A little while back Martin Thompson at the ITSM Review wrote an interesting blog on the complexity of IT service management (ITSM) tool pricing:  http://www.theitsmreview.com/2011/09/ouch-o-meter/…I particularly liked his term "ouch-o-meter." It’s well worth a read.

It's something that has continued to puzzle me – what it would cost to buy AND implement an ITSM tool, PLUS any process or people-based change via professional services or third-party consultancy? Oops, I nearly forgot support and maintenance there too. To make matters worse, this is potentially an unknown and unbudgeted for cost that appears every 5-7years due to tool churn if us analyst types are to be believed (I have an outstanding action to include ITSM tool churn-related questions in a survey). But we need to park the churn issue for now and focus on cost or, more specifically, pricing models.

What did an ITSM tool cost in 2008? Or how long is a piece of string?

I cast my mind back to when I started as an industry analyst in 2008 and the complexity of not only which tools/applications, modules, or features needed to be costed-in but also the 30-50% "surcharge" for the professional services and 20-22% for support and maintenance. Then of course we needed to apply volume-based discounts and maybe something else based on the "customer-logo-appeal," the customer’s sourcing and vendor management strength/capabilities, and/or the sales person's need to hit quota at that point in time. I've probably oversimplified this too, feel free to educate me. 

Jumping forward to the Teenies* ...

In today's rapidly changing risk landscape, it's increasingly critical that infrastruture and operations professionals keep up to date with their most likely risks. Most companies only update their risk assessments annually, but many have not considered the risk of a robot uprising. For those firms that have not yet updated their continuity plans to include this very real risk, here are three tips that can get you started on the right path:

1. Store data in offline forms. Whether you choose tapes (outside a robotic tape library), punch cards, or optical media, you must keep current copies of data in a format that can't be sabotaged by the robots.
2. Keep continuity plans on paper. You'll want to have your plans for specifically dealing with the robot uprising in a format that is harder for the robots to read so they can't devise countermeasures to your plans.
3. Have emergency shutdwn protocols for your data center. To prevent the robots from taking over your data center and using it for their own purposes, you'll have to have an emergency shutdown plan.

These tips should get you started on the right path. Please contact me for additional information and best practices that I can provide on paper.

Happy April Fools!

Tablets drive worker productivity in part due to their hyper-portability, as I argued in a recent blog post. Workers can (and, we showed with data, do) use tablets in more places, places where they wouldn’t (and don’t) take their PCs.

The top question I’ve received about tablet hyper-portability is this one: “Tablets are very portable, sure, but are people using them as creation devices or as (mere) consumption devices?” The general assumption behind this question tends to be that “creation” activities are equal to “productivity,” while “consumption” activities are not. I believe this is a false dichotomy, however. Consuming the right information at the right time can increase worker productivity in and of itself. Let me offer a few examples showing how that can work:

• Retail sales associates using tablets with customers. Retailers are equipping sales associates with tablets to use on the retail floor, creating richer interactions with customers – and driving higher sales.
• Physicians conducting patient rounds with tablets. Physicians can gain rich, immediate insight into their patients’ health records – saving time and driving more accurate diagnoses in less time. They also use the tablets to show patients results (like x-ray images), creating a better patient experience.

The recent Forrester SaaS for IT Service Management (ITSM) Market Overview has proved popular but I thought it wise to step back from its focus on SaaS for a moment to talk about “choice.” That is choice of delivery model for ITSM-enabling capabilities; both upfront and over time. You might argue that this is flexibility rather than choice; but to me it is choice – on-premises, SaaS, or maybe both. If you look at the figure below it’s not necessarily a question at the forefront of people’s minds when choosing a new tool, ITSM-enabling or otherwise:

While Price nestles snuggly behind Features and functions, the closest to choice is “Type of software deployment” sitting in seventh place at 44%. It’s good to see that what the tool does is far more important than the delivery model, it’s probably also indicative of the fact that on-premises as a delivery model is not going away.

My view

IMO choice is important; in particular choice between delivery models and also choice over time. It’s also becoming an increasingly high-profile part of ITSM tool vendor selling and marketing/messaging “conversations.” FrontRange in particular has raised the stakes on choice in terms of coining a new term “Hybrid ITSM” and making it core to its value proposition.

Hybrid ITSM?