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STraTEgIES for ChooSIng a SaaS-BaSEd I.T. SErvICE ManagEMEnT SoluTIon

Consider a more complete solution if you need integration, automation, and change/release management.
By Bob Johnson, Vice President and General Manager, SaaS Business for BMC Software, and Christopher Williams, Lead Service Support Solutions Manager, BMC Software

The choice on how best to consume software whether on-premises or through a Software as a Service (SaaS) model is based on your specific requirements at different points in your business and organizational lifecycles. Each model presents benefits that take into consideration the IT skills within your organization and your budget for capital versus operational expenses. When you look at each model, its also important to consider the potential for growth in your IT infrastructure and the level of customization and integration required.1

the right Approach

Choosing a SaaS delivery model for IT service management can provide your IT organization with many benefits. Leaving the IT service management infrastructure to a SaaS vendor avoids the upfront costs of purchasing and implementing the software, the capital expense of buying hardware, and the costs associated with compliance and security best practices.

However, even after having chosen to adopt a SaaS model, you still need to decide how much IT service management you need. Do you need a tactically focused, slimmed-down help desk application focused on basic workflow for incident management and asset stores? Or do you need a more full-featured system that provides detailed information about the IT infrastructure and best-practice IT workflows? Choosing the right IT service management approach is critical because it will help determine not only your IT costs, but also your business agility for years to come. Here are the criteria that have helped IT organizations like yours choose the right level of a SaaSbased IT service management platform.

The size of your user base, along with your staff size and associated skill levels, can provide important clues about the range and complexity of your environ ment. Weve found that IT organizations generally employ one help desk professional for every 100 users, and that those organizations with a maximum of 35 help desk professionals are generally candidates for a smaller, slimmed-down offering. Firms with more than 35 help desk professionals, on the other hand, tend to have more demanding requirements that call for higher-end IT service management systems, as well as a skilled staff to implement them effectively. Other considerations might be more important than size, however. One is the current and future complexity of your application environment and the IT infrastructure that supports it. If your applications as well as the servers, storage, and networks that support them are reasonably simple and static, you could consider a more basic solution to hold down cost and complexity. The greater the complexity, the more you should consider a comprehensive solution.

Key Criteria

One useful indicator of complexity is the number of changes executed per month, as well as the effect each change has on a service and its related components. The more potential for downtime or security risks each change poses throughout your infrastructure, the more robust a change release system you should consider. You should also take into consideration what percentage of changes are normal or standard changes, rather than emergency modifications. Thats because emergencies give you less time to simulate the effect of the change on other components in your environment. The more effort it takes to make changes and to anticipate and mitigate the effects of those changes the more you should consider a comprehensive IT service management solution. It provides the deeper insights into your environment that could save significant effort, money, and risk in the future. Another factor to consider is how the solution will help you deliver IT services more quickly and at lower cost. If you have a very complex environment, the automation and management provided by a comprehensive solution might actually reduce the cost and time required to provide such services, even though the solution may appear to be more expensive than a more basic alternative. If your environment is less complex, a basic solution may be a better way to get that agility and savings. You should also ask yourself whether the managers of your business are moving from a view of IT as a tactical cost of doing business to seeing IT as a critical business enabler. The more this shift in perspective takes place, the more you should consider a fuller solution that takes a service-centric rather than a trouble ticket or reactive view. A comprehensive IT service management solution provides more information and enables more processes.

anticipate a lot of complexity in the future, consider a more full-service solution for the wealth of information and best-process workflows it can deliver. If you dont anticipate greater complexity, then a basic solution could be more cost-effective. As business managers demand better measurement of the services you provide, it becomes more important to consider a more complete IT service management platform. The measurement and reporting capabilities found in more extensive platforms will help you report on business metrics (such as whether you are delivering services on time and within budget) as opposed to IT-centric measurements (such as the cost per asset delivered via a service request). If managing what you do is becoming as important, or more important, than what you have, you should also consider a comprehensive IT service management platform. Basic systems usually provide only an asset inventory application, rather than an asset management system that uses a configuration management database (CMDB) to catalog information about your IT assets. The CMDB found in comprehensive systems not only stores asset data, but also normalizes and shares it with an entire range of IT service management tools. An enterprise-scale CMDB improves the speed and accuracy of help desk services, while also supporting more mature, enterprise-wide change and release processes. In addition, an enterprise-level CMDB eases asset and software license management activities, ranging from providing software to users to retiring unneeded software. The ability to integrate other systems such as infrastructure discovery, event management, or business applications into your IT service management platform is usually found only in more comprehensive solutions. While most basic systems ship with integration to authentication mechanisms, such as LDAP, you should consider a broader solution if you need integration with infrastructure discovery, event management, or such business applications as ERP or CRM systems. With broad integration needs comes the requirement for infrastructure discovery tools that enable tracking of IT components, such as servers, network switches, and storage arrays, through their service lifecycles. By tracking the IT service components that provide critical business services, you are better able to make the decisions required to resolve service slowdowns or interruptions, or to meet industry, corporate, or legally mandated compliance and governance standards. Youre more likely to need integration with event management systems to the extent that:

integration

Choosing the right IT service management approach is critical because it will help determine not only your IT costs, but also your business agility for years to come.

The current and future complexity of your business processes is also important. The more variety in the types of users you have, and the more information they need from more sources, the harder it is to track the underlying IT assets and assure service levels. If you

Users or customers often discover service slowdowns Users complain about the time or cost involved in
solving problems or interruptions before IT

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You have trouble maintaining uninterrupted operations across an increasingly large and demanding environment Youre having trouble sifting through false alarms or multiple warnings about the same issue The integration capabilities found in more complete solutions might be a requirement if, for example, your service desk needs to be notified about, or make changes through, such devices as smartphones, or to share information with industry-specific provisioning systems, such as those used in the telecommunication industry. Those integration capabilities may also be required if your IT service management system needs to share information with diagnostic tools, such as remote access, or software that allows a service to repeat the sequence of events that caused an error. Finally, consider whether the integration provided by a more complete tool would speed problem resolution and aid service monitoring by allowing service desk employees to share information about system uptime and performance with widely used enterprise applications, such as ERP or CRM.

Service level management capabilities found in comprehensive IT service management solutions may be worthwhile if your business requires interactions among multiple applications and IT infrastructure components, or if you need to provide different levels of service to various classes of users. Other considerations include whether you must meet specific SLAs for users in different business units or divisions, and whether the business measures IT on its ability to provide business services (such as decision support for a manufacturing system or policy underwriting) rather than just applications and network uptime.

As you weigh these criteria, consider your current and future needs.

Comprehensive IT service management solutions tend to provide higher levels of support, as well as more mature processes around change management and service level management. You should give greater consideration to change manage ment the more you are experiencing serious problems implementing changes or security updates within your normal maintenance windows. You should also make it a very high priority if you have experienced slowdowns or crashes because of changes made in error or in the wrong order, or if the problems are caused by collisions among multiple releases. Change management might also help if you are experiencing delays in identifying which IT components provide specific business services, thus hindering your staffs ability to troubleshoot or resolve problems. Ask yourself how beneficial it would be to be able to simulate the impact of changes before making them. Would it reduce application downtime or performance issues? Would it reduce your risk of not complying with corporate, industry, or government regulations? Moving to a broader IT service management solution with mature change management processes might also help you reduce costs and errors by grouping configuration changes or by changing the order in which they are done. Whats more, change management is worth considering if the business wants to significantly improve compliance with industry-standard best practices, such as the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), and if your current change or release management processes make it difficult to assure compliance with corporate, industry, or government regulations.

Change Management and Service Level Management

You should also consider a comprehensive solution if you need to improve in a consistent and measurable way the efficiency, effectiveness, or accuracy of such disciplines as change management, service level management, or release management. A more complete solution is also worth considering if a holistic (vs. siloed) view of how your IT infrastructure and core business affect each other would help reduce costs and/or provide better service to users, business partners, or customers. Finally, consider an extensive service level management option if you are under pressure to better align IT with the business or to make IT a business enabler rather than just a support function. Youre less likely to need as many service level management capabilities (and thus should consider a slimmed down IT service management solution) if you only need a help desk to solve specific problems and perform individual tasks, such as upgrading a users machine. Consider a less sophisticated system if business managers mostly view IT as a cost of doing business and necessary to maintaining daily operations, as opposed to helping the business grow and enter new markets.

The more you need mature release management capabilities and data center automation, the more you should consider a comprehensive IT service management solution. You should give more consideration to release management to the extent that you have experienced problems

release Management and data Center Automation

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implementing new application releases within your normal maintenance windows or have experienced application outages or slowdowns due to software that was released in error or released in the wrong order. The streamlined release management provided by a robust IT service management tool can help free your IT staff from routine work to develop new mission-critical applications or services. Data center automation may be a requirement if your internal IT group is having trouble matching the prices that cloud service providers are quoting for IT services. It may also be a requirement if your IT staff is being pulled away from strategic, business-critical projects to keep the lights on or deal with operational emergencies. Finally, this may also be a requirement if management is considering outsourcing part or all of your IT operation to save money.

About the AuthorS

Bob Johnson, vice president and general manager of BMCs Software-as-a-Service business, joined BMC in December 2009. Johnson has over 20 years of experience in SaaS/Managed Services marketing, product management, application development/integration, and broadband networking. At Cisco, he was responsible for leading the development of Cisco Managed Services offerings for advanced technology applications. He also held executive positions at SAICTelecordia Technologies and the SaaS Division of Breakaway Solutions. Earlier in his career, Johnson held a variety of sales, marketing, and product management leadership roles with Ernst & Young, Teleport Commu nications Group, and AT&T. He is also a former Captain in the United States Marine Corps. Johnson holds a masters degree in telecommunications from Stevens Institute of Technology, a master of business administration and management degree from Webster University, and an undergraduate degree from Boston College. Chris Williams, lead service support solutions manager, is responsible for the product marketing of the BMC Service Support discipline. He manages a team that focuses on solution-level strategies that leverage the comprehensive capabilities of integrated IT processes and practices that are advanced through the use of the BMC offerings. He has more than 28 years of IT experience, including 15 years managing data centers, operations, and technical support organizations for financial, government, retail, and manufacturing organizations. He also owned and managed an ITIL consulting firm specializing in technical and business process analysis.

the on-Premises option

While there are many benefits to deploying IT service management through a SaaS model, there are other cases where on-premises deployment may be the best option. On-premises deployment is required, of course, if your organization must comply with government, industry, or corporate guidelines that forbid corporate data or systems being hosted outside the enterprise firewall. It may also be the best option when senior business or IT management are, for whatever reason, fundamentally opposed to moving critical systems to the cloud. On-premises deployment may be a better fit the more you need to customize the code (as opposed to just reconfiguring the system settings) or integrate it with locally hosted applications. You should give more consideration to on-premises deployment if you have significant concerns about the reliability or speed of the Internet access available to your enterprise. As you weigh these criteria, consider your current and future needs. For example, is the size or complexity of your organization growing? Is IT emerging from its current tactical role to become a more strategic enabler of business services? Will higher maturity levels in such areas as configuration and release management hold down costs or boost customer satisfaction as you move to serve new markets and new customers? While you want to ensure a healthy return from your investment, consider whether comprehensive IT service management capabilities might not only save money in the long-run, but also position your enterprise to out-perform the competition. Whichever route is right for you basic or comprehensive, SaaS or on-premises BMC has the right solution for you.

future needs

For those choosing the SaaS delivery option, BMC Remedyforce Service Desk, an ITIL-based
help desk, meets the needs of organizations with smaller or less complex requirements. Visit www.bmc.com/force to sign up for a free trial. BMC Remedy OnDemand provides a SaaS-based IT service management solution for organizations that need more extensive capabilities in such areas as incident, problem, and change management, as well as integration with other applications. For those choosing an on-premises deployment, BMC Service Desk Express Suite provides essential service desk capabilities, while BMC Remedy IT Service Management Suite provides a full-featured IT service management solution. If your needs ever change, BMC provides the flexibility to move your deployment between the cloud and on-premises as needed. This allows you to protect your investment, while also providing the flexibility to adapt as your business requirements change.
end noteS

buSineSS runS on i.t. i.t. runS on bMC SoftwAre

Business thrives when IT runs smarter, faster and stronger. Thats why the most demanding IT organizations in the world rely on BMC Software across distributed, mainframe, virtual and cloud environment s. Recognized as the leader in Business Service Management, BMC offers a comprehensive approach and unified platform that helps IT organizations cut cost, reduce risk and drive business profit. For the four fiscal quarters ended December 31, 2010, BMC revenue was approximately $2 billion. Visit www.bmc.com for more information.

1 Paul Avenant, Top Considerations for Moving to a SaaS Delivery Model for IT Service Management, BMC Software, 2010.

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