The news this week in the UK has been awash with articles in relation to the potential problems that the Olympics 2012 could bring with reports of transport chaos, security rehearsals happening near Forrester’s London office to secret security documents being left on a train which detail policing measures. This is undoubtedly a unique occasion but with many eyes watching the UK this coming summer it’s something the planners simply have to get right. 

At Forrester, we believe that IT functions need to seriously prepare for the Olympic period also and so we will be holding a half day, collaborative event for our FLB members and interested prospects on Wednesday, 22^nd February 2012 from 12:45 – 4:30pm at Forrester’s London office to explore strategic and tactical solutions to these risks. This session will be led by Senior Analyst Dave Johnson, a former software executive with 15 years of industry experience focused on client management and related operational processes and tools.

So why does this matter to you?  

As well as an adaptation of a festive song this could be one of the guiding jingles for ServiceNow.

This week I have been attending, along with my colleague Stephen Mann, the Knowledge11 conference in Frankfurt. ServiceNow is one of those companies that ITSM practitioners have an interest in because of their phenomenal growth and go-to-market model.

So what are their secret ingredients that make the solution so appealing?

Is it simply, that their key differentiator is that they provide a SaaS-based model and have experienced a bit of luck with the ‘cloud’ computing phenomenon? Is it that they have a great company name which lends itself well to becoming a brand? Is it that their sales and account managers have mythical powers?

My answer to you, after spending time with their clients, is that, firstly, they have inherent or at least portray a focus on the end ‘customer.’ They understand that their customers are looking for fast integration that will link in and improve their current ITSM and other business workflow processes. Also, the majority of their customers adopt the SaaS-based solution; it means that they can’t hide behind the age old cloak of “It must be the users infrastructure/network/environment/processes, etc.” If there is a problem with the software they have to fix it because the chances are that another customer will experience the same issue.

Did the word ‘free’ prompt you to read this post  :-) ?

Stephen Mann’s post a couple of weeks ago on ‘Giving Back To The IT Service Management Community’ got me thinking in regards to ways in which the industry could give something back easily. The reality, I believe, is that we need to take ITSM back to its roots, back to focusing on IT customers.

One of the problems I see with ITSM adoption is that it is all too easy to get lost in a framework such as ITIL and to lose focus on the customer element. Unfortunately, ITSM adoption is not a one-size-fits-all approach and so adoption can be different from company A to company B, which means that trying to adopt a process from a guide can be difficult and can feel impossible.

The answer to good ITSM adoption practices lies within those practitioners who have implemented processes, experienced the highs, the lows, the sweat and even the tears. In order to really build best practices these people need to share these experiences back to the rest of the community. So one way I think we could do this is to arrange a ‘Free ITSM Practitioner Meet Up’ which I thought could maybe be called ITSMME (me=meet up). This would follow the successful Cloudcamp format and would be an evening, free to attend event with an agenda like this:

• 6.30pm  – Introduction  - introducing speakers and maybe a theme.

Another year and Citrix’s acquisition strategy of interesting companies continues as they have announced the purchase of EMS-Cortex. This acquisition has caught my eye because EMS-Cortex provides a web-based “cloud control panel” that can be used by service providers and end users to manage the provisioning and delegation administration of hosted business applications in a cloud environment such as XenApp, Microsoft Exchange, BlackBerry Enterprise Server, and a number of other critical business applications. In theory this means that customers and vendors will be able to “spin up” core business services quickly in a multi tenant environment.  

It is an interesting acquisition, as vendors are starting to address the fact that for “cloudonomics” to be achieved by their customers it is important that they ease the route to cloud adoption. While this acquisition is potentially a good move for Citrix I think it will be interesting for I&O professionals to see how they plan to integrate this ease of deployment with existing business service management processes, especially if the EMS-Cortex solution is going to be used in a live production environment.