7 reasons CIOs should embrace an Internal Service Provider model

Late last year, we released the results of our third annual Global CIO Survey, which found that IT leaders are under growing pressure from Shadow IT. Propelled by this threat, many CIOs are reshaping their IT functions to more closely reflect the business needs that are driving line of business (LOB) IT spending. But Shadow IT isn’t the only reason CIOs are embracing an internal service provider model. Our colleagues in the US outlined the other factors driving its adoption:

  1. Desire for job security: To balance demands among line of business leaders as well as the corporate C-suite, today’s IT professionals must increasingly rely on cloud-based services. Implementing a converged infrastructure where networks, storage and servers can be managed as one is the first step in the evolution toward this service defined infrastructure.
  2. CIO relevancy: Tomorrow’s CIO must become both a business partner to the organisation and a service provider to its internal users, creating a portfolio of user services and experiences, an agile and responsive IT operation, and a more affordable and sustainable technology consumption model than what formerly existed. It’s a transformation journey that, if done correctly, will result in a service defined enterprise enabled by a service management strategy that defines value based on the business outcomes driven by IT rather than the technology itself.
  3. Increased agility, decreased TCO: Driving business value requires a services-led approach to IT, something that starts with the implementation of a software-defined data centre.
  4. Technology blueprints: A software-defined data centre (SDDC) is a key element within a service-defined enterprise, and the result of a well-planned IT transformation journey in which all components of a data center are virtualized to provide the best security, availability, performance and change management at the lowest cost.  Control of a SDDC is fully automated by software freeing IT to focus on working more closely with line-of-business customers.
  5. Evolving service defined strategies: As IT departments transform into internal service providers, a new type of skill set with an emphasis on melding technological understanding with business acumen will be required.
  6. Aligning IT with business priorities: CIOs need to create a catalogue of services and map the relationships between business-critical applications and IT infrastructure to quickly examine and respond to line of business service requests. ITSM tools designed to manage enterprise services across a portfolio of organisational needs provide the answer.
  7. Outsourcing objectives: As CIOs look to expand capabilities without increasing internal staff, the use of managed services is quickly becoming a necessity. The key to success, experts say, is to choose a partner based on skill and experience, not just price.

IT departments as service brokers

With so many driving forces, the shift from technology defined to service defined thinking is gaining momentum worldwide. The ultimate goal is for corporate IT organisations to become brokers of technology services that meet the needs and expectations of their organisations’ users by delivering IT with the same speed and agility they expect – and get – in their consumer lives. Delivering a consumer-like IT experience at work requires a whole new way of thinking among CIOs; it requires an underlying shift from IT as a provider of ‘always on’ technology to a department that supports a service defined enterprise able to offer an array of a la carte computing experiences when and how the organisation’s users need to access them.

To read more about the survey results, download the full report here.

Tags CIO, Digital Transformation, CIOs, IT Department, outsourcing, service defined enterprise, line of business, Shadow IT

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