CIS5308 –Management of Information Technology Services Report 1 IT4IT Infrastructure Adoption SUBMITTED BY: NAME: MANINDER SINGH STUDENT ID: 16333   Activity B: Executive Summary With the technological developments and the pressure of customers for increased efficiency and speed, the banking and the insurance organizations are challenged to provide better services to the customers. IT4IT is an architecture solution which assists the organization in management of IT services in organization. The report discusses the adoption of IT4IT services in Delta Lloyd and examines the roadmap of technology adoption and the challenges faced by the organization in the infrastructure adoption. In the conclusive part, few recommendations are provided to ease the change process.   Introduction IT4IT is a vendor neutral reference architecture which is used to manage the IT operations in an organization. It is based on the value chin concept and comprises of a formal value chain model which can revolutionize IT manufacturing and value chain. The IT value chain comprises of four IT value streams, three level functional architecture and supporting activities. The IT4IT is focused on the easing the IT operations of the organization (Akershoek et al., 2016). In this regard, this report will discuss the adoption of IT4IT in Delta Lloyd. It is a Dutch Insurance company and has adopted the IT4IT to deliver quick and efficient service to the customers. In the report, the adoption roadmap and the challenges in the adoption of the IT4It is also discussed. Background of IT4IT adoption Delta Lloyd is Dutch organization in the insurance sector which operates in Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. At present, there is huge pressure on the IT organizations to carry out digital transformation to serve their customers quickly and efficiently. The changing demands of the customers are creating huge pressure on the IT organizations. The business organizations need to ensure that they are able to address the customer’s demands of high quality, service and speed. Along with it, the companies also need to adapt to the latest technological changes such as Cloud computing, Big Data and Internet of Things. With several technological pushes, it is clear that the companies have to conduct huge changes in their IT infrastructure to address the development and business demand and the technological developments. It also requires new skills and competencies to handle the IT infrastructural changes. The IT4IT is a reference architecture which allows the business organizations to manage IT as a business (Josey et al., 2016). It is vendor-independent architecture aimed at making technology more efficient and predictable to infuse with the business management. It is an integrated solution that allows business to manage the entire IT chain. It simplifies the process of IT operations. The IT4IT reduces the requirements of manual IT instructions so that every person can handle the IT operations of the company. The company has 4 million customers, IT staff of 700 people, 1200 servers and 600 business applications (The Open Group, 2015). The company required new infrastructure because it delivers most of the services through online mediums and mobile applications. Moreover, most of the IT business organizations along with Delta Lloyd are trying to take control over their IT operations to enhance the services provided to their customers. The IT4It infrastructure assists the business organizations to become stable, sustainable and agile organization. Adoption Road Map The value chain of IT aligns with the traditional IT philosophy, “Plan, Build, Deliver and Run”. There are four major value stream of IT4IT, which are categorized as first, second, third and fourth value stream. The first value stream of IT refers to strategy to portfolio (S2P) in which the business define their strategy to balance and establish portfolio. The second value stream is request to fulfill, third value stream is requirement to deploy and the fourth value stream is termed as detect to correct. In this infrastructure model, each IT value stream is developed around a specific aspect of the service model, data objects and functional components that support the model. All the four value streams are essential in establishing control over the IT processes and advancing it through its lifecycle (The Open Group, 2016). In the adoption roadmap, the companies need to define a blue print for the organization. The businesses need to identify their requirement needs and the IT vision in the upcoming years. It has to be evaluated internally and then IT4It infrastructure can be adopted. The adoption of the architecture begins with the identification of the technological gaps between the current IT infrastructure and the It4It reference gaps. The target vision is developed which is unique for every organization. Moreover, the companies also have to identify which current resources it can use and where it needs to invest (Klosterboer, 2008). In Delta Lloyd the priorities were set in the IT management capability developed through IT4IT infrastructure. The first priority was creation of self-service portal, the second priority was development of ITSM platform and the third priority was application release automation. Since Delta Lloyd was also keen to adopt the cloud-based technology for its operations; therefore, it had opportunity to use IT4IT infrastructure in delivering all cloud-based solutions. Precisely, the IT4IT roadmap in Delta Lloyd encompasses of few major steps. In the first step, IT4IT blueprint is create which define the vision to be achieved with the deployment of services. In the second step, ITSM platform is created along with service portfolio management. In this phase, a standardized IT management platform is created for service catalogue, request management and incident problem, SLA and service portfolio management. In the next two phases, the value stream activities of IT4IT deployment are conducted. Initially, request to fulfill is conducted to request the fulfillment, automatically providing the provision of cloud resources such as servers, storage, databases and access rights. In detect to correct phase, the business organizations can monitor and automate the recovery activities, monitor the cloud deployment services and can monitor the usage and capacity of the services. In the next phase, the IT4IT system is deployed wherein the continuous delivery of IT system is ensured and it is integrated with the ALM platform with ITSM/CMDB. In the subsequent steps of the IT4IT deployment, the companies need to monitor the services and their performance on the overall productivity of the organization. It includes log analytics and the root cause analysis for the business chain or process monitoring. In the last step, the strategy to portfolio is achieved. In this step, integrated service/ application are provided to project and investment portfolio (The Open Group, 2015). Challenges in adoption IT4IT is a new vendor independent IT management solution which supports both agile and lean methodologies. It is essential in overcoming the functional gaps which had grown due to the technical advancements. The major challenge in the deployment of IT4IT infrastructure is various architecture options like ITIL already present in the market. The deployment of IT4IT infrastructure will need a substantial investment from the management. Convincing management why IT4IT is a better choice than other standardization methods is challenging. The management might find redundancies and gaps in the infrastructure. After the decision of the deployment of the It4IT infrastructure in the organization, the major challenge in creating IT4IT blue print in the organization and connecting it with the current IT infrastructure of the organization (Davis et al., 2015). Another challenge in the IT4IT deployment is the development of governance model which administers and serves as a guidance to control all the activities related to IT deployment. The IT4IT deployment includes the implementation of all the IT management capabilities such as processes, tool and data. It is not a part of the formal IT infrastructure and each business organization has to find its own governance model. The governance model is set up to encourage positive practices in the development and maintenance of the IT management practices. The creation of management applications requires metrics/KPIs, skills and processes. Moreover, while implementing the IT4IT model, the companies also need to create a decision and review structure. In the deployment, the organization should also specify a decision-making authority which manages all the decisions in the lifecycle of IT4IT operations. It is also important for the organizations to create simple structure so that roll out of the IT capabilities is associated with the IT strategic direction of the organization (Armes et al., 2015). Conclusion and Recommendation Delta Lloyd is a Dutch insurance company. The business organization operates in different countries and uses internet avidly to connect with their customers. The banking and the insurance organizations use internet to connect with their customers and provide various services. However, the traditional IT infrastructure is unable to cope up with the consumer demand of high speed and efficiency along with the technological pressures of cloud computing and internet of things. The IT4IT infrastructure is a vendor independent IT infrastructure which manages all the IT related activities of the organization. It is a value chain advanced model which addresses the weaknesses of previous IT architecture solutions. The major challenge in the deployment of IT4IT infrastructure is creating a blue print of the vision of the organization. It is recommended that the company obtains the input of management, employees and the IT engineers to develop the blue print so that it can be developed realistically. It is also recommended that an authority should be assigned at each stage of IT4IT deployment to ease the process of deployment.   References Akershoek et al., R. (2016). IT4IT™ for Managing the Business of IT – A Management Guide. Van Haren. Armes, D. et al. (2015). SIAM: Principles and Practices for Service Integration and Management. Van Haren. Davis, C.J. et al. (2015). The IT4IT™ reference architecture, version 2.0. Reading, UK: The Open Group. Josey, A. et al. (2016). IT4IT™ Foundation – Study Guide. Van Haren Publishing. Klosterboer, L. (2008). Implementing ITIL Change and Release Management. Pearson Education. The Open Group. (2015). IT4IT™ at Delta Lloyd - The Open Group. Retrieved 31 March 2017 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6u8y7S-WOg&feature=youtu.be&list=PL4uhUsJo0STkg-wCy6QyVg8KcYfzjtTIA The Open Group. (2016). The IT4IT™ Reference Architecture, Version 2.0. Van Haren.   Appendix Activity A: While completing this task, I learnt about the importance of integration of IT infrastructure in different companies. In completion of the task, I found it difficult to understand the actual deployment of the IT infrastructure in business organizations. During the completion of the task, I gained immense knowledge about IT4IT and other IT architecture solutions by the white papers and the presentations delivered by the Open Group. The company is the developer of the software solution and discusses how IT4IT can be used to increase the efficiency of the IT system of an organization. Source: IT4IT White Paper by Logiclis SMC. http://www.logicalissmc.com/media/whitepaper.pdf IT4IT™ at Delta Lloyd - The Open Group . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6u8y7S-WOg&feature=youtu.be&list=PL4uhUsJo0STkg-wCy6QyVg8KcYfzjtTIA