IT Management tips & tricks
Information Technology Management refers to the effective and efficient management of IT resources of an organization – applications, systems, networks, skills, etc. It ensures that the systems and applications support the organizational services and operations in accordance with the objectives and priorities of the business.
Information Technology management has evolved from being managing IT systems and infrastructure to be a strategic enabler for achieving organization goals, business innovations, and the adoption of industrial revolution 4.0. Moreover, the pandemic of COVID-19 had brought IT Management into the limelight to enable businesses to adopt and operate remotely, by delivering connectivity, services, and applications.
Technology advancements, innovations, and new practices such as DevOps have created opportunities to be explored by IT management functions to provide quick, agile, and reliable services to business stakeholders.
Cost savings: Advancements in cloud computing services and adoption helps in cutting down the CAPEX, costs related to provisioning and managing IT facilities such as datacenter, and technical administration costs.
Enhancing employee productivity: As the COVID-19 has influenced the conventional concepts and approaches to work culture, IT management practices can play a vital role in enabling business and enhancing employee productivity. The typical concepts of having office facilities, 9-to-5 work hours is no more the norm or are being challenged. By enabling IT services and connectivity for employees to work anywhere anytime result in enhanced productivity even during this pandemic times. Adopting concepts like Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD), Bring Your Own Application (BYOA) can help in reducing IT budgets on end-user computing devices and applications.
Exploring Digital transformation capabilities: IT Management plays a vital role in enabling digital transformation. Workflows and automation cannot just be for business processes but can also be leveraged for orchestration and self-service provisioning of IT services. Technologies such as chatbots can be used to enhance stakeholder experience and IT service delivery. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can be leveraged to automate mundane IT support and administrative functions without the need for costly integration changes.
Utilization of Artificial intelligence (AI) and IoT: IT Management can effectively utilize the capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and Internet-of-Things (IoT) in analytics, root cause analysis, identify service bottlenecks and predict service outages.
Quicker with DevOps: The DevOps practices have integrated development and IT operations. IT management work together with development communities to deliver solutions faster and quicker in an agile fashion
Green IT & Virtualization of Systems and Networks: Adoption of technologies such as virtualizations, software-defined-networks (SDN) aids in reducing the technology footprints and hardware costs. Network-level virtualizations help various features such as employees can have the same VOIP extension at their home as they have it at home.
However, the opportunities come with challenges as well. An adequate level of tactics and controls have to be deployed for resource optimization and risk and maximizing benefits realization.
Reducing budgets and Increasing expectations: COVID 19 has pushed global economies to gearing up and face recession as outlined by IMF. The trade war between West and East has brought certain IT technologies and vendors under the radar. Organizations are cutting budgets and the implications are felt by IT management too. However, the irony is that, although budgets have reduced, businesses look forward to IT to optimize cost, do more with less, innovate and yet operate efficiently with reduced budgets. The trade wars have limited the options of technology vendors that IT can opt for cost optimizations.
Pitfalls in cloud adoption: Although cloud provides commercial and scalability benefits, if not evaluated, estimated and adopted correctly will result in cost-overheads, reduced stakeholder satisfaction, and even may result in regulatory non-compliance. Stakeholders in a cloud environment tend to exist in varying jurisdictional boundaries. Hence caution approach has to be taken by understanding regulatory requirements, service level agreements, demand, etc. very well.
Pitfalls in cloud adoption: Although cloud provides commercial and scalability benefits, if not evaluated, estimated and adopted correctly will result in cost-overheads, reduced stakeholder satisfaction, and even may result in regulatory non-compliance. Stakeholders in a cloud environment tend to exist in varying jurisdictional boundaries. Hence caution approach has to be taken by understanding regulatory requirements, service level agreements, demand, etc. very well.
Cybersecurity risks: Concepts of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), Work from Home (WFH), etc., have inherent cyber risks associated. IT management in liaison with information security functions should ensure an adequate level of internal using process and technology controls have to be implemented to address cybersecurity risks. A layered defense-in-depth approach can help in mitigating cybersecurity risks including adversaries, malicious code, information leakage, malwares, and ransomware. Minor negligence may impact organizational reputation, financial loss, information leakage or sabotage, and corporate espionage.
Automation and AI-related risks: Using robotic process automation and AI introduces operational risk for IT management. An adequate level of supervisory controls has to be implemented in the environment to ensure accountability, integrity, and transparency of the IT management environment is maintained.
Moving to DevOps or Agile practices without changing the conventional IT Management practice: Organizations rush to adopt agile and DevOps practices. However, this an only by successful if the internal process is authority matrices are adequately realigned. DevOps will not be successful where conventional ways of taking days-to-week to get releases approved.
Vendor lock-ins and Licensing compliance while virtualizing: virtualization platforms have varying licensing norms by principle vendors. Moreover, operating systems and software vendor licensing models as well are different when it comes to virtualized environments. Most organizations tend to choose one platform for virtualization. Hence the adequate level of studies, research, use cases and proof of concepts, CAPEX and OPEX costs, compatibility with current and future systems/applications, skill set availability, etc. have to be thoroughly considered prior to choose any virtualization platforms.
Conclusion: IT Management is looked at by business stakeholders as strategic partners and enablers for the success of a business.
With an adequate level of governance and management controls, futuristic outlook, and innovative approaches; IT management can contribute to achieving organizational objectives and goals, enhance employee satisfaction, customer experiences, optimize IT operational costs and deploy risk reduction controls.
By Abdul Jaleel Puthanpurayil
MBA, CGEIT, CISM, CISSP, CISM, CISA, CEH Chief Specialist,
Dubai, UAE
