Benchmarking

Production Server Virtualization Benchmark

Those organizations with an existing foundation of production best practices such as those recommended by IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), may only need to modify or add procedures and controls in a few areas in order to achieve consolidation objectives. However, those using virtualization to pursue high availability or dynamic resource related objectives should expect a bigger impact on existing standard operating procedures.

Use this benchmark to identify new procedures and controls that ensure the success of virtualization expansion efforts. Also compare key operating performance metrics to over 320 other IT organizations.

Server consolidation practices – 11 practices recommended for those organizations virtualizing and consolidating servers in the production environment.
High availability practices – 25 practices recommended for those organizations expanding beyond server consolidation to use virtualization to achieve high availability objectives. Virtualization is used to move or re-provision resources to restore service in a failover or disaster recovery scenario in an otherwise static environment.
Dynamic resource practices – 12 recommended practices for those organizations using virtualization to manage pools of computing resources. Virtualization is used in an environment where rules or policies trigger resource moves or changes in a more automated environment.

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Strategic Alignment Performance Benchmark

We used data from 9 different organizational attributes to identify common IT value archetypes. We looked at 49 different strategic alignment practices in order to find those practices which predict the highest performance on 16 strategic alignment performance measures.

This benchmark provides detailed comparison of five areas of strategic alignment practices and 16 alignment performance measures. This benchmark can help assess your strategic alignment at three levels 1) IT value archetype fit to business strategy 2) alignment of attributes within your archetype 3) use of proven alignment practices for your archetype.

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Change Configuration and Release Benchmark

We analyzed 57 industry best practices to determine their impact on 15 key performance measures. We identify 7 key performance drivers including 30 individual best practices that best predict top levels of performance across 341 IT organizations studied.

This benchmark provides detailed comparison of specific change, configuration and release practices that are shown to predict highest levels of performance. It details a comparison of the use of the 7 key performance drivers, and all other practices in the study, to the top, medium and low performers in the study. It ties performance drivers to specific performance measures to help quickly identify areas for potential process improvement efforts, and helps identify performance improvement potential based on the results of other organizations that have the key practices in place

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IT Controls Performance Benchmark

We analyzed 53 IT controls to determine their impact on 15 key performance measures. We found that just 12 of the 53 controls analyzed predict 60% of the performance variation in the 330 companies studied. We also conclude that process maturity is the key that unlocks performance improvement potential of these key IT control processes.

With this benchmark you can compare your organization’s use and process maturity of a wide range of common IT controls, and compare your performance measures to 330 top, medium, and low performers identified in the study. This is a fast but powerful tool for both top performing organizations who want to compare their results to the best, and for organizations looking for guidance on where they can focus improvements to achieve top results.

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