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This article introduces how to apply SaaS to IT service management, the content is very detailed, interested friends can refer to, hope to be helpful to you.

The choice of provisioning or software as a service (SaaS) model should be based on the specific needs of the enterprise business and the IT lifecycle in different situations. Taking full account of IT technology and capital and operation budget, each model can bring benefits. When choosing, CIO should take full account of the growth potential of its IT infrastructure and the required level of customization and integration.

The almighty SaaS?

Choosing SaaS delivery model for IT service management can bring many benefits to IT. Handing over the IT services management infrastructure to SaaS vendors saves upfront costs in purchasing and implementing software, capital expenditure on hardware purchases, and costs associated with compliance and security best practices.

However, even if the SaaS mode is selected, CIO still needs to decide how much IT service management is required. Do you need a tactical, simplified help desk application to focus on event management and asset store workflows, or do you need a more comprehensive system to provide details of IT infrastructure and IT workflow best practices?

Choosing the right way to manage IT services is critical because it will not only help identify IT costs, but also determine future business agility. The following standards will help CIO select an appropriate SaaS-based IT services management platform.

Choose standard tailored clothes

User group size, staff size and related technical level are important clues to determine the scope and complexity of the environment served by the IT system. Generally speaking, each help desk staff of the IT department serves 100 users. The IT system with no more than 35 people at the help desk is suitable for smaller and simplified products. Enterprises with more than 35 help desk staff tend to have more stringent requirements, need higher-end IT service management systems, and skilled staff who can deploy these systems effectively.

However, some factors are often more important than the size of the help desk. The first is that the application environment and the IT infrastructure that supports the application environment must be able to cope with current and future complexity. If the application and the servers, storage, and networks that support the application are simple and static, then more basic solutions can be used to reduce cost and complexity. As complexity increases, CIO slowly needs to consider a more comprehensive solution.

An important measure of complexity is the number of changes performed each month and the impact of each change on the service and its associated components. The greater the downtime or security risk to the infrastructure caused by each change, the more CIO needs to use a more powerful change publishing system.

In addition, CIO should consider how many changes are normal or standard changes (rather than emergency changes). Because in an emergency, there is little time to simulate the impact of changes on other components of the environment. Comprehensive IT service management solutions provide deeper insight into the environment, significantly reducing workload, saving money, saving investment, and reducing risk.

CIO should also think about how the solution will help enterprises deliver IT services faster and at a lower cost. Although a comprehensive solution may be more expensive than a basic solution, the automation and management services provided by a comprehensive solution can effectively reduce the cost and time required to provide services if the environment is very complex. If the enterprise's IT environment is not very complex, the basic solution may be a better choice for service flexibility and cost savings.

In addition, CIO needs to know whether business managers no longer see IT as a "tactical expense for business operations" and instead see IT as an important business booster. The more the business manager's view tends to the latter, the more CIO should use a more comprehensive solution, focusing on services rather than thinking from a "work order" or "passive response" perspective. A comprehensive IT service management solution can provide more information and implement more processes.

The current and future complexity of business processes is also important. The more types of users, the more extensive information they need, making it more difficult to track underlying IT assets and ensure service levels. If there are many complex factors in the future, more comprehensive solutions should be considered in order to obtain richer information and the best workflow. If there is no greater complexity expected in the future, the basic solution is more cost-effective.

If business managers need to better measure IT services, CIO should consider a more complete IT services management platform. The measurement and reporting capabilities of such a platform will help CIO to report on business indicators (such as whether services are delivered on time and within budget), rather than IT-centric (such as the cost of each asset delivered through service requests).

If managing what you do is as important as managing what you have, or even the former is more important than the latter, CIO should use a comprehensive IT services management platform. Basic systems usually provide only asset inventory applications, not asset management systems. The asset management system can classify and record IT asset information with the help of configuration management database (CMDB).

CMDB in a comprehensive system can not only store asset data, but also standardize it and share it with a complete set of IT service management tools. Enterprise CMDB improves the speed and accuracy of help desk services while supporting more mature enterprise change and release processes. In addition, enterprise-class CMDB simplifies asset and software license management activities, ranging from providing software to users to phasing out unwanted software. Only a more comprehensive solution has the ability to integrate other systems, such as infrastructure discovery tools, event management, or business applications, into the IT services management platform. Although most basic systems have moved to authentication mechanisms such as LDAP, broader solutions should be considered if there is a need to integrate infrastructure discovery tools, event management, or business applications (for example, ERP or CRM systems).

Broader consolidation requires infrastructure discovery tools to track the service lifecycle of IT components, such as servers, network converters, and storage arrays. Tracking IT service components that provide critical business services can help CIO make better decisions, address service slowdowns or disruptions, and meet industry, corporate, or legal compliance and governance standards.

It is likely that the event management system needs to be integrated if the following occurs:

Users or customers often find service slowdowns or interruptions earlier than IT systems

Users complain that it takes too much time and cost to solve problems

In the environment of expanding scale and increasing requirements, it is difficult to maintain uninterrupted operation and maintenance.

Unable to distinguish between error alerts and multiple warnings for the same problem

There is a greater need for integration capabilities in a comprehensive solution if you encounter the following situations. For example, the service desk needs to be notified or implement changes through devices such as smart phones, or the service desk needs to share information with industry-specific supply systems such as telecommunications. If the IT service management system needs to share information with diagnostic tools or software such as remote access, which allows a service to repeat events that have caused errors, it also requires a high degree of integration. Finally, CIO should consider whether the integration capabilities provided by more comprehensive solutions accelerate problem resolution and improve service detection capabilities after allowing help desk employees to share system uptime and performance information using enterprise applications such as ERP and CRM.

On how to apply SaaS to IT service management is shared here, I hope the above content can be of some help to you, can learn more knowledge. If you think the article is good, you can share it for more people to see.

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