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..
