Managed SPs: Need for Inventory Management to Optimize Managed Cloud Services

This IDC Market Perspective discusses how inventory management should be a central building block in provisioning managed cloud services. Factors driving managed SPs to adopt more robust inventory management extend beyond the need to deliver greater agility, resiliency, and operational excellence. They also reflect growing dissatisfaction with managed SPs that contribute to higher costs, longer timetomarket and development cycles, misaligned service delivery, missed SLAs, and the deterioration of product innovation and leadership."Meeting critical business and IT objectives and overcoming key obstacles in organizational use of managed cloud services requires managed SPs to invest heavily in building a robust, end-to-end inventory management system that is utilized as part of an integrated digital services supply chain. Investments that managed SPs must make involve creating an end-to-end inventory management system, incorporating inventory management as part of an integrated digital services supply chain, implementing a robust governance structure, utilizing best practices from manufacturing, developing new metrics for measuring effectiveness, emphasizing use of empirical information and data, and leveraging AI with inventory management." - Program VP David Tapper, Outsourcing and Managed Cloud Services, IDC