Plan

Map Out Implementation

1.1 Ensure base maturity.

🗲 Pluck low-hanging fruit for quick wins.

2.1 Complete process RACI.

2.2 Complete task RACI.

3.1 Define metrics.

3.2 Define accountabilities.

3.2 Identify gaps.

4.1 Prioritize initiatives.

5.1 Build implementation plan.

Deliverables
  1. IT Operations Center Prerequisites Assessment Tool
  1. IT Operations Center RACI Charts Template
  1. IT Operations Center Gap and Initiative Tracker
  1. IT Operations Center Initiative Prioritization Tool
  1. IT Operations Center Continual Improvement Tracker

PHASE 🗲

Pluck Low-Hanging Fruit for Quick Wins

Optimize the IT Operations Center

Conduct a ticket-trend analysis

Generate reports on tickets from your IT service management (ITSM) tool. Look for areas that consume the most resources, such as:

  • Recurring tickets.
  • Tickets that have taken a long time to resolve.
  • Tickets that could have been resolved at a lower tier.
  • Tickets that were unnecessarily or improperly escalated.

Identify issues

Analyze the tickets:

  • Look for recurring tickets that may indicate underlying problems.
  • Ask tier 2 and 3 technicians to flag tickets that could have been resolved at a lower tier.
  • Identify painful and/or time consuming service requests.
  • Flag any manual repetitive work.

Write the issues on a whiteboard.

Oil & Gas IT reduces manual repetitive maintenance work

CASE STUDY
Industry Oil & Gas
Source Interview

Challenge

The company used a webserver to collect data from field stations for analytics. The server’s version did not clear its cache – it filled up its own memory and would not overwrite, so it would just lock up and have to be rebooted manually.

Solution

The team found out that the volumes and units of data would cause the memory to fill at a certain time of the month. They wrote a script to reboot the machine and set up a planned outage during the appropriate weekend each month.

Results

The team never had to do manual reboots again – though they did have to tweak their reboot script not to rely on their calendar, after a shift in production broke the pattern between memory consumption and the calendar.

Rank the issues

🗲.1.1 10 minutes

  1. Assign each participant five sticky dots to use for voting.
  2. Have each participant place any number of dots beside the issue(s) of their choice.
  3. Count the dots and rank the top three most important issues.

INPUT

  • List of issues

OUTPUT

  • Top three issues

Materials

  • Whiteboard
  • Markers
  • Sticky dots

Participants

  • Operations Manager
  • Infrastructure Manager
  • I&O team members

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

Need Extra Help?
Speak With An Analyst

Get the help you need in this 4-phase advisory process. You'll receive 7 touchpoints with our researchers, all included in your membership.

Guided Implementation 1: Get buy-in
  • Call 1: Discuss current state.
  • Call 2: Review stakeholder presentation.

Guided Implementation 2: Define accountability and metrics
  • Call 1: Review RACIs.
  • Call 2: Review metrics.

Guided Implementation 3: Assess gaps and prioritize initiatives
  • Call 1: Discuss gaps.
  • Call 2: Discuss initiatives.

Guided Implementation 4: Launch initiatives and track metrics
  • Call 1: Review plan and metric schedule.

Author

Derek Shank

Contributors

  • Cyrus Kalatbari, IT Infrastructure/Cloud Architect
  • Derek Cullen, Chief Technology Officer
  • Phil Webb, Senior Manager, Unified Messaging and Mobility
  • Ritchie Mendoza, IT Services Delivery Consultant
  • Rob Thomson, Solutions Architect
  • 2 anonymous contributors

Related Content: Operations Management

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