itsm tool upgrade options

Upgrading your ITSM tool?Think about the TCO.

Barclay Rae, Axios Systems

Gary Stalker, Axios Systems

Mike Alexander, University of Notre Dame

December 03, 2009

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Agenda

Introductions• Emily Sturm – Marketing Manager, Axios

Systems

Upgrade Considerations & Total Cost of Ownership• Barclay Rae – Head of Axios Global Services

A Streamlined Approach to ITSM Upgrades• Gary Stalker – Head of Product Development,

Axios Systems

Customer Experience• Mike Alexander – Director of IT Operations,

University of Notre Dame

Question & Answer session

ITSM Upgrade Considerations Measuring Up The Options

Barclay Rae

Axios Head of Global Services

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• Axios Head of Global Services

• 17 years ITSM & CRM Consulting

• Worked in ITSM/CRM since 1982

• 300+ ITSM & Service-change projects

• HDI/SDI international exam committee member

• Author and columnist

• itSMF committee member

• Head of HDI/SDI Consulting – 2005–2008

Barclay Rae

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Looking To Upgrade Your ITSM System?

Drivers – why are you doing this?

1) Cost savings

2) Quality and efficiency improvements

3) Expanded functional requirements

4) Business changes

5) Vendor and product demands – upgrade path, etc.

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Looking To Upgrade Your ITSM System?

What should you consider?

1) Specification + Process

2) Project + Vendor

3) Hardware + Software

4) Consulting + Training

5) Benefits and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

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Upgrade Considerations

• Specification - have your requirements changed? Functionality Reporting/Management Information Integrations No. of users Access

• Process – do you need to do more? Incident, Problem, Change, Service Desk CMS, SLM Service Catalog, Portfolio, Request, Demand Financial and business focus Non-IT area?

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Upgrade Considerations

• Project – is this scoped and agreed? Objectives Structure and roles Governance Budget Plan Risks

• Vendor – matching partners? Review support and service history Current product capability What is involved in the upgrade path Impact on customizations, configurations and integrations Commitment to the market Approach to delivery Hidden costs

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Upgrade Considerations

• Hardware – current and future? Capacity and Demand Performance Support and maintenance Lifecycle management

• Software – what do you need? Licenses Additional modules Types of user Current versus planned usage Managing code streams and versions Integrations Sources of data Support and maintenance Upgrade considerations

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Upgrade Considerations

• Consultancy – what help do you need? Strategic and business focus Technical and product Process and project management Light touch or team?

• Training – who and at what level? Service and Support staff System administrators IT users Contact users – customers Product and process Ongoing needs – staff changes, etc.

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Upgrade Considerations

• Benefits – what are we trying to do? Costs – operational:

» Efficiency – turnaround times, reduced process bottlenecks» Reduced or re-engaged staff

Service quality – first time fix, request fulfillment Management Information – visibility and control – decision support TCO costs

• Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) - lifecycle costs? Implementation/upgrade costs

» License purchase costs» Integrations » Consulting & training» Internal resources (developers, administrators)

Ongoing / Recurring Costs – 1 – 3 – 5 years» Licenses» Maintenance and support» Consulting & training» Internal resources (developers, administrators)» Product upgrade

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assyst – The Lowest TCO In The IndustryLegacy ITSM Solution assyst - On Premise assyst SaaS - Next Generation

5 YEAR TCO 4.65M 5 YEAR TCO 1.84M 5 YEAR TCO 1.78M

Initial Software Purchase

300 ad-hoc users - full ITSM

1M Initial Software Purchase 300 ad-hoc users - full ITSM

630K Total Subscription for Period 300 assyst Users - full ITSM

1.3M

Software Maintenance for Term 1M Software Maintenance 630K Software Maintenance for Term 0

Consulting

Implementation, upgrades, ongoing

900K Consulting

Implementation, upgrades, ongoing

150K Consulting

Implementation, upgrades, ongoing

150K

Training

User & admin training

150K Training 30K Training 30K

Internal People Resources Implementation, upgrades, administration

1.4M Internal People Resources Implementation, upgrades, administration

300K Internal People Resources Implementation, upgrades, administration

300K

3 FTEs & 2 PTEs 1 FTE Only 1 FTE Only

Infrastructure

Software, hardware, storage, data center

200K Infrastructure

Software, hardware, storage, data center

100K Infrastructure

Software, hardware, storage, data center

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Notes: The costs above are an estimation based on an organization with the following requirements. > 300 ad-hoc users who need access to the application> Integration with >10,000 discovered assets from multiple sources> Integration with email for notifications and Active Directory> Integration with 2 different monitoring / alerting systems>full ITIL deployment (Incident, Problem, Change, Asset, Config, CMDB/CMS, Service Request / Service Catalog, SLM, Financial)> Fully functioning test / development system>DR system

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On Premise On Premise SaaS

Vendor

License Model Perpetual Perpetual Subscription

AdministrationCustomer – team of

developers and admin1 FTE or less to admin 1 FTE or less to admin

Customization versus

Configuration

Custom coding by customer or

vendor

Customer configuration via

GUI and drag and drop

interface

Customer configuration via

GUI and drag and drop

interface

Upgrades

Most often through

professional services. Lengthy

and expensive

Seamless, quick (hours not

days and months),

integrations and

configurations stay intact

In partnership with customer,

planned and expected with no

surprises

TechnologyOld, purchased, different

platforms

One consistent state of the

art platform all developed

in-house

Next Generation SaaS ITSM

built on industry leading tools

with better performance.

Mature while still state-of-the-

art and modern

Axios Systems – Most Flexible Among ITSM Vendors

Gary Stalker

Head of Product Development, Axios Systems

A Streamlined Approach To ITSM Upgrades

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assyst Product Overview

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Why Reduce The Burden Of Upgrades?

There are a number of reasons why smart vendors should

enable a simple upgrade path:

• Reducing the number of supported versions, and the associated administration

• Efficiency of fixes and Service Packs

• We are a support organization - just like you

• Gain upgrade momentum

• Customers using the latest code make good references

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What Impacts A Vendor’s Ability To Upgrade?

There are numerous influencers on a vendor’s upgrade strategy,

including:

• Acquisition strategy

• Re-alignment of technologies

• Re-alignment of business focus

• Permitting amendments to core schema

• Permitting amendments to core code

• Release cycles which exceed 12 months

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So What Does Axios Systems Do?

We believe it is an often overlooked criteria in the tool selection

process, and should be a key component of any evaluation.

What makes Axios Systems different when it comes to upgrades?

• We build upgradeability into the product from the outset

• “Will it impact an upgrade?”

• Organic growth strategy = predictable technology platform

• Set performance targets for staff on minimizing

any upgrade incidents

• Maximum of 12 months release cycle, reducing to 4 months

• Cumulative updates give ability to skip versions if required

• Core belief that it is one of our Unique Selling Points

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Technically What’s Different?

Axios has implemented a number of strategies to ensure ease of

upgrades:

• Stable, but continually evolving schema

• Configuration not customization – all stored in database

• Core upgrade, followed by re-application of configurations

• Simple code stream with “customer specials”

• No re-use of tables/ fields - reports and integrations unaffected

• Agile Development methodology

• Specific needs due to SaaS vendor demands

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assystSaaS Upgrades - 100% Managed Upgrades

• We guarantee upgrades don’t break your integrations, configurations or customizations• Actual upgrade takes 1-2 hours during scheduled maintenance windows

Axios Performs • Release Planning• Regression testing ( old and new features )• Documentation and online training where possible• System testing• All component testing ( EG – Integrations )• Performance testing• Any hardware provisioning if necessary• Upgrade of all software components to new versions

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So What Does This Mean For Axios?

What are the benefits to our organization?

• Greatly reduced support burden

• Nearly 100% of customers on latest versions

• No need for on-site, technical resource

• Developers hate doing support, they love

working on new stuff

• Reference sites with latest code

• Active and over-subscribed beta program

• Predictable release plan

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So What Does This Mean To Our Customers?

The benefits to our customers include:

• Massively reduces TCO of their ITSM solutions

• Predictability improves their planning

• Upgrade when they want, not when we want

• No reliance on Axios resources from a budgetary perspective

• Confidence in solution

• Allows their people to concentrate on delivering more value

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Customer Example

International Bank

Based: London

IT support staff: 300

Business end users: 15,000

No. of assets supported: 40,000

Last Major Upgrade: From Version 7.5 to Version 8 (latest)

End-to-end project time: 1 month

Planning time for upgrade: 4 days

Actual upgrade window: 45 minutes

Axios consulting: 0 days

About University of Notre DameAbout University of Notre Dame

Founded in 1842. Independent university located

adjacent to South Bend, IN. Admission highly-competitive with

71% of incoming freshman graduating in top 5% of their high school classes.

Organized into 4 colleges—Arts and Letters, Science, Engineering, and the Mendoza College of Business—the School of Architecture, the Law School, the Graduate School, six major research institutes, more than 40 centers and special programs, and the University library system.

Students, faculty and staff use assyst to log Incidents (15,000 users).

Self-service to students, faculty, staff andalumni totaling 120,000.

Approximately 200 use assyst regularly (Service Desk and Infrastructure).

Incident Management, Change Management and CMDB deployed, Problem Management is in pilot status, advanced Configuration Management is in planning.

Will deploy Service Catalog in Q1 2010. Currently looking at interfacing with our

monitoring infrastructure for Event Management.

Our assyst EnvironmentOur assyst Environment

Normal operations performed by one administrator (have two backup administrators).

Routine allocation is 3.5 hours per week. Have successfully automated routine tasks

i.e. Business users automatically imported from ERP system.

assyst runs very smoothly. Targeting additional time for primary

administrator to become the in-house expert.

Day-to-Day OperationsDay-to-Day Operations

Upgraded from V7.5 to V8.2 as a defined project End-to-end project ran approximately four months Time to execute actual upgrade: 12 hours Primary time allocations were as follows:

Primary Administrator: 25% Database Administrator: 10% Service Desk (Functional Lead): 25% Project Management: 5%

Good support during trial database conversion Identified about 30 use cases for testing Overall the conversion was smooth and easily done

Configurations passed through into new version seamlessly Did not need Axios consultants on-site to perform upgrade

Release UpgradesRelease Upgrades

Like the fact there are no hidden costs – all modules are included and new ones are supplied as part of maintenance costs.

Training and consulting costs are relatively low compared with other vendors.

Minimal operational support reduces support costs (with respect to administration).

Only other charges encountered were for additional licenses when we decided to expand support to new users.

Total Cost of OwnershipTotal Cost of Ownership

assyst has more capabilities than are apparent Workflow engine allows complex change models Supplier and contract maintenance is beneficial Web interface provides more flexibility Can use to track staff skill inventory.

Metric development is supported through both out-of-the-box canned and dashboard reports and through reporting packages.

User Groups allow for exchange of information.

assyst as a Solutionassyst as a Solution

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Further Resources

White Paper coming soon: 5 Upgrade Headaches & How to Avoid Them

On Demand Webcast: Implementing a Service Catalog – 5 Top Tips

Other white papers and on Demand webcasts available on www.axiossystems.com

Questions?