I’m happy to announce the latest publication of the Forrester IT Administration Methods Structure.
IT (info expertise) makes use of all kinds of techniques to successfully run itself. In contrast to different enterprise areas, the self-discipline of IT administration nonetheless depends on level, best-of-breed options, which require in depth integration to make all of them work collectively. This foundational report presents a brand new layered structure for understanding the techniques used for safe IT supply and discusses how this structure will evolve sooner or later. This new report is a companion structure to the Forrester Reference IT Functionality Map. We keep these two totally different views, in line with structure greatest practices:
- The functionality map reveals your IT administration issues from an working mannequin perspective. Basically, you personal the event and evolution of those capabilities — they aren’t merely a matter of sourcing.
- The techniques structure classifies what you possibly can supply available in the market to help your IT administration capabilities, helping you with managing this complicated portfolio and figuring out key integration areas and techniques redundancy.
A key scoping boundary is between layer 1 and a couple of. Many of the multi-trillion international IT funds is spent at layer 1, representing the precise computing sources underneath administration. Layer 1 just isn’t in scope for the IT administration techniques structure, per se. The techniques in layers 2–5, whereas quite a few and representing billions of {dollars} economically, are orders of magnitude much less by way of the general share of the worldwide IT market. The layers are outlined as follows, with instance techniques (see the report for full system classifications):
| Layer | Description |
| 5. Govern | That is the layer at which IT investments are directed, monitored, and evaluated on the highest enterprise stage and dangers are tracked and managed. It contains strategic portfolio administration, enterprise structure, threat administration, and IT monetary administration. |
| 4. Execute | Work is outlined, deliberate, and tracked right here at the next stage, roughly aligned to a “crew of groups.” That is the place funds are tracked in addition to higher-order issues similar to engineering efficiency, structure, and technical debt. It contains worth stream administration (aka engineering efficiency), AIOps, and the latest development towards safety knowledge pipeline administration, amongst different classes. |
| 3. Ship | That is the extent of labor administration, the first crew layer. Work is coordinated and executed right here, together with preplanned in addition to interrupt-driven work (which nonetheless have to be resourced). It contains enterprise service administration, safety analytics, collaborative work administration, and different merchandise supporting team-level collaboration, amongst different classes. |
| 2. Management | That is the “closest to the metallic” layer of the general management airplane. It’s the layer of the person contributor. It represents aspect administration tooling that straight interacts with the sources underneath administration, discovering, instantiating, and configuring them, facilitating the development and deployment of recent software program, and monitoring and correcting exceptions. It contains merchandise similar to built-in software program supply platforms (DevOps platforms), testing automation (together with safety testing similar to software program composition evaluation), endpoint administration, and infrastructure automation, amongst different classes. |
| 1. IT sources | These are the core IT “issues”: bodily and digital machines, clusters, serverless sources, software program put in on them, networking, storage/knowledge, and safety infrastructure, together with the myriad configuration settings controlling all of this. This can be on-premises, within the cloud, or hybrid. This layer is out of scope for the structure per se. |
What’s subsequent on this analysis stream? Patterns of integration, which can in the end drive market conduct. Just lately, we’ve recognized 5 main integration focal factors within the total structure:
- Core portfolio (configuration administration database [CMDB] + enterprise structure)
- AIOps
- Engineering efficiency/worth stream administration
- FinOps
- Danger and safety operations
These focus areas carry collectively knowledge from a lot of the remainder of the IT administration techniques. From an structure perspective, the core portfolio is leveraged closely by the opposite 4 (therefore the sturdiness of the often-maligned CMDB), and there’s rising concern amongst enterprise architects I speak to about redundancy throughout the information marts that these product classes symbolize — integrations add complexity and upkeep prices.
In case you are an finish consumer determining the large image of your IT administration techniques or a vendor with a worth proposition right here (particularly an integrative worth proposition), I’d love to speak to you.