Skip to main content

Time for IT Operations to Change its Game

David Hayward

The velocity of how enterprises continuously transform their businesses — and change the game of entire markets — is mind-boggling. Apple changed the music industry forever with its iTunes service. Netflix's mail-order CD business crushed its brick-and-motor competitors and now grabs viewers from traditional cable TV providers with its video streaming service and home-grown, Emmy-nominated dramas. And, as recently reported in the news media, Google Chromebooks have come from nowhere to grab nearly a fifth of the US school purchases of mobile computers.

IT development is on board with business transformation, being more agile than ever by building the apps that drive new, innovative services. But what about IT Operations? More than ever, real-time business performance is intertwined with IT infrastructure health. Any lapse in online service performance is felt all the way from the customer to the board room. IT Operations needs to know how to change its game.

According to Jim Frey, VP of Research at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), operations centers are responding to business pressures by transforming from technology alert monitoring into "cross-domain services management organizations." Instead of handling alerts separately from each technology domain (networks, servers, databases, applications), this new kind of operations organization is looking to correlate events and incidents across technology domains and relate them to how they impact specific business services that domains collectively support. According to Frey,"This new cross-domain operations layer in the IT organization is an essential strategy for overcoming the challenges of finding root cause of what impacts services in today's complex infrastructures – and doing it at the speed that businesses demand."

Make-overs like these require monitoring capable of driving new service-focused operational processes and responsibilities. Monitoring tools must analyze service impact across technology domains. Service impact data can be used to drive service-focused incident and problem management processes. Then Operations staff can shift from red-yellow-green infrastructure alert monitoring to service impact alert handling.

A recent Tech Validate poll of organizations moving to cross-domain service management revealed how IT organizations are changing their game. Using service-oriented tools to support new processes, they are transforming IT Operations to support broad business initiatives, such as new business models, new services for gaining market share, and new IT technologies.

Other Tech Validate research found that organizations are implementing cross-domain service management to improve service root cause analysis, be more proactive in addressing service issues and be more successful in assuring that service level objectives are met.

A good example of hand-in-hand business and IT transformation is Lexmark. Known worldwide for its printer products, the company is currently undergoing a major transformation that will take it from a manufacturing and supply chain organization to a printing solutions and software provider. The ability to see the impact of an individual issue on critical process is helping Lexmark improve services and even avoid incidents before they happen. According Lance Neal, manager of the IT Operational Excellence Program at Lexmark, "The focus has shifted away from checking components in silos to ensuring that the end-to-end process works, which is helping improve service internally and to customers."

David Hayward is Senior Principal Manager, Solutions Marketing at CA Technologies.

Related Links:

www.ca.com/apm

TechValidate Poll: CA Service Operations Insight's Role in IT and Business Transformation

TechValidate Poll: Challenges that CA Service Operations Insight Addresses

Hot Topics

The Latest

E-commerce is set to skyrocket with a 9% rise over the next few years ... To thrive in this competitive environment, retailers must identify digital resilience as their top priority. In a world where savvy shoppers expect 24/7 access to online deals and experiences, any unexpected downtime to digital services can lead to significant financial losses, damage to brand reputation, abandoned carts with designer shoes, and additional issues ...

Efficiency is a highly-desirable objective in business ... We're seeing this scenario play out in enterprises around the world as they continue to struggle with infrastructures and remote work models with an eye toward operational efficiencies. In contrast to that goal, a recent Broadcom survey of global IT and network professionals found widespread adoption of these strategies is making the network more complex and hampering observability, leading to uptime, performance and security issues. Let's look more closely at these challenges ...

Image
Broadcom

The 2025 Catchpoint SRE Report dives into the forces transforming the SRE landscape, exploring both the challenges and opportunities ahead. Let's break down the key findings and what they mean for SRE professionals and the businesses relying on them ...

Image
Catchpoint

The pressure on IT teams has never been greater. As data environments grow increasingly complex, resource shortages are emerging as a major obstacle for IT leaders striving to meet the demands of modern infrastructure management ... According to DataStrike's newly released 2025 Data Infrastructure Survey Report, more than half (54%) of IT leaders cite resource limitations as a top challenge, highlighting a growing trend toward outsourcing as a solution ...

Image
Datastrike

Gartner revealed its top strategic predictions for 2025 and beyond. Gartner's top predictions explore how generative AI (GenAI) is affecting areas where most would assume only humans can have lasting impact ...

The adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) is accelerating across the telecoms industry, with 88% of fixed broadband service providers now investigating or trialing AI automation to enhance their fixed broadband services, according to new research from Incognito Software Systems and Omdia ...

 

AWS is a cloud-based computing platform known for its reliability, scalability, and flexibility. However, as helpful as its comprehensive infrastructure is, disparate elements and numerous siloed components make it difficult for admins to visualize the cloud performance in detail. It requires meticulous monitoring techniques and deep visibility to understand cloud performance and analyze operational efficiency in detail to ensure seamless cloud operations ...

Imagine a future where software, once a complex obstacle, becomes a natural extension of daily workflow — an intuitive, seamless experience that maximizes productivity and efficiency. This future is no longer a distant vision but a reality being crafted by the transformative power of Artificial Intelligence ...

Enterprise data sprawl already challenges companies' ability to protect and back up their data. Much of this information is never fully secured, leaving organizations vulnerable. Now, as GenAI platforms emerge as yet another environment where enterprise data is consumed, transformed, and created, this fragmentation is set to intensify ...

Image
Crashplan

OpenTelemetry (OTel) has revolutionized the way we approach observability by standardizing the collection of telemetry data ... Here are five myths — and truths — to help elevate your OTel integration by harnessing the untapped power of logs ...

Time for IT Operations to Change its Game

David Hayward

The velocity of how enterprises continuously transform their businesses — and change the game of entire markets — is mind-boggling. Apple changed the music industry forever with its iTunes service. Netflix's mail-order CD business crushed its brick-and-motor competitors and now grabs viewers from traditional cable TV providers with its video streaming service and home-grown, Emmy-nominated dramas. And, as recently reported in the news media, Google Chromebooks have come from nowhere to grab nearly a fifth of the US school purchases of mobile computers.

IT development is on board with business transformation, being more agile than ever by building the apps that drive new, innovative services. But what about IT Operations? More than ever, real-time business performance is intertwined with IT infrastructure health. Any lapse in online service performance is felt all the way from the customer to the board room. IT Operations needs to know how to change its game.

According to Jim Frey, VP of Research at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), operations centers are responding to business pressures by transforming from technology alert monitoring into "cross-domain services management organizations." Instead of handling alerts separately from each technology domain (networks, servers, databases, applications), this new kind of operations organization is looking to correlate events and incidents across technology domains and relate them to how they impact specific business services that domains collectively support. According to Frey,"This new cross-domain operations layer in the IT organization is an essential strategy for overcoming the challenges of finding root cause of what impacts services in today's complex infrastructures – and doing it at the speed that businesses demand."

Make-overs like these require monitoring capable of driving new service-focused operational processes and responsibilities. Monitoring tools must analyze service impact across technology domains. Service impact data can be used to drive service-focused incident and problem management processes. Then Operations staff can shift from red-yellow-green infrastructure alert monitoring to service impact alert handling.

A recent Tech Validate poll of organizations moving to cross-domain service management revealed how IT organizations are changing their game. Using service-oriented tools to support new processes, they are transforming IT Operations to support broad business initiatives, such as new business models, new services for gaining market share, and new IT technologies.

Other Tech Validate research found that organizations are implementing cross-domain service management to improve service root cause analysis, be more proactive in addressing service issues and be more successful in assuring that service level objectives are met.

A good example of hand-in-hand business and IT transformation is Lexmark. Known worldwide for its printer products, the company is currently undergoing a major transformation that will take it from a manufacturing and supply chain organization to a printing solutions and software provider. The ability to see the impact of an individual issue on critical process is helping Lexmark improve services and even avoid incidents before they happen. According Lance Neal, manager of the IT Operational Excellence Program at Lexmark, "The focus has shifted away from checking components in silos to ensuring that the end-to-end process works, which is helping improve service internally and to customers."

David Hayward is Senior Principal Manager, Solutions Marketing at CA Technologies.

Related Links:

www.ca.com/apm

TechValidate Poll: CA Service Operations Insight's Role in IT and Business Transformation

TechValidate Poll: Challenges that CA Service Operations Insight Addresses

Hot Topics

The Latest

E-commerce is set to skyrocket with a 9% rise over the next few years ... To thrive in this competitive environment, retailers must identify digital resilience as their top priority. In a world where savvy shoppers expect 24/7 access to online deals and experiences, any unexpected downtime to digital services can lead to significant financial losses, damage to brand reputation, abandoned carts with designer shoes, and additional issues ...

Efficiency is a highly-desirable objective in business ... We're seeing this scenario play out in enterprises around the world as they continue to struggle with infrastructures and remote work models with an eye toward operational efficiencies. In contrast to that goal, a recent Broadcom survey of global IT and network professionals found widespread adoption of these strategies is making the network more complex and hampering observability, leading to uptime, performance and security issues. Let's look more closely at these challenges ...

Image
Broadcom

The 2025 Catchpoint SRE Report dives into the forces transforming the SRE landscape, exploring both the challenges and opportunities ahead. Let's break down the key findings and what they mean for SRE professionals and the businesses relying on them ...

Image
Catchpoint

The pressure on IT teams has never been greater. As data environments grow increasingly complex, resource shortages are emerging as a major obstacle for IT leaders striving to meet the demands of modern infrastructure management ... According to DataStrike's newly released 2025 Data Infrastructure Survey Report, more than half (54%) of IT leaders cite resource limitations as a top challenge, highlighting a growing trend toward outsourcing as a solution ...

Image
Datastrike

Gartner revealed its top strategic predictions for 2025 and beyond. Gartner's top predictions explore how generative AI (GenAI) is affecting areas where most would assume only humans can have lasting impact ...

The adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) is accelerating across the telecoms industry, with 88% of fixed broadband service providers now investigating or trialing AI automation to enhance their fixed broadband services, according to new research from Incognito Software Systems and Omdia ...

 

AWS is a cloud-based computing platform known for its reliability, scalability, and flexibility. However, as helpful as its comprehensive infrastructure is, disparate elements and numerous siloed components make it difficult for admins to visualize the cloud performance in detail. It requires meticulous monitoring techniques and deep visibility to understand cloud performance and analyze operational efficiency in detail to ensure seamless cloud operations ...

Imagine a future where software, once a complex obstacle, becomes a natural extension of daily workflow — an intuitive, seamless experience that maximizes productivity and efficiency. This future is no longer a distant vision but a reality being crafted by the transformative power of Artificial Intelligence ...

Enterprise data sprawl already challenges companies' ability to protect and back up their data. Much of this information is never fully secured, leaving organizations vulnerable. Now, as GenAI platforms emerge as yet another environment where enterprise data is consumed, transformed, and created, this fragmentation is set to intensify ...

Image
Crashplan

OpenTelemetry (OTel) has revolutionized the way we approach observability by standardizing the collection of telemetry data ... Here are five myths — and truths — to help elevate your OTel integration by harnessing the untapped power of logs ...