Why 81% of companies experience recurring IT failures (and how to prevent them with ITxM)
In our latest installment of Service Management Unlocked (SMU), I was joined by Jim Hirschauer, Xurrent’s Head of Product Marketing, to discuss how IT teams are evolving to serve the digital enterprise.
We led off the conversation by defining ITxM as the unified convergence of ITSM, ITOM, and IT Incident Management into a single platform that synchronizes incident data across all IT stakeholders in real-time.
ITxM ensures accountability during and after incidents, driving timely resolution and enforcing root cause fixes to prevent recurrence.
Listen and watch as Jim breaks down the definition:
I then shared a (brief) history of the IT/ITSM space, showing this graphic as the foundation:
As you can see, IT has historically been a siloed organization.
Success was — and often still is — measured by:
- Speed of service: Lower the mean time to resolution (MTTR)!
- Queue volume: Reduce monthly tickets!
- Cost of service: Minimize costs!
- Security breaches: Limit!
Over time, IT teams got very good at meeting SLAs (being on time), focusing on accountability, creating repeatable processes (often via automation), and leaning into data compliance (logging it and ensuring it was reportable).
This work was powered by organizations such as Xurrent.
Meanwhile, development teams also lived in the world of silos: Engineering | QA | Release Engineering | Product Support … eventually leading to the formation of new roles to implement the DevOps philosophy across these silos.
Success was measured by business impact (think agile).
Over time, IT teams got very good at being flexible and adaptable, learning how to iterate and innovate … all the while honing in on high-quality output.
But Dev Teams were (and many still are) not great at predictability, consistent delivery times, and compliance.
So when these two worlds collide, as they often do during an incident, the results are not always … ideal.
When ITOps and DevOps meet 🧨
Incidents occur.
Fires need to be put out.
Stuff breaks.
In fact, according to various reports, US companies suffer an average of 12 incidents of unplanned application downtime per year, costing enterprises an average of $5,600 per minute.
When these incidents and fires happen, ITOps and DevOps — two historically siloed organizations (see above) — are forced to converge.
NOTE: even though DevOps is a philosophy, many companies have built DevOps organizations as an attempt to cut across silos.
Listen and watch as I explain:
And what happens next is an endless loop of doom.
Inevitably, most companies land in the Doom Loop
When an incident occurs, this is what a typical incident response flow looks like:
Most teams are really good at “Detection & Analysis” and “Containment, Eradication, & Recovery” but tend to be weaker in “Preparation” and “Post-Incident Activity.”
As it turns out, the first and last “buckets” are essential to solving the underlying causes of these incidents — and preventing them from occurring again (or at least limiting occurrences).
Organizations get stuck in the “Doom Loop” — the fighting fires stages outlined in this graphic:
And here’s the rub: 81% of companies surveyed reported the exact same failure has recurred since the initial incident
Unfortunately, the Doom Loop is challenging to break out of for a few reasons.
First, our day jobs get in the way. As we return to our (often virtual) desks, we settle back into the day-to-day of our jobs and “forget” about the incident. Secondly, the entire Incident Management process is siloed and very manual, leading to redefinition and a lack of accountability.
Xurrent is the answer.
How Xurrent is solving the Doom Loop
ITxM is the solution.
It’s worth repeating: ITxM is the unified convergence of ITSM, ITOM, and IT Incident Management into a single platform that synchronizes incident data across all IT stakeholders in real-time. It ensures accountability during and after incidents, driving timely resolution and enforcing root cause fixes to prevent recurrence.
Listen and watch as I explain more about how Xurrent helps:
ITxM (and Xurrent) is here to help.
The many benefits of ITxM
The Xurrent ITxM solution will help your team lower the total cost of downtime thanks to:
- Faster, more efficient incident resolution
- Improved reliability and resiliency
- Reduction of repeat incidents
- AI-enhanced decision making
Which will ultimately lead to increased customer satisfaction.
Easy. Advanced. Complete.
Ready to see how Xurrent can will help your organization? Speak with a team member today.