IT Management: Disruptive Influences Driving Four Stages of Evolution
IT Management: Disruptive Influences Driving Four Stages of Evolution
What Is Happening? Saugatuck research clearly points to continued and expanded adoption of a series of disruptive influences in IT and business: Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Open Source software, and a Utility Computing infrastructure (see "IT Management Evolution: All Roads Lead to Rome", STR-372, 31July07), including increasingly aggressive virtualization of all aspects of IT. As a result, users' traditional IT infrastructures and associated management processes are undergoing significant changes.
Why is it Happening? Adoption of one or more of these disruptors presents new challenges to most IT organizations. These challenges range, for example, from how to track and manage problems and resolutions in an SOA environment, to how to track resource consumption by business units in a virtualized infrastructure. Each of these challenges requires at least one solution that spans tools, procedures, and, frequently, IT business processes.
The evolution of IT management caused by adoption of technology disruptors can be characterized in four stages which are shown in Figure 1. These are key stages that traditional IT management disciplines must evolve through (and expand into) to include functionality that adequately addresses these new challenges. Such new or broader management functionality, in turn, will require enhanced skills, new/expanded tools, training, and services. Thus yielding significant opportunity for expanded and new vendor offerings.
Figure 1 – IT Management: Four Stages of Evolution 
Source: Saugatuck Technology
Market Impact: Based on our research to date, the stages will clearly have some overlap, and customers will not move through them strictly sequentially. The approximate timing of customer adoption through the stages for more aggressive medium-and-large user enterprises is expected to be as follows:
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Traditional – Up through approximately Mid-2007
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Virtualized – Early-2007 through YE08
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SaaS Focused – YE08 through YE09
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Hybrid – YE09 and beyond
Again, every enterprise will follow its own path. The most important thing for user enterprise executives to understand is the underlying IT management challenges at each stage.
Similarly, the most important thing for IT vendors to understand is the evolution of functional requirements at each stage. Figure 1 highlights some of the evolving requirements associated with three fundamental IT management disciplines, Problem, Change, and Performance Management.
For example, traditional Problem Management tools must be enhanced to address the Virtualization Stage, including: capabilities for automated mapping/translation between virtual state/status information and real state/status information; between virtual resources and real resources; between virtual time and real time; etc. Problem Management tools must be further enhanced in the later IT management stages to include mechanisms to automate problem identification and tracking of incidents involving SaaS offerings. Management of such problems will inevitably involve references to contracts, committed SLAs, etc.
Thus, Problem Management tools should be enhanced to provide appropriate information to gather and pass problem identification to vendors and facilitate discussions with vendors about problem resolution and contractual compliance.
Similarly, configuration/change management, performance monitoring and management, and other key IT management disciplines such as back-up/disaster recovery, security and service/help desk will evolve to address the changing requirement brought about through virtualization, SaaS and the emergence of hybrid environments. In fact, we believe that problem and performance management (driven by impact of virtualization) are especially attractive market opportunities over the next two years, with vendor / relationship management tools a significant longer-term opportunity.
Market Impact: User adoption of key disruptive technologies causes changes in IT infrastructures linked to an evolution of IT management. Thus, IT management is entering a period of change and evolution which will likely persist for the next four to five years.
The stages of this evolution will provide opportunities for new tools and services to support most facets of IT management. Vendor opportunities lie in services and in on-premise and SaaS offerings that assist in IT organization in the processes of managing IT.
Saugatuck has added IT Management to our Research Agenda for the remainder of 2007 and into 2008 -- with a focus in particular around its evolution in an On Demand world, and as it concerns evolving requirements brought about shift to Utility Computing. Please see Saugatuck Strategic Perspective STR-389, "Real or Virtual: All IT Infrastructures Must Be Managed," 27Sept07, for additional insights into the impact on IT management caused by adoption of resource virtualization.
The author invites your comments and inquiries on this Research Alert. Please contact Charlie Burns at charlie.burns@saugatech.com . For a PDF Version of this Research Alert please Click Here (Site Registration Required)
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Gary E. Smith
SaaS Network Architect
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