IT needs to deliver provable results, not bombard businesses with new functionality which they don’t need. Speaking at the Service Desk Show, EMEA managing director of Dell KACE Jim Docherty (pictured) says that demystifying IT is vital for it to deliver what the business actually needs.
“In systems management, people are trying to be too cute and complex, when businesses are looking for simplified IT that delivers results. IT should make working easier, not more difficult,” Docherty told ServiceDesk360.
KACE, which was acquired by Dell late last year to help expand the hardware giant’s burgeoning service portfolio, offers asset and service management tools designed to deliver concise information about performance and usability. Docherty claims that Dell KACE clients enjoy rapid return on investment, with some projects taking just three months to pay for themselves. “Too many products are sold that require huge investment in time and effort to see a return, and therefore sit unused on the shelf.”
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I agree, using IT and deploying systems for any business should be for the business benefit.Not for the ego of the IT staff, especially those from the infrastructure side.
Unfortunately there are some major problems with this concept. The trend for Joe Public and the user community is to involve them in the descision making of what gets delivered, they then are under the fasle illusion that they are IT experts and make choices that mean the systems do not integrate with what is already in place. The real IT experts then need to find a solution to having these incompatible sytems work together. This takes time and increases the complexity of what is eventually delivered.
During the integration work the suppliers will offer a next release and it will integrate proposal. So the project is delayed for that release, by then the “Expert User” will have moved on and another one will come on to the scene with changed requirements! By the time these are delivered. The likes of Microsoft will have delivered a new Operating System or set of office tools. So the cycle goes round and round and the costs go up.
Change is inevetible and progress in IT moves at an ever increasing pace. With changes of mind and system specification, and allowing every man and his dog to have an input then this problem will not go away. Also the idea that the infrasturcture and integration of systems is something that you can buy from PC World needs to be scotched, it is complex and needs to be treated as such. It seems that for every 5 non technical staff in IT there is only 1 technical person. There are people managers, Project managers, Change managers, Security managers, implementation managers, Helpdesk staff, Service assurance, Customer service and so on. They all have there input into what actually gets delivered.
So I do not believe that systems management are being too cute, they are just reacting in the way they know how to an ever increasing complexity not neccessarilay recommending the latest technology.
John
Thanks for your thoughtful comments John. I think we’re at a crossroads in terms of how businesses make best use of IT and I agree with you that there needs to be discipline to ensure users don’t try to take-over, however I do think IT departments will have to try harder to meet users in the middle and deliver friendly technology that works for business and leisure purposes.