WIREDGOV

Service Integration and Management (SIAM) can play an important role in any corporate IT delivery model, including in organizations which opt not to align service lines to specific technology ‘towers’, according to the author of a new white paper from AXELOS Global Best Practice.

Experienced service management practitioner Kevin Holland was responding to recent debates about the use of the SIAM and Tower models in UK government IT. Alex Holmes, Deputy Director and Chief of Staff in the Office of the CTO, explained why the UK government is moving away from the tower model for running government IT services, and why the focus needs to be on building and integrating services to meet user needs*.

Kevin said: “The ‘tower model’ that has been used in some areas of the UK government was a specific adaptation of SIAM. The service lines were pre-determined and aligned to specific technologies and procurement ‘towers’ such as desktop services, hosting and application management.

“Whether the government continues to follow the tower model or not, the SIAM concept is still absolutely relevant, such as when sourcing specific cloud services to meet user needs. There is still an absolute need for a SIAM function and model to provide the overall management, integration, co-ordination, and governance over the multiple service lines.”

The new AXELOS white paper - ‘An Example ITIL®-based model for effective Service Integration and Management’ - describes a working model for how to integrate, manage and govern a wide variety of different services, suppliers, and sourcing approaches for running multi-sourced IT services. It follows a white paper published by AXELOS in January providing an introduction to SIAM and ITIL.

In the new paper Kevin outlines the need to obtain a balance between service complexity and integration complexity by defining appropriate service lines, and points out the issues with the tower model. He also offers practical advice that can be used to build an in-house SIAM capability, using examples which are in use today in the UK public sector.

*https://governmenttechnology.blog.gov.uk/2015/03/17/lets-talk-about-it-services-to-meet-user-needs-not-procurement-models/

To view the white paper in full visit AXELOS.com.