Custom Modeling Tool to Manage IT as a Service Business
The entire IT Management team including the CIO can benefit from having an ITin3D© cost/consumption model as a means to help 'run IT as a Service Business'. Once each service is clearly defined, costed, and the customers are clarified, then IT management can advance into much more business oriented discussions and decision scenarios with not only their customers but also the IT staff to optimize not just each individual service but the entire service portfolio as a whole. In addition, IT performance management can be greatly improved to measure the achievement of IT service goals and objectives as a means to 'prove IT is doing a good job'.
The managers of any shared infrastructure service can greatly benefit from an ITin3D© cost model by enabling the distribution of their infrastructure technology platforms to the business applications that consume these platforms. This enables light to be shed on the 'black hole' of IT infrastructure and operations and helps resolve many Dev/Ops issues by linking the infrastructure costs to their applications that they support.
As mentioned earlier, an ITin3D© model can bring Dev and Ops together to determine the TCO of each IT service/application. IT metrics can be developed by service/application to demonstrate unit cost improvements of the TCO each service. In the agile process, 'Product Managers and Owners' can exploit the TCO model to drive cost improvement use cases and measure the cost/value of each IT service.
IT Finance can greatly benefit from an ITin3D© cost model by enabling IT to break away from the cost center overhead Financial Accounting management of IT to a true service based business management of IT. If desired, the ITin3D© consumption model can become the basis for a true 'showback' model or an actual re-alignment of chargeback based upon real customer consumption.
LOB Business Management can benefit from ITin3D© in two ways. If they are operating as a 'shadow IT' organization, ITin3D© can consolidate their costs into the cost model so that IT and Business executives can see the 'All In' total cost of IT across the organization. The increased transparency of both IT and LOB IT will result in much better business decisions to optimize the roles and responsibilities of both central IT and LOB IT.