Our vision
45° IT as a Service
IT as a Service is not a new operational model. It has been around for several years. Due to the current state of technology, combined with the economic climate, this is the moment to embrace the concepts of an IT services organization.
IT as a Service is also not another cloud service model, like Infrastructure as a Service. It is an operating model, enabled by cloud technology, but not limited to cloud only scenarios. It is actually a perfect fit with a complex, enterprise level landscape, supported by a hybrid architecture.
An IT as Services setup will enable innovation with an agile and flexible model. But how do you start?
The answer is: “freedom within the frame” …
Imagine a world where you have 50 independent teams, all doing their own thing. Would this work? Maybe. But would it be efficient? Most likely not. One example in a Microsoft Azure world. If everybody is on their own, one team could be consuming Azure services using a credit card and a monthly payment. Another one might have a CSP contract and a third one even has an EA. It is an extreme example just to make the point. For a lot of aspects of the journey, a framework is absolutely needed. That is what our IT as a Services approach is offering.
Approach
The last years we helped customers to adopt a Cloud Center of Excellence. Cloud technology supports, and even enables this paradigm shift. Cloud technology offers the agility and flexibility to scale in a cost efficient way. It facilitates innovation and experimentation by a different consumption model, and offers global reach by design. Security and compliance management is at the core of the cloud platform. All of this allows to shift away from infrastructure management to service delivery, and as such, focus on business outcomes.
A couple of years ago, cloud technology was positioned as a goal to achieve. In reality, cloud technology is not a goal as such, it’s a enabler for a modern IT service organization, that drives business value.
A traditional IT department was the one stop shop for everything IT related. They were directly connected to each business unit or business department. Often, also very loosely coupled, and not really involved on the business side of things.
In an IT services organization, we see that each business division has it’s own business IT team. Autonomous teams, something referred to as product teams. Closely involved in the day to day business. How autonomous they are, or how much services are still delivered by the central team, is a key question.
They key consideration is to have a solid understanding of the expectations and accountabilities, amongst all actors.
45 Capabilities in 6 Domains
The key question is how to stay relevant in a world where innovation is happening at the speed of light. And where start-ups have access to technology that allows them to step into markets with a relatively low initial investment. An adaptive cloud enabled IT as a Service environment is a good starting point.
Our framework to setup an IT as a Service organization splits the accountabilities in 6 domains : Strategy, People, Governance, Platform, Security and Operations. Each domain has a set of capabilities. A total of 41. Each capability consists of a group of tasks and activities. The key to a smooth working operating model is to have clearly defined accountabilities for each of these capabilities.
Strategy
The central theme in this capability is “Business Value Realisation”. The strategy capability is focused on ensuring that IT is aligned with business needs and that IT investments can be traced to demonstrable business results.
Engage stakeholders within the Business Perspective to create a strong business case for cloud adoption, prioritize cloud adoption initiatives, and ensure that there is a strong alignment between your organization’s business strategies and goals and IT strategies and goals.
People
The people workstream covers the staff resource capabilities and the change management required for an IT transformation journey. The idea is to evaluate organizational structures and roles, new skills and process requirements, and identify gaps. Performing an analysis of needs and gaps helps you to prioritize training, staffing, and organizational changes so that you can build an agile organization.
It is important to point out that getting the skilled resources onboard is only one part of the challenge. Keeping them onboard is proving to be equally challenging. This is a common topic across the different sub capabilities that needs special attention and action plans.
Governance
The governance capability focuses on processes that are needed to align the IT strategy and goals with your organization’s business strategy and goals, to ensure your organization maximizes the business value of its IT investment and minimizes the business risks.
Platform
Organizations use the the platform capability to describe the structure and design of all types of IT architectures. Cloud technology is never the end goal. It is an enabler to make it easier to create business value. The most optimal approach is to design these in an agile approach. Over a period of time (let's say 12 months), technial platform capabilities change dramatically. The platform team needs to be on top of those. Through Proof of Concepts and Pilots they will evaluate opportunities and see how they can be embedded in the “active architecture”.
Security
Security is a “special” capability. It is part of “the platform” and it is part of “operations”. Given the importance and complexity we do classify it as a separate domain.
Operations
The operations capability is about managing the IT infrastructure and applications. This is about the focus areas that are used to enable, run, use, operate, and recover IT workloads to the level that is agreed upon with your stakeholders. Our approach uses ITIL best practices in a hybrid environment as a starting point. 45 Degrees is not providing outsourcing or managed services. Our focus is on helping customers to organise their operations. Using a managed service provider or doing it in-house. Or with a mix of both. Getting the IT operations processes under control is the starting point of a smooth running IT service.
Need some help or guidance on your transformation journey?
We are happy to listen, and even more to help.
Part of the Cronos Group
Need some help or guidance on your transformation journey? We are happy to listen, and even more to help.