IT as a service

IT as a service (ITaaS) is an operational model where the information technology (IT) service provider delivers an information technology service to a business.^[1][2] The IT service provider can be an internal IT organization or an external IT services company. The recipients of ITaaS can be a line of business (LOB) organization within an enterprise or a small and medium business (SMB). The information technology is typically delivered as a managed service with a clear IT services catalog and pricing associated with each of the catalog items. At its core, ITaaS is a competitive business model where businesses have many options for IT services and the internal IT organization has to compete against those other external options in order to be the selected IT service provider to the business. Options for providers other than the internal IT organization may include IT outsourcing companies and public cloud providers.

Under an ITaaS model, the IT service provider will place great emphasis on the needs and the outcomes required by the business to improve employee productivity and improving the top line (revenue) and bottom line (profitability). Such services will have a deep industry focus to fully enable industry specific use cases. The benefits to the business sought by using the ITaaS model include the standardization and simplification of products delivered by IT, improved financial transparency and more direct association of costs to consumption, and increased IT operational efficiency resulting from the need to compare the price of internally produced products to those available from external providers. The transformation of an internal IT organization from operating as a cost-center to an ITaaS model is also believed to produce improved levels of business agility for the enterprise as a whole.