What is IT Management and How Can It Help Your Business?
The quality of IT management at your business contributes directly to how successful your business is. And given current trends in business and IT, that relationship will only deepen in the near future. Fortunately, you can prepare for the future of IT at your business now, without having to be able to predict how that future will play out.
6 Trends That Will Affect Your IT Management
Based on business and technology media and vendor announcements, there are six areas worthy of immediate attention from your IT management team. Your business is either already being or soon will be affected by at least one of them. The six areas are of the following:
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
The term refers generally to technologies intended to mimic human behaviors and augment human intelligence. Most current attention is focused on AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants. However, AI-powered elements are rapidly finding their ways into a growing number of areas – within and beyond IT management.
The ability to free people from critical yet mundane and repetitive tasks can increase their personal satisfaction levels and value to your business. It can also execute those tasks consistently without error, and mitigate any effects on your business of the widely reported IT skills gap. These features make automation a powerful and attractive addition to any IT management toolkit.
Digital Transformation
The web and social media have transformed how buyers research and make almost every type of business and personal purchase.
Every business must find a way to respond. This almost always requires a thorough review and significant modification of incumbent IT resources. Like IT management, Digital Transformation is different for each business, but essential for all businesses.
Internet of Things (IoT)
In 2017, Gartner reportedly predicted deployment of more than 20 billion IoT devices by 2020. IoT devices are already connecting to business networks in increasing numbers every day.
They range from smart door locks and voice-activated speakers to connected break room coffee makers. And many of these devices have little to no security or upgradability, making them important challenges for IT Management.
IT Operations (ITOps)
This refers to the business processes enabled and provisioned by IT to the business, and those used by IT. It also implies a more operationally focused approach to IT, and collaboration between IT management and business operations teams.
Security Operations (SecOps)
This refers to greater collaboration between cyber security and business operations teams. The goal is to make effective security practices integrated parts of all critical business processes.
Effective IT Management: Secures the Future of Your Business
Every business, including yours, will be affected by and respond to these and other trends in different ways at different times. Fortunately, there is a single set of focus areas that can help you prepare your business for whatever its future holds.
IT Discovery
You cannot manage what you don’t know is in your environment. To make the best possible decisions about your IT estate’s future, you must know all you can about its current state. Then, you must be able to keep that information accurate, complete, and up to date.
IT Asset Management (ITAM)
Once you have a clear and complete picture of what’s in your environment, you need to manage those assets and their interconnecting relationships using an ITAM tool. In addition, you must secure and manage access to all critical resources and intellectual property that traverse them.
You need to be able to extract, distill, and report on events and patterns that provide useful, actionable information about how best to use those assets, and when to augment, update, redeploy, or replace them.
IT Service Management (ITSM)
The availability, reliability, quality, and security of the services you deliver to your users directly affects their productivity, their satisfaction with IT, and their business value. No matter what the underlying technologies may be, your ITSM efforts must focus on delivering services that meet the needs of your users and your business.
No matter what the future holds for your business and its IT estate, some constants apply. The better your IT management, the easier and faster it will be to make any additions or improvements. And the more detailed and actionable the information generated by your IT management tools and processes, the better the IT and business decisions your business will make.
Virima: Building Blocks for a Future-proof IT Management
Virima’s solutions for IT asset discovery, ITAM, and ITSM are designed to tame your biggest IT management challenges, and to prepare your business to take maximum advantage of future opportunities.
They can automatically discover and map your critical IT resources and the interconnections that link them to one another, your applications and services, and your users. In addition, they’re built to be easy to use and configure, and to produce useful, actionable reports about your IT environment.
These features can help you and your IT management team improve services and support today, and deal with the future more effectively. Virima is here to help. To get started, contact us today to schedule a demo and explore the possibilities!
