Over 50% of companies are not ready for major incidents, new survey reveals

Sysop managing director Stuart Sawle

54% of companies will not be ready in the event of a major IT incident according to a new poll by local IT educator and consultant Sysop, with respondents saying they are ‘poorly prepared’ (15%) or are ‘only prepared for some eventualities’ (39%) should a major incident occur.

33% of respondents say they ‘need to do more to align their IT with the business’, with 4% admitting that their IT-business alignment is ‘poor’. Almost two in ten also say that management has ‘no understanding’ (5%) or a ‘poor understanding’ (14%) of the importance of IT to the business.

Professional IT development is another problem highlighted by Sysop’s poll: 37% of respondents say their organisation ‘could do better’ (33%) or is ‘poor’ (4%) in the development of its IT professionals.

The poll surveyed change management, a core IT service management (ITSM) discipline covering key, company-protective changes to IT infrastructure – and revealed that 13% of respondents have no change manager or change advisory board (CAB). Sysop tracked each phase of the development cycle to identify at what stage the CAB or change manager got involved.

Only 17% of respondents say that they got involved ‘when change is chartered’, so following IT service management best practice. 34% say they got involved ‘when detailed specification is designed’; 19% ‘when build and test commences’; and 17% ‘when build and test is complete’.

“Standards can bring IT and the business together, but our poll reveals that many organisations still fail to follow or invest in them as consistently as they should in the key areas of incident, change and people management” comments Sysop managing director and consulting lead Stuart Sawle.

“Failure to address the issue is often far more costly than any investment would have been.”