The Superhero CIO...The next stage in the evolution of organization IT management

July 9, 2013 - PRLog -- CIO? IT manager? What do you think of the following: maximizing IT benefits while reducing costs and presenting achievements to management in a clear and business-like language? Sound like an impossible mission? Here’s how it can actually be done – the right way.

By: Lior Eilam, High Tech Journalist for Status, April 10^th, 2013

Read the Artical... (http://www.itanalyzer.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Status-Article-The-Missing-Link-in-the-Evolution-of-IT-Management.pdf)

The Superhero CIO

In recent years it has become quite clear that the success of an organization, business-wise, is directly related to the capability, flexibility, stability and creativity of the organization's IT. As a result the CIO is expected not only to manage and solve problems within the IT field, as was the case in the past, but also to share corporate strategy and provide solutions from a business perspective.  

Expectations are one thing and reality may differ. Even with setting proper expectations, the CIO's role has become more complex and challenging in recent years. Management's expectations from IT systems grow every year, and new software solutions are implemented frequently. The more complex the IT system becomes, and the greater the business needs, the harder it is to balance these factors efficiently.

The whole is less than the sum of its parts

A major part of the challenge for the CIO is the absence of an independent and objective tool that manages all IT systems from a single interface. So how does the CIO currently deal with this challenge?

Today, he receives the information separately from each system while relying on the vendor’s instructions and information obtained from the siloed management tools. This information relates to the system itself and its functions, and often does not take into account the effects of other systems on the same environment or the holistic impact of this system.

This situation is analogous to a car engine that does not fit the vehicle's chassis - a situation that causes not only inefficient utilization of the engine, but can also be a source of recurring malfunctions, requiring the vehicle owner to visit the garage regularly. As a result (in the analogy) a considerable portion of the CIO's time is devoted to and to handling faults, leaving no time to optimize operations. This is a situation where "the whole is less than the sum of its parts."

While in the past it was possible to deal with these challenges by purchasing another server or upgrading the backup system, in these days of business uncertainty, amid pressure to reduce costs and procurement, the task of justifying additional expenses becomes increasingly difficult.

So, how can we get out of this vicious cycle? How do we manage the IT systems holistically? This means dealing with faults, solving problems, planning for the future while presenting achievements to management in understandable business language and taking a critical role in strategy development for the organization?

A different approach to management.

iTAnalyzer has an original and creative solution. Founded by a team with decades of cumulative experience across the field of IT, the company has already won praise in various competitions in the world, and is considered by many to be one of the most exciting and dynamic ventures of the Israeli IT industry (also selected as one of ten promising startup companies by the magazine Ma'ariv).

iTAnalyzer CEO Ofer Laksman explains: "Our operational intelligence technology provides the CIO with a tool that allows him to manage the IT system independently, efficiently and cost effectively while cutting back on expenses and streamlining. The system collects the information from all IT systems independently, regardless of the information or management system vendors, analyzes and displays it in a single pane. This output is expressed clearly and effectively, in business language that resonates from the break room to the boardroom.”

"This is a revolution in the administrative perception of the CIO's role in the organization," says Laksman, who will speak at the "IT Infrastructure as Business Services in Practice" conference. "The CIO gets a central tool through which he can clearly monitor IT systems management, and is able to reflect the contribution of the IT unit to the other executives in the organization.  Moreover, iTAnalyzer changes the operation and management of the data center (DC), so in many cases you can identify and deal with the problem before it occurs.

Thus the IT manager gets a tool that allows him to implement a different approach to management, an approach based on proactive management, breaking free of the “break/fix” mentality.”

"The results," says Laksman, "are reflected in the improvement of indicators used the by the organization (RCA, Uptime, SLA, MTTR), an improvement that can easily and clearly be reflected to management". Laksman says iTAnalyzer clients achieve an overall improvement of 18% - 25% in the efficiency of the IT systems. Among the many examples he presents is one well known Israeli company in communications -- usage capacity improved by 30%, SLA increased by 50% and system alert were reduced by 80%.

Upgrading the CIO's status

“One of the greatest challenges facing the CIO to date has been the difficulty in translating "IT language" to ‘management language’,” adds Laksman. "One of the advantages of the iTAnalyzer system is that it translates the technical data into business language that is uniform across the organization.  As a result, the CIO and the IT department become strategic partners in real time decision-making". The presence of the CIO in decision making is becoming more critical than ever.

His presence is necessary in order to maximize the benefits from the decisions that the organization makes, and to provide answers to future questions, such as the ability of the IT system to support strategic expansion.

The whole can be greater than the sum of its parts!

In conclusion, iTAnalyzer is not just a company offering new reporting solutions to the CIO. iTAnalyzer changes the IT paradigms, allowing seamless transition to the new world of supercharged IT. The optimal management capability makes the IT system a body equal to the sum of its parts. The ability to reflect this and to contribute in a more significant way to strategic decision-making across the organization makes it greater than the sum of its parts.