Flying under the radar, Moogsoft looks to shake up the ITSM space

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1 Flying under the radar, Moogsoft looks to shake up the ITSM space Analyst: Dennis Callaghan 15 Feb, 2013 Veteran software entrepreneurs Phil Tee and Mike Silvey are back with Moogsoft, their first startup in more than a decade, as they try to solve IT service management (ITSM) issues that continue to baffle enterprises today: too many silos, too many helpdesk tickets and recurring issues, and too much time to resolution. Moogsoft is still in the early stages, and a long way from taking the IT world by storm, but based on early customer feedback we've heard, Tee and Silvey may have hit on something big. The 451 Take Moogsoft looks like a disruptor in an ITSM space that's already been pretty well-disrupted in the last few years by the SaaS model. While the company remains small and early stage, with limited reach, the brains behind Moogsoft and the early adopter feedback we've gotten are both very encouraging. We believe Moogsoft can solve common ITSM issues especially the reduction of helpdesk tickets that continue to vex enterprises. The question is: How disruptive will Moogsoft be? While it will have the opportunity to replace existing systems over time, we believe it will be more complementary, initially. Established ITSM vendors will need to keep an eye on Moogsoft, and may need to match its capabilities or risk falling behind. Context Moogsoft was launched in January 2012 by the veteran software entrepreneur team of Tee and Silvey. Tee, chairman, CEO and chief scientist, and Silvey, president and EVP of business Copyright The 451 Group 1

2 development and product management, previously brought Micromuse Netcool and RiverSoft to market in the 1990s. Both companies would go public. RiverSoft, after an initial public offering in 2000, was sold to Micromuse in IBM then acquired Micromuse at the end of Although Micromuse was an unqualified success and RiverSoft flopped Micromuse ended up acquiring it for a negative multiple the technologies Tee developed at the two companies now form the foundations of IBM Tivoli Netcool, Cisco Info Center and Hewlett-Packard OpenView Extended Topology, and monitor more than 90% of the world's IP networks. Tee and Silvey most recently founded Promethyan Labs, a venture fund and technology incubator launched to bring algorithm-heavy software to market. They have suspended that venture to focus on Moogsoft, an algorithm-heavy software company. Tee and Silvey got the idea for Moogsoft after a lunch with a former customer of their previous ventures. They learned that IT was still swimming in helpdesk tickets, and plagued by siloed expertise and a lack of connection between root-cause analysis at the monitoring layer and the IT service management system. The end user remains the first to identify the existence of an incident, leading to increased times to diagnose and resolve, and consequent cost of impact. Increasing levels of infrastructure complexity, including cloud services and virtualized infrastructure, further complicate matters and delay resolution. Tee and Silvey set out to solve these problems with Moogsoft. Moogsoft did not raise venture funding, but instead got seed funding from potential customers. The company is looking to raise venture funding now, but only if it considers the terms to be suitably favorable. It has fewer than 20 employees. Although Moogsoft was launched in London, and development remains there, it has relocated its headquarters to San Francisco. Moogsoft's corporate website is built on WordPress, and does not mask WordPress in its URL (moogsoft.wordpress.com). Ostensibly, this is done because Moogsoft wants to be up front about the technologies it's using to drive the 'new wave of supplier/customer relations.' It's also because the company is intentionally trying to fly under the radar of potential competitors. Products Moogsoft's Moog platform serves as a bridge between monitoring systems and the helpdesk. It offers 'situational awareness' that ties reported IT incidents to specific faults detected in IT infrastructure or events that impact IT infrastructure. Moog detects these faults not through rules, IT processes, modeling or even discovery, but through advanced stochastic algorithms that can infer the existence of a fault, other faults it may be related to and what systems are impacted by that fault. These algorithms also enable Moog to isolate faults before they lead to IT incidents. Copyright The 451 Group 2

Although Micromuse was an unqualified success and RiverSoft flopped Micromuse ended up acquiring it for a negative multiple the technologies Tee developed at the two companies now form the

3 Moog also features a 'Social Situation Room,' a secure collaboration space where various IT stakeholders support staff, subject-matter experts, customers, runbook automation staff, etc. can access IT service management content, including the events, impacted business services, processes, conversation narratives and activity journals. This allows users to view that content in the proper situational context and see, for example, how multiple incidents could all be linked to the same fault. Moog uses natural language-processing techniques to find help in the form of Internet and intranet information, human expertise, and any previous Situation Room content to help staff resolve the situation more quickly. The promise of Moog, then, is to reduce the overall amount of helpdesk tickets in the first place, either by spotting faults before they become incidents or consolidating helpdesk tickets tied to the same fault. Moog is also used to speed the time to resolution by fostering greater collaboration between stakeholders, giving those stakeholders access to all the relevant information surrounding an incident so that incidents can be resolved without escalation. Moog can be used in combination with existing ITSM tools or as a stand-alone product, which is how its founders envision it. Moog is available as a licensed software download and sold on an annual subscription basis. A SaaS version is planned for later in the year. Customers Moogsoft claims about six customers to date. Although none are able to be referenced at this time, the early adopters we know of are large global financial service firms using the software in combination with their existing ITSM tools to reduce the amount of helpdesk tickets in the first place and speed time to resolution of problems and incidents. One of these early adopter customers first brought the company to our attention. We expect most customers will ultimately be large enterprises. Competition Moogsoft envisions itself as being disruptive to the ITSM space and, ultimately, competing against heavyweights like BMC Remedy, HP IT Service Management, ServiceNow and FrontRange Heat. Initially, the company looks to be more of an add-on to those offerings. We don't expect many customers to take a rip-and-replace approach initially, but if Moog deployments prove successful, that will be an option for some customers. The closest direct competitor we see to Moogsoft at the moment is ITinvolve, a startup focusing on using extensive social IT capabilities to speed the time to resolution, similar to what Moogsoft is Copyright The 451 Group 3

This allows users to view that content in the proper situational context and see, for example, how multiple incidents could all be linked to the same fault.

4 doing with its Social Situation Room. ITinvolve does not have a focus on advanced algorithms, at least not yet. But like Moogsoft, it's being used in a complementary fashion in many of its initial use cases, although it hopes to eventually replace existing tools. IPsoft is a managed service provider that offers outsourced helpdesk services on its own ITSM platform. It touts its autonomic computing capabilities as being able to solve helpdesk issues without human intervention, a similar, though not identical, value proposition to Moogsoft's. SAManage and Freshdesk are newer cloud-based ITSM startups. Cherwell Software, Axios Systems, Vector Networks, Sunview Software and ManageEngine are more established ITSM software companies that offer either a cloud or licensed software model. Spiceworks offers integrated network management, ITSM and IT asset management in a free, ad-supported SaaS model. All of these are potential competitors, although we would expect Moogsoft to be targeting much larger enterprises than most of these companies typically do. SWOT Analysis Strengths Weaknesses You can't get a much more seasoned management duo in IT management than Tee and Silvey. Early customer feedback we've heard has been very positive. Opportunities Threats Helping existing helpdesk tools to work better would seem to be the first opportunity for Moogsoft. Displacing heavyweights like BMC, HP and even a maturing ServiceNow is a longer-term opportunity. Moogsoft is still at a very nascent prefunding stage. Its WordPress-based website reads more like an extended white paper. The company will need to build a partner channel, but many potential technology partners will shun it as a competitor. The larger vendors in this space will have the opportunity to defend their flank if Moogsoft starts to take business away from them. ITSM startups are also developing ways to improve on existing products and processes. Copyright The 451 Group 4

IPsoft is a managed service provider that offers outsourced helpdesk services on its own ITSM platform.

5 Reproduced by permission of The 451 Group; This report was originally published within 451 Research's Market Insight Service. For additional information on 451 Research or to apply for trial access, go to: Copyright The 451 Group 5

ServiceNow looks to move IT beyond helpdesk to managing service relationships

ServiceNow looks to move IT beyond helpdesk to managing service relationships Analyst: Dennis Callaghan 31 May, 2013 At its recent Knowledge13 customer conference, ServiceNow laid out its vision for becoming