That's what BMC's corporate architect Doug Mueller told a BMC Remedy User Group meeting in Melbourne today.
Likening most IT operations to teenagers in that they are too casual and too hit-or-miss, Mr Mueller said "It's time for IT to grow up."
"It's all and only about the business," he explained. As far as people working in business are concerned, IT should "just work" in the same way that electricity comes out of an outlet and water comes out of a tap.
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So IT operations need to adopt a service orientation and "stop showing them how you make the sausage, and just deliver the sausage."
In this new world IT operations can only succeed with processes and a process-focussed philosophy.
Mr Mueller's more specific advice included using standardised processes wherever they exist, selecting the best suite of tools rather than the best tools (in order to gain the benefits of integration), and applying automation to deal with the most boring and repetitive workloads in order to increase the accuracy of performance and to free people to deal with more interesting and challenging tasks.
The two "anchors" of IT service management are the configuration management database (CMDB) and service report management, according to Mr Mueller.
"Getting these two right drives everything about IT," he asserted, "everything else is a detail."
He also pointed out that service management and an CMDB have applications that go beyond IT operations. A single request management system can be used for many aspects of an organisation's activities, including facilities management and human resources.
"It's about... a set of processes that make the business successful," he said.
