Breaking Down Organizational Silos with an Agile Infrastructure Model

High Performance IT Insights

Introduction

As they pursue greater responsiveness to a changing environment and more value from their investments in IT, global companies can call upon a powerful new approach: agile infrastructure. By imbuing the infrastructure organization with greater sharing, coordination, and standardization, agile infrastructure allows companies to use fewer resources to achieve greater impact.

Yet implementing agile infrastructure requires significant change for most organizations, and while the technology is available to make the transition to this new approach, IT service models often are not ready. Whether it’s too many functional silos, not enough coordination, or poorly defined roles and responsibilities, companies often face significant challenges to unlocking the value of agile infrastructure.

As we explore in the following pages, companies can drive flexibility, cost efficiency, and high performance from agile infrastructure, but first they must strengthen their IT service models to allow managing a hybrid infrastructure environment that involves internal and external providers and multiple platforms. They need to adopt a new orientation that balances business unit and enterprise value, with revised and clarified roles, and with an organizational blueprint that keeps IT infrastructure components working in unison.

The Hunt for Flexibility and Cost Efficiency

Agile infrastructure enables companies to provide infrastructure services via shared pools of resources rather than with separate, dedicated servers, storage, applications, and IT staff, by utilizing cloud computing – the dynamic provisioning of IT capabilities from multiple providers (internal or external) over a network. This model, in turn, directly impacts both cost and flexibility. Free of the need to accommodate many peak usage requirements at once, agile infrastructure means fewer idle, under-used assets, greater scalability and increased responsiveness to changing conditions, and lower fixed infrastructure expenses. Agile infrastructure also can speed time-to-market for new capabilities by allowing business application developers to engage in real-time self-provisioning, and by facilitating the provision of resources for those projects that are most critical at the moment.

However, this degree of sharing and coordination is not always easy for organizations to achieve. One reason is that so many infrastructure organizations consist of vertically integrated, poorly coordinated operating silos dedicated to individual business units or technology stacks. Conversely, agile infrastructure revolves around sharing resources, managing dependencies, and reducing complexity, and hence, often requires organizations to achieve a higher level of operational maturity in terms of predictability, coordination and transparency.

In sum, while the technical underpinnings exist to make agile infrastructure possible, many companies attempting to adopt it find that their service models are not quite up to the challenge.

2 Breaking Down Organizational Silos with an Agile Infrastructure Model

4

Transforming the IT Infrastructure Service Model for agile infrastructure

In Accenture’s experience, companies seeking to implement agile infrastructure can benefit from a new approach to their infrastructure organization’s service model. This new approach requires a sharpened orientation around infrastructure customers, solutions, services, and components; a clarified roster of infrastructure management roles linked to key IT infrastructure library (ITIL®) processes; and, ultimately, a revised organizational blueprint that makes plain how the infrastructure organization will operate to unlock the power of agile infrastructure.

A new orientation

A service model optimized for agile infrastructure starts with an orientation around four key elements of the company’s IT infrastructure: internal customers, solutions, services and components (Figure 1). Customers include application development or maintenance managers responsible for business applications, business operations officers administering workplace technologies for their employees, and business managers providing online services to the company’s external customers. These individuals consume solutions, i.e., configured common services and components that address specific needs. This provisioning is an important point: In agile infrastructure, each solution is configured specifically for a particular customer, but the services and components that comprise it—and their costs—are shared across the enterprise.

3 Breaking Down Organizational Silos with an Agile Infrastructure Model

Hosting is one example of an infrastructure service that can be delivered in this way. Under the agile infrastructure model, a hosting product manager adopts a commercial mindset, pulling together computer, network, storage, and management functions into a cohesive service offering, determining the cost to the business of providing this service and the volume required, and setting pricing and service levels that generate maximum overall value for the company. For their part, components are the foundation of the agile infrastructure service model: These instances of infrastructure technology are used to develop and deliver services and solutions.

In the typical, non-agile enterprise, while many of these elements are in place, their roles and delineations often are not sufficiently clear or focused on enterprise value.

Infrastructure organizations commonly lack service managers as well, and therefore do not manage services with the critical commercial mindset described above. Furthermore, when the business partner role (which manages the relationships with customers of the infrastructure organization) is not well-established, infrastructure customers must work with multiple component providers to construct their own solutions. A lack of focus on enterprise value is also common, with many infrastructure organizations instead aligning activities and resources with specific business units.

The results of this type of approach can thwart the benefits promised by agile infrastructure. For example, a global bank with which Accenture worked had dedicated business partners aligned to each business unit. In addition to the

Figure 1: Agile Infrastructure Service Model

DedicatedServer

VirtualServer

Network

WAN

Private Cloud

Components

Services

Solutions

Customers

4 Breaking Down Organizational Silos with an Agile Infrastructure Model

typical duties for this role, such as account management and demand management, some of these representatives were tasked with developing detailed technical designs for custom solutions. However, these designs often conflicted with the enterprise standards developed by the service engineers embedded in the infrastructure platform organizations. Consequently, the proliferation of non-standard custom solutions became uncontrolled, and thus the bank’s cost and complexity dramatically increased.

The right roles to unlock the power of agile infrastructure

One way to help verify these four critical elements are working together to unlock the value of agile infrastructure is by putting in place well-defined roles with clear accountability for specific infrastructure processes (Figure 2). Accenture recommends viewing these roles as mutually exclusive, and collectively exhaustive: There should be no overlap between them and together they should execute the full range of infrastructure management activities, encompassing all solutions, services, and components.

As shown in the figure above, each of these six roles is linked to a specific set of ITIL processes. For instance, the business partner is responsible for working with customers to set service strategy, and to manage business relationships and demand. In terms of service, the agile infrastructure model requires a service manager, service engineer, service transition

manager and production assurance manager, all with specific, clearly segmented, ITIL-linked responsibilities. Companies seeking to implement agile infrastructure also should put in place a platform operations manager to handle all aspects of service operations, including event management, incident management, request fulfillment, access management, and problem management.

As with the key infrastructure elements discussed above, many organizations already have several of these roles in place. The key difference—and a common reason

why agile infrastructure can fail to deliver value—is in the clarity and focus of the roles. The business partner, for instance, is the person who is ultimately accountable for resolving the dilemma between the use of custom versus standard solutions for the whole enterprise. When his customers demand custom solutions, he must first verify the effort is truly justified. If customization is justified, the business partner must be willing to advocate within the Infrastructure organization on behalf of his customers and lobby for the required resources.

Abstraction Tiers

Agile Infrastructure Role

ITIL V3 - Process Area ITIL V3 - Process

Solution Business Partner Service Strategy

• Business Relationship Management• Demand Management

Service Service Manager Service Strategy

• Service Portfolio Management• Financial Management

Service Design • Service Catalog Management• Supplier Management

Service Engineer Service Design • Service Level Management• Capacity Management• Availability Management• IT Service Continuity Management• Information Security Management

Service Transition Manager

Service Transition

• Change Management• Service Asset and Configuration

Management• Knowledge Management• Transition Planning and Support• Release and Deployment Management• Service Validation and Testing• Evaluation

Production Assurance Manager

Continual Service

• 7-Step Improvement Process• Service Measurement

Improvement • Service Reporting

Component Platform Operations Manager

Service Operations

• Event Management• Incident Management• Request Fulfillment• Access Management• Problem Management

Figure 2: Key Agile Infrastructure Roles

5 Breaking Down Organizational Silos with an Agile Infrastructure Model

In many organizations, business partners are in place, but their roles have changed over time to encompass responsibilities like service design and technical design. Likewise, it is common for other members of the infrastructure organization to gradually acquire influence over and involvement with service strategy. Yet it is only when each role—and their respective subordinate roles—enjoys a crisply defined set of responsibilities that the agile infrastructure model truly works. Otherwise, resources get stretched too thinly, or pulled in the wrong directions—for example, coming under the influence of a particular business unit as opposed to serving the entire enterprise. Such developments can disrupt the delicate balance that keeps agile infrastructure humming like a finely-tuned machine, and that allows infrastructure organizations to do more with less.

A blueprint for success

Clearly delineating components, services and solutions, as well as confirming the right roles are in place, are essential prerequisites for unlocking the benefits of agile infrastructure. If these steps comprise the “engine” of agile infrastructure, then an agile organizational blueprint is the lubricant that helps keep all these moving parts working quickly and efficiently, thus boosting the agility and cost-effectiveness of the overall business (Figure 3).

Indeed, as shown in the diagram, well-defined business requirements (BRs), service level agreements (SLAs), and operational level agreements (OLAs) help enable global organizations to manage the complexities, interdependencies, and sharing required for adopting and maintaining an agile infrastructure. For example, business partners typically commit to a set of BRs with their customers, and, in return, negotiate SLAs with service managers. Service managers then negotiate OLAs with platform leaders. An effective blueprint puts accountability in the spotlight: Customers pay for unrealized forecasts, service managers are on point for missed SLAs, and production leaders are responsible for confirming that operations can sustain their OLA commitments.

Consider, for instance, how the agile infrastructure operational blueprint depicted above could support better contractual agreements with vendors—for example, the purchase of long-term mainframe services. Using the blueprint as a roadmap, customers would commit to specific levels of demand for a set timeframe, which then would be aggregated by the service manager. The service manager then would hand off this overall level of demand—to which each customer is held accountable—to the service management team, which would determine the specific platforms and computing power required to meet those needs. The service operations team would then be accountable for procuring and managing the actual services and hardware required to meet the enterprise’s overall needs.

Figure 3: Agile Infrastructure Organizational Blueprint

Customers (App Dev. + Business + End User)

Vendors

Enabling UnitsOperational Units

Business partner

Service Manager

Service EngineerProductionAssuranceManager

Platform Operations Manager

CIO

Risk and Security

Architecture

Sourcing

Finance

HR

Processes and Tools

ServiceAssuranceManager

SLA

SLA

OLA

SLA

BR &

SLA

OLA

OLA

Service Delivery (led by Service Mgr)

BR: Business Requirement SLA: Service Level Agreement OLA: Operational Level Agreement

Conversely, without a blueprint in place, the service operations team typically ends up leading the process. While this group has a deep understanding of the technology being operated, it may not be as familiar with aligning business needs and technology imperatives, or formulating commercial-minded service strategies. In some organizations, individual business partners may manage the transactions: While they understand their own customers’ needs, they may not have an enterprise view of demand or the in-depth technology insights required to make the best technical and operational decision. Not having a clear blueprint in place also allows the loudest or most influential customers to drive such decisions, once again compromising the levels of value delivered to the overall enterprise.

An agile infrastructure operational blueprint helps enable the infrastructure organization to work as a well-oiled machine, utilizing the right roles to deliver services and support that reflect the overall enterprise’s needs. With the levels of sharing and streamlining that agile infrastructure entails, this kind of structure is critical to meeting the enterprise’s objectives.

Agile infrastructure in Action

Accenture’s recent work with a major global bank illustrates how this approach can help organizations realize the potential value of agile infrastructure. As the bank contended with intensifying competition and worsening

market conditions, it found that its infrastructure organization was failing to play its critical role. It had developed an expensive and inflexible cost structure, with little transparency: Projects required dedicated hardware and software, support groups were siloed with redundant resources, and the organization was unable to spread costs accurately and predictably among its users.

The absence of agile infrastructure also thwarted the bank’s decision-making and time-to-market for services and products, particularly when new offers were complex and required coordination among multiple platforms and geographies. Without an agile infrastructure and a clear operational blueprint in place, decisions were hampered by overlapping, unclear roles and responsibilities. The same lack of clarity and accountability meant that when the bank experienced service outages, it was subjected to unproductive firefighting and finger-pointing rather than smooth and rapid problem resolution.

To help it address these challenges, Accenture worked closely with the bank to implement the agile infrastructure model within the bank’s infrastructure management function. This challenge was a formidable one: The bank had several thousand infrastructure employees and operations around the globe. To help the bank with the complex task of implementing an agile infrastructure globally, Accenture worked closely with the bank to implement the agile infrastructure service model in waves, gradually replacing fragmented, business-

specific delivery models with common services across the enterprise. Accenture also cultivated involvement in the project from employees at all levels—particularly in process design—thus gaining valuable insights on needed improvements while securing buy-in for the shift to agile infrastructure.

As a result of these efforts, Accenture helped empower the bank to embark on a three-year total cost of ownership reduction initiative with a realizable 25 percent cost reduction target. Just as important, the bank also is on track to gain a better-integrated, more solution-oriented infrastructure organization, with an improved governance structure that helps it make decisions that balance risk with reward. And agile infrastructure has positioned the bank to maintain these advantages for years to come, with a consolidated service portfolio, better visibility into roles and responsibilities and where offshore resources can add value, a greater degree of industrialization, and sustainable reductions in its technology footprint.

6 Breaking Down Organizational Silos with an Agile Infrastructure Model

Clearly, agile infrastructure has great potential to empower companies to do more with less, and enhance the value that IT delivers to the business. Yet the approach relies upon more sharing, tighter coordination, less slack, and more standardization—all of which are significant challenges for many organizations.

Transforming the IT service model is key to overcoming these challenges. Companies must create crisply defined roles and responsibilities, achieve a careful balance between enterprise value and service to individual

Conclusion infrastructure customers, and implement a well-structured blueprint that supports accountability, trust, and coordination. With these elements in place, leading companies can make agile infrastructure a central part of the pursuit of high performance.

About the author

Hakan Altintepe is a Senior Manager with the Accenture IT Strategy practice and is based in New York.

For more information, contact us at ATC_Infraconsulting@accenture.com

7 Breaking Down Organizational Silos with an Agile Infrastructure Model

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About Accenture Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with more than 249,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of US$25.5 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2011. Its home page is www.accenture.com.