Service Matters! ITSM & IT Management

SaaS - Is it a transitional term?

2010-02-03T05:42:25Z

It gives me great pleasure to introduce Ashish Birla who has joined us as a Lead Consultant in Infrastructure and Service Management transformation practice. He brings with him more than 13 years of rich and extensive experience in the field of IT Infrastructure and Service Management transformation, with many Fortune 500 clients in US and India. And now without further ado, his blog - SaaS, is it a transitional term?

Ever wondered if SaaS (Software as a Service), is a transitional term. You will be pardoned for raising an eyebrow, since it’s a “term” which has entered in the IT arena very recently, and I am talking about it becoming obsolete already.

Well, let’s talk about other “Services”. What terminology are you likely to use, “Transportation” or “Transportation as a Service”; “Hospitality” or “Hospitality as a Service”; “Consulting” or “Consulting as a Service”? As soon as you as you answer this question, you probably have understood why “SaaS” is a transitional term.

]]> Let’s step back a little and analyze what usually transpires for a service to be born or developed. Acceptance of a “service” in a particular area is inversely proportional to affordability or desire to “own” a product. That’s true, a lot of us, see service as “loss of control” over something that you used to own.

Let’s take an example. Although using a public transport is economical from money and carbon foot-print perspective. In a public transport, you don’t have control over the temperature that is maintained inside or where it stops or its schedule or your seat. This leads to owning your affordable mode of transport so you can control most of these constraints. However, can you apply the same principles to Airline or Hospitality services? Probably not, since for most people “owning” the infrastructure would be out of question.

Services also face other challenge vis-à-vis products. While an inventory of products can be maintained for the “season” of anticipated demand, same does not hold true in case of services. Services need to be supplied synchronously when they are demand.

As you begin to manage or remove the constraints, the product becomes a candidate to be offered as a service.

Inferring ITIL® definition of Service, a customer is looking to buy a “solution” and not necessarily a fancy “product” with great features, while many of its features are at best underutilized if not unutilized. Services would mean that you pay for what features you want to use. For example, a customer really wants printing service and not necessarily a fancy printer full of non-essential features in its office. Similarly think about an organization which has begun to offer “carpeting service” instead of making their customers own their carpets. This addresses environmental issues also to a big extent, as carpets owned by customers would end up in landfills after their life where it may take up to thousands of years for it to degrade, while carpeting services would mean the customers get the finest carpeting experience without having to worry about buying-replacing their carpets.

Customers being able to buy “services” would mean that they no longer have to worry about huge capital costs associated with buying a product and can switch to another solution once the current one is no longer able to serve their requirements. This will foster competition. Competition fosters innovation.

Service Providers apart from specializing into a particular set of services, will also be able to offer “economies of scale” hence driving down the costs further.
In not-so-distant-future, Software will not be a product anymore, will mandatorily be offered as a “service” and hence SaaS would become a redundant term. SaaS would be the way of life rather than exception that it is made out to be today. We have seen a spurt in number of software now being offered as service in recent times. Organizations known as Product companies are coming forward with software being offered as service. This trend will continue to grow, not just because it gives a cost advantage over traditional software as a product, but it genuinely reduces headaches (or TCO to be precise) of maintaining it.

Coming to IT Service Management, few years back who would have thought ITSM Tools can be offered as a service, but they are a reality now. More than that ITSM SaaS tools are “the future” of ITSM Tools. Since ITSM itself promotes IT as a service, which is why SaaS becomes more relevant when it comes to ITSM Tools. Refer to Shraddha Tilloo’s Blog for more food for thought.

Configuration and Customization: Enemies or Brothers in Arms?

2010-01-15T12:31:24Z

Author: Satsang Randhelia

Recently I bought a Trek 4500 MTB. As I saw it being put together I couldn’t help but draw a parallel with how we assist our clients implement service management tools. The mechanic started with fitting the basic parts like tyres, pedals, and handle bar etc on the frame, he then adjusted the brake wires, derailleur and the saddle post for my safe and comfortable riding. (Likewise we put together the available modules of the ITSM tool and use their features to support the client’s business requirements. We call it tool configuration). Since I planned to ride mostly on the road, the mechanic suggested replacing the default thick tyres with thinner slick tyres. (Likewise we suggest code modifications in existing modules of the ITSM tools. We call it tool customization)

]]> Back to business, in the ITSM world so much has been talked about the benefits of configuration over customization that the latter has almost become a curse. While there is no denying the fact that in comparison,

Configuration is economical in terms of both time and money
Configuration can be done with relative ease, sometimes by the customers themselves
Configuration enables a simpler and cheaper upgrade path in most cases

Does that make it simple enough to praise configuration as a "gallant hero" that can win your war and discard customization a "nasty villain" that can defeat you? Analyze this.

As in the bicycle world I'd love to buy a ready-to-use bike, so in the ITSM world the clients would love to get a fully configurable tool. However, as Eric Cooper says, even in the best case scenario a tool can only meet 80% of the requirements through configuration. The remaining requirements are to be met through customization.

Let us try to see what really drives customization?

For starters it could be the choice of the tool itself. Jayson says, “I’ve seen many clients use their incident management modules to double up for change management or service request management.“ Now this calls for a lot of customization.

Another reason could be that either the tools or the client’s ITSM processes are not mature enough. In either case the tool needs to be customized and mapped to the prevailing processes. (However over the years both the tools as well as clients’ ITSM processes are getting aligned to industry best practices so this category of customizations will reduce over time)

Yet another reason lies in the emergence of new unsupported requirements owing to the changing business environment, regulatory and statutory norms etc. The tool vendors try to play cat and mouse, but the business requirements keep up the pace and are always 2 steps ahead of what the tools can offer.

Yet, another reason lies in the uniqueness of every business. While there are a set of common best practices applicable across organizations, every business is different and has special requirements (e.g. additional fields in request forms, number of approval stages based on risk level etc) that cannot be fulfilled just by configuring a generic tool.

Shraddha in her blog talks about a couple of other organization specific reasons that drive tool customization.

Until all such reasons cease to exist, configuration alone will not be able to fulfill the business requirements and customization will continue to come to the rescue in bridging the gap.

Though customization may not be as elegant in terms of cost, time and future readiness, it is more powerful and can achieve more than configuration alone. The problem arises only when customization is being touted in place of configuration. This happens when the available features of the tool are not properly understood by the implementers.

Hence, it is not a question of “A v/s B”. Both are merely means to a common goal. Both have unique capabilities and none alone can fulfill all your needs. The essence lies in the decision of using the right means at the right time, and it’s something like A -> B.

So if someone asks me “how should I approach fitting a bike?” I’d say

Step 1: Choose the right bike, if you plan to ride on the road, pick a road bike and do not use your MTB to double up as a road bike.
Step 2: Get it fitted by an expert mechanic who knows exactly what to adjust and what to replace.
Step 3: Allow the expert to first exhaust all configurations like fixing, adjusting, fine-tuning etc of existing parts.
Step 4: Accept customization suggestions like parts modification or replacement in the end to cover the last mile of your unique riding needs.

And probably one could use the same advice for ITSM tools implementation

Introducing Satsang Randhelia on "Configure or Customize?"

2010-01-15T08:53:55Z

So you wish to implement an ITSM tool? You are faced with the configure-or-customize decision. You've heard a lot of customization horror stories and are leaning in the other direction. Hang on! Before you throw out the baby with the bath water here is some food for thought by our new blogger, Satsang Randhelia.

Satsang has rich and diverse experience in the IT industry spanning across ITSM Consulting, Tools Implementation and Application Development. He has worked directly with the top management of international clients to understand their IT service related business problems. He has made recommendations on process design, governance and tools implementation resulting in IT service quality improvements and IT cost reductions.

Satsang is a certified ITIL Practitioner and now specializes in Service Transition, Service Integration and Multisouring. A marathon runner and an avid sportsperson, Satsang kicks off his blogging journey with a hotly debated topic in the ITSM Tools implementation world...

Introducing: Shaju Krishnan on ITSM tool SaaS implementation

2009-11-19T11:57:30Z

Hello fellow blogosphere inhabitants. I would like to introduce Shaju Krishnan. He is an ITIL certified consultant with the process consulting group of Infosys. He has around 10 years of experience, of which 5 years has been focussed on IT service management. He is kicking off his blogging adventure with a piece on the hot topic of SaaS: ''Configuring ITSM tools on a SaaS platform - A few facts'' whereby he will be sharing his experiences and learnings accumulated during the configuration of a SaaS ITSM tool for one of his clients. Over to you Shaju… (Bruno Calver).

Article by: Shaju Krishnan

The Software as a Service (SaaS) model is a way of providing the same software or tool to different customers via a network, usually the Internet. In other words, the software or tool is not hosted on the customers' individual computers. Under the SaaS model, a vendor is responsible for the creation, update, and maintenance of software. Customers pay a subscription to enable access to the service, which includes a separate license for each person that will use the software. The SaaS model can add efficiency and cost savings for both the vendor and the customer. Customers save time and money since they do not have to install and maintain programs. Drawbacks for the customer are that they do not control the software and customization of programs may be limited.

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Implementation of an an ITSM tool in the SaaS model is rapidly growing due to the strong business case i.e Customers can expect higher system availability, increased user satisfaction and significant overall time and cost savings from improved system administration and management. However, I would like to bring some prons and cons to the table, which would benefit both vendors and customers in relation to the successful implementation of an ITSM tool like BMC Remedy , HP openview etc in a SaaS environment from a vendor’s data center facility via VPN or DS3 connectivity

Realistic performance SLA’s should be agreed upon considering factors like load on the servers, no. of concurrent users, infrastructure capacity and the influence of network connectivity and latency
Each customer will want to have their company’s logo on the GUI, hence vendors should configure the system in such a way that each customer’s web interface GUI has that particular customer’s logo.
For processes like change management, approval engines for approving a change will be different for each customer. Vendors should understand each and every customer's approval process and do the customization and configuration accordingly
If an update, customization or configuration is requested by a customer, it will most likely have a benefit or impact to other customers who are also using the same software. The vendor should communicate and get alignment from all its customers before deploying the changes
For deploying the above mentioned changes, vendors should agree appropriate change windows as Peak and off peak hours may vary for different domains. For example, the banking industry will have weekend and evenings as off-peak where as Saturdays and Sundays will be peak hours for the gaming industry. Change windows should be selected in such a way that it is acceptable to all the customers and does not impact their business during peak usage times
Infrastructure architecture diagrams and data segregation methods should be shared with all customers in order to provide a comfort feel to the customers that their data is safe and secured
Finally vendors should configure tools in such a way that it complies with all regulatory requirements of all its customers. This can be a challenge as regulatory requirements may vary for each different domains.

Thankyou

An open letter to Enterprise Architecture from IT Service Management !!

2009-11-04T10:35:02Z

Posted by Aswin Kumar

Dear Enterprise Architecture Group,
I am writing this letter to express my desire to work towards a closer and effective relationship between our groups. We can use the synergies to build a leaner and a better IT organization.
Let me put forward my viewpoint with respect to the references to Enterprise Architecture in the ITIL v3 framework.
ITIL always evolved towards adapting a common framework of practices that unite all areas of IT service provision towards a single vision – delivering value to the business.

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If we look into the business goals of Enterprise Architecture (EA), it is also focused on the realization of value through logically organizing business processes with the IT infrastructure. In a tactical sense, EA teams are responsible for developing/maintaining Enterprise Data Model, System/Physical architecture diagrams, Technology standards, Future state architecture vision etc.
Taking a holistic perspective of both the worlds, Enterprise Architecture and IT Service Management both aim to achieve a living blueprint of services with the architecture and service assets underneath.

According to the Service Design book under ITILv3, Technology architecture is one of the five aspects of Service Design. Architecture requirements analysis is essential to ensure operational capability & maintainability of the new or changed service. It also recommends that Service Design needs to ensure that Architectures are flexible, concise, simple, integrated & aligned with all business strategies & needs. Furthermore, it suggests that Enterprise Architecture should be an integrated element of the Business Architecture and should include Service Architecture, Application Architecture, Data Architecture, IT infrastructure Architecture & Environmental Architecture.

I completely agree that all types of Architectures need to be maintained in the Service Knowledge Management system. Yes, SKMS can truly be combined to provide a top-down view to business ranging from highly generic to highly specific ones. The business architecture repository can add a feed of the unique service architectures available under SKMS that can further assist the Enterprise Architects focus on critical services with huge business value.
Similarly, there are multiple overlaps between the ITIL v3 and the Enterprise architecture guidance. There are organizations which have changed the Metamodel of their Configuration Management Systems (CMS) to include the missing data related to Enterprise Architecture requirements. Further, the CMS data feeds into the EA repository. Also, in some companies ITSM is managed by people called “Architects”. Innovation is on…

Having said all this, question is that do we want to take a next step towards exploring new areas of mutual collaboration?
Please let me know your feedback comments and do not hesitate to email me in case of any quick clarifications.

Thank you!
- IT Service Management

How Much is Too Much for an ITSM Tool customization?

2009-10-23T06:27:44Z

Recently I was sitting at the O’Hare Airport, waiting for my flight back to India. There was a coffee shop in the waiting area and the shop lady was serving different items ranging from Mocha, Latte, Muffins to Indian Chai. I observed that the shop lady in between serving the customers was also trying to change the arrangement at the cash counter, in order to handle the customer better during rush hour. She moved the counter position, shifted a few boxes, small items here & there, but during this time she never stopped serving the customers. If it was not for the ease of changes & rearrangements on the fly, she would not have dared to do them amidst peak business hours...

]]> I realized that each business continuously keeps changing, transforming, altering & upgrading just for one reason: to serve the customer better. The key behind any such move is: Do it quickly, Do it smartly & Do it economically. Technology also needs to change, transform & upgrade to support business. Larger is the degree of customizations in a technology environment, higher is the cost of changes. But many times these customizations are much needed in order to exploit the technology for business purposes. That’s why its always conflicting situation in front of Technology Officers (CIOs & CTOs) when they have to make a tradeoff between the cost of the change & need of the change.

I couldn’t help but draw a parallel between the coffee shop lady and the ITSM world. The way she managed changes at the cash counter, does an ITSM tool platform offer same ease & simplicity of changes?

In case of ITSM tools the situation looks little more complex. Most of the ITSM tools are highly customized for various reasons ranging from:

Varied degree of process adoption across organization
Organization cultural barriers
Departmental needs for process
Technology adoption roadmap

Because of these customizations built into the ITSM tool platform, when it comes to moving to a new platform it becomes very very difficult for Service Management organization to take into consideration all the customization needs while evaluating a new platform. More so when it comes to moving from a traditional client server based platform to a SaaS based ITSM tool.

As you know I have been talking about SaaS in ITSM and its potential in the market, lets look at how customization and configuration become critical factors for an On-Demand ITSM migration scenario.

Customization or Configuration: In a highly code based customization environment, any upgrades or migrations could result into unforeseen high cost making it near case of re-implementation. These codes based customizations invariably calls for signing a maintenance contract with the tool vendors who would take care of the upgrades and rewrite the new codes with the new version. In contrast to a code based customization, a configurable tool offers a great flexibility, ease & comfort in terms of upgrades or migration. Configuration eliminates the cost attached to the changes done through customization in an ITSM tool environment. Many of the software vendors today are promoting a metadata configurability using SaaS and multi tenancy.

The difference between a code based customization and metadata configuration is that in the later an application develops the logic for accepting the metadata and uses it for business processing and transactions. In case of customer specific detailing, all one needs to do is to change the metadata and the same logic picks up the changes. The actual application code doesn’t need to be changed. The metadata changes work outside the application and they communicate with the application logic using APIs. This makes the job simpler both for the application vendor as well as client. ITSM tools that have started aligning to SaaS based platforms; also provide the metadata based configurability. This capability of an ITSM tool can also help in mitigating the risk associated with the End-Of-Life technology scenario which calls for a migration and re-implementation.

Hope this has helped the readers get a view on why configurability is more beneficial than customization, when it comes to “Serve the Customer Better” as I had mentioned in the beginning of my blog.

The Next Big ITSM Evolution (part 3) – Spot the difference

2009-10-15T08:28:53Z

In my first posting on this topic I highlighted the trend of customers who wish to enhance the maturity and efficiency of their IT capabilities are looking towards their development and test infrastructure. The next part then looked at why such infrastructure tends to be built as an ad-hoc deployment rather than a service.

In this post I wanted to, by example, highlight some of the differences of building a pre-production environments service in contrast to a Production service. I want to take the example of measuring application/service availability, a critical measure of the quality of service to clients.,,,

]]> There are three core challenges with capturing this kind of information in a pre-production Environment Service context. The first and most obvious is separating platform availability from application availability. In a Production environment there is little differentiation between platform and application as far as the users are concerned, the focus is the availability of the end to end system. In a development and test scenario it is critical to separate the two, because fundamentally it is quite possible that a given deployment of an application will actually not work or break during operation, especially in the early test phases. This means that one of the first activities in Incident Management is to determine whether there is a fundamental software code issue or platform issue. A best practice that I have observed is for the Environment Service organisation to take accountability for determining the source of an incident and referring accordingly, much like a traditional service desk, with an oft occuring characteristic that an Incident can be referred back to the client for a fix. The key point here is when the issue has been identified and then confirmed by the client as an application code defect, any service downtime is not attributed to the environment. This differentiation also helps to make a classic tension point between software projects and infrastructure teams transparent, so that the real issues can be identified and fixed.

Secondly ITIL availability is often measured as total user time of a given service, minus total user downtime. In a Production environment user numbers are relatively large, stable and well defined, so total user hours are easy to define to a reasonable level of accuracy per month. In a set of test environments, the user base is not stable and can change from day to day. The location of test users can also change. This makes useful Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of this nature very fickle and hard to measure in a meaningful way. For example, an environment might be down for 5 days, but if there are no test users working on it, does it actually matter? Is it useful to report that a given environment is down for 5 working days out of 20 (i.e. 25%) that month? What does it tell management? The key is the impact on users, which as described is difficult to track, so management need to recognise this when setting targets and be careful not to set those which might skew the service offered to the users. One solution to this challenge might be to get the clients themselves to fill in a simple web based form that tracks user numbers in a given environment, this can then be used to calculate service availability.

Finally, there tends to be a much higher rate of scheduled downtime for code deployment and data refreshes in a development test scenario. This ‘downtime’ should also be excluded to the point it is delivered within an agreed timeframe. If deployments fall outside of this schedule, then it should be counted as service downtime. It is important, however, to measure the deployment times and seek efficiencies, as often deployments can be very manual and limit the useful time on an environment, which can cause delays to projects. A good target in this area would be to monitor on-going deployment times per application and environment class and seek incremental improvements.

A related topic is how to assess the priority of an incident, as just like the user base changes, so does the priority of certain applications and environments as per the project requirement. This is a topic for another day, but in the meantime I would invite readers to share their experiences around the specific challenges of a test environment service…?

Potential for SaaS Based ITSM Consulting

2009-09-08T05:44:13Z

I think companies offering ITSM consulting services can look at having SaaS as a promising area to include into their portfolio and with current recession time the need of a hosting based, on-demand tool becomes more relevant. The On-Demand nature of a SaaS based ITSM portfolio can have some of the key offerings as:

On-Demand readiness assessment for tools and processes
Tool evaluation for SaaS based ITSM
Process uplift for On-Demand ITSM
Process & tool implementation
Training and course development around the same

Once IT organizations make up their mind to adopt a SaaS model for their ITSM environment they need to do a quick check on the readiness of current processes and tools platform to move to a SaaS based model. They need to figure out those critical components that need to undergo a change and the degree of change for these components. This phase can be completed efficiently and expeditiously if there is a ready toolkit & framework that plugs & play for a typical ITSM environment and help identifying those gaps. Process Consulting Practice within Infosys has built capabilities around this kind of assessment with propertiary techniques & toolkits.

Once environment is ready for SaaS migration, next step is to identify the right tool that fits the bill. There are quite a few vendors providing SaaS based ITSM tools solution few examples are Service Now.com, Beetil, Octopus Software, SaaS for HP Service Manager 7.0. Each of them has its pros & cons. I’m not pointing the comparison of these tools in this blog. If you intend to read more on how these tools compare with each there are some write up on ITSM Tool Vendors On SaaS. What is more critical is to identify the factors to be considered during the vendor/tool evaluation, such as :

Flexibility of the Tool
Backend Technology
Time to Market (implementation cycle)
Cost
Support Model & Expertise
Security & Confidentiality of data

After the right tool selection the implementation can happen in phases under two primary tracks: Process Uplift & Platform Migration. Many a times these tracks go in parallel, sometimes the process design happens first and then tool deployment. Companies have opportunities to offer services around both of these tracks with a proven methodology for implementation, ready to use, out-of-box templates, toolkits & checklists to really drive a fast track implementation. The actual benefit of a SaaS based platform off course is in its lower cost of ownership, but even reduced cycle time to deploy makes it an equally lucrative option for organization looking at migrating to a new ITSM platform.

Only challenge I see in all these migration scenarios is that of level of customization that would need to be replicated exactly while moving from a traditional, client/server based ITSM environment. That prompts me to the topic of my next blog, how much is too much for ITSM Tool Customization?

Keep watching..

The Next Big ITSM Evolution (pt.2) - An “Environments Service” or just a pile of under-utilized hardware and software adding to the cost base?

2009-07-20T10:28:19Z

Following on from my previous entry I wanted to highlight why development and test environments tend to be a problem area, a root cause analysis if you will.

Rather than looking at some of the symptoms that we see that challenge the on-going operation of Environment type services I think it is important to go back to the moment of birth. The picture I am going to paint is a worse case scenario, but elements of this situation haunt all major development and test environment deployments.

]]> The birth tends to be a painful process. Usually a large development project comes along with the objective of developing some major piece of software. At some point in the process they realise they need some sort of an infrastructure platform. They have money and in a bit of a hurry they get a few servers into the data centre, hook it up to a network and some storage and dump some software services on top.

The developers then hack around a bit, get it all working, go through a few test cycles and deliver an application or service to the business. In this frenzy, or should I say, highly controlled project delivery environment, on time delivery of change is the priority. Once the software has successfully been released into the Production environment the work stops, and most likely the budget has been burned.

For this reason, projects rarely clean up after themselves and indeed there is little short term incentive to do so. What they therefore leave in their wake is a large amount of hardware and software, probably far more than is required for the odd bug fix and for which there is no ongoing budget to support or maintain properly. Releases and fixes still flow into the Production environment and some or all of the development and test environments may be left behind in terms of release updates and patches.

This then leaves the next poor unsuspecting soul that wants to deliver change to come and make sense of it all….

Does the next version of ITIL needs more than 7 Rs of Change Management? YES!

2009-07-07T19:55:32Z

Posted by Aswin Kumar

It may be a funny debate if I start scoping out the extra number of R’s required in Change Management. Anyway, I’m not a potential author of the next version of Service Transition book yet

Of course, I always wonder why all the R’s were fitted under the magic number ‘Seven’? Was someone inspired by the ‘McKinsey 7-S Model’ or the ‘7 principles of Supply Change Management’?

Hey, Shirley and Ivor, Are you reading?

]]> On a slightly ITILized note, have we really analyzed and implemented the 7R’s of Change Management? Recently, we came across the need for a similar philosophy where we planned to use the tenets of the 7R framework. Yes, this is for a hard-core Change Management model design assignment.

Let me first put forward my interpretation of each of the question under 7R (keywords after each question below):

Who ‘Raised’ the Change? - “Who”
What is the ‘Reason’ for the Change? - “Why”
What is the ‘Return’ required from the Change? – “ROI”
What is the ‘Risks’ involved in the Change? – “Risks”
What ‘Resources’ are required to deliver the Change? – “Resources”
Who is ‘Responsible’ for the build/ test and implementation? – “Roles & Responsibilities”
What ‘Relationships’ are there between this and other Change? – “Impact Analysis”

Now what needs inclusion here? Any guesses? I would give 3 keyword hints for the 3 new questions: “Requirements”, “Value” & “End-Users”. Let’s go for it in the following lines.

The existing question on the ‘Reason’ for the Change focuses more on the ‘Why’ factor. The Service requirements fulfillment perspective from a change needs to be explicitly addressed.

“What are the Service ‘Requirements’ fulfilled from this change?” This should cover the specific requirements for the services that are enhanced due to the change implementation. For instance, if a database change ultimately modifies the Email Service component and is deployed to fulfill the Sarbanes Oxley guidelines then all the functional and legal requirements need to be documented.

Secondly, the value realization tracking seems to be completely missing. We need a question that assures the value tracking mechanism right from the inception of the change to the steady state.

“Is the Change value ‘Realization’ plan available”? This will put an onus on the business stakeholders to define the value realization requirements and work with the enablers such as Information Technology (IT) to validate the actual value derived during the post-steady state reviews of the change. I am sure that this will generate a list of lessons learned for future changes.

Thirdly, the human side can be better addressed systematically in the 7R questions, especially when the change is of a global scale. I feel more for the end-users of the change where there is a need for a thorough and consistent diagnostics that can assess the organizational readiness to accept the Change and also be able to successfully operate it. These diagnostics need to specifically address the human behaviors, perceptions, language capabilities and build sufficient infrastructure and programs needed to drive the change globally. For instance, if a change is deployed out of the US and needs a training material creation in Spanish or Japanese for the regional offices then there needs to a dedicated planning and execution effort to close on this.

I suggest that validating this aspect is crucial for the business approvers of the change. This can also enable the business (end-users)/IT alignment.

These were my thoughts on one of my favorite topics: Change Management, what are Yours?

Does SaaS compliment ITSM, towards achieving Operational Effciency?

2009-06-15T10:38:51Z

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?”

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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.

Dial SaaS for On-Demand IT Service Management

2009-06-11T09:53:38Z

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.

I’m sure you will agree that most of the ITSM tools (likes of BMC Remedy, HP Service Manager & CA etc) have always raised eyebrows of ISTM program sponsors and stakeholders, because of their high cost of licenses, longer cycle of implementation & continuous release of upgrades/patches.

Leveraging SaaS based tools and products can help accelerate your implementation of ITSM and there is great need to socialize this model into the ITSM world.

A true On-Demand IT Service Management offering can be an optimal combination of SaaS based ITSM tool, proven methodology for ITSM implementation & process management combined with assurance of reduced cost and time.

Finally I want you to read this interesting blog on the topic which I found while reading on the internet about SaaS:

http://myservicemonitor.com/ITSM_Fear_and_Loathing/give_your_itsm_implementati.html

Lets keep posting comments on this interesting topic and bring out some innovative thoughts around On-Demand ITSM, my favorite subject for now..

Better Governance or the Right Operating model: A Solution or not a solution?

2009-06-11T07:30:59Z

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…

Introducing Aswin Kumar on Outsourcing Governance

2009-06-11T06:56:16Z

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…

ITSM: Enabling Sustainable IT

2009-05-27T02:58:12Z

Posted by: Mitesh Desai

In recent times, there has been a lot of hype about green computing and the drive to lower the impact of IT on environment. Most of the focus to date has been on how to reduce power consumption in data center. Hardware vendors are coming up with energy efficient computing devices and architectures. On the other hand, software vendors are coming up with products for virtualization to improve hardware resource utilization and as a result save up on energy and reduce carbon footprint.]]> While there is no doubt on the quality of technology solutions provided by the vendors, how many times have the technology solution being able to solve the business problem and yet the return on investment was not realized? Was the technology not effective or was the organization not able to make optimum use of features provided by the technology? How will the organizations manage complex infrastructures created by technology solutions like virtualization, consolidation etc?

In order to address all such questions, organizations need to have well defined processes and procedures with “green” action points embedded in them as control points. They also need to have people who are trained and are willing to contribute to “green” efforts made by the organization. Hence, the organizations need to start looking at their “green” initiatives from all the 3 dimensions, viz. process, governance and technology. IT Service Management comes out as a perfect solution to this situation as it takes care of all 3 dimensions the organizations need to address.

Process: ITSM advocates provision of organized services by IT to its business customers and hence the philosophy of ITSM revolves mainly around processes. The probability of success of “green” initiatives of the organizations increases when the “green” action points are injected in IT operational processes like asset management, configuration management, change management etc. At the same time, it becomes easy for the business to visualize ROI on such initiatives by incorporating “green” agenda in IT strategy and preparing a strong business case for them.

Governance: Success of “Green” initiatives also depends on presence of trained people and good governance structure. ITSM is also seen as a primary enabler for IT Governance. Various frameworks like CoBIT, ITIL etc. provide guidance on establishing governance around IT. These frameworks can also be utilized as a base for setting up processes and governance for Green IT.

Technology: Large numbers of software tools are available in the market for ITSM. The vendors of these tools have observed the rising adoption of technologies like virtualization and are preparing their ITSM solutions for managing services in virtual environments. For example, HP has come up with an approach for end-to-end service management in virtualized environment.

Hence, going green is not just about technology implementation; instead it requires a holistic approach and the IT organizations need to understand that ITSM is an important element in their endeavor to be sustainable.