Risky human behaviour fails changing firms

Companies are failing to understand the risk and consequences inherent in IT service delivery – particularly during periods of change to systems and infrastructure.

According to recent research from YouGov, only 39 per cent of IT managers claim to be confident they are aware of the risks when undertaking any change.

According to recent research from YouGov, 53 per cent of businesses see IT outages as one of their biggest business risks, yet only 20 per cent of IT managers polled are confident their current IT management system helps them evaluate risk.

Less than a third (29 per cent) of IT managers polled were confident their management systems give staff the required knowledge required to maintain new technology effectively.

Sean Larner, European MD of Managed Objects, who commissioned YouGov to carry out the research, said: "This survey highlights that IT organisations are still not sufficiently confident in understanding the potential impact of change. Change poses such a risk that IT organisations need to have 100 per cent confidence they know the potential consequences."

Thomas Mendel, an analyst at Forrester Research, said: "Manual interference and the lack of consistent service management processes are still the number one source of incidents resulting in end user downtime. Companies tell us that unplanned and untested infrastructure changes remain at the heart of the problem."

"Let's face it: humans are not very good at repetitive tasks - this cries out for automation," added Mendel.