Gartner's Infrastructure Operations Maturity Model

At Gartner's Data Center Conference, Donna Scott and Jay Pultz, both Gartner VP Analysts,

announced the new Gartner Infrastructure and Operations Maturity Model. There are 6 levels for an organization:

• 0: Survival
• 1: Awareness
• 2: Committed: sufficient resources available (people, capital)
• 3: Proactive
• 4: Service-Aligned (SLA’s defined as IT services)
• 5: Business Partner

From a poll of the audience (~2000 attendees), 60% are at levels 1 and 2, 7% are at level 0 (survival), 19% are level 3 (proactive) and only 1% are level 5 (business partner).

Level 2: focuses on customer satisfaction. Organizations invest in project management, incident management and service support.

There are three components to the IO Maturity Model: People, process and technology. Technology changes are the easiest to implement, followed by process changes and finally followed by people changes (e.g., training and having the appropriate staff).

Technology changes needed for the different levels:

• 1: Asset management system in place
• 2: Consolidation, standards in place
• 3: Automated failover and architecture in place
• 4: End-to-end service levels
• 5: Dynamically change the infrastructure

Levels 2 and below are not sustainable levels. By the end of 2012,

• 35% of large enterprises will be at level 3 (proactive), compared with 25% in 2007.
• 14% will be at service-aligned, compared with 9% today