The Open Group IT4IT™ Standard – in 3 minutes

1 Title/Current Version

IT4IT™ Reference Architecture Version 2.1, an Open Group Standard

2 The Basics

The Open Group IT4IT Reference Architecture is a standard reference architecture for managing the business of IT. It uses a value chain approach to create a model of the functions that IT performs to help organizations identify the activities that contribute to business competitiveness.

The IT4IT Reference Architecture Standard:Provides a vendor-neutral, technology-agnostic, and industry-agnostic reference architecture for managing the business of IT, enabling insight for continuous improvement.

• • Provides the capabilities for managing the business of IT that will enable IT execution across the entire Value Chain in a better, faster, cheaper way with less risk.
  • Provides prescriptive guidance on the specification of and interaction with a consistent service model backbone (common data model/context)
  • Supports real-world use-cases driven by the Digital Economy (e.g., Cloud-sourcing, Agile, DevOps, and service brokering)
  • Embraces and complements existing process frameworks and methodologies (e.g., ITIL®, CoBIT®, SAFe, and TOGAF®) by taking a data-focused implementation model perspective, essentially specifying an information model across the entire value chain
  • Is industry-independent to solve the same problems for everyone.
  • Is designed for existing landscapes and accommodates future IT paradigms.

3 Summary

The IT4IT Reference Architecture standard consists of the IT value chain and a three-layer reference architecture. Level 1 is shown above.

The IT Value Chain is shown below.

The IT4IT Reference Architecture provides prescriptive, holistic guidance for the implementation of IT management capabilities for today’s digital enterprise. It is positioned as a peer to comparable reference architectures such as NRF/ARTS, TMF Framework (aka eTOM), ACORD, BIAN, and other such guidance.

Together, the four value streams play a vital role in helping IT control the service model as it advances through its lifecycle:

The Strategy to Portfolio (S2P) Value Stream:

• Provides the strategy to balance and broker your portfolio
• Provides a unified viewpoint across PMO, enterprise 
architecture, and service portfolio
• Improves data quality for decision-making
• Provides KPIs and roadmaps to improve business communication

The Requirement to Deploy (R2D) Value Stream:

• Provides a framework for creating, modifying, or sourcing a service
• Supports agile and traditional development methodologies
• Enables visibility of the quality, utility, schedule, and cost of 
the services you deliver
• Defines continuous integration and deployment control points

The Request to Fulfill (R2F) Value Stream:

• Helps your IT organization transition to a service broker model
• Presents a single catalog with items from multiple supplier 
catalogs
• Efficiently manages subscriptions and total cost of service
• Manages and measures fulfillments across multiple suppliers

The Detect to Correct (D2C) Value Stream:

• Brings together IT service operations to enhance results and efficiency
• Enables end-to-end visibility using a shared configuration model
• Identifies issues before they affect users
• Reduces the mean time to repair

4 Version 2.1 Release Highlights

The following topics have been included/enhanced in Version 2.1 of the IT4IT Reference Architecture:

• Service Model simplification and enhancement – The data objects which make up the Service Model Backbone have been simplified and better defined to lead to a stronger understanding of the Reference Architecture in its entirety. The Service Model is the backbone of the entire standard.
• Financial Management supporting function – The Reference Architecture has been updated to highlight how financial management capabilities are now supported by the standard. Financial Management is one of the Supporting Functions in the overall IT Value Chain and has impacts on core functions and data objects which have been updated to more effectively support this capability.
• General consistency and flow of the overall standard – The Reference Architecture 2.0 was the first version of the standard which was published. There were certain sections, naming conventions, and content which lacked some consistency throughout the standard which have now been resolved.

4 Target Audience

The target audience for the standard consists of:

• IT executives

• IT process analysts

• Architects tasked with “business of IT” questions

• Development and operations managers

• Consultants and trainers active in the IT industry

5 Scope

The Open Group IT4IT standard is focused on defining, sourcing, consuming, and managing IT services by looking holistically at the entire IT Value Chain. While existing frameworks and standards have placed their main emphasis on process, this standard is process-agnostic, focused instead on the data needed to manage a service through its lifecycle. It then describes the functional components (software) that are required to produce and consume the data. Once integrated together, a system of record fabric for IT management is created that ensures full visibility and traceability of the service from cradle to grave.

IT4IT is neutral with respect to development and delivery models. It is intended to support Agile as well as waterfall approaches, and lean Kanban process approaches as well as fully elaborated IT service management process models.

The IT4IT Reference Architecture relates to TOGAF, ArchiMate, and ITIL as shown below:

6 Relevant Website

For further details on the IT4IT Reference Architecture standard, visit www.opengroup.org/IT4IT.

The IT4IT™ Reference Architecture, Version 2.1
ISBN: 9789401801126
Author: The Open Group
Price: € 39,95 (VAT Tax.)