There is a huge gap between IT departments’ aspirations to deliver the best service possible to users and the actual measures they have in place to achieve this, says a recent survey commissioned by systems and software vendor Hewlett-Packard (HP).

An overwhelming majority (93%) of respondents to HP’s survey agreed that improving the quality of IT service is a priority, yet only 45% of

	What policies have you put in place to improve IT services and support? Source: Hewlett Packard

organisations formally measure the performance of the IT service they deliver internally, and just 28% have an official best practice policy for IT service delivery.

Furthermore, three-quarters of respondents said they believe it to be either ‘critical’ or ‘very important’ to formally measure IT services standards. However, a far smaller proportion was aware of some of the formal mechanisms available to do so.

For example, only 26% knew of the BS15000 standard for IT service management, while 51% were aware of the standard but had no plans to implement it. On a similar note, only 27% of respondents were aware of the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), a detailed set of guidelines for IT service management.

Those respondents that had implemented best practice measures saw considerable improvements in performance and efficiency, according to HP. Nearly four-fifths of this group reported a decrease in the frequency and duration of IT failures, 76% said that monitoring IT performance was easier as a result, and 61% said they were more able to account for IT spend.