Geography

In organizations with multiple locations, it is common for the Technical and Application Management departments to be represented in each physical location. However, this does not mean that each location will have all the same departments, or that they are all responsible for the same actions.

As support and management tools mature more and more IT Infrastructure and application CIs can be managed remotely. This means that each department will have a strong, centralized Technical or Application Management team, with local members to provide specialized, on-site activities or support.

For example, in Server Management, the central team will help to create standards for server configuration, they will monitor and control remote devices, perform backups, perform Operating System upgrades, etc. The local teams will provide basic on-site support, hardware maintenance and repair and configuration and installation of new servers.

In Application Management, the central team could participate in ongoing design and testing of the application, monitoring and control; perform backups, data integrity checks, etc. The local team could provide on-site support and education to end users and work with the local Technical Management team to resolve more complex problems involving local equipment.

There is one potential issue that needs to be resolved however, and that is who the local team reports to. In some organizations they report to the manager of the centralized team. This has the added advantage of consistent performance and management across the whole enterprise.

In other organizations the local teams report to the most senior IT Manager at that site. This has the added advantage that IT Services can be customized to meet local conditions, but it creates a lot of confusion about who the local teams should take direction from.

The advantages of this type of organizational structure include the following.

• Organization structure can be customized to meet local conditions
• Technical and Application Management can be customized to meet differing levels of IT service from region to region.

The disadvantages of this type of organizational structure include the following.

• Reporting lines and authority structures can be confusing
• Standards are difficult to impose, resulting in inconsistent and duplicated activities and tools, resulting in reduced economies of scale, which in turn increases the overall cost of operations
• Duplication of roles, activities, tools and facilities across multiple locations could be very costly.

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 902