Customer preference is for hybrid IT Service Management

A key finding in the survey reveals a growing number of IT organisations are seeking a new generation of IT Service Management applications to help them monitor and manage their IT services from within a hybrid environment of on-premise and cloud services.

The survey, conducted between December 2012 and January 2013, draws its data from 341 participants within organisations of all different sizes and a variety of industries worldwide. The following were among the key findings reported:
• Nearly three quarters of respondents (72.7%) currently rely on legacy on-premise ITSM solutions to address their needs.
• Only 13.5% of respondents reported that they are “very satisfied” with the delivery method of their current ITSM solution, and an almost equal proportion stated that they are “dissatisfied” with said delivery method.
• One-third of respondents reported that the primary driver behind changing their ITSM solutions is to better align IT with the business. More than a quarter of survey takers also cited improved ease-of-use as a key factor in such a decision.
• Over half of the respondents categorised their organisations as being at the first level of ITSM maturity—in which organisations utilize a basic offering of IT help desk tools including incident, problem, inventory and knowledge management and reporting—and only a little more than a third of the respondents (35.5%) are at the second level of maturity—in which organisations take advantage of an expanded range of IT services including change management, self-service, service request and SLA management.
• Less than 10% of survey respondents are at the highest level of maturity and using service virtualisation, release governance, social IT management, analytics and reporting, and mobility management tools.
• A significant portion of respondents are committed to making the necessary investment in their ITSM systems and skills in 2013 to raise the maturity level of their ITSM deployment
• The IT manager is the key decision-maker in an organisation’s selection of its ITSM solution, and the quality of the ITSM supplier’s support and their ability to reduce the user’s total cost of ownership (TCO) are the most important criteria for selection.

“Scores of organisations are committed to improving their ITSM capabilities and maturity levels” said Jeffrey M. Kaplan, Managing Director, THINKstrategies. “However, many are finding that traditional, on-premise solutions do not always provide the best value when applied across the whole of the organisation. There are many instances where a cloud delivery method provides a level of cost-effectiveness and functionality that simply cannot be matched by legacy offerings.”

“Based on these survey findings, it is becoming increasingly apparent that organisations need a new generation of ITSM solutions that can address their evolving business needs with a mix of traditional, on-premise systems and widening array of cloud services,” said Kevin J. Smith, vice president and general manager of the Cloud Business Unit with FrontRange. “These findings confirm our position as the only provider of hybrid service management solutions on an integrated platform and that our vision and roadmap are aligned with what our end-users want and need to succeed in their business.”