Realizing the Benefits of SaaS-Based Service Management in the Enterprise: Best Practices and Lessons Learned in Real-Life Implementations

Transcription

1 Realizing the Benefits of SaaS-Based Service Management in the Enterprise: Best Practices and Lessons Learned in Real-Life Implementations

2 Introduction The benefits offered by Software as a Service (SaaS)-based solutions are compelling for corporate IT: no need to purchase and manage infrastructure, no maintenance, and no upgrades. IT managers know these benefits can result in faster time-to-value and lower total-cost-of-ownership (TCO) for IT infrastructure and services. In the IT Service Management world, SaaSbased solutions have been used successfully by organizations with simple environments and less mature process models. Many enterprises look at those experiences and wonder if it is possible to reproduce the benefits while meeting the more complex requirements of a large organization. This paper is based on in-depth interviews with IT executives at 14 enterprises who have chosen and implemented SaaS-based Service Management solutions. Participants consistently reported that SaaS-based solutions for Service Management can be appropriate for use by large companies. However, they cautioned that it is important to clearly understand business requirements because not all SaaS-based Service Management solutions meet the unique demands of larger companies. This paper discusses important considerations for choosing a SaaS-based Service Management solution for enterprise environments, including: Fully capturing the total cost of ownership (TCO) Evaluating the impact of customizations Understanding the effort required to build and maintain integrations Scoping needs beyond initial modules Availability of services to support an enterprise implementation Project Methodology Dimensional Research interviewed customers who have purchased and implemented SaaS-based Service Management solutions for use in an enterprise environment to obtain in-depth feedback on actual experiences using these products. Content in this paper is based directly on input from telephone interviews with IT executives representing 14 companies based in North America and Europe. The participants were identified using independent sources. All quotes were taken from interview transcripts, although some quotes have been edited slightly for grammar and readability. This paper was commissioned by HP Software, a supplier of SaaS-based Service Management solutions. HP did not introduce Dimensional Research to any participants, did not participate in the interviews, and did not influence the content of this report. Participants were not informed that HP was the research sponsor. Participant Profile All participants were IT executives at large companies, ranging from $500M to $90B in revenue and with service desks that support from 2,000 to 10,000 employees. The participants represented 14 companies from a wide range of industries including: Financial Services and Insurance (4) Technology (2) Services (2) Travel and Entertainment (1) Energy (1) Real Estate (1) Retail (1) Healthcare (1) Public Sector (1) Participants had deep experience primarily with two SaaS-based Service Management solutions: Service-Now and HP Service Manager. Because of the challenges in obtaining corporate approvals to discuss their IT operations publicly, all participants were assured their feedback would be presented as part of a summarized report with no attribution to them or their companies. Pioneering SaaS Service Management for the Enterprise The IT executives in our study were consistent in feeling they were pioneering a new area of technology by selecting a SaaS approach to Service Management tools. There were simply no other live enterprise deployments to evaluate before making Realizing the Benefits of SaaS-Based Service Management in the Enterprise 2

3 their own decision, and they had to extrapolate their decision based on past experiences with in-house solutions, talking to smaller companies about lessons learned from SaaS implementations, and working with the vendors to learn from their expertise. What Works Well in Real Life Certain attributes of the SaaS tools used by participants were consistently seen as clear strengths. These attributes included: Ease of use offered by a Web-based interface Ability to easily scale an implementation as the user base grows Simplicity of upgrades Web-Based SaaS Tools Considered Very Easy to Use Participants emphasized that Service Management tools must be used easily by a wide range of users to be successful: from employees who submit tickets only occasionally, to the front-line support staff who use them as a primary application, all the way to the power user administrators. Both Service-Now and HP Service Manager got high marks for ease of use, and participants felt the SaaS approach was a key component of this positive review. The web-based interface was emphasized by participants as a huge advantage of SaaS tools. Because the products are web-based, getting new users up and running is very simple no matter where they are located and, once activated, users can easily access the application from anywhere. One of the key success factors in our tool decision was that the end users would actually want to use it. The Service-Now interface, especially for Incident Management, was very simple and easy to use. HP Service Manager has been around for a while, so we were concerned that they d do like Remedy and stick to the old user interface. But somebody at HP gets it. Their new user interface is slick. We re not getting pushback from our end users at all. Participants mentioned one caveat to these advantages: The more straightforward modules, such as Incident Management and Problem Management, were the easiest to use. Modules with more sophisticated functionality, for example Asset Management and Configuration Management Data Base (CMDB), were by nature more complex and not as straightforward. Easy to Scale the Number of Users One expected benefit of any SaaS deployment is that as the user community grows, IT can easily increase the number of users without hitting plateaus of support in an internal infrastructure. Participants confirmed that this scalability benefit was indeed true for SaaS Service Management products, and they considered scalability one of the important benefits for choosing the SaaS approach. No-Hassle Upgrades While the SaaS-based Service Management tools used by participants had different upgrade cycles, in general the upgrade process itself was painless and had very little impact on users. The upgrade was made automatically the next time users logged-on, sometimes displaying a note to point out significant changes, especially for administration features. Upgrades functioned as promised, which was considered a huge benefit by participants. One caveat to the ease of upgrades was the case of extensive customization. If the Service Management applications had been customized heavily, upgrades could cause problems. See the Customization section below for more detail on this issue. 3 Realizing the Benefits of SaaS-Based Service Management in the Enterprise

4 What Caused Issues: Five Things to Consider While interview participants were able to articulate many benefits of SaaS-based Service Management, they stated that just because the tools were SaaS-based, it did not mean that tool implementation and operation was straightforward in their complex enterprise environments. Participants consistently emphasized a few key factors that should be considered before selecting and implementing a SaaS solution, including: Total cost of ownership Requirements for customization Need for integrations Roadmap of needs beyond the first modules Services available to support enterprise implementations SaaS has many conveniences, but it is not magic. While it was really simple to implement the basic things, most things that were complex in our in-house solution are still complex with SaaS. In Real Life, the TCO of SaaS Service Management is Not Lower One surprise for many participants was that the SaaS option did not have an obviously lower cost of ownership in enterprise environments. Unless an IT organization is fundamentally changing how it handles Service Management when moving from an in-house solution to SaaS, for example by eliminating certain capabilities, the total cost of ownership remained about the same. We did a very deep analysis of cost and net-net the cost of the products came out pretty even. Service-Now, HP, and Remedy were all about the same. Several participants complained that one unexpected surprise in a SaaS solution was the cost of the network connection to the data center. Enterprise customers who require security, failover, and high performance in their network connections had to make unplanned investments in additional dedicated circuits, VPN, firewalls and other equipment. Of course, this was not an issue for all participants, only those with enterprise requirements for handling sensitive data and availability commitments. Realizing the Benefits of SaaS-Based Service Management in the Enterprise 4

5 Sure, it was cheaper on Line Item 10, but those costs were just shifted to Line Item 3 when we had to upgrade the network and it wasn t cheaper on the bottom line. Customization May Cause Problems with Some SaaS Tools The ability to configure the SaaS tools used by participants was considered a real strength of both the Service-Now and HP Service Manager solutions. Participants reported that it was straightforward to make the configurations. However, configurations are very different than customizations: Configurations are relatively straightforward to make, with no obvious impact to a SaaS implementation. One example of configuration is making basic changes to the name of an existing field. Customizations involve making changes to the tool. The most typical types of customization for a Service Management solution are to add a new field or change a workflow. Customizations add complexity to SaaS-based products, because upgrades to the core product are not always aware of customizations and changes to the core product may break customizations. We re not the kind of company that does anything out of the box. We need to do extensive customizations and need to understand the customizability of a product, the cost to implement customizations, and the impact that will have on ongoing maintenance. Not every SaaS product could support those needs. When customizing a SaaS Service Management solution, it is important to communicate with the vendor to clearly understand the impact of upgrades before they are implemented. Automatic upgrades may be a problem rather than a benefit in environments with customizations. Participants using the Service-Now product in particular expressed frustration about implementing customizations, especially around changing any of the look-andfeel aspects of the product or creating sophisticated workflows. We had no problems at all rolling out the Incident Module of Service-Now, but my concern is what s next. We have a highly customized asset management system with a lot of approver-style workflow that I don t think Service-Now is robust enough to deal with. Carefully Capture Integration Needs Service Management tools do not exist in isolation. An enterprise environment frequently has requirements to integrate Service Management tools with a wide spectrum of other solutions including monitoring, authentication, HR, and ERP. In a SaaS environment, integrations technically work the same as with in-house solutions, and tools should be evaluated in the same way. Participants recommended asking the vendor to provide detailed information on APIs, web services, or other ways to integrate data or workflow with other tools. Reference customers who have successfully implemented those integrations should also be requested from vendors, because participants mentioned several examples of integrations that had been built by the vendor but never used in an enterprise environment and that did not work as promised. Note that participants considered integration, especially with monitoring products, to be a strength of HP Service Manager. We want to automatically generate a ticket anytime we have an alert from the monitoring systems, but we ve had some real problems with the integration and still don t have all of our monitoring alerts going into Service-Now. For an enterprise, that s just not acceptable. 5 Realizing the Benefits of SaaS-Based Service Management in the Enterprise

6 One additional impact of integrations is the network connection. If a workflow passes sensitive data, such as monitoring information or user details, a secure connection to the SaaS tool provider s hosting facility may be required and should be factored into the total cost of ownership. Once you integrate with HP Operations Center or Microsoft MOM you re freely passing all your dirty laundry over the internet. You have to peel back from that with VPN, dedicated circuits, and firewalls, and those cost more money. Decide Early if You Need More Than Incident Management Implementing an Incident Management module was very straightforward with both Service-Now and HP Service Manager for all participants. However, because Incident Management is a typical starting place for any Service Management implementation, and is an area that is highly standardized across the industry, participants cautioned other IT managers to avoid setting expectations about the ease of implementing future modules based on that initial experience. Two specific recommendations were made by participants for selecting tools to meet current and future needs for Service Management. The first recommendation was to decide before implementing an Incident Management solution if further modules will be implemented that will share information. If the solution is just for Incident Management, a simplistic category approach can enable a fast implementation with little downside in the future. However, if long-term plans involve a CMDB, the category approach is not the best for getting started with SaaS-based Service Management. Of course you can do Incident Management with just a database and a task table that has a front end. But any enterprise probably needs to do change management based on assets, and you will get stuck pretty fast with a category/subcategory approach. The other recommendation made by participants was to evaluate tools based on a five-year roadmap. An enterprise that needs only Incident Management and Problem Management capabilities with a rudimentary CMDB will choose a different SaaS solution than an enterprise that wants a robust asset management solution and a powerful CMDB. Identifying these long-term plans and needs before choosing a SaaS-based Service Management solution will save time and expense in the future. Identify Enterprise Implementation Needs Early When implementing a SaaS-based solution, it may feel as if there is no need for vendor help because the product is already installed. However, participants reported the actual implementation is a minor part of the whole solution. It is important for IT managers to determine if they will need help in building processes, implementing configurations, developing customizations, or building documentation. Each vendor has a different ecosystem for these types of enterprise support, and participants recommend understanding fully the implications for a particular enterprise environment early in the process of selecting a solution. As a large enterprise, I like to have my vendor provide some hand holding during an implementation. If there is a problem with the process, the tool will get blamed. Realizing the Benefits of SaaS-Based Service Management in the Enterprise 6

7 Conclusion Enterprise IT organizations can gain significant benefits from implementing SaaS-based solutions for Service Management, but it is extremely important to start the project with an eye toward long-term requirements. While certain modules, particularly Incident Management, are extremely easy to implement with any of today s SaaS-based tools, not all products can extend beyond that starting place as enterprise requirements expand. Before selecting and implementing a SaaS solution for Service Management, be sure to fully consider: Total cost of ownership including costs for a secure network Requirements for customizations including both ability to make changes and the impact of automatic upgrades Need for integrations including detailed information on successfully integrating with key systems Roadmap of needs beyond the first modules, particularly CMDB or discovery mapping Solution support for enterprise implementations including available resources for building processes, developing customizations, and building documentation. About Dimensional Research Dimensional Research provides practical market research services that help corporate IT organizations and technology companies make smarter business decisions. Our researchers are experts in technology but also understand how corporate IT organizations operate. Our research services deliver a clear understanding of customer and market dynamics. For more information visit About HP Software This paper was commissioned by HP Software. Our business technology optimization (BTO) solutions help you make sure that every dollar invested in IT, every resource allocated and every application in development or production meets your business goals. For more information visit , Dimensional Research. All rights reserved. HP Operations and Operations Center are registered U.S. trademarks of Hewlett-Packard Company. Service-Now is a registered trademark of Service-Now.com. All other product and company names are the property of their respective trademark or service mark holders and are hereby acknowledged.