Cloud - Based ITSM Software

IT Service Management, or ITSM to keep with our indelible quest for abbreviations in all things IT to make us sound expensive, is really just a means to keep IT services from becoming the weeds of an organization. From addressing quality of service to how each digital transformation change can have a measurable impact or really anything to do with IT. As you've probably heard or even implemented in various parts of your business, you can't manage what you can't measure – Deming? Drucker? You tell me who but it still sticks. We'll explore the till sticks. There are definitive points to host your ITSM software on-premise as well as on-cloud as a Software as a Service, SaaS offering.?

With the world steering head-on to sustainability efforts, one thing you can do to reduce your footprint is to reduce what you have on-premise. Though you need to be careful in that as not everything should be stuffed in the cloud due to a multitude of reasons such as data management and security as well as risk exposure. This is where a clear organizational policy on data management has to be well crafted and aligned with all business stakeholders along with a robust risk management assessment of the policy that is also cleared with regulators, both internal and external. Obviously this applies to your ITSM software and all moving parts need to be re-assessed on a regular basis as things change and applicability of clauses as well as the considerations for risk management should be continually aligned and all business stakeholders kept abreast to any changes. What does this mean to your organization? To not bore you further, I've included a table to show some of the comparisons between on-premise vs cloud-based ITSM software solutions.?

**I've seen many TCO calculations leave the extent of this out. Real estate includes space cost or rental, physical security guards, physical access such as card and biometric cost as well as maintenance, data centre service costs also include maintenance costs as well as the hours needed for your procurement, finance, auditors, governance, leaders...you know what I am alluding to.?

When business leaders tell me that they view SaaS or cloud services expensive, more often than not, they have not really calculated the total cost of ownership.?

Let's also have a short conversation on the latest hype, which is Ai. Having such add-ons may seem expensive for a Cloud ITSM software but I was once required to provide 6 servers for an on-premises solution just to enable some Ai functionality and that was from a large provider too. On cloud? A fraction of the cost and no fuss on dealing with resiliency, scale and compute resource needs.??

However, all the plusses of having your ITSM software on cloud means nothing if it does not comply with your company's data management policies or any required external regulatory compliance.??

Let's look at one of the leaders with a SaaS offering, ServiceNow. I have had countless people telling me that it is expensive. My usual question is, as compared to what? You may start with ITSM and decide to do CSM, HR, SecOps or maybe SPM, what does it cost you? Call your AE, ask for the invoice and it's pretty much turned on for you to start work configuring to your needs. How much time did you spend on procurement in comparison to on-premises? Software license subscription only vs that and compute resources, also needing quite substantial time planning the sizing of the compute resources and increased procurement processes too. Most SaaS also provide non ITSM modules too and that eases a lot of pain like justifying for other services and software as well as ensuring your existing IT operations can support a different platform but with something like ServiceNow? Your same people can handle additional modules. Don't forget that when you staff up, you need to consider sufficient resources to cover in absence or attrition to reduce the risk too.?

In a nutshell, when you are looking to increase your IT service quality and understand the cost and performance of IT in your organization, unless there are regulatory compliance needs, Cloud-based ITSM software is the way to go with many more advantages that can have your organization improve your competitive advantage over peers that have yet to consider ITSM.

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