Clearing the Fog with Cloud based ITSM – Part 1

Slide Presentation Available here

It seems like every year in IT there is some hot topic. It gets hyped to a point that the hype takes on a life of its own. It is TRANSFORMATIONAL, PARADIGM SHIFT, It becomes the savior of all IT struggles and issues. It will save the world. But as we have seen recently, it is very hard to live up to the hype frenzy. Cloud Based ITSM is something a lot of vendors are pushing right now. So let’s take a look at the myth versus reality.

Looking at Gartner’s Hype Cycle for 2010, it looks like Cloud Computing in general is over the hump. Though a closer look shows us that private cloud computing hasn’t reached the top of the hill. That is because the focus on the cloud has been the public cloud.

Now the cloud, after a few permutations along the way, has become an active area. Maybe more specifically it has expanded to engulf not only those banks of modems but also the servers, infrastructure, applications and in some cases the human resources. It has expanded right up to the browser door of the end-user. Through this one door, the user can make use of not only the company’s information but also transparently access information from multiple sources (vendors, customers, partners) that they need to perform their jobs more efficiently and effectively.

What is the Cloud?

Unlike the cloud of the past, the cloud of today is many things to many people. It seems every day there is another service identified for the cloud based on a Service Oriented Architecture. The idea that we can utilize services as we need them and expand and contract requirements as well as costs are the main reasons the cloud has such an appeal to the IT industry.

Whenever a new subject is hyped, people start creating scenarios as to what the advantage is for the subject. There is no one size fits all and there is no one advantage. Each business has their own requirements and vision as to what is important.
 SMB – Low upfront cost, fewer human and technical resources, basically they look at it as the latest in outsourcing. Enterprises on the other hand might look at lower upfront cost, pay-to-play services, virtualization capabilities reducing infrastructure, web services vs. custom api’s for integration. 

Again, no one size fits all especially when it comes to IT Service Management.

Cloud based versus application based – an example – tweet is sent, read, retweeted, automatically posted to Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, integrated into a blog, it feeds more data back to the poster, copied to an IM chat. That one tweet interacts with numerous systems and then becomes part of the cloud consciousness. So it shouldn’t be a giant leap to believe that ITSM will see massive growth in the cloud. It may be in private clouds but then, through secure connections, it connects, as needed, to other services and resources to create a completely federated system. Once the system is in the cloud, ITSM becomes part of the growing composition of knowledge. The knowledge and information becomes available to other trusted connections without building large, disconnected systems.

Hybrid SaaS Cloud

Before there was SaaS we had ASP hosted services. These terms still exist, but have all been replaced by SaaS, predominantly due to the success of products like Salesforce.com. Indeed, most Sales Force Automation (SFA) tools are now offered this way, and tend to work very well. However it is important to understand that SaaS is not a good fit for every organization. 

The problem is not necessarily with the technology itself. Everything can be done over public and private clouds quite easily using secure channels and web services. The problem is the security, performance and scalability.

Fast forward to 2009 and the growing interest from analysts and organizations in SaaS based offerings. With the increasing cost pressures and economic downturns, organizations are looking for ways to ease the burden of installing, implementing and managing large software projects. However, it is important to understand what the different offerings provide. 

While there has been a significant amount of hype surrounding SaaS in the last few years, these discussions have been predominantly focused around the pure-play SaaS solutions, what we call the SaaS 2.0 model (hosted only). These solutions have often failed to deliver in the ease-of-use and level of integration required in the large enterprises

. Focusing on SaaS 3.0, or the hybrid approach, you must recognize that larger installations require more than a simple hosted environment. Early approaches focused on providing SaaS using legacy client server systems. We have seen many failed attempts offering SaaS using a combination of client server software, VPN tunnels, Citrix servers, and even WebEx based access. These approaches to SaaS have all but vanished from the landscape. This model was designed by the legacy vendors so they could claim they had a SaaS based offering and were still new, innovative and relevant. This is not much different to what happened when vendors such as LiveTime were selling web based service management in 2002, and suddenly everyone was claiming they were web based. When in fact, what they were really doing was web enabling their software. Essentially providing limited access to the system via the web, usually providing some sort of client portal at best and exposing less than 10% functionality of the software.
 This still goes on today using .NET applications, ActiveX controls and Flash. It isn’t transformational or a paradigm shift in thinking…it just requires thinking through the design and aligning it with the business objectives.

A survey by Gartner found that, among users and prospects of SaaS solutions in 333 enterprises in the US and the UK, the apparent acceptance of SaaS as a viable model has not entirely translated into satisfied users of SaaS. Vendors of these on demand solutions will point out that a large percentage of respondents will maintain their current levels. 

The Hybrid SaaS model provides various choices, from a full installation, through to a plug and play hardware appliance. These solutions sit within the enterprise and allow more seamless integration and scalability within your environment.

 This model is suited to larger enterprises, with a large number of technicians and end users, typically with multiple points of integration that require sub-second response times.