Customer Reviews

IT Services: Costs, Metrics, Benchmarking and Marketing

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is one of, if not the, best guides to developing, implementing and managing a mature production support organization.

The value of this book is that it takes a business-centric approach to service delivery, and augments material on service level management (such as Foundations of Service Level Management - another excellent book).

Specifically, this book contains sorely needed body of knowledge in a profession that has lost its way. What I mean by this bold statement is the production support function in many IS/IT departments has devolved from service delivery to infrastructure management. IT Services brings the focus back to where it belongs: supporting the business.

What I like most about this book is it not only shows what is wrong with most production support organizations, but it provides a clear roadmap to how to restructure production support from an infrastructure management focus to a service delivery paradigm.

I highly recommend this book to anyone in production support, consultants and IT/IS executive management. It would also be useful to ISPs and ASPs because most of the material can be applied to internal or external customers.

This is a book that many IT managers have to read, it's a quick meal though, no details but a balanced dose of good ideas and a window on Service delivery where IT data centers is no longer a "cost center". The only thing I did not like is to center the data center around SUN and Oracle or a brand in general, although it is clear the book reflects the authors experience in SUN/Oracle environment.
I advise anyone who has anything with today's data centers (no matter his or her technical level) to read this book.

The size of our IT organization has exploded over the past five years as we've deployed new systems and products. The focus was always on delivering projects on time.

Well, we've grown up and now have to support those products. Oh, what to do: we've been technology driven, not service driven.

Along comes "IT Services" to provide a blueprint of how to go about implementing a services organization. There's practical advice on determining what "customers" want, what IT can offer, and what to do about the gap. It gives good examples of how to determine service costs. The sample "Service Level Agreement" in Appendix B and discussions of SLAs in the text is probably worth the price of the book alone.

Minor nitpicks - Sometimes the authors could spend a little more time explaining figures and tables: I'm still trying to figure out what authors are trying to convey in the first two rows of Table 5-4 (p. 51).

Overall, I had a hard time putting down the book. The more I read, the more ideas I had. I won't loan out this book for a while - I want to keep it close at hand. My staff will have to get their own copies...

I bought it with the objective of having it as a reference for managing data center operations. The ideas and concepts were very interesting, and I totally agree that the starting point should include determining linkages with the core business and getting management support. Most useful to me are the following chapters:

Processes and Procedures - gives a framework on processes such as customer communication, internal communication, and change control.

Resource and cost model - helps determine the types and amount of resources (material, human, etc.) that are needed to efficiently serve requirements.

Measuring Success - discusses service levels and their measurement and coming up with service level agreements (SLAs)

The Appendices on job descriptions and sample SLA is also a great help.

The reason why I'm only giving 3 stars is that the authors could have given more examples as they explain the concepts. A line in the back cover page says "proven results, benchmarks and case studies--not just theory!" Sad to say, except for the sample SLA, this was not really delivered. It would help if the authors came up with even a fictitious company and apply the concepts to it.

Again, the ideas and concepts are great, but the authors could have given more examples to help explain them. So if the authors come up with a new edition or a sequel that addresses this, I'd be most interested in buying it!

This book describes how to build and run a corporate IT services organization from scratch. It is written in a very clear and readable manner without resorting to "Big-5 consulting firm" type buzzword-speak. Most of what I have read in this area promises much, but leaves things too vague to apply to specific situations. This book dissects a very complicated management problem into simple, understandible parts that make sense in the real world. An unsuccessful enterprise application rollout can cost a large corporation millions (if not billions) of dollars. The lessons here help you "dot-com" your organization successfully and delight your customers (internal or external) with the results.

This is one of the most important books on IT strategic and tactical planning, service support and service delivery that you can buy. More to the point, the information that this book provides is easily the equivalent of reading a pile of [expensive] Meta Group or GartnerGroup reports on the costs, metrics and tactics of running an IT shop and managing the delivery of services. You can view the table of contents online via this Amazon page, so I am not going to repeat that information or the glowing comments of other readers. The most compelling reasons to get this book are: (1)everyone to whom I have showed this book have, after a quick scan, immediately ordered a copy for themselves; and, (2) the company for which I work ordered 10 copies to give to some of our most important clients. I cannot think of a stronger testimony to this book's value.

Finally a simple step by step guide on how to successfully implement a Customer focused operation center. This book is a straightforward "Non-Techie" path to achieving a results oriented service delivery team. It is a must read for anyone serious about containing cost at the same time satisfying their customer!

a small, concise exploration of the topic; some good ideas and good thoughts on a rare topic. Probably would have benefited from a broader view of its topic. Not a bad book though.

This truly is a comprehensive end to end guide on how to develop, implement, market, and measure an Integrated Operations Model. What's better yet is that it is practical information in a very easy to read format. I highly recommend "IT Services" to anyone interested in implementing a service organization and is committed to customer satisfaction!

This book is very formal approach to IT services. Please don't give it to your customers/clients it will scare them. If you need humor or analogies to make things clear consider another book.The book is very hard to read with wordy sentences. Simplicity is much better, and this book makes some things even more confusing.