Addressing your ITSM needs

We’ve been very busy in recent months finding innovative cost-cutting ways to help customers derive more value from their IT Service Management processes and disciplines.

Some key (and probably very obvious) drivers for our customers have been:

1. Reduce direct vendor costs (software licenses and maintenance costs)
2. Faster time-to-market for new features and benefits
3. Reduce implementation time & cost
4. Improve service quality
5. Improve alignment of Service Delivery team to the Business

To achieve these we’ve had to overcome a few key challenges:

Legacy Challenge #1: Cost & Complexity

The legacy ITSM solutions are about as cumbersome and complex as the typical organizational specific ITSM processes and workflows themselves.   Granted the legacy vendors are trying really hard to re-invent the front-end usability, ease of implementation, etc, but there’s no way they can just overhaul a complex ITSM product overnight.  It’s a bit like trying to change the wheels on a moving vehicle.   The challenge with using these legacy solutions [as powerful as they may be] is that the license, maintenance and implementation costs are prohibitive for smaller organizations.  Even large organizations – especially in the current economic climate – are desperately looking for innovative ways to reduce costs while improving their service delivery capability and quality.

Our Solution:  Change the underlying technology.   Service-now.com is a web2.0 [modern] solution, built from the ground up, is cloud based [no more operational babysitting and system administration nightmares], and was designed with ease of use and implementation as a fundamental guiding principle.  This means we can design, build and test the ITSM solution in third of the time of what we traditionally could and did.

The Benefit:  Reduced cost and complexity – and significantly so.  Our Service-now.com customers are ecstatic with their choice of technology and our ability to deliver.  Once delivered, the administrative overheads are substantially reduced and the fact that Service-now.com is offered through the cloud, means that the painful and costly exercise of upgrading and remaining current evaporates into thin air [excuse the pun].   I always used to maintain that technology is “just technology” and no one technology can make a huge difference… well I’ve been proven wrong.  I was actually astonished as to how big an impact the changing of an underlying technology can have on the key drivers listed above.

 

Legacy Challenge #2:  Engineers & Consultants

We “grew up” in an industry where organizations relied on consultants to help define their ITSM processes (and requirements) while an independent reseller or systems integrated implemented the ITSM solution.  There appears to be increasing frustration with misalignment between the perfect [often over-engineered] ITSM processes, the business needs and what the technology is able to deliver within a reasonable time.  To avoid this misalignment, a more inclusive consultancy approach to solution delivery has become paramount.

Our Solution:   Our delivery teams increasingly rely on experienced ITSM solution experts, business analysts and consultants that understands the underlying solution capabilities.  This means we guide the customer through a design process using a far more pragmatic approach.   Our experienced business analysts and consultants work together to engage [interrogate] the business users and capture the true business requirements.   They either design or assist in the design of the customer’s processes and ensure that the user and business requirements are converted into well defined technical delivery requirements.

The Benefit:  Our customers are now getting more value from the process design through to implementation.  Our pragmatic approach means the processes are designed to bring simplicity, ease of use, achievable results and are quick to implement, directly achieving many of the key drivers identified above.

 

When next faced with questions on your improvement strategy, you should be considering a lot more than simply how to improve current processes.  By using an innovative solution like  Service-now.com and an agile implementation/consultancy partner such as Marutech, you’d be surprised how easily you can swop out the underlying legacy technology AND improve your processes for less than what you would have spent on your next big upgrade.

SaaS not easy for everyone

The terms “Cloud Computing” and “Software as a Service” have been flying around in IT circles for a while now, and have become a local buzz word, so much so we even having conferences based on these buzz words. Yet a number of people still do not understand what the core of Cloud Computing / SaaS is supposed to deliver ?

In short, Cloud Computing is simply to access shared resources, software over the internet, and Software as a Service (SaaS) to make that software available to customers via the same channel and thereby the vendor or supplier, charges a type of a leasing fee (depending on the vendors business model) for utilizing their software or resources.  [Edit: Of course - this model has at its core - the ability to scale massively and on demand - something that not all 'legacy' vendors are able to do.  BC]

The conceptual idea of selling software has become a model of the past, most companies are moving to a software as a service model allowing their services and software to be made available to customers at a fraction of the cost while they still maintain the ownership of the software.  [Edit: unfortunately not always at a fraction of the cost, but the long term TCO is generally considerably lower due to the simplified approach.  BC]

This has obviously changed the strategy and operations for the smaller to medium size vendors who have been more flexible in growing their own market share within the SaaS business model.

But this does put strain on the larger [legacy] vendors who do not have the flexibility of the smaller [younger - SaaS specific] companies, they have to incorporate their current business model and build that into a Cloud-based / SaaS model moving forward, which has kept a number of BA’s up late at night trying to figure out how to move this large ship with fixed processes and models to a flexible Cloud Based customer centric solution. For some local and international companies this is still a slow and difficult transition.

OPNET is a company that we have partnered with for a number of years, and are certainly a leader in the APM space.  They too are in the process of slowly changing their business model within the Network and Application Performance arena to ensure that they move forward with the changing trend in IT [edit - but as mentioned above - this isn't always easy. BC].

OPNET was founded in 1986 by brothers Mark and Alain Cohen, have a number of software packages in three categories of application and network concerns. Application Performance Management, Network Engineering, Operations, and Planning and Network R&D.

Its flagship product is APM (Application Performance Management) suite, which consists of three solutions: ACE Live, ACE Analyst, and Panorama.

ACE Live performs network monitoring, measurement, and detection of SLA violations. It gathers data about application performance, resource utilization, route quality, and other metrics and monitors network flows through passive Ethernet connections. It integrates seamlessly with ACE Analyst, which performs analysis of network packet traces, intermittent application problems, and other data in order to troubleshoot application performance problems.

Panorama does transaction tracing within the Java and .NET platforms and uses correlation technology and a statistical correlation engine to detect patterns in metrics and events. It monitors metrics with established ranges for normal behaviour and identifies deviations based on how far from normal they are.

OPNET’s products are slowing moving towards a SaaS model, but this will take some time, although the company can install its products on site for a customer and operate them on the customer’s behalf, they are still a way off from having a truly Cloud Based / SaaS offering.   [Edit - Unfortunately - APM type products just don't lend themselves to SaaS that easily, and Alain's comments below reflect this dilemma. BC]

Alain Cohen CTO of OPNET :

“For the most part, our solutions need to operate in the environment where the business transactions are processed and the network traffic is present,”

“They’re processing a lot of data, so to transfer it across the Internet would not be the best approach, and some of our solutions just wouldn’t work well that way, particularly in some aspects of reporting.”

So for a number of larger well know vendors who are trying to incorporate the SaaS model into their business, it will definitely be a slow and painful process.

For the immediate future Cohen says “OPNET’s mission is to keep looking for new levels of capability for application performance management. It will search for new ways to give all levels of IT staff visibility into the performance they’re getting and to expand the software’s analysis and troubleshooting to every nook and cranny of the IT environment”.

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.

The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA)

If you haven’t come across the CSA before, then here’s a brief introduction and few interesting bits to go with it….

Who are they?
“The Cloud Security Alliance is a not-for-profit organization with a mission to promote the use of best practices for providing security assurance within Cloud Computing, and to provide education on the uses of Cloud Computing to help secure all other forms of computing. The Cloud Security Alliance is led by a broad coalition of industry practitioners, corporations, associations and other key stakeholders. For further information, the Cloud Security Alliance Web site is www.cloudsecurityalliance.org.”

Trusted Security Certification
Novell and the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) announced in March 2010 the vendor-neutral initiative for the Trusted Security Certification program.  I’m not sure how busy they are with this in the background, but I’m certainly hopeful that this will help to drive cloud adoption.   Of course – once the certification exists, vendors need to adopt and comply, otherwise, it’s just going to be another certification with no weight.   This is most certainly a topic I’ll be keeping an eye on.   Read more here..

Useful Documents
You can download and read (or glance over) v2.1 of the “Security Guidance for Critical Areas of Focus in Cloud Computing” document for some very helpful information if you feel a little lost when people are talking about cloud-computing and what it entails.  This document deals with 3 main (and very important) areas being: architecture, governance and operations.

Another useful document to scan/read is Top Threats to Cloud Computing.  CSA have done a good job of summarizing some of the threats and categorizing in a fairly quick and easy way to digest.

Keep it going…
The CSA might not be the only organization out there trying to guide security standards for cloud computing, however, they are most certainly an important one which makes them an organization worth mining for information on  a regular basis.