A growing number of IT organizations 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, according to a comprehensive survey by FrontRange and THINKstrategies that examines how the accelerating adoption of cloud computing is impacting the ITSM needs of organizations.
The following were among the other key findings:
- 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 categorized their organizations as being at the first level of ITSM maturity — in which organizations 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 organizations 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 virtualization, 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 organization’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 organizations are committed to improving their ITSM capabilities and maturity levels. However, many are finding that traditional, on-premise solutions do not always provide the best value when applied across the whole of the organization. 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 organizations 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.
The survey, conducted between December 2012 and January 2013, draws its data from 341 participants within organizations of all different sizes and a variety of industries worldwide.
Jeffrey Kaplan is the Managing Director of THINKstrategies and Founder of the Cloud Computing Showplace.
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