Finding ITSM Toolsets that Meet Customer Demand

Technology revolutions in mobility and social media have dramatically affected the way IT organisations use toolsets to support their service improvement strategies. Meanwhile, other concepts such as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and cloud computing are also influencing the way toolsets are managed and used. What are the implications of these issues for those who are buying tools or executing a continual improvement strategy to meet the changing accessibility demand of clients? As new mobility technology and cloud computing strategies in all sorts of guises evolve and become more prevalent, these trends are having a massive impact on ITSM toolsets, both individually and in combination with each other. They are not only changing how we manage IT but also what we manage. Changed requirements According to Paul Muller, HPs VP Strategic Marketing, Software, the management of cloud and mobility fundamentally changes the requirements of toolsets. While cloud services might conceivably imply that management of the data-centre has become obsolete, in actual fact, management of the services increases across a number of dimensions, Muller said. There now needs to be tool-assisted processes for planning, selecting and retiring services. Within the tool suite, you also have to establish a self-service catalogue to concentrate points of consumption while automated provisioning, integration and documentation into the CMDB needs to be addressed. Ideally, you will also need to deploy proactive monitoring of availability, performance, security and cost plus you will need a capability to integrate case-exchange between third party helpdesks in relation to incidents and changes etc. The consumerisation of IT With the consumerisation of IT in full swing, Tom Canning, VP APAC for Flexera Software emphasises that IT organisations need to be able to support users by delivering mission-critical applications whenever, wherever and however they are required. Increasingly, this is via self service app stores, Canning said. They must do this in a manner that ensures continual application readiness through automated identification, rationalisation, compatibility assessment, planning, fixing and packaging of the applications to be delivered. In addition, they must ensure continual compliance with software license agreements all the while retaining control and accountability over software assets through the use of software license optimisation solutions. Self-service experience Canning then went on to declare that users want an iTunes-like, selfservice experience to access their mission critical enterprise apps. This applies for all of their devices in their target environment but it can create issues with licencing compliance and application readiness. Enterprises are challenged to implement AppPortals that can deliver this experience while also retaining accountability and control, he said. To deliver continual readiness and compliance, it is therefore essential for the environment to be closely integrated with the application readiness and software license optimisation processes. This gives IT the control and processes needed to ensure apps are usable, easily supported and that licenses are proactively managed.

Blurred lines Adrian Talbot, Solution Architect with Unisys Asia Pacific, said there has been a blurring between work and personal use of devices and tools utilising Apple iOS and Android apps. This puts new demand on the IT department to manage a greater range of devices requiring new skills sets, Talbot said. This is particularly so if they are employee-owned and being used on a BYOD basis, there is less control over what is running on those devices and what they are used for. We are seeing an increasing number of ANZ organisations wanting mobile access to the actual ITSM toolset. They want to be able to use Web and Phone Apps to access the toolset to raise Incidents, view details and receive status updates. They also want to be able to raise changes and approve them.

Mobile technologies deliver service John OBrien, VP Asia Pacific at FrontRange Solutions cited a Gartner forecast which predicts 50 per cent of Level 1 service desk analysts in large organisations will use mobile technologies to deliver service by 2017. He also pointed to other research that identified that mobility had surpassed cloud as the number one concern for Australian CIOs (Gartner 2012 CIO Survey). This trend is not limited to the IT department, OBrien said. Mobility has implications for the broader business as well, especially in light of emerging concepts such as BYOD and the consumerisation of IT. The proliferation of mobile devices and the broader adoption of cloud computing has changed the way IT operators interact with their staff, customers and partners, which has far-reaching implications for traditional IT Service Management (ITSM) toolsets. As personal devices enter the workplace, including tablets and smartphones, the broader IT function in enterprises has had to respond very quickly. ITSM vendors have had to adapt rapidly to facilitate these trends, most importantly by developing customer facing IT service management tools that are webbased and can easily integrate with mobile devices. They are also developing multiple iterations of their toolsets so they are available to the people that need it most, including technicians who can now receive job notifications on-thego via mobile ITSM applications. Of course this has security and IT governance implications. Emphasis on rich features In light of the evolving business technology access environment, ITSM toolsets have indeed changed and improved over the last 2-3 years to meet customer requirements with an increased emphasis on feature rich experiences for the end-user. FrontRanges OBrien thinks this is by far the biggest challenge ITSM toolsets vendors have faced but one that is being met head-on by the industry. The front-end has become much more important, he said. Interfaces and dashboards have had to become more intuitive and easy-to-use. There has also been more emphasis on the likes of self service modules, integrated voice capabilities and service catalogue offerings. Complete transparency of all steps involved in a service request helps increase end-user confidence to serve themselves rather than calling the service desk. Future-proofed investments Flexeras Cannon said the toolsets that are thriving today must facilitate continual change to help enterprises future-proof their investments in software assets. For example, IT environments have long been homogeneous, requiring on-premise, MSI-formatted applications running on perpetual software licenses, Cannon said. In todays increasingly heterogeneous environments, those traditional applications have to run alongside SaaS, Cloud, virtualised, and other types of applications. Companies need a common solution to manage this increasingly diverse and more complex environment. Tools that were previously viewed as tactical for functions like application packaging, have evolved and become far more strategic solutions. They are now critical to helping enterprises manage migrations to new platforms such as Windows 7 in these heterogeneous environments. With critical functions such as compatibility assessment with virtual/ cloud environments, remediation, and packaging for multiple environments, cutting edge toolsets vastly simplify and streamline application deployments on premises, in virtualised environments and the Cloud.

Virtualisation at the core According to HPs Muller, while there have been many changes to ITSM toolsets in recent years, in many ways things havent changed that much at all. Cameron Haight from Gartner has a great blog on the topic where he talks about how IT management tools have really only advanced incrementally over the last decade and to some extent I agree, Muller said. Clearly, the most impactful change of the last five years has been virtualisation. While many think that virtualisation sounds like an operational plumbing problem, its actually fundamental to ITSM toolsets and with virtualisation being a foundational cloud technology, organisations looking to build their own private or public cloud need to understand the implications. Unlike physical environments where moves/adds/changes (MACs) are low frequency and relatively long duration, MACs in a virtualised environment are rapid, high frequency and automated - such as spinning down an unused virtual server to accommodate capacity for a more heavily used or failover service. This change creates a huge headache for ITSM toolsets that are unable to track the constantly changing relationship between what work is being done (the service), where its being done (the physical resource) and importantly why its being done (the service level and cost). Without that information even basic functions like diagnostics are challenging and advanced tasks such as capacity planning and optimisation are impossible. Managing the rate of change Muller also discussed where he thinks customers are looking for further improvements in the toolsets they use. He said that they want help to keep track of the rate of change as they move to become more cloudlike in their service delivery models. The most pressing concern that emerges when I meet with CIOs and their staff is their ability to develop and deliver innovative applications to the business with less time, cost and risk, he said. They are particularly concerned when the business makes comparisons between their internal IT and cloud/SaaS providers who are able to deliver continuous, incremental improvements to their service without causing massive downtime or a visible spike in costs. It is a general trend for organisations to be able to act more like a SaaS/ Cloud provider. They want to be able to update in a similar manner to providers such as Google Docs, Facebook or Salesforce which can often be multiple times a day without the end user knowing it. Transparency in favour OBrien said that FrontRanges customers are mainly looking for continued improvements in transparency from their toolsets. Rich out-of-the-box functionality based on ITIL best practice is also a key consideration for customers, OBrien said. They simply do not want to spend time making hefty configurations to their ITSM toolsets. They want flexible solutions that have the scalability to grow with the dynamic needs of their own business. Meanwhile, many organisations are moving beyond incident management alone, to explore the opportunities posed by embedded knowledge management and service improvement modules. OBrien said that customers are also asking for better integration of ITSM and additional functionality in extending its capabilities in the business. Service catalogues with shopping cart-like experiences, voice integration for automated help desk support for basic IT issues such as password re-sets and better desktop and server management are also high on their list of priority improvements, he said. Its all about business service According to Unisys Talbot, customers are starting to pay more attention to the business service or process enhancements of toolsets. They want to be able to map individual components of a toolset to that level. This allows them to measure and determine the service, availability and impact of incidents and changes at the business service or process level instead of the individual component level. This will enable changes to components of the environment to be assessed to determine which business process they might or will impact, Talbot said. Incidents for individual components can be mapped to the business process that they are impacting and then the incident can be raised at the business process level with appropriate priority level instead of a default priority level for the individual components.

This then provides an end-toend view of the environment from a business process point of view including end users devices where these are also mapped and monitored. Challenges for tools vendors According to Flexeras Canning, the greatest challenges faced by ITSM toolsets vendors aiming to advance innovation and meet the needs of customers is in predicting which technologies and trends will gain or lose momentum. Vendors have to be forwardlooking and must analyse trends and anticipate where the market is going, Canning said. This often requires making product decisions based on that analysis. Successful tool vendors do this well and therefore have products ready for customers as they are ready to invest in solutions. At the same time, they must maintain simplicity in their solutions in the face of accelerating complexity. None of this is easy but successful vendors always find ways to add more value to their solutions. Unisys Talbot feels that there are still challenges for vendors in meeting the diversity of integration options. He said there can never be too many standardised off-the-shelf integrations for the ITSM suite. It is a rapidly changing marketplace where customers expect more deployment options, he said. We are pleased to see the advent of on-demand options for customers who wish for a cloud based service offering and we look forward to outof- box integrations with social media platforms and I see the gamification of ITSM as one of the more innovative concepts on the horizon. HPs Muller felt that the other great challenge for toolsets providers is countering the great vendor consolidation trend which started back during Y2K. Today, this has reversed into an explosion of heterogeneity, Muller said. We now have a wider choice of hypervisor, operating system, database technologies and middleware before we even stop to consider the impact of the various new devices and cloud services we have to manage. In terms of the new heterogeneity, last decades approach of trying to limit this choice is doomed to fail as enterprises leverage this IT Cambrian Explosion to gain differentiation. While I anticipate that like its ancient counterpart, we will eventually settle on a handful of the strongest alternatives, in the meantime IT leaders are asking us to give them flexibility of choice. This is not just in terms of process, applications and infrastructure, but also in terms of management tools themselves. We have to be able to respond to clients need to be able to integrate our competitors tools and open-source tools into our environment with the same degree of connectivity that they expect from using an endto-end toolset. Were living through a time of remarkable change in terms of business models, compliance and technology. HPs current focus is on helping enterprises perform better by anticipating change enabling them to capture the opportunity of tomorrow today. FrontRanges OBrien believes the biggest challenge for ITSM toolsets vendors is increased demand from customers for shorter development turnaround times, as well as, incremental service. Rather than executing one or two major upgrades per year, customers want more continuous and quicker upgrades, he said. This presents more pressure on organisations to invest and deliver on R&D projects that will ensure products are stable, especially those hosted in the cloud. Therein lies the other great challenge. Vendors have to foresee emerging market trends and keep pace with change. They have to identify the right areas of investment to ensure their toolset is leading the way in terms of best practice and customer satisfaction. Thanks to the following organisations which assisted with this article: Flexera Software is a provider of strategic solutions for Application Usage Management. It helps businesses strategically manage application usage so they can deliver continuous compliance, optimised usage and maximised value. www.flexerasoftware.com. Unisys provides a portfolio of IT services, software, and technology. It brings together offerings and capabilities in outsourcing services, systems integration and consulting services, infrastructure services, maintenance services, and high-end server technology. www.unisys.com.

 FrontRange Solutions provides IT service management, IT asset management and customer services solutions. Its ITSM software brings together a comprehensive set of service and lifecycle products designed to improve service levels and productivity in alignment with the delivery of business value. www.frontrange.com. HP offers a complete range of services through a hybrid, multisource delivery model that allows customers to manage and secure their entire service portfolio to enable governance, security and service quality regardless of source across the services lifecycle. www.hp.com.