Chapter 1. Introduction

Do you find that operations support in global distributed environments today almost completely rely on a few key senior support personnel coupled with a certain amount of heroics? Do you find that the operations staff tends to be in a reactive position as opposed to that of a proactive one? Do you find that you are struggling with folding your third-party support providers into the overall operations framework?

Let's face it, operations in a global distributed environment is, relatively speaking, a new paradigm. Challenges exist with being able to clearly define the technical environment along with its associated portfolio of services. Few benchmarks exist to use as a guide for setting up a successful operation. There is no point in having the best network, or the best applications, or the best servers in the world if your users cannot use them to build the business.

Management, pushed to deliver increased productivity and new sources of competitive advantage, increasingly rely on the availability of information systems as a contributing factor to user productivity.

Users, empowered by the influx of information to their desktop, are becoming more technologically savvy and more demanding about the capabilities and performance they need from their systems.

This means that greater focus needs to be placed on making sure information systems are accessible anytime to anyone who needs them. Equally important is to ensure that users are trained properly to make full use of and gain maximum productivity from these systems.

This book presents an enterprise integrated service delivery approach, that solves the problems of today's operations in global distributed environments by defining the scope of services and responsibilities that are a critical part of enterprise IT. The mission of integrated service delivery is to provide services and information that help users become even more productive.

This book focuses on the basic vision, processes, goals, and performance measures of an enterprise integrated service delivery operation, without limiting it to any particular delivery organization: internal or external, in-house, or outsourced. Learn how to set stretching goals, define a measurable set of services, and how to commit to delivering concrete benefits to the business!