Recently, I was interviewed by StrataCloud for a white paper BRIDGING THE GAP – Strategies for Cultivating New IT Skills and Transforming to a Services Model on the “skills gap” IT organizations face as they move to cloud and IT as a service (ITaaS).

Companies everywhere are struggling to close a gap in the knowledge required to exploit cloud environments and ITaaS capabilities.

But the problem goes beyond the need for new skills in areas such as open-source, cloud architecture, and DevOps.

What’s needed is a new operating model, focused—not on IT technologies—but on IT services, and making those services as compelling and as easy to consume as possible.

Business has grown accustomed to “consumer” service.

If you ask business users what they like about working with external service providers like Amazon, Google, and Azure, it’s the ease of doing business. Services are packaged in ways that make sense to the business. Prices are clear. Ordering is a snap.

In contrast, how easy is it to do business with your IT organization?

• Do business users know what services you offer?
• Is there an easy way to order services?
• Are services priced?
• How do you know which IT services the business wants or needs?
• Is someone in your organization responsible for the quality of the business user’s experience?

The operating model is a critical — and often most challenging – component of IT Transformation and provides a foundation to modernize your enterprise.

If IT is hard to work with, the business will go elsewhere.

Many IT organizations learn this lesson only after making significant investments in infrastructure transformation. Indeed, Gartner finds the #1 problem encountered with cloud initiatives to be “failure to change the operational model.” (Source: “Problems Encountered by 95% of Private Clouds” by Tom Bittman, Gartner Blog Network, February 2015)

From our experience in thousands of IT Transformation consulting engagements —as well as with EMC’s own internal IT transformation, we’ve learned that to make it easier for business user to consume services, IT must be able to:

• Package IT services – Present a catalog of services that users can access through a self-service portal
• Provide financial transparency – Clearly price services and automate show- or charge-back, based on actual service consumption
• Develop new processes, roles, and skills – Put the organization in place to effectively and efficiently manage both the “business demand” side and the “services delivery” side of the business

Although transforming to the complete ITaaS operating model happens over several
years, it allows for early wins and tangible successes.

Get started

The good news is that IT organizations don’t have to start from scratch to begin to move from a structure of technology silos to a “service center” model.

Some proven “first steps” include:

• Introduce a Business Relationship Manager – Assign a Business Relationship Manager to begin working with your business customers right away. The role of the Business Relationship Manager to understand the services that the business wants and communicate it back into IT, so that the right services portfolios can be developed and the right service operations can be put in place to deliver them.
• Create a storefront – Many IT organizations assume they must have a fully mature, automated service catalog before creating a portal. But, in fact, a portal can accomplish a great deal in improving business user experience, just by creating a storefront, where the business can see what services are available—even as processes are automated behind it.
• Pilot a service center – Get some hands-on experience with a pilot service center. EMC offers a service to jumpstart high-level design of an initial service center in just 10-12 weeks. Define a service center charter, develop a basic catalog of services, define some new core operating processes and roles, and determine what training is needed to help staff to fill new roles. With the experience gained, you’ll be ready to expand your service center—or build another.

To close the skills gap, communicate the vision:

Figuring out the type of skills and training needed to enable a new operating model brings us full circle—back to the IT skills gap.

You can read more about developing the organizational structure, processes, roles, and skills needed to manage today’s ITaaS service center in the recently published StrataCloud white paper BRIDGING THE GAP.

If I had to sum it up, though, I would say that in our experience, most people get excited when their leaders communicate openly about where the organization is going—and why the business needs them to take on bigger, service-centered roles.

People intrinsically want to be great performers. If you communicate the vision, they will invest in developing the technical and soft skills they need to help IT evolve from being just an “order taker” and to become a strategic partner and broker of services to the business.

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