IT Services: Costs, Metrics, Benchmarking, and Marketing

Chapter 1. Introduction

Do you find that operations support in global distributed environments today almost completely rely on a few key senior support personnel coupled with a certain amount of heroics? Do you find that the operations staff tends to be in a reactive position as opposed to that of a proactive one? Do you find that you are struggling with folding your third-party support providers into the overall operations framework?

Let's face it, operations in a global distributed environment is, relatively speaking, a new paradigm. Challenges exist with being able to clearly define the technical environment along with its associated portfolio of services. Few benchmarks exist to use as a guide for setting up a successful operation. There ...