Q&A: Forrester Talks About the Future Technology Management Cycle - Part 2

Pete Goldin
APMdigest

Jean-Pierre "J.P." Garbani, VP, Principal Analyst serving Infrastructure & Operations Professionals at Forrester, discusses his new report: Transform Infrastructure And Operations For The Future Technology Management Cycle. In Part 2 of APMdigest's exclusive interview, he talks about the changing role of the I&O organization.

Start with Part 1 of the interview.

APM: In the transformation to the Business Technology Era, how does the role of the Infrastructure and Operations (I&O) organization change?

JP: This transformation requires I&O to transition from a provider of technology components to a broker of technology and business services. Thus, the I&O organization must focus on roles that assemble, design, oversee, and evaluate.

APM: Are there services I&O provides today that will no longer be needed?

JP: In terms of user demands to IT, there may be changes to the way user demands are met by technology: end user devices are an example. If we are talking about typical demands about applications and infrastructures, I anticipate that the demands will not change, but the way they are answered does: for example cloud instead of on-premise infrastructures or SaaS instead of in-house application development. But that is transparent for the user.

APM: What new demands will users start to expect from the I&O organization?

JP: Delays in provisioning, configuring and deploying specific infrastructures will no longer be tolerated from the I&O organization. Deployment of applications must be fast and agile to support agility in application development.

APM: What new roles will be needed in the I&O organization?

JP: Today's I&O organizations combine the roles of technology and production experts. As we transition from the typical plan-build-run model to a plan-procure-manage model, the new roles require different skills: While doers are part of the external service provider organization, the added value to the service broker role of I&O will be to assemble complex solutions, which may require a "collage" of service providers. Planners, designers, system engineers, and vendor/service managers become the lynchpin of technology management in the enterprise.

APM: How do you advise today's I&O organizations to prepare for the BT era?

JP: Today's I&O is mostly a siloed and hands-on organization. As it progressively shifts toward a service-oriented organization, it must assume more and more the role of technology expert and service broker on behalf of other organizations such as business units or development groups. This means that I&O must train and acquire new skills that are adapted to these roles.

APM: With these changes in mind, how do you see APM evolving? Will app performance remain a key consideration?

JP: A well-executed strategy will ensure that customers are continually engaged with your firm and employee productivity is optimized via mobile apps. Thus, I&O professionals must be able to proactively measure and guarantee mobile app performance.

As systems of records are involved in the systems of engagement performance, APM will also be relevant for traditional services.

ABOUT J.P. Garbani

As Forrester's VP, Principal Analyst, Garbani serves Infrastructure & Operation Professionals in predicting and quantifying IT disruptions. His expertise is in the IT management software and IT operations market, and his research examines the shifting industry dynamics caused by economic pressures and the impact of new technologies such as virtualization on the IT organization. Garbani has several decades of experience as an IT technology designer and marketer and also as a client of IT technology. He has broad experience in designing advanced technology solutions in industrial and commercial applications and bringing them to market.

Garbani came to Forrester through the acquisition of Giga Information Group, where he was the research director of the computing infrastructure group. He started his IT career in early 1968 as a software engineer working on the automation of nuclear power plants in France. He then joined Bull General Electric in Paris (subsequently Honeywell Bull), where he was a designer and project leader of very large network infrastructures in France, Scandinavia, and the US. Garbani moved to the US in 1984 and filled several engineering and marketing positions with Bull Information Systems. In 1994, Garbani created Epitome Technology Corporation, a middleware software company focused on manufacturing execution systems. Prior to joining Giga, Garbani worked as an IT management consultant for several large financial institutions in the US. He graduated from Ecole Superieure d'Electricite (Supelec) in Paris (MS in computer science).

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Q&A: Forrester Talks About the Future Technology Management Cycle - Part 2

Pete Goldin
APMdigest

Jean-Pierre "J.P." Garbani, VP, Principal Analyst serving Infrastructure & Operations Professionals at Forrester, discusses his new report: Transform Infrastructure And Operations For The Future Technology Management Cycle. In Part 2 of APMdigest's exclusive interview, he talks about the changing role of the I&O organization.

Start with Part 1 of the interview.

APM: In the transformation to the Business Technology Era, how does the role of the Infrastructure and Operations (I&O) organization change?

JP: This transformation requires I&O to transition from a provider of technology components to a broker of technology and business services. Thus, the I&O organization must focus on roles that assemble, design, oversee, and evaluate.

APM: Are there services I&O provides today that will no longer be needed?

JP: In terms of user demands to IT, there may be changes to the way user demands are met by technology: end user devices are an example. If we are talking about typical demands about applications and infrastructures, I anticipate that the demands will not change, but the way they are answered does: for example cloud instead of on-premise infrastructures or SaaS instead of in-house application development. But that is transparent for the user.

APM: What new demands will users start to expect from the I&O organization?

JP: Delays in provisioning, configuring and deploying specific infrastructures will no longer be tolerated from the I&O organization. Deployment of applications must be fast and agile to support agility in application development.

APM: What new roles will be needed in the I&O organization?

JP: Today's I&O organizations combine the roles of technology and production experts. As we transition from the typical plan-build-run model to a plan-procure-manage model, the new roles require different skills: While doers are part of the external service provider organization, the added value to the service broker role of I&O will be to assemble complex solutions, which may require a "collage" of service providers. Planners, designers, system engineers, and vendor/service managers become the lynchpin of technology management in the enterprise.

APM: How do you advise today's I&O organizations to prepare for the BT era?

JP: Today's I&O is mostly a siloed and hands-on organization. As it progressively shifts toward a service-oriented organization, it must assume more and more the role of technology expert and service broker on behalf of other organizations such as business units or development groups. This means that I&O must train and acquire new skills that are adapted to these roles.

APM: With these changes in mind, how do you see APM evolving? Will app performance remain a key consideration?

JP: A well-executed strategy will ensure that customers are continually engaged with your firm and employee productivity is optimized via mobile apps. Thus, I&O professionals must be able to proactively measure and guarantee mobile app performance.

As systems of records are involved in the systems of engagement performance, APM will also be relevant for traditional services.

ABOUT J.P. Garbani

As Forrester's VP, Principal Analyst, Garbani serves Infrastructure & Operation Professionals in predicting and quantifying IT disruptions. His expertise is in the IT management software and IT operations market, and his research examines the shifting industry dynamics caused by economic pressures and the impact of new technologies such as virtualization on the IT organization. Garbani has several decades of experience as an IT technology designer and marketer and also as a client of IT technology. He has broad experience in designing advanced technology solutions in industrial and commercial applications and bringing them to market.

Garbani came to Forrester through the acquisition of Giga Information Group, where he was the research director of the computing infrastructure group. He started his IT career in early 1968 as a software engineer working on the automation of nuclear power plants in France. He then joined Bull General Electric in Paris (subsequently Honeywell Bull), where he was a designer and project leader of very large network infrastructures in France, Scandinavia, and the US. Garbani moved to the US in 1984 and filled several engineering and marketing positions with Bull Information Systems. In 1994, Garbani created Epitome Technology Corporation, a middleware software company focused on manufacturing execution systems. Prior to joining Giga, Garbani worked as an IT management consultant for several large financial institutions in the US. He graduated from Ecole Superieure d'Electricite (Supelec) in Paris (MS in computer science).

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Hot Topic
The Latest
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The Latest

The Hidden Data Engineering Work Required to Make Enterprise AI Viable

If AI is the engine of a modern organization, then data engineering is the road system beneath it. You can build the most powerful engine in the world, but without paved roads, traffic signals, and bridges that can support its weight, it will stall. In many enterprises, the engine is ready. The roads are not ...

Why AI Is the Differentiator for Operationally Resilient Organizations

In the world of digital-first business, there is no tolerance for service outages. Businesses know that outages are the quickest way to lose money and customers. For smaller organizations, unplanned downtime could even force the business to close ... A new study from PagerDuty, The State of AI-First Operations, reveals that companies actively incorporating AI into operations now view operational resilience as a growth driver rather than a cost center. But how are they achieving it? ...

Escaping Pilot Purgatory: How AI Becomes an Operational Advantage

In live financial environments, capital markets software cannot pause for rebuilds. New capabilities are introduced as stacked technology layers to meet evolving demands while systems remain active, data keeps moving, and controls stay intact. AI is no exception, and its opportunities are significant: accelerated decision cycles, compressed manual workflows, and more effective operations across complex environments. The constraint isn't the models themselves, but the architectural environments they enter ...

Closing the Gap in Modern Tech and the Tools Meant to Monitor Them

Like most digital transformation shifts, organizations often prioritize productivity and leave security and observability to keep pace. This usually translates to both the mass implementation of new technology and fragmented monitoring and observability (M&O) tooling. In the era of AI and varied cloud architecture, a disparate observability function can be dangerous. IT teams will lack a complete picture of their IT environment, making it harder to diagnose issues while slowing down mean time to resolve (MTTR). In fact, according to recent data from the SolarWinds State of Monitoring & Observability Report, 77% of IT personnel said the lack of visibility across their on-prem and cloud architecture was an issue ...

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Technology management is evolving, and in turn, so is the scope of FinOps. The FinOps Foundation recently updated their mission statement from "advancing the people who manage the value of cloud" to "advancing the people who manage the value of technology." This seemingly small change solidifies a larger evolution: FinOps practitioners have organically expanded to be focused on more than just cloud cost optimization. Today, FinOps teams are largely — and quickly — expanding their job descriptions, evolving into a critical function for managing the full value of technology ...

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Enterprises are under pressure to scale AI quickly. Yet despite considerable investment, adoption continues to stall. One of the most overlooked reasons is vendor sprawl ... In reality, no organization deliberately sets out to create sprawling vendor ecosystems. More often, complexity accumulates over time through well-intentioned initiatives, such as enterprise-wide digital transformation efforts, point solutions, or decentralized sourcing strategies ...

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The observability industry has an evolving relationship with AI. We're not skeptics, but it's clear that trust in AI must be earned ... In Grafana Labs' annual Observability Survey, 92% said they see real value in AI surfacing anomalies before they cause downtime. Another 91% endorsed AI for forecasting and root cause analysis. So while the demand is there, customers need it to be trustworthy, as the survey also found that the practitioners most enthusiastic about AI are also the most insistent on explainability ...