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The Open Group IT4IT Forum Launched in LondonLONDON --(Business Wire)-- The Open Group today at its London event announced the launch of its latest forum, The Open Group IT4IT™ Forum, to provide a vendor-neutral environment for IT executives to meet, gain knowledge and lead the development of the IT4IT Reference Architecture for IT portfolio management. The IT4IT Forum has been established by enterprise customers, IT service providers and tools vendors to help IT departments address the strategic challenges brought about by the changing IT landscape. It will create and drive the adoption of the IT4IT standard to provide a vendor-neutral Reference Architecture that supports management and execution across the IT value chain. The Reference Architecture will enable the provision of data-driven insights that help IT organizations focus on business outcomes while delivering solutions faster and with reduced cost and risk. TheĀ IT4IT standard is intended to enable the IT function to achieve the same level of business discipline, predictability and efficiency as other business functions. The new standard will also embrace and complement existing processes and methodologies (e.g. ITIL®, CoBIT®, SAFe® and TOGAF®) by taking a data-focused implementation model perspective across the entire IT value chain. Founding members of The Open Group IT4IT Forum include Enterprise Architects and IT leaders from organizations such as Royal Dutch Shell, Accenture (News - Alert), Achmea, HP, Munich RE and PwC. "The IT function in many of our member organizations is under constant pressure to provide improved capabilities to the enterprise while at the same time lowering total cost", said Allen Brown, President and CEO of The Open Group. "This customer led initiative is both timely and valuable and I look forward to supporting the development, adoption and integrity of this important standard through the application of The Open Group processes."
"Gartner (News - Alert) research suggests that many IT functions are struggling to
contain IT cost and many companies see base cost (run and maintain of
the estate) going up, leaving less funds available for innovation and
the new business applications. The insights that IT4IT promises to
deliver will enable opportunities for cost reduction to be identified,
freeing up funding for innovation. Gartner estimates that for a $1b per
annum IT function, this benefit could be five to 20 percent of total
budget." "Like many other companies, Shell faces challenges around matching IT capabilities to core business needs, and reducing IT spend while delivering IT solutions faster. Rapid technologicl developments like Cloud computing, IT consumerization, and Big Data add further complexity, and we find ourselves in a position where we are increasingly stretched to respond to rising demand and a need for greater agility. In 2011, we decided to change our approach and we initiated discussions with HP Software to jointly design a comprehensive and integrated model for managing the business of IT and to deal with the challenges identified. This arrangement paved the way for Shell and several other companies to share their expertise. Significant progress has been made since on the IT4IT initiative, and in fact we are on the verge of seeing an open standard for IT management come into place.
We stand to benefit from this work in various ways e.g. by enabling
crucially needed interoperability in multi-vendor ecosystems and gaining
a much deeper insight into what is happening in the IT function that
will highlight opportunities for cost improvement, quality enhancement
and risk reduction. We believe that the emerging IT4IT standard from The
Open Group will drive a change in the market that will enable us to
consume IT management capabilities as a service and to streamline future
sourcing decisions by including adherence to the standard in relevant
contracts." "Hybrid architectures, new sourcing models and new delivery models mean that the IT environment is more complex than ever, making it challenging for CIOs to maintain control whilst maintaining the agility and flexibility they need in today's digital environment. Tools are available to help, but so far tend to be point solutions, developed in siloes.
With IT4IT, we envision the development of industrialized IT operations,
supported by integrated automation that uses a common framework across
the value chain, from investment portfolio management to the delivery
and management of IT operations. As a founding member of the IT4IT
Forum, Accenture seeks to work with IT customers and vendors within The
Open Group to make this vision a reality."
"In our industry, control of the end-to-end IT Value Chain is mandatory.
That particularly includes effective and dynamic management of a
multi-sourced landscape, which can only become a cost-efficient and high
quality reality with the right level of standardization. We're committed
to the IT4IT initiative, as we strongly believe in a community driven
open standard as the basis for sustainable competitiveness. We've done
it in other areas and know that it works."
"HP applauds The Open Group's initiative to drive IT4IT towards
an accepted industry standard and we are enthusiastic supporters of its
growth across the industry."
"Cloud services and multi-provider outsourcing are adding new degrees of
complexity to IT service management. The IT4IT Forum will use its real
life cross-industry expertise to define a new operating model for IT -
and will drive tool vendors to deliver toolsets optimized to support
this new IT4IT industry open standard."
"An IT4IT industry standard to truly enable the business of IT is long
overdue. The industry is ever changing and IT needs to evolve to meet
the needs of the business while effectively managing the IT services
provided both internally and externally. By driving an industry standard
at the reference architecture level, we will truly achieve
interoperability among our software vendors providing the strongest IT
environment available, thus allowing us to focus our energies on
differentiating the business services instead of focusing on how best to
manage IT."
Notes to editors
About The Open Group
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