ast-0038962 strategies for choosing a saas
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8/4/2019 AST-0038962 Strategies for Choosing a SaaS
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t rg AppacChoosing a SaaS delivery model for IT service man-
agement can provide your IT organization with manybenets. Leaving the IT service management infra-
structure to a SaaS vendor avoids the upfront costs
of purchasing and implementing the soware, the
capital expense of buying hardware, and the costs
associated with compliance and security best practices.
However, even aer 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 workow 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 workows?
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 orga-
nizations like yours choose the right level of a SaaS-
based IT service management platform.
Ky CaThe size of your user base, along with your sta size
and associated skill levels, can provide importantclues about the range and complexity of you
environment. Weve found that IT organizations
generally employ one help desk professional fo
every 100 users, and that those organizations with a
maximum of 35 help desk professionals are gener
ally candidates for a smaller, slimmed-down oering
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 sta to
implement them eectively.
Other considerations might be more important than
size, however. One is the current and future complexityof your application environment and the IT infra
structure that supports it. If your applications
as well as the servers, storage, and networks tha
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
Te cice w best t csme swe wete -pemises t Swe
s Seice (SS) me is bse y specic eqiemets t ieet pits i y
bsiess izti iecyces. Ec me pesets beets tt tke it csieti
te IT skis witi y izti y bet cpit ess peti expeses.
We y k t ec me, its s imptt t csie te pteti wt i y
IT istcte te ee cstmizti iteti eqie.1
STraTEgIES for ChooSIng
a SSBaSEd I.T. SErvICE
ManagEMEnT SoluTIonConsider 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 Soware,
and Christopher Williams, Lead Service Support Solutions Manager, BMC Soware
b m c i N D U S T R Y i n S i G h t S
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One useful indicator of complexity is the number
of changes executed per month, as well as the eect
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 modications. Thats because emergencies
give you less time to simulate the eect of the change
on other components in your environment. The more
eort it takes to make changes and to anticipate and
mitigate the eects of those changes the more you
should consider a comprehensive IT service manage-
ment solution. It provides the deeper insights into your
environment that could save signicant eort, 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 automa-
tion 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 shi in perspective
takes place, the more you should consider a fuller solu-
tion that takes a service-centric rather than a trouble
ticket or reactive view. A comprehensive IT serv ice
management solution provides more information and
enables more processes.
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 t he
underlying IT assets and assure ser vice levels. If you
anticipate a lot of complexity in the future, consider a
more full-service solution for the wealth of information
and best-process workows it can deliver. If you dont
anticipate greater complexity, then a basic solution
could be more cost-eective.
As business managers demand better measurement ofthe 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 deliver-
ing 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 managementsystem that uses a conguration management database
(CMDB) to catalog information about your IT asset s.
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 ac-
curacy of help desk services, while also supporting more
mature, enterprise-wide change and release processes
In addition, an enterprise-level CMDB eases asset and
soware license management activities, ranging from
providing soware to users to retiring unneeded soware
igaThe ability to integrate other systems such as infra
structure 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 integra-
tion to authentication mechanisms, such as LDAP, you
should consider a broader solution if you need integra-
tion 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 ser vers, 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:
Users or customers oen discover service slowdowns
or interruptions before IT Users complain about the time or cost involved in
solving problems
Choosing the right IT service
management approach is
critical because it will help
determine not only your ITcosts, but also your business
agility for years to come.
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You have trouble maintaining uninterrupted opera-tions across an increasingly large and demanding
environment Youre having trouble siing through false alarms or
multiple warnings about the same issue
The integration capabilities found in more completesolutions might be a requirement if, for example, your
service desk needs to be notied about, or make changes
through, such devices as smartphones, or to share in-
formation with industry-specic 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 soware 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 informa-tion about system uptime and performance with widely
used enterprise applications, such as ERP or CRM.
Cag Maagm a SvcLvl MaagmComprehensive 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
management the more you are experiencing serious
problems implementing changes or security updates
within your normal maintenance windows. You shouldalso 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 experi-
encing delays in identifying which IT components provide
specic business services, t hus hindering your stas
ability to troubleshoot or resolve problems. A sk your-
self how benecial 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 cor porate,
industry, or government regulations?
Moving to a broader IT ser vice management solution
with mature change management processes might
also help you reduce costs and errors by grouping
conguration changes or by changing the order in
which they are done. Whats more, change management
is worth considering if the business wants to signi-
cantly improve compliance with industry-standard best
practices, such as the IT Infrastruc ture Library (ITIL),
and if your current c hange or release management
processes make it dicult to assure compliance with
corporate, industry, or government regulations.
Service level management capabilities found in com-
prehensive 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 dierent levels
of service to various classes of users. Other consider-
ations include whether you must meet specic SLAs
for users in dierent 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.
You should also consider a comprehensive solution if
you need to improve in a consistent and measurable
way the eciency, eectiveness, or accurac y of such
disciplines as change management, service level man-
agement, or release management. A more complete
solution is also worth consider ing if a holistic (vs. siloed)view of how your IT infrastructure and core business
aect each other would help reduce costs and/or provide
better service to users, business partners, or customers.
Finally, consider an extensive service level manage-
ment 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 serv ice level manage-
ment capabilities (and thus should consider a slimmed
down IT serv ice management solution) if you only need
a help desk to solve specic problems and per form
individual tasks, such as upgrading a users machine.
Consider a less sophisticated system if business man-agers mostly view IT as a cost of doing business a nd
necessary to maintaining daily operations, as opposed
to helping the business grow and enter new markets.
rlas Maagm a daaC AmaThe more you need mature release management capa-
bilities and data center automation, the more you
should consider a comprehensive IT service manage-
ment solution.
You should give more consideration to release manage-
ment to the extent that you have experienced problems
b m c i N D U S T R Y i n S i G h t S
As you weigh these criteria,
consider your current andfuture needs.
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About the AuthorS
Bob Johnson, vice president
and general manager of
BMCs Soware-as-a-Service
business, joined BMC in
December 2009. Johnson has
over 20 years of experience
in SaaS/Managed Services
marketing, product manage-ment, application development/integration, and
broadband networking. At Cisco, he was respon-
sible for leading the development of Cisco Managed
Services oerings for advanced technology appli-
cations. He also held executive positions at SAIC-
Telecordia Technologies and the S aaS Division of
Breakaway Solutions. Earlier in his career, Johnson
held a variety of sales, marketing, and product
management leadership roles with Ernst & Young
Teleport Communications Group, and AT&T. He is
also a former Captain in the United States Marine
Corps. Johnson holds a masters degree in telecom-
munications from Stevens Institute of Technology,
a master of business administration and manage-
ment 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 man-
ages a team that focuses on
solution-level strategies that
leverage the comprehensive
capabilities of integrated IT processes and prac-
tices that are advanced through the use of the BMC
oerings. He has more than 28 years of IT experi-
ence, including 15 years managing data centers,
operations, and technical support organizations
for nancial, government, retail, and manufacturingorganizations. He also owned and managed an
ITIL consulting rm specializing in technical and
business process analysis.
buSineSS runS on i.t.
i.t. runS on bMC SoftwAreBusiness thrives when IT runs smarter, faster and
stronger. Thats why the most demanding IT
organizations in the world rely on BMC Soware
across distributed, mainframe, virtual and cloud
environments. 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 prot. For the four scal quarters
ended December 31, 2010, BMC revenue was
approximately $2 billion. Visit .mc.cm for
more information.
b m c i N D U S T R Y i n S i G h t S
implementing new application releases within your normal maintenance windows or have
experienced application outages or slowdowns due to soware 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 sta 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 sta is being pulled away from strategic, business-critical projec ts to keep the lights on or
deal with operational emergencies. Finally, this may also be a requirement if management is
considering outsourcing par t or all of your IT operation to save money.
t o-Pmss opWhile there are many benets 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 rewall. 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 t the more you need to customize the code (as opposed
to just reconguring the system settings) or integrate it with locally hosted applications. You should
give more consideration to on-premises deployment if you have signicant concerns about the
reliability or speed of the Internet access available to your enterprise.
f nsAs 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 congu-
ration 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 theright solution for you.
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 organiza-
tions 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 exibility to move your deployment between the cloud
and on-premises as needed . This allows you to protect your investment, while also providing theexibility to adapt as your business requirements change.
end noteS
1 Paul Avenant, Top Considerations for Moving to a SaaS Delivery Model for IT Service
Management, BMC Soware, 2010.
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