AOL Keywords Era

Do you remember AOL Keywords? AOL sold AOL keywords that can be searched inside their walled garden or internet as they called it. As AOL was synonymous with internet, businesses had to buy keywords so that users can find them on AOL. This was a controlled access that worked for a while,  when websites came with their own URLs, followed by better search engines like Google. The AOL keywords faded and became irrelevant.

I Think Gartner's Magic Quadrant will end up like AOL Keywords.

• Talking to customers, understanding and learning from their implementations
• Arriving at conclusions and have a few pointers, how the future will be
• Sharing this information with the world

• Only paid vendors get into the MQ
  
• Others may get mentioned but not covered
• There is a form for every vendor to give a briefing, everyone who has filled it knows that it never works
  

http://www.bmc.com/solutions/ondemand.html

Here's BMC CEO with Marc Benioff

But, Where Is The Product on AppExchange / StandAlone

The demo was good, however I am not able to see the product on SF.com's AppXchange or any links. Can anyone send the link on the real product - no demo stuff. 

BMC Software Leverages Amazon Web Services to Simplify Deployment and Management of Cloud Environments

BMC Press Release

I feel that BMC's PR on Cloud Computing needs a little explanation as it has the word cloud computing is often mistaken for SaaS. BMC's parntership with Amazon EC2 will help users to move their Software Installation to the cloud. It is NOT BMC's software moving to the cloud.

There's a big difference, let me explain.

First, What is Amazon EC2

Amazon EC2 is Virtualized Infrastructure as Service. Let's take an example, how will a small business run apps and offer a service? They have to rent / own data centers, they have to buy their own hardware and server software and then hire specialists to manage datacenters. Over time this non-core function takes a lot of resources which is not the core focus of business. Amazon EC2 helps you with an Infrastructure virtualization solution. With EC2,  you can instanly provision any type of server hardware you want and choose the software and within minutues your server is ready. You can even remote control the machine. This helps you rapidly scale up or downsize infrastructure in minutes. All you have to pay is a monthly charge for usage of machine and bandwidth. To get a little more under the hood, Amazon EC2 is an improved offering based on Xen Hypervisor, an open source insfrastructure virtualization. 

Hosting Your App in EC2 Is Not SaaS, Why?

Hosting an application in Amazon EC2 is not SaaS because you have just moved the app installation from your own datacenter to Amazon cloud or virtualized data center. There is no magic that will automatically give scalability and multi-tenancy to your apps.Yes, you can do a PR with a word cloud computing, this is not SaaS by any measure.

Where is the AMI package for Remedy and Service Desk Express

If there was something that could have really helped is the link for Remedy or product AMI. An AMI instance is a special package for a direct deployment in Amazon EC2. An AMI is nothing but an image of you app with the OS, once you got this ready. This will help customers to pay and fire up an AMI, they will get product installated almost immediately. 

I was unable to find any AMI for BMC products, I only found people asking for it.

http://www.nabble.com/Remedy-in-Amazon-Computing-Cloud--td23276709.html

So How Will BMC + Amazon EC2 help users?

In my opinion, there is only one useful thing. 

BMC Atrium creating dynamic AMI instances in EC2: Although this is not a killer feature, I think it will help users really if you can create and provision server hardware from the request itself. It will be a simple api call to fire up a machine instance. Alteast the user does not have to switch between two different services. 

 Enterprise customers can request computing resources – either internal (physical or virtual) or external from Amazon EC2 – through an integrated self-service portal.

I really not sure how this is even a feature to be quoted as it is just an option in the self service request form. 

I Expected Something really Bigger and Better

This is not it. 

Service-now really covers ITSM to a great extent. It's no surprise, as the founders are ex-Peregrine techies. They have built ITIL features in breadth and depth. Service-Now wants to play only the big league, Business Service Management stuff on the product and minimum price tag of $40k shows that they are shooting for the BMC, CA and HP, IBM league. The implementation is comprehensive, it is meant for large businesses moving away from the Big 4. I was curious to know how they managed the asset discovery as it's important step for populating the CMDB / CMS. This is the part where most vendors say you have to buy a third party discovery tool, that will increase your spend per asset. I found that they use scripts for asset discovery, cool. You don't have pay extra. They have all ingredients to win, 250 enterprise customers, 25 million in recurring revenues, a proven management team and a product on the spot. I think it is fair to say Service-now is the new leader in the "Saas Vendors in ITSM Space".

Watch Out:

Service-now is comprehensive but it is also complex. It's very hard to figure out where you want to start. It is not the Do-It-Yourself kinda stuff. I am sure Admins and team need a lot of training to figure this out. I don't blame them, in the ITIL-domain where the processes are well-defined, if you want to implement all the processes by the book, you will end up like this.

Price: Minimum contract price is $40,000 for support 35 processes. 

Beetil: 

Beetil is a Kick-ass startup from New Zealand. Beetil takes a less-is-more approach to ITIL. I see a lot of similarities with 37signals in terms of UI and less-is-more approach. The approach shows two things well, they understand ITIL and what their customers want. They have taken the key points of ITIL and implemented in a easy way for small business. This means that you will get all ITIL Service Support modules with a fresh and simple approach. You can get all the modules Incident, Problem, Change, Release, Configuration management made simple and for one price. I am not sure how you will populate the asset database. Guess you have to buy a discovery tool. This is a great product for SMB to get started with, there is no learning curve, they don't have to break their heads over ITIL jargons or implementing it. It just works.

Watch Out:

There is no categorization in incidents, problems. I am really not sure how users can pull out a report on how many incidents / problems came in because of a failure (particular type). 

Price: $25 per seat per month

As of I know that's it. In the pure play Saas, there are only two players each on opposite side spectrum.

Other Products / Services That Did Not Make It

Zendesk : 

Zendesk, a Helpdesk on Saas but they don't have ITIL.  They have the word Incident Management and Incident types will not transform a helpdesk into an ITIL Service Desk. Maybe a few other words too!.

Octopus Software:

Octopus Software:  A ITIL Software based and maybe technically fits the bill for a Saas app. Sylvain Hamel R&D Director got back with the advantages of Microsoft Smart Client Architecture. However in a world that is moving towards the web, the desktop UI is a BIG turn off. Personally, I will not call it a Saas app or will not recommend to my customers.

 Friendly Request Forms

Just when we were ready to take the PinkVerify / PinkScan Certification, OGC announced ITIL Certification for software vendors. Now OGC owns ITIL or directs ITIL so it becomes the most obvious choice.

 For the first time since the creation of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) over 20 years ago, the OGC have given their official endorsement for an ITIL product compliance scheme to audit Vendor products, documentation and processes against the published best practices of ITIL (v2 and v3).

PinkElephant had a clearly defined process with evaluation criteria and they charged for consulting if we failed to comply. It was straight forward, software vendors can focus and release a service pack to make sure that the product complied. OGC is not transparent, and there are so many ways to interpret a standard.

• Ken Turbitt is founder, CEO and President of SMCG
• SMCG consults for the APM group, it processes ITIL compliance
• Malcom Fry is consulting partner of SMCG
• BMC was the first to get OGC compliance

Price:

it is going to cost $10,000 per process and guess you get some rebates if you chose to 4 or 5 together. As software vendor we will go for the license unless our customers say, we will not buy unless you have the OGC compliance. We are yet to meet THAT customer.

Image licensed under creative commons by Loving Earth

Update: The license is based on technicians $50 per Technicians [Not users] which is good.

2. Incident Monitor

These guys are funny, really. Check this out.

 Our proven track record for SaaS can not be matched. Our typical 3 day SaaS service project plan for either your specific solution need or our standard ITIL Helpdesk, covers the following:

• Day 1 - Set Up, configure your initial project using our standard ITIL Helpdesk or one of our other solution templates. Load all of your contact and service personnel information into your environment and provide secure access.
• Day 2 - Tailoring, tailor the initial project or ITIL Helpdesk for your specific notification messages, service rules and end user interface look and feel. Do scenario walk-throughs to exercise the system and validate the system.
• Day 3 - Training, walk you through a one day hands on training course that introduces you to IncidentMonitor and the process of managing service requests.