What is IT operations management?
IT operations management (ITops) refers to the unified information technology strategy of a company or other complex organization including the business management teams, programming talent, and systems administration employees required for maintaining services 24/7/365 in required operations.
IT operations management organizes the hardware, software, and talent resources of a business to function in support of services or manufacturing. This requires desktop, mobile, web server, cloud, PaaS/SaaS, and other resources to be purchased, configured, and maintained in use by professional staff.
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Components of IT operations management
IT operations management is concerned with the totality of computer, cloud, software, networking, etc. resources required for the internal business operations, productivity, and customer support of a complex organization. In enterprise corporations, this involves support for office computers, product design, web/print publishing, technical engineering, medical services, industry, and manufacturing.
Each Fortune 500 company has a unique ITops strategy. ITops managers must make executive decisions on platform software, cloud providers, hardware systems, and programming talent. ITops managers assemble teams to program custom software solutions, administer data center facilities, or manage productivity applications for customer support, product sales, and international logistics.
ITops management is entrusted with data security, OS upgrades, web server maintenance, and innovation across corporate verticals and departments over time. Primary components are hardware purchasing, maintenance, and provisioning; network and data center administration; productivity software licensing, training, and updates; and custom software development to support employees, clients, and customers.
IT operations management vs. DevOps
ITops management refers to the totality of business operations of a company and their support in IT services, where DevOps is specifically concerned with the development and operation of software applications. Usually DevOps teams build web/mobile applications or SaaS/PaaS solutions for startups. ITops must support internal VLAN, SD-WAN, or SDDC requirements that are outside of normal DevOps range of operations. DevOps is specifically concerned with bringing custom software apps to market.
Similar to DevOps, ITops can be further subdivided to SecOps which focus on implementing security protocols across a cloud network or SDDC and CloudOps which is essentially network administration across multi-cloud or hybrid cloud architecture. DevOps works integrally with SecOps and CloudOps in production, where each are subdivisions dedicated to microservice support under ITops governance.
IT operations management best practices
Best practices in IT operations management revolve around building the most cost-efficient solution for any size organization according to the unique requirements of production, office support, software development, cloud hosting, etc. Often this involves decision making on hardware purchases, software platforms for installation, operating systems, service providers, or third-party software services. Unifying all of these requirements for a large business organization requires a lot of time and talent.
Software like the VMware Aria Suite includes utilities for ITops management that are designed for enterprise-scale implementation. Smaller companies may not be able to afford large investments on private cloud software and rely on public cloud services for savings. Open source solutions offer ITops managers a major alternative to Microsoft, Oracle, VMware, and AWS with expensive licensing or subscription fees. Linux solutions from Ubuntu, Red Hat, and SUSE are now popular in enterprise.
Related Solutions and Products
VMware Aria Operations
Self-driving IT operations management
VMware Aria Suite & vCloud Suite
Automation and operations with lifecycle management
vSphere
Server virtualization software