Just a quickie blog as the ServiceNow Knowledge11 European annual user conference draws to a close in Frankfurt. It’s been a whirlwind three days so far and I still have a couple more sessions to attend including my own (a panel session about working effectively within the information blizzard that is the modern “workplace” … obviously the session has a far flasher title than this … “Information Consumption At The Speed Of Light”).  The other is the sexily-titled “Mobility, Cloud, And The Coming Singularity” by Chris Dancy.

For more details see the Twitter #know11 stream http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23know11 and/or read a couple of other related Forrester blogs:

http://blogs.forrester.com/john_rakowski/11-12-08-good_tidings_we_bring_as_the_customer_is_king

http://blogs.forrester.com/stephen_mann/11-12-06-newsflash_for_the_itsm_community_saas_is_a_red_herring

So what did I learn?

A lot, on many levels; the difficulty is where to start and what to “log” in a short space of time (this needs to be quick).

Anyway, here we go:

1. ServiceNow’s customers love them and their stuff (I knew this from the last two European events but it is good to double-check). See my previous blog as to why.
2. ServiceNow’s latest release (Aspen) focuses on increased resilience and availability – an end user experience “enhancement.”
3. Real IT people shared experiences of real ITSM in the trenches in the context of pre, mid, and post-ServiceNow “implementation.” Examples include (from my Tweets):
   • Reinoud Martens, CERN: service management at CERN is not just IT but all general services and admin services which incs HR, Fin etc.
   • Reinoud Martens, CERN: service mgt maturity ... When we pulled our heads out of the sand we were worse than we thought.
   • Reinoud Martens, CERN: we take from #ITIL what makes sense <<< seems Nobel Prize winners have suggested improvements.
   • Orange Business Services: key to success is delivering against customer needs rather than supply-based restrictions.
   • Simon Skelton, John Lewis: his title slide lists him as Manager, Service Mgt Improvement (aka PR & Politics Mgr).
   • Simon Skelton, John Lewis: lessons learnt ... too much focus on incident ... Didn't place enough focus on problem management.
   • Simon Skelton, John Lewis: ITIL process maturity was very low, too much reliance on people working hard #know11
   • Simon Skelton, John Lewis: it used to take new service desk staff 2 years to become effective.
   • Simon Skelton, John Lewis: internal security people cloud concerns went to "that's better than what we do.”
   • Simon Skelton, John Lewis: realized that e-learning needs more time and effort than the tool implementation
4. Chris Dancy dropped loads of social gems, such as:
   • #social ... Your users are already doing it, you just don't know …
   • How many people in an org are paid to just create and read emails?
   • Saying "social CMDB" is like saying "turbo horse"
   • Mobiles are the new smoking ... "Men have become the tools of their tools"
   • In 2 years our devices will know more about us than we know about them
   • IT's view on security is flawed ... Lock down my eyes
   • Personal data liberation ... What does your employer do when the future technology-grafted you moves between jobs? 
   • The speed of tech change is because new technology is used to create newer technology which is used to create newer technology.
5. Oh, and by the way, ServiceNow’s customers really do love them.

The John Lewis experience in particular is an ITSM case study on the softer side of technology implementation waiting to happen. My hat is tipped to Simon Skelton.

So that was that, the quick and dirty way. 

Auf Wiedersehen and, as always, your thoughts are always appreciated.

Please check out my latest blog ... http://blogs.forrester.com/stephen_mann