Service Management Software Survey Review

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1 Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association University of Oxford 13 Banbury Road Oxford OX2 6NN Tel: +44 () Fax: +44 () Service Management Software Survey Review Summary At the highest level this Survey shows that whilst most institutions are working on implementing ITIL they are doing so at their own pace and in an order which best fits with their individual operational priorities. There is no single universities all use.. toolset with a wide range of toolsets in use to varying levels of complexity and exploitation. There were 34 respondents to the Survey of whom almost all (94%) have implemented ITIL to some degree. Unsurprisingly, the most common process to be implemented is Incident Management/Service Desk with Change Management being the next. Types of tool in use In support of the implemented processes the most common type of software in use is the commercially purchased Integrated Service Management Toolset. There is also a significant use (~33%) of in house developed systems or other systems such as Excel and Sharepoint although they are most commonly used alongside another technology solution. Perhaps surprisingly there is no use of any of the open source service management toolsets. The graph and table below show how many institutions have implemented each process and also which types of tools they are using to support these implementations. The count of uses is based on a yes answer to the question Which of the following products do you use as a tool to support your ITIL implementation? and includes multiple counts where an institution uses more than one tool.

2 3 Which of the following products do you use as a tool to support your ITIL implementation? Microsoft Excel or other spreadsheet application Integrated Service Management Toolset (purchased) Integrated Service Management Toolset (open source) In-house developed system Other None Table 1: Number of institutions using the technology in support of ITIL Specific vendors and applications A review of the actual purchased Integrated Service Management toolsets shows that there is a wide variety of products used including some SaaS services hosted offsite. For the purpose of this work and because the spread of applications and versions was so diverse, the figures below show an aggregation across the version numbers. There is no clear leader, however, the most commonly used are Hornbill Support works (7 users,) and RMS (3 users). However, the Hornbill products are available in three different levels of complexity and both with and without pre-configuration; all of these have been shown together under Hornbill.

3 Integrated service management toolsets in use by vendor/application The free text comments showed an equal mix of purchasing approach either direct from the vendor or via a reseller which seems to be product dependent. The question wording meant that replies about satisfaction with the person that they purchased the product through were limited only to resellers and not direct vendors. For those that did answer the questions about satisfaction there was a complete mix from very happy through to would not recommend. Vendor/Product name Altris HEAT Hornbill Support Works HP BTO Toolset HP Service Centre Lan Desk M/S Office (Sharepoint & Excel)* Marval Numara Footprints Remedy (BMC) Richmond RMS Service Desk Express (BMC) Service Now Top Desk Vmware Infrastructure Service Management System Universities using the product Oxford Institute of Cancer Research Anglia Ruskin, Exeter, LSE, Glasgow. Thames Valley, University College Falmouth, Portsmouth Nottingham Trent Newcastle, Buckinghamshire New Dundee Arts, Kent, Edinburgh Northampton Kent Sheffield Hallam City Wolverhampton, Coventry, Bradford Liverpool John Moores, Leicester Birmingham Edinburgh Arts Note*: Whilst around ten institutions mentioned that they used a Microsoft product in support of their ITIL implementation only these three institutions mentioned them within this question about integrated service management toolsets.

4 Toolset use by process Toolset use by ITIL process Process Not Implemented Other Integrated Service Management Toolset In-house system Excel/Spreadsheet Maturity level of toolset implementations The figures show that less than one quarter of the responding institutions have a stable set of ITIL support tools that they are happy with. Most (approx 66%) of the institutions are either developing or have just gone live with a new toolset and are still actively developing it. Maturity level of current toolset implementation Fallen out of favour - considering replacement Live - frozen, no developments allowed Live - only minor enhancement to support continual improvement Live - still being significantly developed and added to Under development - not yet live Of the Integrated Service Management Toolsets that have been in use for more than five years most are happy with their toolset and are still working to add significant enhancements to them.

5 Conversely, all of the systems who were classified as fallen out of favour were systems that had in place for more than five years and the comments were about them being cumbersome to use and not fully supporting the ITIL processes that they needed. Perhaps this is an indicator of how much the Service Management discipline has developed during this time Length of time in use Excel ISMT Other + years 4 to years 3 to 4 years 2 to 3 years 1 to 2 years Less than 1 year General comments Below are a selection of the free text comments made by respondents which could be helpful to others. They are anonymous as a number of institutions asked for this. The tools are not bad in themselves, however their implementation is clumsy, overly complex and contains too many bespoke customisations which are impossible to support internally following the departure of the individual who implemented them. We hope to upgrade to a newer, vanilla version of the product in 211 the out of the box tool seems good as far as we have used it. We have been having some problems with supplier management. Also we have had difficulties resourcing the necessary levels of change management to achieve the desired service management maturity level. Requires too much programming capacity that we haven't got in-house. Over reliance on same 1-2 people (who have other roles) and/or expensive consultancy. Not wholly accepted in community required to use it. Implementations not felt to have been taken through to completion, so doesn't fully meet requirements and not clear when/if they ever would be. Reporting is a nightmare. Having had an in house system for over eight years, the improvements we stand to gain in efficiency and monitoring are enormous when we switch over to an ITSM solution later this year. SLA control and visual representation (once configured) are very good. You can see at a glance what requests are allocated to the team, being actioned and being passed around! We are happy with our product for two main reasons: 1. Ease of use for support staff (analysts) and for user self-service relatively intuitive. 2. Highly extendable and configurable relatively open for a fully supported commercial product.

6 We have used MS excel plus MS Sharepoint to support our ITIL Service Management implementation. This has allowed us to take a very pragmatic approach to what we have adopted and how. Want more detailed feedback? More detailed feedback is available to UCISA member institutions from ITIL Steering Group member Liz Bailey (liz.bailey@le.ac.uk). Please specific questions as required.