Long regarded as "just" technology providers, IT organizations now are routinely called on to leverage infrastructure advances and in order to drive efficiencies, improve performance and transform business functions throughout the enterprise. Yesterday's technology providers must become tomorrow's IT service providers, agile business partners able to provision resources efficiently and effectively in response to the changing needs of the enterprise.

Transitioning to "" is easier said than done, as IT pros find their progress limited by a variety of significant constraints including , delays with resource provisioning, variable resource demands, complex configuration requests, and the ambiguities of . These challenges overlay persistent pressure for IT to "deliver more with less" while under increased scrutiny to prove ROI.

ANALYSIS:

As we see it, the solution has two parts. First, any IT organization that wants maximum agility and self-service while still maintaining its existing physical, virtual and heterogeneous IT investments in a secure fashion, must implement an .

Second, that on-premise cloud must be run like a business. Given the strategic impact of technology to both the top and bottom line of a company, it makes sense to monitor performance and drive transparency into the total cost of delivering each IT service. You can also improve agility by automating and continuously managing the budget, forecast and planning cycle of IT.