IT as a Service – ITaaS

What is ITaaS? Isn’t this just what we’re already doing? Can’t I do this with just a little ITIL and cloud? What is ITaaS? … and what is it for higher education institutions? What’s the advantage of ITaaS? 2

Organizational Goal Differentiators 1 Operational Excellence: Consistent, predictable, error-free and efficient. (More efficient, but less flexible.) Product Leadership: Rapidly introduce industry-leading offerings, or change mix. (Flexible for offerings, but less efficient.) Customer Intimacy: Tailors product or service delivery to the processes of individual customers. (Flexible for customer, but less efficient.) Lack of focus on one differentiator - lower performance Focus on the wrong differentiator - customer alienation Inconsistent or conflicting differentiators - stressed workforce 1 “The Discipline of Market Leaders”, Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersma, Addison-Wesley 1995.The Discipline of Market Leaders 3

Organizational Goals – a triad You can only be great at one of these “differentiators”, (but need to be good at the other two)… Outsourcing/cloud sourcing: (operational excellence, product leadership, customer intimacy) - which goal(s) are you trying to optimize when you outsource? service uptime? Staying at the forefront of technology/product advancement? Both? Can you have it all and be great at more than one of those goals after all? Because it lets you harness the power of partnering for your service delivery. Is this the difference between a (strategic) partner and a vendor? 4

ITaaS Questions… Is ITaaS appropriate for everything central IT provides? How do we ensure we have the technical skills to offer the service our campuses need? It will require technologists with much broader range of skills rather than specialists for each system. as we move away from technology silos (sys admins, DBAs, Developers specific to certain systems, etc) How do we ensure that all campus units are not only supported at a very basic level if needed but are also making sound security/compliance decisions? 5

… more ITaaS Questions… What organizational changes outside of IT are required to make ITaaS successful? How is ITaaS different from the way our groups are currently operating? What is the role or interface with departmental IT with ITaaS ? What does ITaaS require/imply for the IT organization from a structural perspective? From the governance perspective? (I.e.: if ITaaS is typified by flexibility, what does that mean for process heavy, slow moving IT orgs?) Does the ITaaS model put us in even more direct competition with outside service providers? If so, how do we differentiate ourselves, creating additional value for the institution? 6

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