The "secret sauce" for most Managed Services Providers is the standards they use to manage and maintain their clients IT environments. Some MSPs recommend all of their clients use the same brand of firewalls or computers, but these types of standards only scratch the surface of all of the standards the MSP subscribes to in order to provide the best possible service to their clients.
Like the overall technology market, IT service management standards constantly evolve to customer needs. Recently BSI, the business standards company, published BS ISO/IEC 20000-1: 2018 Information technology – service management – part 1: service management system requirements.
This standard has been revised for the first time since 2011, to help organizations better respond to increasing service demands and a changing service delivery environment, the company claimed. The revised standard takes a more strategic focus to deliver an optimized performance for a company and its customers.
Changes to the IT Service Management standard include:
- Key service management trends are addressed
- An increased focus on planning to drive improved performance
- An increased focus on leadership and strategy to ensure an optimized performance is delivered for the user and customers
- Standard is now aligned to a high-level structure that applies to all new management system standards
As businesses move IT infrastructure to the cloud, and utilize cloud-based services to handle many business critical services, the day to day break/fix model of IT service management has been reduced. Now businesses are expecting IT leadership as opposed to just the occasional help when hardware or software malfunctions. These businesses want to know what tools they can utilize to make them more productive, and keep their companies up and running. IT leadership and direction are becoming key services for MSPs to offer.
Another reason these standards have changed is the inclusion of AI, and other types of automated systems that are improving service levels for customers. With the simple day to day tasks easily handled, MSPs can concentrate on higher-level service offerings that require more skill and technical knowledge.
Anne Hayes, head of governance and resilience at BSI, said in a prepared statement: “Whether your organization is an internal service department or an external service provider, delivering a quality service valued by your stakeholders is essential. BS ISO/IEC 20000-1 will assist organizations in responding to ever-increasing service demands and a changing service delivery environment.”
More information on BS ISO/IEC 20000-1 can be found here.
