Introduction: The “IT doesn’t matter” argument points out the future direction of IT鈥攖hat IT should better support business operations. In fact, many new solutions today, such as ITSM, need to be more tightly integrated with users’ businesses. The question is, how can ITSM be better localized?
In the world’s premier F1 (Formula One) racing, every second of overtaking relies on technological advancements to realize a team’s ultimate dream. For Toyota Motorsport GmbH, progressing every second from design to launch to on-track performance requires IT to stay aligned with business objectives.
F1’s Business Management
This closely relates to the dynamic approach of linking key IT components with business goals. BSM (Business Service Management) allows Toyota Motorsport GmbH to refine F1 car manufacturing, reduce production time, and enables the Toyota racing team to understand and anticipate the impact of technology on business, as well as the effect of business on the IT architecture. In other words, BSM helps improve business performance while reducing costs and IT architecture complexity.
The Toyota racing team is one of only two F1 teams that uses a complete in-house, end-to-end design and manufacturing process. To manufacture or modify an entire car in a short period, all processes must be ready. Compared to other manufacturers who need 7 years to launch a new car, Toyota Motorsport GmbH can complete the same manufacturing process鈥攆rom engine design to wind tunnel chassis research, from manufacturing to testing鈥攊n just 7 days during the racing season.
Using the BSM strategy allows the Toyota team to monitor the satellite links between Cologne and any of their competitors’ tracks. This link is crucial for the team throughout the race weekend, enabling them to replicate 6-8 Gigabytes of real-time data collected via over 100 sensors on each F1 car, transmitting this data from the track to their engineers in Cologne for immediate analysis.
Without real-time insight into the car’s performance, the Toyota team would not be able to react promptly to changing conditions during the race.
This is a classic case of BSM. As an effective approach centered on deeply integrating IT and business to optimize IT resource allocation, BSM has had a profound impact on enterprises. Zhang Zejun, President of Dragon Flow Technology, believes that BSM is the ultimate goal of ITSM (IT Service Management), but if ITSM is to take root in China, much more work needs to be done.
The Direction of IT
There is a saying circulating in the IT industry: “Overseas, the cheapest thing sold is hardware, followed by software; the most expensive are consulting services, and in the end, you still have to sell a value proposition to the user. In China, the most expensive is hardware, followed by software; consulting services are generally provided for free, but what about value?”
Indeed, services are not highly valued by many users. American economist Nicholas Carr’s 2003 publication “IT Doesn’t Matter” also demonstrated that as enterprise IT infrastructure matures, increasing IT investment yields diminishing returns. This is the fundamental reason why many enterprises are gradually reducing IT investment and directing limited resources to business activities that generate direct profits.
Yang Ting, Senior Analyst at IDC China’s Software and Services Research, believes: “The direction of IT development should be IT + Business, meaning IT should better support business operations. In fact, many new solutions today are more tightly integrated with users’ businesses.
But this issue should be viewed from two aspects. One aspect involves industries where IT is not particularly tightly integrated with the user’s business, where the correlation is not high鈥攕uch as traditional manufacturing or wholesale and retail industries. In these industries, the direction of IT should be to better support business operations.
On the other hand, for industries where IT is highly correlated with the user’s business, such as finance and telecommunications, the IT system has actually become part of the business system. Therefore, in these industries, IT can develop into one of the enterprise’s core competencies. Thus, the direction of IT is to truly integrate with users’ businesses, and ITSM will be an excellent approach for this.”
ITSM solutions, as infrastructure solutions that are very tightly integrated with business, are designed to promote better business operations. A truly good infrastructure is one that users do not even feel the existence of鈥攇overning by doing nothing, so to speak.
Gartner states: “Without a comprehensive understanding of the IT infrastructure, enterprises will continue to face business risks during the implementation of application changes. As enterprises deploy their Configuration Management Database (CMDB) strategies, information about proprietary applications is crucial for building a comprehensive (or complete) view of IT services.”
From a technical perspective, to implement a complete ITSM system, there are two core elements that must be realized during the implementation process.
First, analysis of user requirements is necessary, because ITSM is a process-focused methodology, and user processes require rigorous supply-demand analysis. This is an obvious fact.
Second, during implementation, ITSM must have a unified buffer database, enabling various types of monitoring data to achieve synchronous sharing.
Perhaps domestic vendors like Dragon Flow Technology can more deeply understand the actual needs of customers, and the IT operation and maintenance assessment standards they formulate also align with China’s national conditions, emphasizing intuitive, simple, and accurate evaluation.
Delayed Response
The delayed response to new business requirements has become a very important issue. A leader from Bank of China once stated: Why is there a need to transform the core business system now? One of the primary reasons is the delayed response to new business requirements, a problem that has become extremely prominent. A simple example is that rolling out a small business module might take from start to finish more than half a year; meanwhile, many other banks have already pushed this business to the market, which affects the enterprise’s market advancement process.
Yang Ting says many enterprise users encounter problems. On