Are firms getting IT maintenance? Gartner asks

MUMBAI, INDIA: IT maintenance, with its cost, difficulty and expenses, remains one of the most urgent and critical issues for enterprises worldwide, so Gartner, Inc.'s Global IT Council for IT Maintenance has created a Code of Conduct that addresses IT maintenance consumers' most serious concerns.

The Gartner Global IT Council for IT Maintenance consists of CIOs and senior IT leaders of large enterprises, as well as Gartner analysts, who work together to create actionable real-world recommendations and drive fundamental changes in the way the IT industry works.

"Enterprises need timely, reliable, cost-effective IT maintenance, but they just aren't getting it," said David Cappuccio, vice president and chief of research, Gartner. "On the one hand, hardware and software maintenance represents the single largest IT expense for many enterprises, but it's also a huge source of revenue for IT vendors. This fundamental conflict presents many problems for IT consumers."

The Council's Code of Conduct, as per a press release, codifies some of the highest-priority rights and responsibilities of vendors and IT organizations, to spark a discussion about how maintenance services can be applied efficiently and cost-effectively, without damaging mission-critical business processes. This discussion among IT organizations, vendors and Gartner analysts should improve everyone's understanding of maintenance issues, raise awareness of established and emerging issues, and define best practices and expected consumption and execution models.

The Council's Code of Conduct incorporates seven rights of IT maintenance consumers that it believes will help providers and consumers work more productively together. These rights include:

The right to regular, appropriate, predictable updates to software products: Council members agreed that software vendors should offer all customers an update/patch process with clearly defined frequency and duration timelines.

Furthermore, vendors should use a defined process for delivering emergency updates when serious operational or security flaws are discovered, including mechanisms for notifying stakeholders in advance.

Scheduled and emergency updates should align with contract lengths and product life cycles, so that enterprises can plan their purchases without paying for unnecessary or unwanted releases. Finally, IT maintenance contracts should address customers' specific regional support and provide for comparable levels of support, at comparable cost, across all regions where they do business.

"The members of the Gartner Global IT Council for IT Maintenance believe that industry-wide adoption of these principles and recommendations will bring significant benefits for IT consumers and vendors," Cappuccio said. "This Code of Conduct will mark a starting point for a valuable ongoing discussion among the various stakeholders, with the goal of transforming these basic principles into standards that are accepted and respected across the industry."