The bad thing about a good vacation is that it haunts you. I am still trapped in time after the snorkeling in the blue and green beaches in Langkawi. The office and keyboard still feels odd. If all this was not enough, I watched Avatar and understood the meaning of out-of-the-world-experience. Getting back to reality one step at a time. One baby step at a time.
AOL Keywords Era
Do
you remember AOL Keywords? AOL sold AOL keywords that can be searched
inside their walled garden or internet as they called it. As AOL was
synonymous with internet, businesses had to buy keywords so that users
can find them on AOL. This was a controlled access that worked for a
while, when websites came with their own URLs, followed by better
search engines like Google. The AOL keywords faded and became
irrelevant.
I Think Gartner's Magic Quadrant will end up like AOL Keywords.
BMC announced in DreamForce event that they were offering ServiceDesk on the cloud using Force.com. This is a very good move, I am sure this will help customers to get a ServiceDesk by just signing up. You don't need consultants / experts to install and configure the system.
http://www.bmc.com/solutions/ondemand.html
Here's BMC CEO with Marc Benioff
But, Where Is The Product on AppExchange / StandAlone
The demo was good, however I am not able to see the product on SF.com's AppXchange or any links. Can anyone send the link on the real product - no demo stuff.
BMC Software Leverages Amazon Web Services to Simplify Deployment and Management of Cloud Environments
I feel that BMC's PR on Cloud Computing needs a little explanation as it has the word cloud computing is often mistaken for SaaS. BMC's parntership with Amazon EC2 will help users to move their Software Installation to the cloud. It is NOT BMC's software moving to the cloud.
There's a big difference, let me explain.
First, What is Amazon EC2
Amazon EC2 is Virtualized Infrastructure as Service. Let's take an example, how will a small business run apps and offer a service? They have to rent / own data centers, they have to buy their own hardware and server software and then hire specialists to manage datacenters. Over time this non-core function takes a lot of resources which is not the core focus of business. Amazon EC2 helps you with an Infrastructure virtualization solution. With EC2, you can instanly provision any type of server hardware you want and choose the software and within minutues your server is ready. You can even remote control the machine. This helps you rapidly scale up or downsize infrastructure in minutes. All you have to pay is a monthly charge for usage of machine and bandwidth. To get a little more under the hood, Amazon EC2 is an improved offering based on Xen Hypervisor, an open source insfrastructure virtualization.
Hosting Your App in EC2 Is Not SaaS, Why?
Hosting an application in Amazon EC2 is not SaaS because you have just moved the app installation from your own datacenter to Amazon cloud or virtualized data center. There is no magic that will automatically give scalability and multi-tenancy to your apps.Yes, you can do a PR with a word cloud computing, this is not SaaS by any measure.
Where is the AMI package for Remedy and Service Desk Express
If there was something that could have really helped is the link for Remedy or product AMI. An AMI instance is a special package for a direct deployment in Amazon EC2. An AMI is nothing but an image of you app with the OS, once you got this ready. This will help customers to pay and fire up an AMI, they will get product installated almost immediately.
I was unable to find any AMI for BMC products, I only found people asking for it.
http://www.nabble.com/Remedy-in-Amazon-Computing-Cloud--td23276709.html
So How Will BMC + Amazon EC2 help users?
In my opinion, there is only one useful thing.
BMC Atrium creating dynamic AMI instances in EC2: Although this is not a killer feature, I think it will help users really if you can create and provision server hardware from the request itself. It will be a simple api call to fire up a machine instance. Alteast the user does not have to switch between two different services.
Enterprise customers can request computing resources – either internal (physical or virtual) or external from Amazon EC2 – through an integrated self-service portal.
I really not sure how this is even a feature to be quoted as it is just an option in the self service request form.
I Expected Something really Bigger and Better
I like BMC because they have been solving real ITSM problems for large customers for a long time. Most new players are able to break and offer similar solution because of they cracked the problem earlier. When Kia Behnia hinted in his blog about a Cloud offering, I was expecting something big.
This is not it.
This is a follow-up to the my previous post Saas Fever Catches On With ITIL Tool Vendors. Everyone has it, atleast in PR. I tried to look at a few emerging players, in this post, let look at all the ITSM players on Saas
What I mean by Saas? Please, providing Hosting Is NOT SAAS
Saas Apps need to multi-tenant, as a user should be able to sign up, try, and use it over a web browser without having to install or download products. It also means that service upgrade must be taken care of by the vendor. Hosting products or providing a data center where products are hosted and calling it On-demand is not Saas. It's PR hype trying to cash in Saas, It's BS.
SaaS ITIL Tools/ Vendors
Now that we have clearly defined what's Saas, it becomes really simple as there are a very few!
Service-Now : Service-now.com
Service-now really covers ITSM to a great extent. It's no surprise, as the founders are ex-Peregrine techies. They have built ITIL features in breadth and depth. Service-Now wants to play only the big league, Business Service Management stuff on the product and minimum price tag of $40k shows that they are shooting for the BMC, CA and HP, IBM league. The implementation is comprehensive, it is meant for large businesses moving away from the Big 4. I was curious to know how they managed the asset discovery as it's important step for populating the CMDB / CMS. This is the part where most vendors say you have to buy a third party discovery tool, that will increase your spend per asset. I found that they use scripts for asset discovery, cool. You don't have pay extra. They have all ingredients to win, 250 enterprise customers, 25 million in recurring revenues, a proven management team and a product on the spot. I think it is fair to say Service-now is the new leader in the "Saas Vendors in ITSM Space".
Watch Out:
Service-now is comprehensive but it is also complex. It's very hard to figure out where you want to start. It is not the Do-It-Yourself kinda stuff. I am sure Admins and team need a lot of training to figure this out. I don't blame them, in the ITIL-domain where the processes are well-defined, if you want to implement all the processes by the book, you will end up like this.
Price: Minimum contract price is $40,000 for support 35 processes.
Beetil:
Beetil is a Kick-ass startup from New Zealand. Beetil takes a less-is-more approach to ITIL. I see a lot of similarities with 37signals in terms of UI and less-is-more approach. The approach shows two things well, they understand ITIL and what their customers want. They have taken the key points of ITIL and implemented in a easy way for small business. This means that you will get all ITIL Service Support modules with a fresh and simple approach. You can get all the modules Incident, Problem, Change, Release, Configuration management made simple and for one price. I am not sure how you will populate the asset database. Guess you have to buy a discovery tool. This is a great product for SMB to get started with, there is no learning curve, they don't have to break their heads over ITIL jargons or implementing it. It just works.
Watch Out:
There is no categorization in incidents, problems. I am really not sure how users can pull out a report on how many incidents / problems came in because of a failure (particular type).
Price: $25 per seat per month
As of I know that's it. In the pure play Saas, there are only two players each on opposite side spectrum.
Other Products / Services That Did Not Make It
Zendesk :
Zendesk, a Helpdesk on Saas but they don't have ITIL. They have the word Incident Management and Incident types will not transform a helpdesk into an ITIL Service Desk. Maybe a few other words too!.
Octopus Software:
Octopus Software: A ITIL Software based and maybe technically fits the bill for a Saas app. Sylvain Hamel R&D Director got back with the advantages of Microsoft Smart Client Architecture. However in a world that is moving towards the web, the desktop UI is a BIG turn off. Personally, I will not call it a Saas app or will not recommend to my customers.
Friendly Request Forms
Users hate request forms, for the same reason why everyone hates tax-filing-forms! All the complicated request forms are ignored and users simply call or email the helpdesk. Technicians end up taking calls or have to deal with data spread over emails. A few points to consider while designing request forms
Request form is the best way to get organized information from users. Keep the forms simple and to the point to reduce incoming call and email volumes.
Minimize Manual Request Dispatch
Manual Dispatch is not only exhausting and tedious, requests waiting for dispatch leaves less time for technicians to resolve issues. Automating dispatch and routing the request to the right technician using helpdesk workflow helps technicians to get more time to resolve issues and meet SLAs. Automatic dispatch needs to be intelligent enough to route tickets based on email address, content, category or any such classifications. Stop manual request dispatching, before it kills someone.
Empower Every Technician to Deliver
Empower every technician to help users get over problems with work around and solutions. It is important for Work Around to be shared across technicians. Get a process in place and make sure helpdesk software has provisions for easy sharing. Never get yourself in a situation where you have to depend on one technician to resolve specific cases. Have a Weekly/ fortnightly standup briefing on new work arounds and solutions. Published Solutions need to be fine tuned with keywords and tags that users search for. Effective sharing is essential to equip and empower technicians.
Invest in Knowledge Base, Perfect It As You Go
Build a searchable knowledge base similar to your Incident categories. It is recommended to have a simple three level knowledge base.
The simple three levels help users find what they want quite faster. These levels help users to browse and select the type of problem and choose the area and move to a focus point. Educate users with most popular and recently added solutions; it helps you prevent repeatedly asked how-to questions. Choose five most frequently reported incidents and educate users to help themselves through the self-service portal and announcements.
Don't Run the Errands, Automate Them
Build a list of reoccurring and mundane tasks and automate them. Most of the maintenance tasks such as periodic backups, refilling paper in printers, server maintenance tasks, daily checks for critical application URLs can be automated. You can automate it if you have an efficient helpdesk or through custom scripts. Identify more tasks that can be automated like password reset, and make the helpdesk deliver more value.
Be The First To Know
Today, IT manages availability of services across different layers such as Applications, Network and Bandwidth. The best way to monitor and manage services is to setup event monitoring systems to check threshold levels and report the most probable occurrence of an event. Get event and application management systems to monitor service health of at each level and report events.
When you are in control, you must be the first to know.
Report Your Success, Colorfully
Take credit for running an efficient helpdesk; report your success to business colorfully. Powerful, data rich, reports are important to prove success. Make sure you are able to pull out html, PDF, XLS, or any kind of reports. Easy access to the database schema, custom report building wizard, integration with Crystal Reports or any popular are very important. Print out best performance reports to motivate helpdesk staff, set new targets and keep improving.
Just when we were ready to take the PinkVerify / PinkScan Certification, OGC announced ITIL Certification for software vendors. Now OGC owns ITIL or directs ITIL so it becomes the most obvious choice.
Unlike PinkElephant, OGC Is Not Transparent For the first time since the creation of the Information Technology
Infrastructure Library (ITIL) over 20 years ago, the OGC have given
their official endorsement for an ITIL product compliance scheme to
audit Vendor products, documentation and processes against the
published best practices of ITIL (v2 and v3).
PinkElephant had a clearly defined process with evaluation criteria and they charged for consulting if we failed to comply. It was straight forward, software vendors can focus and release a service pack to make sure that the product complied. OGC is not transparent, and there are so many ways to interpret a standard.
