The Open Group’s official blog reports on the ‘interesting case’ of the use of its IT4IT in Shell’s digital transformation. A major outsourcing initiative saw Shell’s IT transferred to three global service providers. Shell then had to develop its own interfaces to the outsourcers to track IT incidents. TOG quotes Shell’s Mary Jarrett as saying, ‘Shell faces challenges around matching IT capabilities to core business needs and reducing IT spend. Technological developments like cloud computing, IT consumerization, and big data add complexity, and we [ are ] increasingly stretched to respond to rising demand and a need for greater agility’.
The IT4IT Reference Architecture is said to provide ‘holistic guidance’ for the implementation of IT management capabilities. The latest (V2.1) release is a 190 page document with some 70 plus sections offering a highly granular approach to IT service delivery. TOG positions IT4IT as a ‘peer’ to other reference architectures such as the Object Management Group’s NRF/ARTS retail operational data model, and the eTOM business process framework. IT4IT is said to allow IT ‘to achieve the same level of business predictability and efficiency that supply chain management has allowed for the business’.
A January 2016 white paper describes how Shell has leveraged IT4IT across its 140,000 desktops with support from some 10,000 IT staff (including contractors). The TOG blog is essentially a reprise of the 2016 white paper. Shell’s IT outsourcing began in 2008. All of which begs the question as to the extent to which Shell is still using the IT4IT framework. Now here’s a thing. Shell’s first port of call when seeking a home for its ambitious Open Subsurface Data Universe was of course, TOG. Moreover OSDU, like IT4IT has the cloud at its focal point. How much of the IT4IT DNA will migrate across to OSDU is a question that we hope to able to answer in our next edition when we report from the TOG Amsterdam member meeting.
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