1 14589 SMB IT Decision Makers Guide How SaaS Can Benefit the IT Help Desk

8/3/2019 1 14589 SMB IT Decision Makers Guide How SaaS Can Benefit the IT Help Desk

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ThoughT Leadership WhiTe paper

The SMB IT Decision Makers Guide:How SaaS Can Benet the IT Help Desk


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ConTenTs

ExEcutivE Summary 1

thE StatE o SS or thE i.t. hElp DESk 1

WhoS uSing SS or thE i.t. hElp DESk, anD Why? 2

thE Evolution o SS or thE i.t. hElp DESk 3

obStaclES to aDoption 4

bEnEitS o SS anD thE clouD or thE i.t. hElp DESk 4


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W ees e s s e SS?

(r e e ees se 15, 1 e s d 5 e es .)

1 2 3 4 5 ts

Quickly get started with an automated setup 17 17.9% 25 26.3% 26 27.4% 15 15.8% 12 12.6% 95 100%

Personalize our portal to improve productivity 10 10.5% 24 25.3% 36 37.9% 17 17.9% 8 8.4% 95 100%

Deect help desk call volume through sel-service 16 16.8% 24 25.3% 28 29.5% 13 13.7% 14 14.7% 95 100%

Gain visibility into the environment through reporting

and dashboards12 12.6% 28 29.5% 27 28.4% 17 17.9% 11 11.6% 95 100%

Leverage sel-service to empower end users and

improve customer satisaction 1414.7% 28 29.5% 25 26.3% 19 20.0% 9 9.5% 95 100%

Reduce service costs 23 24.2% 19 20.0% 23 24.2% 19 20.0% 11 11.6% 95 100%

Provide ease o use 28 29.5% 19 20.0% 18 18.9% 18 18.9% 12 12.6% 95 100%

Have 99% reliability uptime 31 32.6% 17 17.9% 15 15.8% 13 13.7% 19 20.0% 95 100%

Table 1. Key eatures delivered by SaaS

Whos using ss or The i.T. heLp desk, and Why?

Although not all SaaS applications are created equal (see Three Common Misconceptions About SaaS or IT Management,

page 5), the SaaS model itsel is mature and tested. Salesorce.com, the enterprise cloud company, has more than 87,000

enterprise customers and two million individual subscribers using its services and its Force.com platorm or a variety o

business-critical, hosted applications rom sales and service (otherwise known as CRM) to IT inrastructure management

and database management. salesorce.com customers range rom small- and medium-sized businesses to Fortune 1000companies and multinationals.

Twenty-three percent o those surveyed used SaaS or their IT help desk, and nearly 28 percent used SaaS or their IT inrastructure.

Other uses included CRM, human resources/nance, and other applications. Slightly more than hal were not using SaaS.

As expected, respondents adopted SaaS solutions over traditional, on-premise solutions or a variety o IT services or the

ollowing key reasons:

Eciency

Scalability

Reliability and availability

Minimal startup cost

Low-cost monthly subscription and automatic upgrades

Businesses with a mission-critical IT help desk and demanding operational requirements such as telecommunications

vendors are entrusting their help desk to the cloud. For example, Allied Wireless Communications Corporation (AWCC)

provides Alltel wireless services to more than 800,000 customers in six states. The company chose a cloud-based service

desk solution that provides a consolidated service desk with sel-service and inventory management capabilities. Key to

the companys decision was the solutions strategic, subscription-based pricing and the speed o implementation.


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The IT help desk is an ideal candidate or SaaS or several reasons. The help desk is an established unction in IT, having been

around since the days o mainrames. The unction has mature, automated processes and standardized best practices, which

have been bolstered urther by best practices rom the IT Inrastructure Library (ITIL).

The IT help desk is in the critical path o business: A server problem or a lost password can knock a nancial trader or customer

ofine, resulting in lost business. Speed, eciency, eective collaboration, and scalability are important to success. By denition,

the IT help desk is constantly changing as it adapts to new users, new business applications and systems, and new work patterns

(such as mobile computing). The more you can automate and standardize the unction, the more ecient you can make the entire

experience or everyone involved.

Nearly 32 percent o respondents notcurrently using SaaS or their help desk are using homegrown solutions or manual

processes. This suggests the potential or savings and operational eciencies by o-loading soware maintenance,

development, and administration to a SaaS application delivered over the cloud.

The most eective IT help desk is mostly invisible. This means that IT is able to automatically solve most problems beore people

notice them and x problems aster. The help desk empowers business people to reset their passwords, gain access to new

services, or solve most o their own problems rom their Web browsers or sel-service portals.

Now, picture being able to have a help desk that is better and aster and that reduces costs because you are using the Web and

OPI (Other Peoples Inrastructure), while creating a better experience or help desk staers and customers alike. Thats the big

advantage o SaaS and the cloud or the IT help desk.

The evoLuTion o ss or The i.T. heLp desk

As revealed by the survey, early adopters o the SaaS model or the IT help desk are realizing advantages, including operational

savings, exibility, and speed. The combination o proven, eld-hardened SaaS platorms (such as salesorce.com) with proven,

mature IT help desk soware (such as the BMC Remedy IT Service Management Suite) can lower the risk and speed the ROI o

deploying a SaaS solution. For example, such solutions can speed implementation, make IT sta productive more quickly, and

enorce good standardized processes all o which save you time and money.

Aer AWCC acquired markets rom Verizon, we needed a service desk solution. With [BMCRemedyorce Service Desk], we got an out-o-the-box, ITIL-based solution that is easy orour employees to use, and we were able to set up the on-demand service desk in a mattero hours.

Rob Grummer, service desk manager, Allied Wireless Communications Corp (AWCC)

Based on our experience with the help desk, BMC is condent that as SaaS becomes more rmly entrenched in the IT help desk,

it will open up new opportunities or eciencies, including improving communication, collaboration, and rst-call problem solving

by taking advantage o the social Web. SaaS eventually could establish new benchmarks or IT help desk responsiveness and

perormance among business users, making the move to the cloud a competitive necessity or businesses in some industries.

Everyone in IT today is thinking about how to do things better, aster, and cheaper. One way to achieve this goal is to ocus on the

things that the business is known or your products and services and outsource the things that arent your specialty, such

as certain kinds o IT management. For many companies, SaaS will liberate the IT help desk sta rom drudgery so that they can

ocus 100 percent o their eorts on keeping business people working.

Although many organizations are still hesitant to adopt SaaS oerings as part o their service portolio, this survey demonstrates

that SaaS solutions are making great headway in addressing concerns over security, privacy, and data logistics. As more and

more IT and business service decisions are being made with a broader eect on the business perspective, the allure o the

SaaS model is in act being justied through the increasing statistical data reported by those who have already adopted this

alternative service model.


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obsTaCLes To adopTion

The survey also provides insights into why some businesses may have hesitated to adopt SaaS or their IT help desk, as

shown in Table 2.

Seventy-eight percent o respondents who are notcurrently using SaaS or their IT help desk or IT inrastructure said that

they would consider using SaaS or service management i they could demonstrate that it is more cost-eective than their

current help desk solutions.

The ability to satisactorily address privacy and security concerns, the availability o out-o-the-box best practices, and the

availability o inventory management control eatures are also important.

Respondents notcurrently using SaaS or IT service management cited the ollowing actors as important motivators or

moving to SaaS: proven cost-savings; ease o use; improvement in customer satisaction; out-o-the-box best practices

or help desk, service desk, and inventory management; and automatic upgrades.

Respondents who are notusing SaaS indicated that their current IT help desk solution meets most o their needs, but

there are additional eatures that they would like. Others said that their solution is not meeting their needs and that they

are outgrowing it.

Wd sde s S S e e e des? (ce .)

tee wee 107 esses.

c pee %

Yes, i we could demonstrate that is was more cost-eective than our

current help desk83 77.6%

Yes, i it used out-o-the-box best practices or service management 38 35.5%

Yes, i we could addresss security and privacy concerns 56 52.3%

Yes, i we could control inventory management 25 23.4%

Table 2. Considerations or SaaS in the uture

beneiTs o ss and The CLoud or The i.T. heLp desk

This section expands upon the results o the survey by discussing in more detail how the new generation o SaaS applications

or the IT help desk can provide businesses with many benets:

e u acc: Browser-based interaces provide ast, amiliar access to data and capabilities. Theres minimal

need or training, and help desk sta can easily customize their personal dashboards to make themselves even more

productive. Your sta can access their dashboards anytime, anywhere, rom any Web browser or their mobile devices,

as can your customers. With a good SaaS application, you can be up and running in minutes.

p--y-gw ml: With SaaS, businesses rent the soware applications, paying a monthly ee or each user.

This means that you pay only or what you use, and you can scale up or down based on whats going on in your business.

For example, a retailer could temporarily add IT help desk sta during the holiday season, or a nancial services company could

add sta during tax season. Theres no costly overhead soware licenses, servers, maintenance, power, and cooling sitting

in the background eating up your budget. Just pure application capability, available when and where you need it.


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ot--t-b bt pctc: Best-in-class SaaS applications or the IT help

desk include precongured, ITIL-based processes or incident management, sel-

service, and inventory management. SaaS vendors have an edge: They can draw

on the real-time collective experience o many IT proessionals (their customer

base) to stay current with the latest practices something you could never do

cost-eectively yoursel. And SaaS can deploy these practices to everyone as soon

as the practices are available something not possible with traditional soware.

stzt: SaaS applications can help you deploy and enorce standardized

processes more easily.

allt/ut: To remain competitive, SaaS vendors must provide high

service levels.

sl-sc: A good SaaS application will let you easily create and publish

sel-service portals or your customers so they can reset their passwords,

troubleshoot simple problems, and provision new services without assistance rom

a help desk technician. This kind o sel-service can eliminate nearly hal o your

most repetitive incidents. You can also customize these portals easily or your best

customers or or specic sets o customers in an industry.

attc u: SaaS vendors can push new capa bilities out to their

customers over the cloud as soon as they are available a new update every

day, i they want. For businesses, this means no more cumbersome soware

upgrades that can take the help desk ofine. Updates happen automatically, in the

background. Advanced multitenancy technology and other technologies ensure

that everyone on your team is updated on the same schedule.

pc sct: Established SaaS vendors serve thousands o customers

rom huge, secure data centers. Advanced privacy and security technologies,

along with multitenancy technology, enable SaaS vendors to serve many customers

while keeping their data separate and their access pr ivate. Managed services

where one organization, such as a serv ice bureau, processes data andtransactions or another organization have been around since the 1980s.

Data ormats and privacy/security practices emerged rom those services.

Today, these concepts and practices are now moving to the cloud, where

they continue to evolve alongside new advancements.

scllt: Want to add new eatures or upgrade data capacity? One o the

big advantages o a best-in-class SaaS application is the ability to easily and

cost-eectively do both, making it highly unlikely that you will ever outgrow

your SaaS solution.

gtw t t Cl: When your IT help desk resides in the cloud, you can

easily integrate it with other capabilities such as the latest productivity-

enhancing technologies available rom your SaaS vendor because the

technologies all use common inrastructure. For example, you can integrate

your help desk with your companys CRM application through precongured

connections provided by the vendor. You can try new mobility applications that

deliver help desk unctions on mobile devices. You can let IT sta and business

people collaborate and share inormation securely within the enterprise using

social applications, like Chatter.

Three Common misConCepTions

abouT ss for i.T. managemenT

There are many vendors oering SaaS

applications or IT management. That makes

or a lot o product announcements, market

noise, and conusion and misconceptions.

Here are three common misconceptions and

some advice on what to look or as you

navigate the many choices.

all ss lct ct ql.

Not true. Just as with traditional soware,

there are important considerations beyond

basic capabilities and price. Important

considerations include availability (which

may be more critical in some industries

than others), privacy, and security. Privacy

and security may be critically important or

businesses that are in regulated industries

or that conduct business in Europe, where

privacy regulations may require that data

be housed in the country in which it is

generated. In these two cases, larger,more established SaaS providers may be

able to meet these requirements more

cost-eectively.

ss lct tl l

c t - lt.

Again, not true. Data that resides on an on-

premise server may actually be less secure

than data stored in a cloud application. Data

on a local server can be hacked or can walk

out the door on a thumb drive or a mobile

phone. Data in SaaS applications typically

is housed in o-premise data centers that

are protected by high-grade rewalls,secure transport protocols, multitenancy

technology, and enterprise-grade security.

SaaS providers are in the business o

providing service assurance, not just renting

soware capabilities; thus, they can usually

provide better security and privacy

than you could or yoursel.

m t ss cc

ctlt t ctc.

Absolutely not true. In act, or many

organizations, moving to SaaS may provide

unctionality and best practices that they

could not have acquired cost-eectively anyother way. With a good SaaS application

or the IT help desk, businesses should not

notice any dierence in basic unctionality.

You are still getting the unctionality in

coded soware thats been developed,

programmed, and continually improved

over many years. Its simply a dierent

ownership model.


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survey baCkground

The survey o the help desk and the cloud

was conducted in the ourth quarter o

2010 with the help o TechTarget, a global

technology media company that operates

more than 90 technology-specic Web

sites serving nine million registered

members. Survey respondents came rom

a cross section o industries and a rangeo company sizes, and each held dierent

roles in IT.

C sz

35 percent worked or companies with

101 to 250 employees


251 to 1,000 employees


1,001 to 2,500 employees

J ct54 percent were technical resources

46 percent represented mid- and

executive-level management

The survey results p rovide insights into

the experience o businesses that have

deployed and are using SaaS or their

IT help desk, and the questions ocused on

that area. The results also p rovide insights

into the mindsets o those businesses that

have yet to make the move, including the

possible reasons why.

Ofoading your IT help desk inrastructure opens up new opportunities or

improving productivity, delivering higher service levels to your customers, and

achieving greater eciencies in inventory management. Creating and maintaining

an eective conguration management database (CMDB) or your IT help desk is

much easier and less expensive, because you can get the capacity you need when

you need it. And, because your CMDB resides in the cloud, it is much more exible

to use and easier to integrate with CMDBs in other areas o IT to help you run the

business more eciently.

Based on the experience o survey respondents with SaaS overall, using SaaS

or your IT help desk should provide signicant savings and ast ROI. More than

41 percent reported realizing savings o between 10 and 50 percent rom their

various SaaS applications, and an additional 7 percent reported savings o more

than 50 percent.

Still, its important to note that SaaS is not a magic cure or every business. Some

IT help desks may use a simple, homegrown solution that can be managed with a

single administrator. Conversely, other IT help desks may have complex or highly

customized processes that they have built and maintained or years. In both cases,

the cost and risk o migrating to a SaaS model may outweigh the savings and benets.

As with any other IT investment, you should do a total cost o ownership (TCO)

analysis that considers migration costs as well as overhead costs (soware

licenses, maintenance, customizations, inrastructure resource consumption,

and so on). BMC can provide TCO models or you to work rom. As more businesses

successully outsource their IT inrastructure to the cloud, other businesses will

likely see the value o SaaS applications or the IT help desk.

To learn more about SaaS solutions rom BMC, please visit:

tt://www.c.c/ct//t--.tl.


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at t at

Chris Williams is responsible or product marketing o the Service Support discipline or BMC Soware, which includes the

BMC Remedy IT Service Management Suite, BMC Service Desk Express Suite, and BMCs Soware as a Service (SaaS) solutions

or IT service management. He manages a team that ocuses on solution-level strategies that leverage the comprehensive

capabilities o integrated IT processes and practices. Williams has more than 29 years o IT experience, including 15 years managing

data centers, operations, and technical support organizations or nancial, government, retail, and manuacturing organizations.

He also owned and managed an ITIL consulting rm specializing in technical and business process analysis. He has been with BMC

or 14 years and has managed technical consulting departments, proessional services teams, and global product marketing teams.

b r i.T.

i.T. r bmC sfw

Business thrives when IT r uns smarter, aster and stronger. Thats why the most demanding IT organizations in the world

rely on BMC Soware across distributed, mainrame, virtual and cloud environments. Recognized as the leader in Business

Service Management, BMC oers a comprehensive approach and unied platorm that helps IT organizations cut cost, reduce

risk and drive business prot. For the our scal quarters ended December 31, 2010, BMC revenue was approximately $2 billion.

For more inormation, please visit www.c.c.

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1 14589 SMB IT Decision Makers Guide How SaaS Can Benefit the IT Help Desk