CERN Delivers People-Centric Service Management Using Service-now.com

CERN, being one of the world’s most respected centres for scientific research, and now also a Service-now.com success story represents the essence of what we see Service-now.com as being.  A solution that drives people-centric service management through improved efficiency, effectiveness and innovation.

As with our own implementation, CERN are benefiting from the hugely beneficial service-culture that a Service-now.com solution is able to create.

Read the full press release here…

CloudWashing – a recurring topic

I can’t tell how many times I’ve read articles and blog posts about the differences between legacy vendors and “true” cloud vendors.

Legacy vendors tend to hop on the cloud bandwagon by simply hosting their legacy applications and then [sometimes] building some fancy wrapping and automation around it.  And then there are those that think because they’ve hosted their application on some virtual infrastructure (aka VMWare or other), that they now have a pure cloud offering?  (They even believe it themselves)

On the other side, [true] cloud vendors do things differently by taking the time to build their solutions from scratch.  They tend to use modern technology and programming techniques and most importantly, the tend to focus on the ease of use for the end-user.  The more modern paradigm is what cloud computing and Software as a Service is really about, but few of these new and small startups or vendors have the marketing budget to compete with the large legacy vendors that have managed to white-wash the cloud paradigm [or is it brain-wash their clients?] with a “hosting is also cloud computing” idea.  True cloud vendor’s products are simply better suited to the 21st century – they’re simpler to use, quicker to implement and give you better bang for your buck almost every time.

All the early adopters and thought leaders out there will know what I’m talking about…  The rest, well, I suppose we’ll see you onboard [or is that enlightened?] sometime in the future…  perhaps just in time to get confused by the next big thing.

 

The direct benefits

So the technology is great and the concepts are fresh, but what are the direct benefits to our customers if they use our services/solutions?

Here’s a concise list of real benefits:

Benefit No 1:    Simplification, simplification, simplification…..

This is perhaps a bit of an abused cliche, but with our solutions – your life as a CIO or CTO, IT director, IT manager, IT Engineer, service desk administrator or operator or even just an IT user – becomes simpler, more efficient and easier on a daily basis.  The typical IT environment has become so complex and all the systems needed to monitor and manage the infrastructure and associated services associated – along with the governing processes (i.e. ITIL) have resulted in a huge jumble of integrated point solutions and complex software models and architectures.
We’ve taken a fresh approach that has enabled us to essentially replace the entire management layer (Enterprise Systems Management + IT Service Management) with a simple integration of two of the most innovative and practical solutions to enter the IT management space in decades.  (Service-now.com for ITSM and Monolith Software for ESM).   Add to the fresh technical approach the fact that these solutions are offered as a service, and a huge amount of effort and skills required for [essentially] non-core services are taken off your shoulders.

Benefit No 2:   Cost savings…

(I might as well say cliche no 2.)  As a direct result of the simplification explained above – huge cost savings can be had.  First of all, ALL of the solutions that we offer as Marutech fall into the category of:  “On Demand” or “Software as a Service” or “Cloud Computing” or “Managed Service” or “Subscriptions” or “Off Balance Sheet”  – choose your buzz-word (carefully, as there’s often strong internal resistance to over-used buzz-words in the market), but we do not sell you software licenses and hardware that you need to worry about.   Everything we do is focused on zero capital expenditure (CAPEX) while drastically optimizing your long-term operational costs (or OPEX).   But besides that, there’s the direct cost savings achieved due to lower operational overhead, fewer complexities, increased productivity and performance, lower maintenance costs, fewer contractors and specialist skills, etc…   These result in real cost savings…

Benefit No 3:  Improved Customer Service, Performance, Morale, Productivity, etc.
Quite incredibly – the customers that have migrated from their legacy systems to Service-now.com and/or Monolith-Software are experiencing such elation and enthusiasm with their decisions that the only people we see moaning and groaning about these technologies are the (non-customer) late adopters and bigots that can’t let go of the empires they’ve built using the legacy solutions…  Virtually every customer I know of that has made the move, have re-energized teams, staff and particular managers and of course improved customer service and productivity levels. They all seem to be in jovial moods with huge weights being lifted from their shoulders since ditching the legacy systems.   Every single one of them seems to be eager to share the great success stories…

I could ramble on and get into a lot of detail, but at a high level – these 3 benefits really stand out as the primary impacting benefits on customers that have adopted either of our 2 core solutions.

What is Service-now?

So here’s a a pitch on Service-now.com for the uninitiated. This is most certainly not the best, most comprehensive or only angle to consider, but I tried to touch on many of the aspects that local business in South Africa are concerned with and areas that I believe need real consideration.

As Marutech we have a few great products that enables you to offer better IT services while cutting costs and Service-now.com (SNC) is our flagship product that is taking the world by storm.  SNC has in fact shown exponential growth over the past 5 years – reaching the $50m revenue mark even quicker than Salesforce.com.

Service-now.com is a comprehensive IT Service Management (ITSM) solution and more.  In fact, it’s been seen more and more as an ERP for IT due to all the great features that are being added such as Project and Portfolio Management, Sale Force Automation, Runbook Automation, Development Lifecyle Management, etc. – far more than a just an ITSM solution. It competes directly with your current Remedy, HP Service-Manager, CA Service Desk or Frontrange HEAT solutions.  The great advantage of this solution is

that it was developed purely as an internet based service (i.e. Software-as-a-Service or SaaS) and is thus an off-balance sheet solution to which you subscribe on an annual basis rather than having to purchase licenses and hardware which you have to then maintain yourself.  The fact that it’s web2.0 type design allows you to access it from anywhere and at any time using virtually any browser (including smart-phones) is just an added bonus and adds great value to all your IT users.

Service-now.com has been replacing legacy systems worldwide at an astonishing rate (see attached competitive snapshot) because people are after solutions that are simpler, easier and best practice aligned – solutions that offer similar or better features, flexibility, customizability and benefits that legacy vendors just can’t match.  The amount of time and resources required to maintain or enhance existing legacy systems is costing more than what the systems [sometimes] seem to be worth, hence, the advantage of using a robust solution to which you simply subscribe.

I encourage you to review this solution before renewing maintenance or spending more time and effort on your current system.

Core Functionality

Service-now.com currently offers eleven Pink Elephant verified ITIL (v3) modules (i.e. Incident, Change, Problem, etc) and a whole bunch more – all inclusive of the subscription.  You can choose to enable each functional area as your organization matures and needs arise to utilize additional processes.

Architectural [default] features that most can’t afford in legacy systems include full disaster recovery, 3-5 different instances (depending on your size) so that you can separate your development and test platforms from production, numerous integrations and a high level of security and even encryption of the data if required.

Services Considerations

Probably the biggest differentiator to legacy solutions is the reduced effort (resources and time) to get the system going, aligned to business requirements and keeping it running.  The intuitive interface and ease of use means that customers are sometimes up and running and fully functional in a matter of weeks rather than months (or even years).   Service-now.com manages all hardware and software components so the effort, resources and risk of managing the systems, upgrades, etc yourself are all taken away.   As an example of the value of a great architecture, Service-now.com did the last upgrade of over 1500 instances (spring release) in under 2 days – with zero failures.   Service-now.com has been going since 2004, they releases 4 upgrades a year and continue to add great new features with virtually every upgrade.

Case Studies

Some of the world’s largest and most famous organizations are using Service-now.com including Facebook, New York Stock Exchange, Google, PWC, Hyatt Corporation, Pepsi, VeriSign, Myspace, Best Buy, Deutsche Bank, Juniper, Cisco…   the list just goes on.   In 5 years, Service-now.com have gained over 490 customers globally and are currently signing up between 5 and 10 new customers every week – this says a huge amount about the success of the product and the need out there for a fresh approach.

Costing Overview

The pricing model couldn’t be simpler.   Pricing is based on a subscription per process-user per year.  (specifically process users –  self-service users and people simply logging or monitoring their requests are at no cost).  The only ‘other’ component that is priced separately is the discovery option which requires the installation of a ‘probe’ in your environment and which will help with effectively populating the CMDB if you don’t have that info.  Discovery option pricing is currently based on the number of servers you have, but this is possibly subject to change in the near future.

The biggest consideration however with regards to cost remains the long-term value and savings achieved in reduced resources needed to maintain, develop and support the system.  This is where most organizations really see huge benefits.

To wrap up…

If you have more time to explore this, I’d encourage you to visit the website: www.service-now.com.   You could even go as far as getting your helpdesk manager or team to test the look and feel of the solution on the global demo instance (but be aware that others may also be playing around on it so you might find some funnies appearing.  This instance is reset one a day at 12:00 SA Time back to defaults.)

If this sounds good – you’d be right.  It’s a great product and Service-now.com are a great vendor to work with.

If you have any queries – please feel free to contact us on +2711 287 1501.

Marutech ad iWeek

Take a look at our latest full-page add that featured in the ITWeb iWeek 11 August publication… (inside back cover).

Take a look!

The message is hopefully quite clear.  The world is changing, and if you’re not changing with it – you’ll end up as a fossil.

Cloud helps ITSM (ITWeb publicity)

The ITWeb Virtualization and Cloud Computing event in Jo’burg last week was a great success.

ITWeb published an online article highlighting our presentation’s key points…   read it here.

Confusion in the cloud business model (Insights #2)

I find it quite interesting to see how this landscape is constantly changing…  the winds of change seem to be blowing more violently now than ever before, and there are a lot of people out there that are getting quite confused – and with good reason.

I received two news-type emails today with views that tell very different stories…   The first email from ITWeb referred to a Business World article stating that “EMC Philippines has unveiled a technology for ‘advanced virtual storage’”.   The very next email was from InfoWorld with the main article titled “Why some vendors regret becoming cloud providers“ , which talks about EMC’s regrets and why they are shutting down their Atmos  Online cloud storage service.

So who’s confused?   Everybody?

My personal opinion is that its everyone. EMC in my opinion is missing the point to an extent or don’t understand ‘the cloud’.  Sure the business model is tough and it might not make sense for a hardware vendor (or any vendor) to lose traditional business to its new cloud service offerings.  We’re face with exactly the same when our existing licensed solftware clients want to convert to SaaS solutions.

Here are a few points to consider if they don’t offer the service:

• Someone else will.  In my book, that’s lost opportunity.
• It doesn’t mean that existing customers will continue buying hardware forever (from EMC).  They may just consider alternatives at some point.
• They missing the potential parallel (backup) revenue stream – there are a lot of cloud adopters out there, and adoption is growing – fast.
• They shouldn’t be selling the same volumes ‘as a service’.  In other words: don’t sell the same volume – sell the same value!
• Cloud services may not generate the same revenue per customer in year 1, 2, 3 or 4, but by year 5 the scales start tipping.

That being said – I just need to emphasize that I don’t really understand the storage space – or the EMC Atmos model for that matter.  I’m merely commenting on the general premise of these articles that I find them both interesting and amusing that I should get these emails within 20 minutes of each other.  What these articles did do however is leave me wondering who’s not getting it – the vendors, reporters or me?

That being said – I think we might finally be coming out of the Gartner hype-cycle peak with regards to cloud computing.  People are starting to understand the value proposition as well as the long term cost implications.   Some of the vendors are starting to hit the stumbling blocks (alla EMC articles) and these are going to expose those that jumped on the bandwagon without a full understanding of what it’s all about….   Infoworld posted another worthy read that points to some of the potential shortfalls and realities of cloud computing and SaaS titled “Is the SaaS experiment finally over?”

Well, I hope you got some value from my ramblings…

Happy reading.

How to motivate to exco

We often encounter administrators, IT managers or sometimes even senior managers that just don’t know how to write an effective business case or motivation for the solutions that they’re really, really excited about.
Unless they are influential individuals with an evangelistic flare, without a fairly decent motivation which effectively communicates the value proposition, requests to get funding are simply denied. You may get lucky and someone else will help it through [although he/she will possibly take the credit], but that doesn’t help you for next time you have a chance to make difference.

If you want your proposal to be considered seriously, remember the following:

1) If the business benefits aren’t clearly communicated, nobody will understand the true value proposition.  Also – make sure you understand the business, and what the business is trying to achieve – only then will you understand how your proposed solution will align with the business and can bring value to the business.

2) Keep your proposal or motivation short, simple and to the point.  Ten pages of value proposition’ probably means eight pages of unnecessary waffling. Executives don’t have time to read waffle.  That means that you have to go to great pains to shorten and simplify your sentences.  Remove unnecessary words, sentences and even paragraphs that don’t carry significant weight or value and definitely review  your tenses (a simple – but probably not very good example is this blog post.  I could write an entire book on “how to write a effective proposal” or even a comprehensive 5 page article, but the point is to get the the crux of what you want to say and say no more – therefore – I share only3 points of wisdom.

3) Show tangibles – estimations based on real numbers and facts.  Be sure that you can quantify these and be ready to defend these in a boardroom.  Also – TCO and ROI are important, but be careful – they’ve also gained a questionable reputation over time as vendors often offer models that exaggerate the outcomes.  Don’t give up if your numbers aren’t factual or 100% accurate, but be realistic and demonstrate tangible gains for the business.

That’s it.
Bruce

PS. If you feel you needed more, think again.  These 3 points may not be the only 3 points and could quite possibly not even be the most important 3 points, but use them as a starting point and get creative for the rest.   If you’re lost – break down these 3 points further.  As example – tangibles could include financial data, supplier data, risk and risk mitigation plans, etc.   Be original and write your own proposal – don’t copy and paste – you will learn a lot more about yourself, the business and about writing than what you would otherwise.   If you still can’t come up with a structured approach, and you’re totally lost, then by all means, go get the “how-to” guide and spend a few weeks educating yourself in the basics – it could help.

PPS. Expect a follow-up post soon with some specific tips on motivating for a SaaS solution.