VMware Research Library

The IT operations organization must provide reliable, responsive, and cost-effective services for everything from running the production systems to ensuring adequate capacity for business operations to rapidly completing requests for new employee provisioning. Two constituencies expect different things from the operations organization: Line managers and end users want responsiveness and flexibility in regard to their requests, while senior business and corporate expect cost effectiveness and reliability -- even when demand for IT services fluctuates. Operational reliability, stability, and costeffectiveness are "table stakes" for the IT-business relationship -- a positive IT-business relationship depends upon the perception of IT providing "utility grade" operational services.