Over the past two years, the economy has forced IT departments to downsize, sometimes cutting their budgets to the bone. Priorities and processes had to be reevaluated, and one of the main tenets of ITSM — do more with less — became an imperative with teeth. With the economy motivating this drive to do more with less, it may have come as an unwanted change. But it’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, the folks on the “O” side of Forrester’s I&O team have long been focused on how you can reduce your IT costs through automation and industrialization — essentially, how to do more with less.

But now IT budgets are springing back, which may tempt some to stray from the path of IT service management. We urge you to resist this temptation. Our research shows that in 2010, most of the I&O budget is being spent on new infrastructure, not personnel. This means you're still having to do more with less, and to do this you need to focus on process. In fact, we want you to focus on process and industrializing your operations so much, we’ve built our holiday wish list around it.

The Ten Things We Want For The Holidays (and The Ten Things You Need To Improve Your IT Service Management )

• True active executive commitment
  • To achieve real results, you need to have CIO-level support.
• Behavior change – discipline of IT service management
  • To launch a successful program, you need to educate and enforce.