A Holistic view of Operational Resilience Using the 5-Layer 

IT Operating Model

Executive Summary

Designing and implementing improved operational resilience in an enterprise IT organisation requires a holistic and integrated “top-down” approach. By leveraging the 5-layer IT Operating Model framework, enterprise IT organizations can systematically embed resilience into every aspect of their operations, from strategic vision to daily execution. This holistic approach not only minimizes the impact of disruptions but also fosters a culture of adaptability and continuous improvement, ultimately strengthening the organization's ability to operate and adapt in an increasingly complex and unpredictable digital world.

Introduction

In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, operational resilience has become a paramount concern for enterprise IT organizations. The ability to withstand, adapt to, and recover from disruptions is no longer a luxury but a fundamental requirement for business continuity and competitive advantage. This article explores how a structured approach, leveraging a 5-layer IT Operating Model (ITOM) framework, can be instrumental in designing and implementing robust operational resilience. By integrating resilience considerations into each layer of the ITOM, organisations can build a more robust, adaptable, and ultimately, more reliable IT environment.

The 5-layer IT Operating Model provides a holistic view of an IT organization, from strategic intent to daily operations. By systematically embedding resilience principles into each layer, enterprises can move beyond reactive incident management to proactive resilience engineering.

Understanding the 5-Layer IT Operating Model Framework

The ITOM framework provides a structured approach to optimising IT capabilities, breaking down the complex task of IT transformation into manageable layers.

• Level 1: Vision and Strategy: Defines the "Why" – the overarching purpose, strategic direction, policies, principles, critical success factors, objectives, key results, and governance for IT.

• Level 2: Capability Design: Defines the "What" – the high-level capabilities required to achieve the strategic vision, including value streams, service portfolio, security & cyber, and operational constraints.

• Level 3: Functional Design: Defines the "How" (High-Level) – translates capabilities into practical functional components, covering service architecture, interfaces & dependencies, the organization model (high-level), supply chain model, and governance & management framework.

• Level 4: Organizational Design: Structures the "Who" – focuses on the organizational structure, learning & development, performance management, stakeholder engagement, and people & culture needed to support the model.

• Level 5: Operational Design: Delivers the "How" (Detailed) – establishes the core components and infrastructure for daily functions, including technology & products, facilities & infrastructure, policies, processes & standards, information & data, IT security (operational), and vendor & partner integration.

Applying the 5-Layer IT Operating Model to Operational Resilience

The ITOM framework, as outlined above, consists of five interconnected layers: Vision and Strategy, Capability Design, Functional Design, Organizational Design, and Operational Design. Each layer plays a crucial role in shaping the overall resilience posture of an IT organization.

Level 1: Vision and Strategy - Defining the "Why" of Resilience

This foundational layer sets the strategic direction and establishes the core purpose for IT. For operational resilience, this means clearly articulating the organization's risk appetite, defining critical business services, and establishing the strategic importance of uninterrupted operations.

Resilience Design at Level 1:

• Policies & Principles: Establish clear policies that mandate resilience as a core design principle for all new and existing IT services. For example, a policy could state that all critical applications must have a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of less than 4 hours and a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of less than 1 hour.

• Critical Success Factors (CSFs) & Objectives & Key Results (OKRs): Define CSFs related to service availability, data integrity, and rapid recovery. OKRs could include "Achieve 99.99% availability for core banking systems" or "Reduce mean time to recover (MTTR) from major incidents by 20% within 12 months."

• Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC): Integrate operational resilience into the overall enterprise risk management framework. This involves identifying potential disruption scenarios, assessing their impact, and establishing clear accountability for resilience across the organization.

Example: A financial institution's vision and strategy might explicitly state that maintaining uninterrupted access to customer banking services is a top strategic priority, driven by regulatory requirements and customer trust. This translates into a policy requiring active-active data centers for all critical transaction systems, ensuring immediate failover in case of a regional outage.

Level 2: Capability Design - Defining the "What" of Resilience

This layer focuses on defining the high-level capabilities required to achieve the strategic vision. For resilience, this involves identifying and designing the capabilities necessary to prevent, detect, respond to, and recover from disruptions.

Resilience Design at Level 2:

• Value Streams: Map critical business value streams and identify the underlying IT capabilities that support them. This allows for prioritization of resilience efforts based on business impact. For example, the "Order-to-Cash" value stream might depend on CRM, ERP, and payment gateway capabilities, all of which need resilience built in.

• Service Portfolio: Categorize services based on their criticality to the business and define resilience requirements for each category (e.g., mission-critical, business-critical, supporting). A tiered approach to resilience, with different RTOs/RPOs for different service tiers, can be established here.

• Security & Cyber: Integrate cyber resilience as a core capability. This includes capabilities for threat intelligence, incident response, vulnerability management, and secure coding practices to prevent cyber-attacks from impacting operational continuity.

• Operational Constraints: Understand and document any inherent constraints (e.g., legacy systems, budget limitations) that might impact resilience design, and develop strategies to mitigate them.

Example: For an e-commerce company, the "Online Sales" value stream is critical. The capability design would identify capabilities like "Secure Payment Processing," "Inventory Management," and "Customer Order Fulfilment." For "Secure Payment Processing," resilience capabilities might include redundant payment gateways, real-time transaction replication, and automated fraud detection systems.

Level 3: Functional Design - Defining the "How" (High-Level) of Resilience

This layer translates the high-level capabilities into practical and functional components, detailing how IT services will be delivered. For resilience, this involves designing the architecture, interfaces, and models that support robust and fault-tolerant operations.

Resilience Design at Level 3:

• Service Architecture: Design architectures that inherently support resilience, such as distributed systems, microservices, and cloud-native patterns with built-in redundancy and self-healing capabilities. Implement circuit breakers, bulkheads, and retry mechanisms.

• Interfaces & Dependencies: Clearly map and manage dependencies between systems and services to identify potential single points of failure. Design resilient interfaces with robust error handling, retries, and fallback mechanisms.

• Supply Chain Model: Assess the resilience of third-party vendors and partners. This involves due diligence, contractual agreements for service level agreements (SLAs) including resilience metrics, and regular reviews of their disaster recovery plans.

• Governance & Management Framework: Establish a framework for managing resilience throughout the service lifecycle, including change management, configuration management, and incident management processes that prioritize rapid recovery.

Example: For a cloud-based SaaS provider, the functional design for their core application would involve a microservices architecture deployed across multiple availability zones. Each microservice would have redundant instances, automated scaling, and API gateways with rate limiting and circuit breakers to prevent cascading failures. Dependencies on external APIs would be managed with robust retry policies and fallback mechanisms.

Level 4: Organizational Design - Structuring for Resilience

This layer focuses on the organizational structure, roles, responsibilities, and culture needed to support the IT operating model. For resilience, this means building an organization that is agile, adaptable, and has a strong culture of continuous improvement and learning from incidents.

Resilience Design at Level 4:

• Learning & Development: Invest in training programs for IT staff on resilience engineering principles, incident response, and disaster recovery procedures. Foster a culture of continuous learning and knowledge sharing.

• Performance Management: Incorporate resilience metrics into performance objectives for IT teams and individuals. Reward proactive efforts in identifying and mitigating resilience risks.

• Organization Model (High-Level): Define the high-level structure and roles involved in managing and operating IT services, ensuring clear ownership for resilience. This might include defining a "Resilience Engineering" function or a "Disaster Recovery Lead" role.

• Organizational Structure: Design teams and reporting lines that facilitate effective collaboration during incidents and allow for rapid decision-making. Consider dedicated resilience teams or cross-functional "chaos engineering" teams.

• Stakeholder Engagement: Establish clear communication channels and engagement strategies with business stakeholders regarding resilience capabilities, incident status, and recovery plans.

• People & Culture: Foster a culture of psychological safety where individuals feel empowered to report issues, learn from failures, and proactively identify potential vulnerabilities without fear of blame. Promote a "blameless post-mortem" approach.

Example: A large enterprise IT department might establish a dedicated "Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)" team responsible for designing, implementing, and testing resilience mechanisms. This team would conduct regular "chaos engineering" experiments to proactively identify weaknesses in the system and would be empowered to drive improvements across different functional teams.

Level 5: Operational Design - Delivering Resilience in Practice

This final layer establishes the core components and infrastructure needed to support the daily functions of the IT operating model. For resilience, this involves implementing the technology, processes, and standards that ensure robust and continuous operations.

Resilience Design at Level 5:

• Technology & Products: Select and implement technologies that support resilience, such as highly available infrastructure, robust backup and recovery solutions, automated failover mechanisms, and comprehensive monitoring and alerting tools.

• Facilities & Infrastructure: Design and maintain resilient physical infrastructure, including redundant power supplies, cooling systems, and network connectivity. Consider geographically dispersed data centers for disaster recovery.

• Policies, Processes & Standards: Implement detailed operational policies, processes & standards for incident management, problem management, change management, and disaster recovery. This includes runbooks, playbooks, and automated recovery procedures.

• Information & Data: Implement robust data backup, replication, and recovery strategies. Ensure data integrity and availability across all systems, including immutable backups and versioning.

• IT Security (Operational): Implement operational security controls such as intrusion detection/prevention systems, security information and event management (SIEM), and regular security audits and penetration testing to prevent and detect threats that could impact operations.

• Vendors & Partner Integration: Establish operational processes for managing third-party dependencies, including regular performance reviews, incident response coordination, and testing of their resilience capabilities.

Example: For a global manufacturing company, the operational design would include implementing automated data replication across multiple geographically separate data centers. They would utilize a robust monitoring system that automatically triggers alerts and initiates failover procedures upon detecting critical system failures. Regular disaster recovery drills would be conducted, simulating various failure scenarios to validate recovery processes and train operational teams.