Page 471 - Handbook of Modern Telecommunications

4-2 CRC Handbook of Modern Telecommunications, Second Edition

Introduction

All service providers need positioning. Executives want to know where they stand in comparison with
the industry average and to best practices. Benchmarking is well known and well accepted in many
industries. This chapter devotes particular attention to benchmarking indicators, myths, advantages,
and risks. Product and service portfolio benchmarks are very popular with service providers. But dif-
ferentiation is difficult because neither customers nor service providers know the difference due to the
high number of product and service options.
This chapter offers other opportunities for differentiation by addressing IT alignment with business,
information life-cycle management, meaningful use of business intelligence, and implementing gover-
nance to the enterprise as a whole.
How important is IT to the business processes of service providers? This chapter will give concrete,
actionable directions for improving the effectiveness, efficiency, and reputation of IT. In particular, state-
of-the-art business applications–related technologies, such as SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture,
SOBA (Service-Oriented Business Application), SODA (Service-Oriented Development Application),
Business Impact Management (BIM), Business Service Management (BSM), and the requirements of the
Real-Time Enterprise (RTE) are addressed in some depth. Their proper use—in-house or outsourced—
can ensure the expected competitive advantage.
IT managers are challenged by the need for innovation, virtualization of servers and data centers, sup-
porting agile and real-time business processes, by budget cuts and by overaverage turnover of human
resources. As a result, there is little time left for them to address document management. But the num-
ber of files, records, images, video clips, e-mails, PowerPoint presentations, collaboration logs, and blogs
to be managed is increasing considerably. Even worse, meeting compliance demands by the enterprise
may extend the life cycle of documents requiring more sophisticated storage resource management.
Business intelligence is a discipline of developing information that is conclusive, fact based, and
actionable. Business intelligence gives enterprises the ability to discover and utilize information they
already own, and turn it into the knowledge that directly affects corporate performance. It is an umbrella
term that ties together other closely related data disciplines including data mining, statistical analysis,
forecasting, and decision support.
Service-level management (SLM) regulates the relationship between customers and service providers.
After an introduction to the principal phases of SLM, key performance indicators (KPIs) are addressed
in greater depth. A proven template for service-level agreements (SLAs) is also included. The popularity
of managed services for customer support, integration, and reporting is growing continuously.
Actually, the culture of an enterprise depends to a large degree on governance. Five different alter-
natives will be discussed: hard management, centralizing model, centrifugal model, loosely coupled
organizations, and the laissez-faire approach. Workforce is one of the critical success factors in building,
maintaining, and operating communication networks. Motivated people are the differentiating factor
between a well run and a badly run business in the service provider area. One section focuses on human
resources and their management by introducing a sample organization. Human resources are assigned
to principal business processes and support tools of the service provider. Typical job profiles will also
be introduced.
Outsourcing is always a viable option for enterprise executives. Various business models have been
implemented with mixed results and experiences. In any case, new responsibility areas are on the way to be
implemented. Contract management and managing a distributed workforce are gaining momentum.
Standardization is an important way to approach best practice performance. Three management and
control specifications (as part of standards) will be addressed: Control Objectives for Information and
Related Technology (CoBIT), IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), and International Standard Organization
(ISO) 17799. CoBIT tells management what to monitor and control. ITIL describes how to go about
implementing the processes for doing that. ISO 17799 lays out a process for securing these services and
addressing legal requirements.