You can’t outsource responsibility for services, so don’t outsource them to the cloud before you’re sure you’re on top of them.
That’s the advice of IT service management firm Hornbill, at least. Chief evangelist Pat Bolger takes you through four key steps that ensure your IT department is prepared for migrating your service to the cloud.
Number 1: Are the services already well defined and managed in an effective manner by internal IT? If the department is following a best practice framework like ITIL, or a standard such as ISO 20000, and services are under the control of pre-existing demand, then the service is healthy.
Number 2: Can IT anticipate and provide some form of accountability for all incidents and service outages that occur? The reality is that they should never be unexpected. On those rare occasions they are, IT should be able to establish the primary causes and be able to highlight the measures taken to prevent the incident from recurring.
Number 3: How well are changes to the service supported? If the IT department can’t guarantee reliable upgrades and support for its users then more attention is required.
Number 4: Most importantly, are user expectations around their service managed? End users should always know what to expect from their services and who to contact when issues arise. They should be given warnings and information on both planned and unplanned disruptions to the service, so that their work isn’t disrupted.
The IT department should always remember that, regardless of how it provides its services, it will remain the primary point of contact for users. As a result, it must be confident that it can address any issues that come about. Ultimately, IT departments need to remember the golden rule; technology and services may reside pretty much anywhere, but ownership, responsibility and management can only ever be in one place.
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