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IT & DATA MANAGEMENT RESEARCH,
INDUSTRY ANALYSIS & CONSULTING
Executive Summary
Historically, the Service Desk and Operations have struggled to optimize process efficiencies and in
many cases even to meaningfully communicate. But current macro-economic pressures combined with
advances in best practices and new technologies are creating a transformational environment rich in
both requirements and choices. This environment can present huge opportunities for better business
alignment and a broadened role for IT. But it can also lead unprepared IT executives into a confusing
labyrinth of what may seem to be no-win options.
This report looks at the dynamics underlying these pressures for change as well as the best practices
and technologies that can support an effective integration of the Service Desk and Operations teams.
The report focuses on closed loop incident and problem management, as well as end-to-end change and
configuration management, with a particular focus on automation. The report also introduces HP’s dis-
ciplined approach for addressing these requirements from both a process and technology perspective.
Market Background
It has become a cliché to state that IT organizations are pressured into doing more with less, and that this
will require innovative approaches to management – in both senses of the word. Organizational changes
to support more cross-domain collaboration represent the single most important transformation in IT
over the past thirty years, and that includes the move from mainframe to distributed computing.
A parallel set of innovations in technology is also supporting this, as silos within operations, and
between operations and the service desk and application development, are slowly being bridged by
innovative management software solutions designed for modularity, cohesiveness and automation.
As IT organizations plan to bridge this divide, it is important to keep in mind that the politics of IT and
the technologies supporting management automation are closely linked. Automation can empower you
to become more efficient, but you will be sacrificing some of the gains if you are not willing to leverage
the advantages of automation as a transformative, cultural and process catalyst. Market analyses that
key only on technology, and process analyses that key only process definitions, are consistently wrong
in large part because they ignore these critical interdependencies.
One of the more significant
organizational and process divides
within IT is that between the service
desk and operations as a whole.
The Service Desk vis-à-vis
Operations
One of the more significant organizational and process divides
within IT is that between the service desk and operations as
a whole. It is a divide that has deep cultural roots with often
very different perspectives on values and objectives.
The service desk has traditionally been outwardly facing and customer-centric, but often staffed by less
technically skilled personnel more focused on monitoring processes than on monitoring and managing
infrastructure and applications directly.
By contrast, operations has been staffed with a range of skills, including Level 2 and 3 experts who see
themselves as part of a technical elite focused on the very tangible requirements of deploying, main-
taining and operating a complex IT infrastructure and an increasingly diverse array of applications.
Collaborative IT: A Pragmatic Approach for Bringing the Service Desk and Operations Together
©2010 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. | www.enterprisemanagement.com
Page 1
IT & DATA MANAGEMENT RESEARCH,
INDUSTRY ANALYSIS & CONSULTING
EMA dialogs and consulting have repeatedly exposed the fact that service desk personnel often
view operations as uninterested in their real human clients while preferring arcane technical detail.
Operations professionals have often dismissed the service desk, and particularly the help desk, as light
weight and intrusively bureaucratic. The fact that the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) emerged out of
a service desk-centric culture, with defined attention to process, was on the one hand natural and good,
but on the other hand it limited how quickly ITIL best practices could be assimilated and embraced by
the entire IT organization.
The good news is that this operations/help desk divide, a chasm that magnifies operational inef-
ficiencies and limits business alignment, is beginning to be bridged. ITIL, for instance, is evolving to
become more sensitive to operations’ real-time requirements with a broader and more dynamic vision
of service management. Triage teams are emerging that combine skills across operations in dialog
with the service desk. And new centers of competence in service management are emerging politically
within many IT organizations—a vanguard that typically combines process awareness with advanced
technical and architectural skills.
In parallel, technologies are emerging that provide superior levels of information sharing and automa-
tion between and across IT organizations.
The Growing Role of the Service Desk
One of the more important developments in supporting more effective dialog between operations
and the service desk is the evolution of the reactive “help desk” towards a far more proactive “service
desk” model. Figure 1 shows the skill sets associated with service desk organizations in 2009 and
clearly reflects a growing depth and breadth that in itself should help to promote better dialog between
the service desk and IT operations.
Which IT technologies or initiatives do you have direct involvement
in or a working knowledge of at your organization? (Q13)
Service Desk/Help Desk
IT Service Management
(ITSM)/SLM/BSM/Service Catalog
Change and Configuration Management
IT Asset Management/Financial Management
Systems Management
Configuration Management System (CMS)
Applications Management
Network Management
Security
Virtualization
IT Governance/Risk/Compliance Management
Storage
0%
20%
93%
70%
65%
56%
49%
46%
39%
37%
36%
34%
34%
30%
40%
60%
80%
100%
% Valid Cases (Mentions / Valid Cases)
Figure 1: Skill sets across associated with the service desk suggest a growing depth and breadth in bridging the
operations/service desk chasm: (“The Aging Help Desk: Migrating to a Modern Service Desk,” April, 2009.)
Collaborative IT: A Pragmatic Approach for Bringing the Service Desk and Operations Together
©2010 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. | www.enterprisemanagement.com
Page 2
IT & DATA MANAGEMENT RESEARCH,
INDUSTRY ANALYSIS & CONSULTING
Not surprisingly, according to this same research, seventy-five percent of the respondents felt that the
role of the service desk was expanding. In Figure 2, we can see that critical integrations between the
service desk and operations are already top of mind and span a wide range of disciplines.
In your help/service desk environment, which technology
silo integrations do you deem critical to the needs of your
operation? (Q35)
Integrated with network management
Integrated with applications
management
Integrated with systems management
Integrated with security management
Integrated with voice management
Integrated with storage management
Other (Please specify)
0%
66%
66%
63%
63%
41%
37%
9%
20%
40%
60%
80%
% Valid Cases (Mentions / Valid Cases)
Figure 2: The expanding role of the service desk has already created an environment in many IT organizations
where integrations across a wide range of operational disciplines are already top of mind.
Automation as a Way of Bridging the Service Desk/Operations Divide
But integrations can mean many things. Traditional trouble ticketing integration has been around for a
long time. What the next-generation service desk requires is a much more automation-centric approach
to integration across a wide variety of processes and automation technologies. Figure 3 shows how
priorities for automation in the service desk are both strong and broad in type.
In your help/serv. desk environment, which
process/automation integrations do you deem critical to
the needs of your operation? (Q39)
Integrated workflow management
Integrated closed-loop change and
configuration management
Integrated process automation
Integrated closed-loop problem
management
Integrated closed-loop lifecycle
asset management
Other (Please specify)
0%
68%
64%
63%
57%
49%
5%
20%
40%
60%
80%
% Valid Cases (Mentions / Valid Cases)
Figure 3: Key automation requirements for service desk-to-operations span a broad
range of technologies beyond traditional service desk workflow
Collaborative IT: A Pragmatic Approach for Bringing the Service Desk and Operations Together
©2010 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. | www.enterprisemanagement.com
Page 3
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