BSM and Hiring Trends...

What is BSM and why should you care? There has been a rising trend in IT to only people that have strong business skills and business degrees.

There are various driving forces behind this trend, one of them is simply that companies can hire fewer people - so they need higher caliber.

The main driving force is that IT people MUST understand how business interacts with IT. This is where BSM comes in, Business Service Management.

You can no longer look at a data center and go all geeky - you have to understand that this rack supports SAP that has X number of users that use this function and another Y number of users that do this... and so.

For too long, many system administrators have lived in the IT silo without realizing their efforts directly impacted the day to day business functions of thousands or tens of thousands of people.

The BSM process and software takes the logical business of a company and maps it to the underlying business processes and technology. To be able to understand both sides of a project like this, we have to meet with our business owners or LOB owners and get a firm grasp on they are organized and how they do business. These discovery sessions require technical knowledge, but at this point it requires more of business attitude and a good set of ears.

So where I am going with this? As technical resources, many of us have already made the jump into the business/IT fold. For those that haven't, you need to work on your business skills and get a firm understanding of how to address business needs with IT solutions.