Service Matters! ITSM & IT Management

Posted By Shraddha Tilloo 

I touched upon the basics of SaaS in my last posting, in this one I would like to focus more on synergies between SaaS and ITSM. Let’s try and see if we can answer questions like “Is SaaS the best option for an ITSM tool?” “How best SaaS can help in increasing the operational efficiency in ITSM implementation environment?”

SaaS has the potential to become a viable solution for organizations struggling with ITSM tool implementation and facing challenges such as:

• High cost and cycle time of implementation
• Frequent upgrades and version changes which are inevitable in nature.
• Highly skilled and trained staff requirements to use and manage the tool
• Installing and managing hardware/infrastructure for ITSM tool

A SaaS based ITSM tool can address these challenges by the very model of SaaS when it allows the software to be deployed and managed by a third party service provider. But is that all? Does SaaS solve all the problems of an ITSM implementation? The problem doesn’t seem to be as simple as stated here.

Most of the IT organizations who have adopted ITIL, have some or the other tool to carry out functions and process activities such as:

• Service deck
• Incident Management
• Problem Management
• Change Management

The critical question to answer here, is to find the suitability of a SaaS based tool for an organization. With existing tools in place an assessment should be done on the fitment of SaaS based solution which will cause minimal impact and organizational change. SaaS based ITSM may not be suitable for all IT organizations and needs to be evaluated for a suitability test, which includes but not limited to: technology compatibility, process integration, ease of implementation, enterprise architecture and IT strategy. In order to fully exploit the benefits of SaaS while understanding the challenges, its necessary to analyze the SaaS model from its architectural complexity, operational intricacies and prevailing business needs point of view. After a detailed analysis and comprehensive assessment of the existing ITSM environment, organizations can leverage the agility, flexibility and economics that a SaaS based ITSM can offer.

Once the assessment is done and results show positive indicators towards SaaS based ITSM, the approach should be to look at legacy applications and tools to best integrate to give a true On-Demand ITSM implementation. The benefits that can be expected from a typical On-Demand ITSM are:

• Reduced total cost of ownership(TCO) including cost of tool, hardware & maintenance due to shared hosting and flexible pricing model.
• Best in class features and updates automatically happening due to wider community of hosted users.
• Larger collection of best practices since the community of users drives the tool functionality and features.
• Improved Scalability, serviceability and security with increased business needs.

The two questions that I had posed at the beginning of the blog are probably addressed to some extent now and it also points to a huge opportunity for consulting companies to develop good practices, offerings around the assessment and enablement of On-Demand ITSM.

Posted by Guest Author at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Shraddha Tilloo, Consultant, Infosys Technologies.

By the very sound of the word “SAAS”, it reflects many meanings ranging from “breath” & “Mom-In-Law” in Hindi to “Software As A Service”. The last meaning is something which has caught my fancy since last evening, when I attended a webinar of a vendor offering product suit for “On Demand IT Service Management” based on latest technology of web2.0 & SaaS.

Not that the other meanings of the word I mentioned earlier are less critical for my life (especially the second one “Mom-In-Law”), I thought of increasing my level of knowledge on SaaS beyond basics.

In our day to day life do we maintain the electricity that runs into our houses? Do we open a garage in the backyard every time our car goes down? Do we really bother to test the pipeline that carries the gas for our cooking?

No. You don't do these tasks because you understand that for certain things, its better to let specialists handle them and we focus on our core business. It increases your productivity, its cost effective and keeps you stress free.

Something similar can be expressed about SaaS, when I read through in details, surfed few blogs and updated my knowledge level on the topic. As Wikipedia defines Software as a Service (SaaS, typically pronounced 'sass') is a model of software deployment whereby a provider licenses an application to customers for use as a service on demand. Some of the striking features of this model of software deployment are:

• Network/Internet based access and management relieving of troubles of heavy client server installation.
  
• Single instance, multi-tenant architecture which allows multiple customers accessing the application from single instance remotely.
  
• Centralized control and management of feature updates, patches & upgrades.

Bringing back the attention to our favorite topic (rather bread & butter) of ITSM, I was forced to believe that ‘On-Demand’ might be a a way to go while into the ITSM journey & can be considered as an option instead of traditional tool vendors while evaluating an ITSM tool.

Posted by Guest Author at 09:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Aswin Kumar 

Recently we audited the manufacturing design application infrastructure of a major European company that had been affected by a series of major Incidents that had seriously impacted the business.

"I am ITIL compliant !!" uttered the Service Desk Manager from a vendor as soon as I started one of the audit interviews.  He showed me number of process documents and walked me through some good looking service management tools. It eventually turned out that every vendor working for the client organization had their own version of ITIL compliance, which they would defend to the last.

Apart from the usual audit experiences, I noted a consistent message from the client operations staff.
Guess what? They were unhappy with the increased outsourcing of all the critical infrastructure support to third party vendors. Further, they were almost sure that the root cause of all the major incidents was with the vendor’s staff and were trying to prove the belief that outsourcing had actually led to more losses than gains.

The story does not ends here. Now listen to the vendor’s side of the story...
The vendor clarified that they had proactively suggested a new support model for the critical application infrastructure, but the client was not ready to spend money on the premium support costs. Logically, the vendor outsourced the work to low cost destinations and arguably in the process subject matter expertise and knowledge management become a challenge.

So what was missing here? Why was the perceived value of outsourcing not realized?

Here are some of observations on the key issues that have affected the success of outsourcing:

• Infrastructure outsourcing was done without a formal IT service view in place. Investments were mostly done based on the type and size of the physical infrastructure rather than business usage
• The culture and values that are difficult to put on paper and quantified
• The absence of a Vendor service performance framework with only a minimum level of reporting
• Service Management Governance and process ownership rests with Infrastructure Operations leading to inherent issues arising from a scenario when the definition and adherence rests within the same organization
• Many cutting edge infrastructure tools in place but most of them utilized for sustaining a reactive support model
• Every vendor signed up to a separate set of Service Management processes (such as Incident Management) with the client resulting into ‘mature’ silos of process excellence
• Too many vendors controlling separate portions of the Infrastructure

How common are these issues across global outsourcing organizations?

Does the solution lie in better planning and Governance? Or does it lie in setting the right operating model for the co-existence of the client organization & the outsourcing vendors?

Well..I do not have one answer now but I will continue to investigate as well as call upon bright ITSM consultants to brainstorm on the possible solutions…

Posted by Guest Author at 07:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Outsourcing has been around for many years and most of the time it is seen as a way to contain and diminish costs. At the same time the general expectation from the client is a ‘quicker and technologically superior solution’.

There can often be a tendency to break up the value chain too much to optimize cost efficiency. Driving home the same analogy, the client has a perspective of value and the Service provider tries to do all they can to get to the highest point possible in the value chain.

As with any ongoing arrangement, Outsourcing has to be governed accordingly. So where is the link between IT Governance & IT Service Management in the outsourcing context? Do they work together effectively? What are the challenges?

Aswin works in the IT Service Management & IT Governance consulting practice with specific focus on ITIL, ISO20000 and CobiT standards. Aswin has worked in various capacities in the past that have allowed him to see the outsourcing of IT in various shapes and sizes, be it the off-shoring of product development, business processes, IT infrastructure or even pure process management.

He is an ITIL v3 expert, has ITIL Masters, ITIL Practitioner (IPRC), CGEIT, PMP, 6 Sigma GB and Lead Auditor ISO27001 qualifications.

His current passion lies in exploring how organizations can adopt effective IT Service Management, IT Governance & Information Security practices to become winning organizations. In this series of blogs Aswin will explore these topics further and invites input and comment from readers and colleagues…

Posted by Bruno Calver at 06:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)