Management of Information System Technology Services

Question: Discuss about the Management of Information System Technology Services. Answer: Introduction The IT4IT Reference Architecture offers a holistic guidance in order to implement IT management capabilities for digital enterprise at present days. In addition, it is positioned as peer to the comparable reference architectures like NRF/ARTS and TMF Framework. Present report deals with background and justification for adopting IT4IT Reference Architecture in Delta Lloyd and adoption road map that explains the process of implementation. Moreover, challenges faced by Delta Lloyd at the time of adoption process are described in the present report. It also explains the outcomes of IT4IT adoption in Delta Lloyd and recommendations for improving IT service management. Background and justification of IT4IT adoption Thorson (2013, p.141) stated that with the help of IT4IT standard, members of The Open Group have generated a usable and practical piece of work, which underpins and improves the things like COBIT, ITIL, CMMI and Agile that makes a relation directly with TOGAF 9 and ArchiMate. Borrowing from the principles of management transforms the process of manufacturing and it includes formal IT operating model that is based on value chain approach. It is known as IT value chain and three-level functional reference architecture, which encompasses major IT value streams of Delta Lloyd (Wang Wang, 2012, p.241). Application of value chain thinking to the operations in the organizations allows analyzing the weakness of the organization (The Open Group, 2017). In addition, adoption of the reference framework in Delta Lloyd allows the organization to find the bottlenecks of the company and the opportunities that can improve performance of the organization. Josey (2015, p.631) mentioned that adoption of the IT4IT Reference Architecture provides perspective guidance on the process of managing the service models as well as life-cycle of the ongoing operations and the types of systems that can be put into the place in order to gain competitive advantages in the business (The Open Group, 2017). Along with these, adoption of the reference framework allows the organization to reduce costs and make simplification of the process along with bringing end-to-end traceability to the production of the company (Josey et al. 2016, p.134). It is intended to have outcomes for IT4IT Reference Architecture enables IT management in order to work across entire value chain in better, faster as well as cheaper way with fewer risks. Adoption of the reference architecture implies in cloud computing that benefits in service orientation and take right decisions and actions at the time of the reaching to the risk point where infrastructure provisioning shift left to the teams of DevOps System and to the application software. Adoption road map The reference architecture enables choreography of four high level IT value streams such as Strategy to Portfolio, Requirement to Deploy, Request to Fulfill as well as Detect to Correct. Each of the value streams can be broken down into detailed functions and includes a number of functional elements used to manage data objects (Cannatelli et al. 2014, p.311). In Delta Lloyd, adoption of the reference architecture is processed through a number of steps. Planning and designing: In order to implement the IT4IT Reference framework, it is required to plan and design of the entire process at first. In this phase, Delta Lloyd need to develop IT project plan and make logical service model. In addition, functional and technical requirements are achieved in this step. Developing: Agile, iterative and waterfall are developed in this step. In addition, source and setting up of dev environment along with vision control and developer testing are achieved in the step of implementation in Delta Lloyd. Testing: Davis (2015, p.641) asserted that functional such as desktop and web mobile application are achieved in this step of implementation in the organization. In addition, performance is measured and status as well as dynamic security is analyzed in this stage of deployment of IT4IT at Delta Lloyd. Deploying: Releasing the plans and changing configuration process are included in this step of implementation (The Open Group, 2017). In addition, knowledge management and application of security monitoring is achieved in this step of the implementation of the reference architecture. Challenges encountered at Delta Lloyd during adoption process A deeper analysis of adapting IT4IT Reference Architecture shows that Delta Lloyd has faced several challenges that are encountered during the process of adoption. Grammatikopoulos and Pond (2016, p.1) commented that there is lacking of real architecture vision on realizing the new paradigms. In addition, the essence of the ITFIT is architecture based on ITIL V3/2011. It also explains and structures major components of ITIL (The Open Group, 2017). The service of Life-cycle and incidents and issues make changes in the organization. In addition, major IT4IT value streams like Strategy2Portfolio and Requirement2Deploy are based on traditional plan and develop approach for run. IT4IT brings tremendous extra value for giving the clients architecture of the organization for business of IT (Josey, 2015, p.201). However, some of the organizations cannot get afford of it. Hence, the majority of the enterprises including Delta Lloyd are struggling with implementing the service and service life-cycle as well as core thoughts associated with ITIL. Hence, it s required to make sense to start using the reference framework in order to analyze present situation and set a baseline for getting further optimization. Outcomes of IT4IT adoption in Delta Lloyd Implementation of IT4IT can provide several results at Delta Lloyd that can be described as followed. Preliminary phase and creating vision: It is crucial to assign ownership for adopting the reference architecture in Delta Lloyd (Attaran, 2015, p.541). There are number of key roles involved within the organization requires to manage process of IT management as well as applications required to support value streams of IT4IT. On the other hand, the vision of Delta Lloyd required IT management capabilities and investigation of medium as well as long-term roadmap of technology. As-Is Analysis: The major use of the reference model is making comparison with baseline state of Delta Lloyd. IT4IT recommends baseline states that can be modeled by using the ArchiMate notation. In the process, identification of the stakeholders as well as analysis of the baseline skills along with competences is included in this step (Maes et al. 2016, p.795). The gap analysis is generated in order to compare with IT4IT Reference Architecture. To-Be Architecture: The target of the architecture is modeled in ArchiMate notation. Thus, it is likely to start with the goals as well as drivers. One of the useful tools for defining the goals of IT is goals of CORBIT 5 Goals Cascade. Therefore, to-be architecture consists of different EA domains like business, application, technology and data. Gap Analysis: One of the key activities to develop architecture is achieved in this step. The gap analysis requires to be performed of present situation and against the target model (Strzelczak, 2014, p.605). Gaps in all areas of architecture are processed in this step such as skills, capabilities, data and functionality of system. Opportunities and solution; migration and implementation: The gaps result good starting point that can be used in the lean techniques like DMAIC that can identify the quick-wins as well as rationalization scopes such as consolidating tools for different service management. Recommendations Some challenges encountered during the process of implementation results some issues in IT service management. Therefore, it is required to take some actions and follow some approaches that can be helpful to achieve better results for IT4IT adoption in Delta Lloyd. It is required to enable the capabilities for the service model end-to-end as well as top-to-bottom services. The automation capabilities are required to achieve single-service delivery and with higher levels of automation through cloud containers such as Docker. The service models across the layers need to consume the application services through consuming infrastructure services. It is also important to map the financial support capabilities in each of the value streams. Conclusion From the above discussion, it can be concluded that adoption of the IT4IT Reference Architecture provides several benefits to the organization. The value stream of IT4IT like Strategy to Portfolio helps to take decisions to select the services and the process of delivering. In addition, it also helps to cloud finance outputs. However, some challenges faced by the organization can generate some issues in the process of adoption. Thus, appropriate approaches and actions need to be taken that can results in producing best possible output for adopting IT4IT in the organization. References Attaran, A., 2015. 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