A new survey of CIOs, VPs of Technology and other IT leaders by IDG Research Services reveals that IT groups face a tremendous opportunity to become a core part of the business and help shape future direction. The challenge is for IT to keep up with the pace of change and deliver new services efficiently, while staying on top of the day-to-day work. The transformation to IT as a Service has begun.

1. IDG Quick Poll * IT-as-a-Service
How IT Can Improve Efficiency—and
Deliver on Its Greatest Opportunity
IDG survey says IT poised to become a crucial business partner and driver—
if it successfully transitions to a new service delivery model
More than ever, IT groups find they must develop
ever-closer relationships with the businesses they
serve, the result of a need to deliver more services
in a digital format for the benefit of employees and
customers alike. As such, IT groups face a tremen-dous
opportunity to become a core part of the
company value proposition and play a starring role
in shaping the future direction and success of the
business. But such gains can only be made if IT can
figure out ways to keep up with the pace of change
and deliver these new services efficiently, while still
staying on top of the day-to-day work.
It all amounts to a transformation of IT to a new
model, one in which IT evolves as a service broker
to the organization. And in this new model, not only
does IT have a seat at the table for important busi-ness
decisions, but IT also helps drive innovation—for
both technology and business initiatives. Doing so will
mean finding ways to free up time to dedicate to these
new endeavors, so that IT can become more agile and
able to deliver while still “keeping the lights on.”
These are some of the top-level findings from
an IDG Research Services survey of heads of IT—
CIOs, VPs, directors, and the like—at 55 companies,
each with at least 500 employees.
One of the respondents, Phil Bertolini, is dealing
with this new reality every day in his position as
deputy county executive and CIO for Oakland County,
Mich., which provides IT services for 82 departments
and divisions serving 1.2 million residents of 62
villages and townships in the county.
“Now more than ever we’re changing so fast,
we have to be better at understanding organizational
needs, what brings value to the organization, and
making sure we’re at the table to help them make
that change,” he says.
The good news is that because IT touches
every department in an organization, it is in a unique
position to deliver.
Feeling the pressure
IT leaders report facing a number of business and
technology pressures to deliver and support new
services. New demands might involve increasing
the use of digital services and technology to create
improved business outcomes, the result perhaps of
improved agility to get ideas to market faster than the
competition. Digital services may also form the basis
for new products or capabilities, such as self-service
tools that allow users to address their own IT issues
or make bank deposits from their smartphones.
A shift toward mobile workplaces and markets is
another big driver, one that Bertolini sees firsthand. He
says fully 40% of the traffic to the various websites
his group operates—which collectively offer some 50
digital services—comes from mobile devices.
“It’s just where everything’s headed,” he says.
“I can’t imagine what the figure will be a year or
two from now, because smartphones have been
outselling PCs for two or three years.”

2. 2 IDG Quick Poll * IT-as-a-Service
What business and technology pressures are compelling your organization to
deliver and support new digital services (i.e., transforming business models,
products or operations with technology)? (Please select all that apply.)
Efficiencies — doing more things, more quickly
Improvements in enterprise cost structure/efficiency
Shift towards mobile workplaces and markets
New revenue-generating business opportunities
Employee engagement and demand
Compliance with existing and anticipated industry
and government standards and regulations
Changes afoot in IT
In response to these pressures, IT groups are
making significant changes. The most common
change under way, cited by 82% of respondents,
is to improve the quality of IT services—hard to
argue with that. But the next four responses get
at how IT is seeking to improve:
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consumer needs” is the next most popular area
of change, which 67% of respondents say is
already under way and another 27% are planning
for in the coming 12 months.
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of IT services, which 65% of respondents report
is under way and another 22% have on tap for
the coming year.
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delivered and consumed—such as through cloud,
mobility, app stores, and the like—with 20%
planning to do so in the next year.
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service delivery, with 16% more planning to
do so in the near future.
A large majority of IT organizations (87%) say it
is important for them to make exactly those sorts
of changes to enable them to become more in tune
with business and consumer needs.
69%
62%
58%
49%
40%
40%
How change is happening
If IT wants to be more of a strategic player (and the
business needs it to be), the question becomes how
to make it happen. All the day-to-day activities that
IT has always performed aren’t going away. So IT
effectively has to take on this new role while still
performing its old one.
In fact, some of the traditional IT activities become
more important than ever, says Chris Rixon, executive
advisor for IT management solution vendor BMC.
“IT needs to be better than ever at change
management, at defining service-level agreements
and sticking to them, and being proactive about
monitoring them and communicating to stake-holders,”
Rixon says. “These core IT management
disciplines that have always been important are
now beyond critical.”
One way IT is trying to free up time is by
empowering end users to address their own IT
issues through self-service offerings. In fact, of
the respondents to the IDG Research survey who
consider “improving the quality of IT services” to be
critical or very important, 71% already have initiatives
under way or have immediate plans to empower
end users to address their own IT issues.
Respondents are also making proactive invest-ments
in a number of other areas, including cloud
Not only does
IT have a seat
at the table
for important
business deci-sions,
but IT
also helps drive
innovation—for
both technology
and business
initiatives.
Other
Source: IDG Research Services; Base: 55 qualified respondents
7% Other mentions:
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The desire to create efficiencies, improve
cost structure, and shift toward a more mobile
workplace is driving plans to deliver and
support new digital services.

4. 3 IDG Quick Poll * IT-as-a-Service
“We pushed as
much as we
could through
automated
tools. It saved
hundreds and
hundreds of
hours.”
— Phil Bertolini
deputy county
executive and CIO
Oakland County
Mich.
How would you describe your organization’s investments in the following
technologies over the past 12 months?
Mostly proactive
investments
(i.e., anticipating
user demands)
(3)
Equal mix of
proactive and
reactive investments
(2)
Mostly reactive
investments
(i.e., reacting to
user demands)
(1)
No
investments
(0)
18%
33%
25%
31%
40%
31%
29%
42%
Source: IDG Research Services; Base: 55 qualified respondents
offerings, automation tools, mobile offerings, and
data analytics, each cited by at least one-third of
respondents.
Many others are making reactive, or a mix of
proactive and reactive, investments in the same
areas, along with service support, data management,
and performance and availability management tools
(see chart below).
Such responses map well to the 2014 State of
the CIO survey by CIO magazine. Some 72% of
respondents cite improving use of data and analytics
as a priority, and more than a third cite creating
a comprehensive mobile and tablet strategy for
customers, business partners, and employees.
Increased use of digital services
Many of these investments sound familiar to Berto-lini,
including cloud technology, which has “changed
the dynamic” around how he delivers services,
using a shared services model vs. the old “own and
operate” mode. Indeed, he’s using cloud to deliver
lots of self-service capabilities that once required
residents to visit a county office. In a county that
covers 910 square miles, that’s a major convenience.
“Making services available online, making it
easy to do, makes [IT] real for them,” he says.
“They get their business done in 5 minutes and
get back to their day, with no standing in line.”
He is far from alone, as survey respondents have
big plans around using digital services to improve the
end-user experience. Making such services avail-able
via mobile technologies leads the pack, cited
by 78% of respondents, with a focus on ease of use
and simplicity not far behind (71%). About two-thirds
of respondents expect digital services to improve
collaboration between end users and the IT organi-zation,
while 64% see them playing a role in self-service
models.
Easing the IT burden
Success in rolling out self-service models will be
imperative if IT is to ease its own burden—and thus
deliver on the larger strategic goals of the organiza-tion.
Toward that end, survey respondents are also
investing in solutions to better manage the back
end of IT.
They include software that automates repeti-tive
processes such as provisioning, in which 91%
of respondents are making at least modest invest-ments.
Oakland County, for example, has 4,000 PCs
to manage. “We couldn’t manage all those desktops
without automation,” Bertolini says, noting he has
tools to do simple things like patching and pushing
out updates.
Cloud
Mobile
Automation
Service support
Data Analytics
Data management
Performance and availability management
Social
49%
33%
36%
27%
33%
27%
22%
16%
18%
27%
24%
33%
16%
31%
35%
27%
While respondents feel they are making mostly proactive investments in cloud technology,
investments in data analytics and social media are more often reactive in nature.
15%
7%
15%
9%
11%
11%
15%
15%

5. 4 IDG Quick Poll * IT-as-a-Service
And he’s currently in the process of upgrading
from Windows XP to Windows 7. “We pushed as
much as we could through automated tools. It saved
hundreds and hundreds of hours,” he says.
Cloud technology, both public and private, is also
popular among survey respondents, with more than
80% of respondents making at least modest invest-ments
in each.
“These are well-placed investments, because
they allow IT to more quickly deliver resources that
users need, whether it’s for an internal development
group or to address a business opportunity,” says
Atwell Williams, a senior director in the Office of
the CTO at BMC.
“In this digital age everything is happening
much faster,” Williams continues. “Success or
failure is measured in days, as opposed to weeks
or months. So cloud gets to the notion that IT
needs to be more agile.”
IT groups are also investing in various sorts
of management tools, including monitoring and
performance management software (84%), improved
service desk or help desk software (80%), and
discovery and dependency mapping tools (78%).
“Such tools are all about making IT people more
productive and enabling them to spend more time on
cool, innovative projects,” Williams says. “IT people
don’t wake up wondering how many password resets
they’ll get to do today. Nobody gets excited about
keeping the lights on.”
Monitoring and performance management tools
are also important because they can help IT quickly
diagnose and repair problems that are impacting
customers.
“More and more we’re seeing customers talking
about proactive monitoring, getting ahead of prob-lems
to avoid failures,” Williams says.
At the core of many management tools are auto-mation
capabilities that help IT professionals perform
their jobs not only more quickly, but also more accu-rately
and consistently, BMC’s Rixon notes.
“Automation is a massively empowering capa-bility,”
he says. “It’s not just removing the need to do
repetitive tasks and [freeing] up people, but includes
lots of other things like repeatability, standardization,
and measurement. Automated things tend to be the
same every time, and there’s huge value in that.”
Automation is particularly important as IT is
being counted on to deliver new digital services. To
maintain any credibility IT organizations have earned,
they must consistently deliver high-quality services.
“Consistent delivery is one of the huge payoffs of
automation,” Rixon says.
Conclusion: Opportunity beckons
Achieving consistent delivery is no mean feat.
However, it is critical to IT being able to deliver more
and better digital services that enable it to become
more of a business partner and business enabler.
In some ways, achieving consistency is the key to
IT transformation going forward.
A true transformation will require IT to become
ever-more adept at the tasks it has always
performed, and automation will play a crucial role
in making that happen. In short, IT has to invest in
solutions that enable it to achieve a more productive
state, in order to improve service delivery with less
human effort.
That means implementing solutions such as
service management, provisioning and configuration,
integration and orchestration, as well as monitoring
and ongoing operation. BMC’s Rixon and Atwell are
focused on helping CIOs put such tools to use in
order to position their organizations to become more
agile and efficient—and ultimately seize the opportu-nity
in front of them.
To learn more about their work and how to
navigate the transition to the new era of IT,
visit: www.bmc.com
It is critical to
IT being able
to deliver more
and better
digital services
that enable
it to become
more of a busi-ness
partner
and business
enabler.