IT service management and Vista adoption

Key issues are affecting adoption of Windows Vista

The results of Freeform Dynamics’ recent research on Vista adoption offers an insight into better management of desktop/laptop machines.

In answer to the question: ‘How likely are you to adopt Vista in the next 12 months?’, fewer than 10 per cent of respondents in organisations that ‘only monitor their systems in an ad hoc manner’ said they would.

But among organisations that adopt a service management approach to the delivery of IT services to their customers, the percentage planning for or investigating the potential deployment of Vista in the next 12 months rose to more than 40 per cent.

This perhaps indicates that the challenges associated with desktop service delivery are now more visible, and there is a growing recognition and expectation of the business value delivered by IT in general and to the desktop in particular.

However, all considerations of potential desktop service delivery require the organisation to have a good understanding of what services the machines it supports actually deliver.

Freeform’s research indicates that for most IT groups this core knowledge is almost certainly not available, or at the very least is likely to be out of date or incomplete.

Information from the research suggests that only one in four organisations perform hardware and/or software audits more frequently than once every three months, with another 10 per cent undertaking such work every six months.

Some 14 per cent of those responding carry out an audit only every year or longer, while 44 per cent have either no fixed schedule to undertake this work or never do so.

Asset and identity information is essential to good systems management, and forms the core of all IT service delivery, as well as helping to keep cost under control and greatly improving the security and availability of systems.

This begs the question of how those organisations that do not undertake regular asset discovery can manage their desktops and laptops effectively, and certainly raises doubts about their ability to make valid decisions regarding future deployment of services.