IT service levels: Time to drop your standards?
Summary
Topics
Speaking at a Gartner event examining how CIOs should tackle the economic downturn, Gartner research director Kurt Potter recommended that IT bosses should lower business expectations around IT service levels.
If availability of a service drops 98 percent from 100 percent but saves the company a significant amount, the business impact is minimal enough to make it a viable cost-cutting option, according to the analyst.
"[Service availability] doesn't have to be perfect. Perfect costs too much now," he said.
As an example of a suitable IT area for this approach, Potter cited delaying the refresh of non-critical servers. Although such a move might result in an increased breakage rate as the hardware wears out, Potter said the financial savings generated by the delay could be of benefit to the business.
Other Gartner analysts said determining which services can take a hit without seriously affecting businesses' performance will be a significant challenge.
According to Gartner fellow Mark Raskino, during the previous downturn, the areas where IT costs could be cut were more obvious--such as consolidating telecoms or content management systems--but things are more complex in the current climate.
"Many pillars of perceived wisdom have now been removed. The externalities are in charge," he said.
Gartner managing VP, Alexander Drobik, added it can be difficult to know which services can be sacrificed until there is a problem with them. "The first time you know the value [of a service] is with an outage," he noted.
Executive partner, Judi Edwards added: "Providing differentiated service levels for different client groups is quite important."
Tim Ferguson of Silicon.com reported from London.
Talkback Most Recent of 9 Talkback(s)
-
Drop Standards?
We have done the exact opposite. We are no longer relying on metrics to be the sole sum of our SLAs. Our new CIO is meeting with all management and asking two questions. 1) What are we doing well? and 2) What could we be doing better? Just getting senior IT staff in front of the users on a regular basis (and yes, its painful and time consuming) has changed the perception of many departments about the committment of IT to them and the organization without dropping standards or increasing dollars spent.
fonegirl3rd Mar 2009 -
Yes, drop standards.
I agree that senior IT staff needs to be in front of the users. There are costs associated with that though, whether direct or indirect. More time in front of the users means more time that a senior level tech is tied up with (from a technical perspective) trivial IT problems, rather than leveraging their experience and knowledge on more advanced issues, or implementation of newer technologies.
Just my humble opinion.
rshores3rd Mar 2009 -
Perception vs reality
In many ways, perception is reality. Getting senior staff out in front of the troops is a nice-to-have. But senior staff have decisions to make, and they have clients to deliver to as well, and it can be difficult to deliver when you spend time in meetings.
With a tougher fiscal climate, the realities may well be about the bottom line again. I remember the tech-wreck, and the tough decisions that were made back then. This time around, it isnt just tech companies that are affected, but it seems almost ALL sectors are taking a hit, with protracted cuts across the board.
My thoughts back around 2001 were that the reaction by a lot of CIO's to slash budgets was very much a faddish reaction. Business managers still had products they wanted to put out into the marketplace, but couldnt do it due to lack of support from internal teams pared down to the bone. There was eventually an explosion of demand, which tends to leav me thinking that this should just be ignored, and people should continue right along their previous spending patterns.
Of course, if budgets arent available because banks dont provide the same levels of liquidity, then that may make things more difficult.
In an ideal world, we could spend our way out of this, but it needs a concerted approach from EVERYONE.
roberto_maietta@...3rd Mar 2009 -
Maybe cut back on services yes.. but make sure to trim maintence carefully
We moved to VM for our new project and i fully plan to move most, if not all, old servers to VMs. The cost savings alone in servers, space and electricity are amazing. The lease for the existing stuff just ended this month, so costs just went down 6000 a month.
We also moved to fiber at all our sites for a net 4000 savings for data services a month. We plan to move to voip with the same provider for phones, that should net us another 4000 per month. The downside is we have to implement a new voip phone system internally ( most of ours are really old ), but the cost savings from both should make up the cost in three - four months.
We provide our techs with their vehicles and gas cards, so there is no wear and tear expense checks going out the door.
It will be up to those in charge to find their own savings areas and capitolize on them.
Maybe use used printer cartridges rather than new ones? Only give users monochrome lasers rather than color, move to color copiers instead and let them print the color stuff there. Ban all overtime? Move your webhosting to a cheaper host? Drop web services that are not used? Use cheaper SSL certs or even self published ones.
I could go on.
Been_Done_Before3rd Mar 2009 -
Ahhhh...are you SURE about the amounts?
"If availability of a service drops 98 percent from 100 percent but saves the company a significant amount, the business impact is minimal enough to make it a viable cost-cutting option, according to the analyst."
That would leave a TWO PERCENT service availability. Me thinks there is a word or two missing from that sentence.
IT_Guy_z3rd Mar 2009 -
this 2%
this 2% is just a euphemism to say from "perfect" to "almost perfect". of course "almost perfect" is similar to "imperfect" or "faulty".
99.x% of availability is equal to say "it can fail anytime".
99% of *warranted* availability is different,its about the service provider is using a backup (or second plan) system.
99.9% of warranted availability is even further, they have all the goodness: hot swap,mirror,raid and secondary system running at parallel.
magallanes4th Mar 2009 -
Nope 100-98=2
"drops 98 percent from 100 percent"
IT_Guy is right. 100-98=2
I'm pretty sure my users would revolt at that. I also am pretty sure that wasn't the message as intended.
"drops TO 98 percent from 100 percent", now that I would be move likely to live with.
LOL, just imagine the electrical and HVAC savings by having the servers up only 3.36 hours a week!
EMonkIA4th Mar 2009 -
If availability of a service drops
If availability of a service drops 98 percent from 100 percent but saves the company a *PENNY*. then dropping the service from 98 to 50 then the company can save a lot.
Of course companies did it, they don't need a crisis to cut in IT.
magallanes4th Mar 2009 -
Are you kidding?
"service" levels are already disgusting. What we consumers receive is hardly something called customer service. Companies need to stop outsourcing and start paying attention to who actually keeps their wallets from looking frail.
VoiceOfLogic4th Mar 2009
Talkback - Tell Us What You Think
The best of ZDNet, delivered
ZDNet Newsletters
Get the best of ZDNet delivered straight to your inbox
Facebook Activity
