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We are delighted to announce the availability of the 2011 Business Service Management Benchmark Report.
 
The survey, which was conducted in the first half of this year, measures the maturity of BSM initiatives industry-wide. The report provides unique insight into the working relationship between IT and their business counterparts, across departments and roles. It measures the effectiveness of IT service support and identifies the current use and planned adoption of ITIL v2 and v3.
 
We believe you will find the benchmark report both intriguing and insightful.
 
A few key take-a-ways from the benchmark report include:

• Both Business and IT personnel are approaching consensus on the high-level definition of Business Service Management

• Businesses are maturing at a higher rate than IT and, as such, IT is struggling to keep pace with the business

• There remains a significant "information" gap between business and IT regarding how technology could, or should be leveraged to support business growth and competitive differentiation

• Nearly half of enterprises we surveyed have achieved fairly effective alignment with their business counterparts and are meeting expectations

• Too many IT shops are in danger of being marginalized as the lack of investment in IT leads to less innovation and IT services that are inadequate to satisfy the longer term needs of the business

Click <here> to download the final report.

This quote by Audrey Rasmussen of Ptak/Noel and Associates does a nice job summing up the report.

"As is typical for major transformations such as BSM, progress never seems fast enough and accurately gauging progress is a continual challenge.  This BSM Maturity benchmark study provides a view of the current "state of BSM", giving BSM practitioners perspectives on their own "state of BSM" and how it compares with other BSM initiatives, as well as a benchmark to measure their progress."

Please don't hesitate to comment on the study in the BSMReview blog or send us e-mail at info@bsmreview.org.

An recent article at CIO.com entitled "How to Argue with the CEO - and Win" offers 13 tips, culled from current and former CIOs and communication consultants ...with the goal to get the CEO to see the CIO's perspective when arguments about IT spending ensue.

All 13 tips are relevant to BSM, but the one that sticks out to us is #3 -- CIO must Speak in Business Terms. We have heard this loud and clear from CIO's who fought for, and succeeded at getting a seat at the table with the CEO. To succeed at this level, the CIO must be respected for his knowledge and ability to contribute to the discussion about business strategy and operational excellence.

Our interview with Robert Urwiler, CIO at Vail Reports, brought this to the forefront very early on in our discussion. In the interview, Robert demonstrated a deep understanding of the business and discusses the collaborative role of IT regarding resort operations. Robert's story is a great example of the benefits of alignment, but not all CIO's can make that transition.

According to a number of sources, the argument between the CIO and CEO often are a result of poor business communication skills of the CIO. Another CIO,com article entitled "10 Communication Mistakes CIOs Still Make" highlight these communication challenges.

We have been discussing this communication gap at BSMReview for some time. We think there needs to be a new vocabulary that serves as the  bridge for this communication gap. Some people think the responsibility lies solely with the CIO ...that the CIO should develop the business skills required to learn the business.  I disagree in that I think the business also needs to learn something about IT, not at the level of the CIO, but certainly enough to know what IT services and trends directly affect business operations and competitive differentiation. Perhaps an IT 101 course for the CEO and line-of-business executives, and the equivalent course for the CIO on the dynamics of the business.

I have often thought that a set of business-oriented key performance indicators (KPIs) would be a step in the right direction -- linking IT investment and performance to business performance. Sounds a bit like Business Service Management.

At any rate, I wanted to bring this CIO article to your attention. It is well worth reading if you are interested in aligning your IT investment with your business strategy.

Finally, another must read that is related to this entry is the recent interview with Mark Settle, CIO of BMC Software.

Vance Brown, CEO of Cherwell Software, makes the case for changes IT organizations must make to survive in the new economy in a recent BSMReview article.

But change is hard -- it requires people to alter their behavior, processes to be reinvented and technology to support the new business process. Vance states that "the cornerstone to effective change in information technology is to harness the necessary information to proactively make the right business decisions-at anytime from anywhere-and thereby truly aligning IT with business objectives."

With today's technology, business unit managers can utilize an iPhone or PDA device to proactively receive, and then act upon, the right information-at anytime, from anywhere. This enables people with sound processes to make the right business decisions. In order to make right, or "RITE" decisions, management must have data and information that is:

1. Relevant to the mission, strategies, and objectives of the organization
2. Integrated across all department "silos" and geographic locations
3. Timely, so that the issues can be addressed and resolved before they become crises and
4. Efficient, so that with the mounds of data, organizations can "manage by exception" and the automated best business processes can be enforced

What we all know is that Change is Inevitable .. How you control and manage it is optional.

More >>

As IT becomes increasingly important to business operations more and more IT organizations are turning to ITIL and other such ITSM frameworks to bring IT under control and provide services that deliver business value. ITIL V3  sums up perfectly what we in IT need to deliver "Value to customers in terms of outcomes they want to achieve without the ownership of specific costs and risks."

Unfortunately, too many  ITSM improvement programs fail. Reports vary, stating that between 70% and 80% fail to deliver value. A Forrester report revealed that 52% fail because of resistance. These failures cause wasted costs and increased business risks. These failures are no longer acceptable.

Paul gives us the "Top 10 Types of Resistance" you had better keep an eye out for. And if you catch yourself resisting with one of these techniques... well, then.

More >>

Back in 2007, Gartner released the statistic that IT was responsible for 2% of global CO2 emissions. This puts IT on a par with the aviation industry. Yes, really! We all focus on the airlines, because they are big and obvious, we can even pay an off-set charge to "feel better", but we need to start and focus on things we can more directly impact on our own doorstep, the IT we use. The carbon footprint of PCs and monitors is expected to triple by 2020 - a growth rate of 5% per annum. The global data centre carbon footprint is expected to triple by 2020 - a growth of 7% per annum.

We've all heard about global warming and the impact we hungry consumers are having on the planet. It's something we need to address, especially as we begin to see the impact it's having on our weather patterns. Severe floods in South America, Australia, heavy snow in the UK and East coast of the USA. These conditions are impacting our lives and businesses and are projected to continue unless we all start to turn the tide and think of ways to reduce our carbon footprint. Many governments and businesses have Green policies and set targets as part of their corporate governance responsibilities ...perhaps your own organisation has such a policy. If so, do you know its content and how you can contribute towards it? We need to start adding Green IT thinking into all that we do, particularly in the business/IT (BSM) relationship, before it's too late.

What can we do about this? There are simple things to make a positive start, such as archive unused data, power off idle Desktops, printers etc. We need to bring this thinking into our Service Strategy and Design initiatives ready for the transitioning into live operations. We need to bring Green IT into the business-oriented service management discussion. 

Recently I came across a great article by Karen Ferris from a consulting company in Australia, Macanta Consulting, who looked into Service Management and in particular ITIL as a way of understanding, controlling and reducing a Businesses CO2 impact. I hope you'll find it of interest and useful in your Green IT efforts.

BSMReview is a Media Sponsor for the Pink Elephant conference and expo being held in Las Vegas this week. As a media sponsor, we promoted the event on BSMReview and are covering BSM newsworthy items at the event. BSMReview is well represented at the event and we are holding down a spot on the expo floor.

As you probably know, Pink Elephant is a professional services organization that provides consulting, education and tools to assess ITIL and IT service management competency. The Las Vegas conference is their 15th international event, has 1600+ attendees, and offers a solid program of educational sessions that features ITIL experts and customer presenters. The event is well run and sessions that I attended are content rich and well attended.

As a side note, I loved the opening video they produced and recommend watching it -- it is both entertaining and insightful.

We are launching the 2011 BSM Maturity Survey at the event. We are finding a high level of interest in both the BSM Maturity Model we developed last year and the survey instrument. Nearly everyone we have spoken to recognizes the alignment gap between IT and the business, but few know how to deal with the issue. They see the maturity model as a good way to start a dialog and the survey as a way to measure where they stand as compared to other companies their size and within their industry.

Many of the presenters at the event are real customers who are sharing their experiences -- lesson learned and best practices. Many view the CIOs role as the indicator for BSM maturity. Many see their CIO focused exclusively on IT operations (keeping the lights on), others see the CIO as transforming IT (to run IT like a business) and a fewer number see the CIO as strategic to the business. There was a healthy discussion about how IT leadership transitions though these phases, what leadership characteristics are key and if multiple roles are necessary to do it all. It is worth reading the 2011 State of the CIO survey by CIO.com to see how CIOs see their priorities changing this year.

We didn't spend a lot of time with vendors and won't be blogging about any new BSM related announcements. However, we spoke to a number of vendors who have agreed to promote the BSM Maturity Survey to their customers and prospects to support the benchmark study.

Finally, we made some great connections with customers at the event and have a half dozen or so lined up for interviews, so be on the lookout for that.

The Pink Elephant event is 100% relevant to BSM, offers insightful content and is run professionally. We will be back there next year and hope to see you there.

Chris Bruzzo, the CTO of Starbucks, and Narinder Singh, the founder of Appirio, demonstrate Starbucks Pledge 5 application, built on the force.com platform.

They did it in 21 days.  That’s the real value of the cloud.

Watch:

As a community of business and IT professionals, we're conducting our First Annual Survey to measure the maturity of BSM initiatives industry-wide.  Our goal is to benchmark the adoption, perceptions and expectations of aligning IT and business within a variety of industry segments.

In addition, the survey will help refine the definition of Business Service Management, quantify its value to the organization and provide the data necessary to measure IT and business alignment based on market and business maturity.

Each survey participant will be provided the resultant BSM Maturity report (complimentary), analyzed by BSMReview experts, and be invited to participate in a webinar that discusses the results. It is our intention that participants will learn:

1.    How other companies are assessing the value of BSM.
2.    How your BSM maturity and initiatives compare to others.
3.    What others are doing to better align business with IT.
4.    How others are measuring BSM effectiveness.
5.    The norms for BSM adoption within your industry segment.

The survey consists of 19 questions and the average time to complete the survey is 10 minutes. Survey participation is 100% anonymous.  Our goal is to obtain survey response from both IT and business personnel, so we strongly encourage forwarding the survey link to business colleagues who will benefit from participating.

2011 BSM Maturity Survey

A friend of mine just pointed me at this Wikipedia definition of BSM. Whilst I like some of the entry, I must admit that I'm not keen on the first couple of paragraphs, which seems to imply that BSM is a bunch of management tools you buy from one or more vendors.

BSM is actually a mindset. Everything you do has to be from a business point of view. This is absolutely key. Once you get this, everything else flows on from here. Tools are pointless if you don't have the mindset and processes to exploit them.

For instance if I walk into a motor manufacturer IT department and ask an employee what he/she does, the correct answer is I sell cars - not I monitor Oracle.

Once you have this, then you look at things like ITIL and CoBIT to help you achieve your goals.

• You don't need all of ITIL - choose the bits you need

My big hang-up with ITIL is that it demands you learn its grammar and syntax and vocabulary. Sorry, I know why I need a CAB, but I couldn't care less what the initials actually stand for. Use ITIL as a means to achieve the first bullet, not as a gospel that has to be followed blindly. 

• BSM is two-way

Everyone loves to talk about the business impact of a failed router or whatever, but  that is only a small part of the story and an example of IT impact on the business. 

What most people forget or ignore is the other way - the impact of business on IT.  One of the definitions cited in the Wikipedia entry says that BSM is a 

"strategy and an approach for linking key IT components to the goals of the business. It enables you to understand and predict how technology impacts the business and how business impacts the IT infrastructure." 

I would actually say services rather than components, but I see too many people getting bogged down in the first half and forgetting the second. Actually you have to get the second half right before you can do the first. There is no way you can design an IT infrastructure if the business hasn't told you what their goals / budgets etc. are. I can design you a sub-second 24x7 system, but do you need it and can you afford it? It may be right for some business services , but not all etc. 

• IT and business need to be co-joined.

If IT does not have a place on the board with equal or greater importance than other departments like manufacturing, sales etc. then get another job. BSM has no chance in a place like this, as IT will always play second fiddle. 

However, this also means that IT people have to learn to not  talk IT when they meet anyone from outside their department, and that business people have to say what they need rather than what they want.

• Don't run stuff in-house that should be outsourced

BSM is not about protecting IT - it's about running IT in the most efficient and effective manner possible for the business. For example, if you know nothing about networks, get someone else to run them for you.

• Make your contracts business based, not component

Any contracts you have with service providers, or you have with someone outside your organisation should be based on the delivery of that service, not on the availability of server no. 843, which is meaningless.

This raises some very interesting questions on who measure the service and reports on it and with what regularity? Are they measuring it from your point of view or theirs? I don't care if the service provider uses carrier pigeons if the service meets my requirements. I have no interest in how they do it, I just need to know that it will work and how they will respond when it breaks? 

• Don't run something just because someone else does or you read it somewhere

Every business is different. Your company goals are different. Your strategy is different. (If not, then merge and save some money). Ergo, your IT will be different.

There are many more examples I could quote, but I hope you agree that everything flows from the first bullet. If not, or you think I'm totally wrong, please let me know.

In the Chief Executive.net CEO Briefing article, "WikiLeaks' Next Target: CEOs", it seems to me that Wikileaks' founder Julian Assange will make good on his vow to go after big business and to release confidential information concerning the nation's largest private companies.  The most severe threat to any organization whether it is the State Department, Department of Defense, or a large U.S. Bank or other major publicly traded company is the insider threat.

I spoke with Chrisan Herrod, our security expert, to get her view on how this will impact security policy in global enterprises. This is what Chrisan had to say:

"Wikileaks has made it completely obvious that information security breaches represent a significant risk to the enterprise and that an air tight cyber security strategy is not an option, it is a must. The question then becomes how best to counter the threat without damaging the mission of your business.

1. CEO's should take notice now of what is happening within the US government and take extraordinary measures to protect their corporate information.  IT and the Business should focus on the principles of alignment offered by Business Service Management. Business leaders and Information Security personnel have much that they can do, and should do to be as proactive as possible.
2. First and foremost make Information Security a top priority for your company.  If you do not have a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) hire one and place the individual outside of IT in a role that is visibly important to the entire company. 
3. Stand firmly behind your Corporate policies and enforce them through the best education, training, and awareness that you can afford for your employees.
4. Adopt a culture of risk management and form an IT Risk Management group that reports to the Audit Committee of the Board of Directors. 
5. Do not buy technologies to solve your problem, rather adopt technology that will enable your company to do a better job of ensuring who has access to information and systems and require business units to monthly validate an individual's need for access. 
6. Finally, use technology in conjunction with improved access management processes, compliance to corporate policies and increased awareness of the risks to your company should information be leaked that could be damaging to you personally or your company as a whole.

I agree with the government's increased emphasis on improving access management and my reasoning is supported by survey data released earlier this year by the Ponemon Institute.  In their survey, sponsored by CA, they revealed that rank-and-file employees were much more likely than executives to see the necessity of certain enabling technologies to reduce or mitigate security risks within their organizations, and the technology with the widest difference: identity and access management systems.
 
If Identity and access management systems and processes are not in place, it places the corporation in a higher risk category.  And even if they are in place, they must be continuously monitored.  That is why it is so important not to invest in technology alone, but to invest in sound processes based on enforceable and monitored policies.

So by all means take to heart the issue of access management and address it first and foremost, but also ensure that you are taking Information Security and Risk Management seriously as part of your Business Service Management strategy in a high threat environment."

In a recent BSMReview blog note I recommended listening to EMA's (Enterprise Management Associates) webinar discussing Business Service Management. They were in the process of publishing a new EMA Radar Report on the 'service impact" of implementing BSM technologies.

After watching the Webinar this week, I was disappointed with the incompleteness of the analysis.  My primary concern is how the analyst can you claim accuracy and objectivity  when vendors that have been long time advocates and thought leaders for BSM are excluded?   Even if a vendor doesn't respond to the analyst inquiries, it seems prudent to reference that fact and comment on information that is in the public domain. 

For example, I don't understand how you can have a Business Service Management vendor discussion without BMC being mentioned. I can kind of understand not mentioning Service-Now.com, but frankly I think most customers would be highly interested in one of the fastest growing SaaS vendors in the space and how they are positioning their solution in the context of BSM.  This begs the question, what other vendors are missing?

The Radar report positions 14 vendors (some which I am just now hearing about) and provides some insights, but I'm hesitant about buying into the outcome.  This makes me wonder if the report is highly influenced by EMA's vendor clients and, as such, is it biased?

Sorry, I have been very quiet on here for a while. Combination of a big birthday (numbers wise), and the fact that I am writing a book for BMC - more about that when it is ready to be published.

Reading through the articles on BSMReview.com, I started to wonder: "what is the problem?". Is IT really thàt disconnected from the business? Looking around in my living room and at the office, I can harldy imagine how life would be without any Information Technology to support me. And all of this is provided to me by companies in the form of products and/or services. Would I buy and/or use them if I didn't know what value they bring to me? No, of course not. Given that IT has penetrated already so much into my life, these "IT companies" must be connected to (or better say integrated within) "my business".

Interestingly some time ago I delivered an ITIL v3 based Service Portfolio Management workshop within a large Financial Institution. In preparing for this workshop we agreed to first focus on the question: "what is a service?". So I started by presenting the ITIL v3 definition of a service: "A means of delivering value to customers by facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve without the ownership of specific costs and risks.". So far, so good. Then we looked at how to define a service and -more specifically- on how to define the business value of a service. Now when I asked the question "what is the busines value of your e-mail service?" the answer I got is "The e-mail service provides message traffic and storage of e-mail and e-calendaring". Does this describe a business value? Don't think so.

Looking at this sample, one might see it as a proof point that IT is really disconnected from the business and use it to justify a Business Service Management approach. Personally I wouldn't go that far. The only thing that it shows to me in this particular case is that IT is not able to articulate the business value of a service, but that doesn't mean the service doesn't have value or is not being used. On the contrary, the e-mail service sample above is one of the most used and appreciated service in the Financial Institute with an implicit value. Nevertheless and ultimately as one of the results of the workshop we came up with the following definition:

E-mail services provide value to the business when cooperative business communications are conducted without the constraints of location, device or time-zone. Value is created when IT operates for the business a store-and-forward messaging system, so that business employees can compose, send, store and receive e-mails with peers both inside as well as outside the business and in a manner that

• Is accessible 24 x 7 x 365 across the globe
• Allows only one outage of max. 5 min per 3 months
• Enables messages up to 45Mb and mailboxes up to 100Mb
• Supports protection of business confidential information
• Ensures data availability and archiving within business policies

Similarly and on a bigger scale, I recently met with another customer (read: a service catalog manager within IT) who asked me to review his service catalog and provide feedback. Of course I accepted this and then found myself reading through a 193 pages thick service catalog printed on paper. When the guy returned after a few days and asked me for my opinion, I said: "Imagine that you are entering a restaurant and ask for a menu card. And when the waiter returns he delivers to you the cookbook of the chef. How would you feel?". He immediately got the point that the service catalog contained way too much information for their business customers. In addition I showed him that there was also information missing in the service catalog. And you probably have guessed this one already: it contained no descriptions of business value whatsoever.

Again also in this situation the reality was that all services in the catalog already existed and were actively being used by the business customers. So why then create a service catalog? Good question. In this particular case the main driver for producing a service catalog was IT's desire to explain what they deliver, however the business didn't ask for a service catalog and also was not involved in the creation. And like Bill Keyworth rightfully stated in The Why & What of Business Service Management: "BSM success is entirely dependent upon the willingness and skill of both IT and business to have an effective two way conversation ...one party without the other is doomed to failure.".

Reading through my samples above and several articles on BSMReview.com, I see a number of very specific issues and symptoms, but am still not sure what the main problem or need is for which we are trying to find a solution under the name of Business Service Management. When we define BSM as "the discipline that aligns the deliverables of IT to the enterprise's business goals" then I wonder what's the value in doing this? And isn't this already happening implicitly ? Is it really possible to define the package of whatever it takes to deliver the expected service to the business community ...in a way that they can understand and appreciate that delivery? To me this sounds a little bit similar like designing the perfect organizational structure, while we all know that this does not exist (otherwise everybody would have it by now...).

I realize that my statements are provocative, however I believe that a good understanding of and interactive discussion around the fundamental problem we are trying to solve should be the starting point for (m)any article(s) on BSM(Review.com). So let's first address the question: "Business Service Management: what's the problem?".

Looking forward to your comments.

Richard L. Ptak, Bill Keyworth and Audrey Rasmussen believe that IBM's strategic focus on Integrated Service Management (ISM) and the application of IBM solutions under the Smarter Planet theme marks a milestone achievement in linking business and IT resources and assets for business success. Not the least because Integrated Service Management, in our opinion, leads directly to the broader message of how IT can effectively leverage and link together all enterprise assets and resources to achieve the goals of the business. ISM closely aligns with the Business Service Management (BSM) concepts that are being unnecessarily limited to discussions of just leveraging IT infrastructure. 

Learn how IBM illustrates and documents enterprise-wide benefits to be realized from BSM.  Read the article »

"You Answer It; You Own It!"

A customer-focused service culture designed with the customer in mind will quickly benefit from the practice of Total Contact Ownership (TCO), where there is no ambiguity of ownership and direct accountability when it comes to the customer experience and ultimate satisfaction.

Read the article »

IT leaders must learn the necessity, value and process behind the development of a "Business Impact Statement" and the importance of crafting this statement in terms and metrics that are meaningful to the business community. Bob Multhaup & Ken Turbitt highlight its critical role in initiating business-oriented service management.

Read the article »

Why would a business executive be interested in Agile software development? 

Why is Agile a topic of interest to the Business-oriented Service Management community? The answer involves strengthening the connection between the developer (...who provides software capabilities for business use) and the business entity (...who uses software technology for critical business functions.)  These two groups are frequently bridged (...successfully or unsuccessfully) by IT operations, adding complexity and increased business frustration to the BSM process of aligning business with IT (...both operations and development or DevOps.)

Read Bill Keyworth's book review >>

Well, here it is: "Why Doesn't the Business Drive BSM? A Value-Driven Business Service Management Maturity Model" >>

BSMReview's Bill Keyworth and Rick Berzle evaluate the management of IT services from the perspective of the business, a.k.a. "business service management."

The negative impact of IT organizations being culturally and functionally disconnected from their business community is escalating, explain the authors.  As evidenced by the push to bypass traditional IT options through Cloud and SaaS initiatives, IT must enhance how technology is provisioned for the business.

The BSM Maturity Model described in this ground-breaking paper covers 5 levels:

You can download it here for free (registration required) and let us know what you think >>

For those of you who live on another planet, e.g. Venus, or in another country, which has no interest in what goes on here in the UK, e.g. most of you, we are going to have a General Election soon. This means we get to choose who is going to make a complete hash of running the place for the next five years, whilst they line their pockets with our hard-earned cash. (If you think that's cynical, you should have seen my initial version!)

Register for our monthly newsletter, and download "Creating Strategic Differentiation with Information Technology" - a diagnostic for IT executives - by John Hagel III.

Here's what John says to frame the discussion:

IT alone cannot create strategic differentiation - it is only an enabler. IT creates options that must be effectively exploited through focused business initiatives.

Nick Carr is right: competitors can copy virtually any individual business initiative leveraging information technology. This has three implications:

1. Companies must aggressively measure return on IT investment - companies often over-estimate the differentiation available from IT investment and under-estimate the investment
required

2. Building institutional capability for continued initiatives is the only real source of sustainable advantage

3. Since individual initiatives provide only fleeting advantage at best, it is helpful to define a longer-term strategic direction that can provide a context for waves of initiatives that reinforce each other and accelerate movement towards longer-term areas of opportunity

The document is made up of diagnostic questions in four key sections, to help you think through how to create strategic differentiation with IT:

I. Do you know where you are going?

II. Are you achieving as much impact as possible?

III. How do you define success?

IV. What is required to move even faster?

Don't just sit there - sign up for our newsletter, and download your copy now. >>

Is your company’s IT department passionate about their work?

If not, then perhaps you’re not letting them solve problems…  Passionate IT solves problems - not just for IT, but for the business.

More from John Hagel on pursuing passion »

I have started a mini-series in The Agile Executive on the subject of innovation. Part I discusses new forms of experimentation. Part II is about US national policy. Part III, to be posted early next week, will address Open Innovation.

I have preliminary thoughts about Part IV and Part V of the mini-series. I would, however, like to keep the mini-series open to contributions from readers and experts of BSM Review. The number of WW IT professionals is about 15M. Innovation, particulary in Business Service Management, is, I am sure, on the mind of many of them. I plan to tap into the wisdom of this "crowd."

Please post a reply, compose a guest post, or just send an email to isrgat@gmail.com.