IDC predicts that by 2016, 65% of global competitive strategies will require real-time 3rd Platform IT as a Service (ITaaS). The ability of CIOs and IT organisations to grasp how business wants services that serve actual business needs, not traditional IT components, is significantly altering the ways in which service management is defined as successful. 
 

3rd Platform technologies are fundamentally altering how IT organisations function, how business is conducted, and how enterprises compete. This demands restructuring IT to deliver ITaaS 3rd Platform services that are focused on realizing the enterprises’ competitive strategies. The ability of IT to immediately achieve a maturing business focus within its strategic planning and execution process is now an imperative. 
 
Other findings include: 
Maturing the IT business dimension requires the active participation of top IT management. All stakeholders and beneficiaries of IT within the enterprise must be kept abreast of the business dimension maturity process and actively solicited for feedback whenever possible;
Service innovation demands a multifaceted approach that seeks to ensure that all five maturity dimensions are simultaneously addressed, continually focusing on the least mature process or the bottleneck that is holding up all other maturity dimensions
 

IDC recommends companies take a “theory of constraints” approach, frequently used within IT as a Service to quickly identify, analyse, and resolve a prioritized impediment (constraint) to IT-business alignment, which will fuel and drive a second and third IT-business alignment constraint.
 
IT organisations that achieve long-term success will be characterized by a service-centric culture that tracks effectiveness through an “outside in” or customer-focused perspective, rigorous IT competitive analysis, and business-oriented service metrics.
 
“Creating a mature, strategic business alignment between IT and its customers requires a clearly defined end-state vision, an empowering IT culture capable of initiating rapid change, and an increasing focus on the financial costs and benefits as measured from a consumption basis versus the traditional cost-budget basis,” says Bill Keyworth, vice president of Research at IDC. “A method of assessing service innovation maturity is needed as a planning tool and source of guidance to prioritize and evaluate the progress of an IT organisation in adopting to the true customer (business) perspective of IT 3rd Platform services.”