Lisa Erickson-Harris, Author at Gigaom

GigaOm Key Criteria for Evaluating Application Performance Management (APM) Solutions

Lisa Erickson-Harris — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 18:33:11 +0000

Applications provide an entry point for those seeking products and services from government, businesses, and non-profits worldwide. Yet, growing application complexity is a primary operational challenge for application performance management (APM) staff and operations teams across the enterprise. GigaOm’s recent application user research shows that the majority expressed application complexity as among the biggest operational challenges for operations teams. To address application environment complexity, foundational APM tools are needed with an awareness of applications that run within and across all of these environments.

Application and operations management within complex environments places pressure on IT Operations Management (ITOM) teams to ensure the applications and services meet the needs of quality user experiences. Similarly, an additional load and responsibility rests with developers who must handle the application code complexity and infrastructure use. With DevOps practices having risen in acceptance, developers and R&D teams are essential to the operations landscape and must have the tools and knowledge to not only build efficiently performing code but also to anticipate future impacts on the complex environment.

The discipline of security operations (SecOps) is also crucial to application performance in protecting sensitive and ensuring security vulnerabilities are not introduced within the environment.

APM aims to ensure applications deliver optimal speed, reliability, scalability, and end-user experience to support key business services and objectives. APM solutions help organizations to ensure that applications and services remain performant and available, providing a tangible benefit to any business IT environment, regardless of size. APM also helps to predict anomalies and potential degradation of service using a host of different techniques.

Business Imperative

The C-suite will be interested in this tool to the extent the APM tool and associated processes can avert customer, client, and constituent impacts. Application failures lead to missed business transactions and disrupt the delivery of essential services to those seeking to do business. APM tools can foresee degradation within the environment and provide an opportunity to resolve issues quickly and, in some cases, before users are impacted.

Other stakeholders include technical ITOM teams, service management teams, developers, security teams, department heads, and business users. APM is critical for avoiding revenue-impacting downtime and provides a way to plan ahead to avoid operational challenges.

Sector Adoption Score

This GigaOm Key Criteria report offers a structured assessment to help executives and decision-makers evaluate the potential impact and value of deploying an APM solution, examining the sector across five key factors: benefit, maturity, urgency, impact, and effort. By scoring each factor based on how strongly it compels or deters the adoption of an APM solution, we provide an overall Sector Adoption Score (Figure 1) of 4.2 out of 5, with 5 indicating the strongest possible recommendation to adopt. This indicates that an APM solution is a credible candidate for deployment and worthy of thoughtful consideration.

The factors contributing to the Sector Adoption Score for an APM are explained in more detail in the Sector Brief section that follows.

Key Criteria for APM Solutions

Sector Adoption Score

Deters
Adoption

Discourages
Adoption

Merits
Consideration

Encourages
Adoption

Compels
Adoption

Source: GigaOm 2024

Figure 1. Sector Adoption Score for APM

This is the third year that GigaOm has reported on the APM space in the context of our Key Criteria and Radar reports. This report builds on our previous analysis and considers how the market has evolved over the last year.

This GigaOm Key Criteria report highlights the capabilities (table stakes, key features, and emerging features) and nonfunctional requirements (business criteria) for selecting an effective APM solution. The companion GigaOm Radar report identifies vendors and products that excel in those decision criteria. Together, these reports provide an overview of the market, identify leading APM offerings, and help decision-makers evaluate these solutions to make a more informed investment decision.

GIGAOM KEY CRITERIA AND RADAR REPORTS

The GigaOm Key Criteria report provides a detailed decision framework for IT and executive leadership assessing enterprise technologies. Each report defines relevant functional and nonfunctional aspects of solutions in a sector. The Key Criteria report informs the GigaOm Radar report, which provides a forward-looking assessment of vendor solutions in the sector.

The post GigaOm Key Criteria for Evaluating Application Performance Management (APM) Solutions appeared first on Gigaom.

GigaOm Radar for Application Performance Management (APM)

Lisa Erickson-Harris — Thu, 05 Dec 2024 16:00:14 +0000

Applications today provide a technological means to deliver a host of business, entertainment, and social services, and to provide access to an ever-increasing range of products and information. These applications serve academia, government, businesses, mission-driven organizations, and individuals. Many are developed for broad off-the-shelf use, while others are customized solutions for organizational needs. They may execute in on-premises infrastructure or public or private cloud environments, as a SaaS application, in low-code/no-code environments, and in various combinations.

In all cases, applications are becoming increasingly complex, and the growing reliance on them places mounting pressure on IT operations monitoring teams to ensure these applications are running properly. The business imperative is to keep applications performing at peak levels to support a range of causes and purposes.

Moreover, with the additional emphasis on DevOps and SecOps, developers are now part of the operations landscape and must have the tools they need to help ensure the future performance and reliability of applications. Developers must handle application code complexity and the use of virtualized and as-code infrastructure. Application performance management (APM) solutions are able to respond to this need, offering insights to IT operations and to development and security teams. These tools must handle a much more complex environment that now includes both operations personnel and developers. The benefit of such tools is preemption of degraded application performance and security vulnerabilities and guaranteed availability.

Current APM solutions often interact with the code via code injection or an application agent. These full-stack solutions provide detailed insights in the actual code responsible for generating metrics and other observations. Use cases include the full stack that involves all supporting components of the application delivery model and faults at any layer in the stack illustrating errors, anomalies, or degradation.

Many APM solutions have been folded into observability tools, moving the needle from monitoring to observability and, eventually, to awareness. Operational and organizational awareness requires monitoring and observing IT systems and applications. The relationships among monitoring, observability, and awareness (MOA) are shown in Figure 1. MOA refers to the process by which data about operations (IT) and business (people and processes) is tracked and evaluated to enable a company to develop organizational awareness.

Figure 1. Monitoring, Observability, and Awareness Relationship

Monitoring provides the state of a single system (or service) and metrics about it (performance or a break/fix condition).

Observability looks at the state of multiple systems and asks additional questions about the health of these systems as a whole, such as why devices, systems, or applications are behaving a certain way within the context of IT.

Awareness brings together all information about the company to evaluate whether operations (IT) and business (people and processes) are performing in an acceptable way, what is likely to break next, and how to prevent problems before they are monitored or observed.

APM solutions are now situated squarely within the observability space, with some vendors moving toward awareness resulting from the addition of more analytical tooling using AI.

This is our third year evaluating the APM space in the context of our Key Criteria and Radar reports. This report builds on our previous analysis and considers how the market has evolved over the last year.

This GigaOm Radar report examines twelve of the top APM solutions and compares offerings against the capabilities (table stakes, key features, and emerging features) and nonfunctional requirements (business criteria) outlined in the companion Key Criteria report. Together, these reports provide an overview of the market, identify leading APM offerings, and help decision-makers evaluate these solutions so they can make a more informed investment decision.

GIGAOM KEY CRITERIA AND RADAR REPORTS

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How ITIL’s Ownership Transition Impacts the ITSM Market

Lisa Erickson-Harris — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 17:14:52 +0000

The ownership of the information technology infrastructure library (ITIL) has changed. As a result, the information technology service management (ITSM) market’s understanding of familiar ITIL solution certification organizations (SerView and Pink Elephant), which have been relied upon for decades, no longer exists in the same way.

ITIL Certification Has Changed

ITIL best practices have long been a staple for both vendors and users in the ITSM market. For enterprise users, ITIL has provided an impactful best practices framework to guide enterprise operations and train those at the helm of ITSM deployments and operations. For vendors serving these enterprises, ITIL solution certification provides a link between enterprises and their buyers, ensuring that solutions serve the best practice needs of buyers. Together, ITIL, in all of its iterations, has raised the bar for quality service delivery.

ITIL defines specific processes for handling IT services and is now in its fourth generation, which marks a significant change. A brief history is that:

ITIL was originally developed to guide the provisioning of IT services by the Central Computing and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA), a government agency in Britain.
ITIL 2 added definitions related to service support and delivery.
ITIL 3 was established a five-part service management lifecycle: service strategy, service design, service transition, service operation, and continuous improvement.
ITIL 4 shifted focus to demonstrate business value and digital transition of all service management functions.

While this most recent change is not a layer or new revision, the ownership rights for ITIL have moved from the government to a private entity, shifting the landscape for vendor certification and creating a change that buyers must consider as they purchase certified solutions. Pink Elephant, SerView, and now PeopleCert are the key players to consider, and buyers must understand the impact of this change.

PeopleCert’s Acquisition of AXELOS

AXELOS was established as a joint venture between the UK government and Capita plc that focused on the development of a number of best practices, including ITIL. The rights to the use of ITIL language and its process definitions have now moved from the UK government and AXELOS to PeopleCert. While this transaction closed in early 2022, it began impacting the ITSM market in the spring of 2023 and continues to be a driving factor. With the acquisition of AXELOS, all decisions related to ITIL rest in the hands of PeopleCert.

In turn, PeopleCert has redefined the ITSM solution certification landscape. It now has multiple levels of vendor solution certifications that are tagged by their branding levels of Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Platinum Global. PeopleCert’s model is designed to assess the level of support for ITIL modules and the qualifications of the vendor solutions team. It follows two basic formulaic components for evaluating how extensively ITIL is supported within the solution and whether or not the technical team has adequate ITIL expertise. Assessments are conducted by qualified third parties who evaluate solutions using this model. Like prior certification organizations, details regarding ITIL certification are publicly available for ITSM buyers and others.

While GigaOm has not specifically evaluated price points related to this granular certification approach, vendors have expressed concern about the substantial investment that is required to participate. Some vendors, especially smaller vendors, have opted to slow the process of their move to PeopleCert’s accreditation both for budget reasons and to allow the market to absorb these changes and ensure that the model is settled for the long term.

The Acquision’s Impact on Pink Elephant

PeopleCert’s acquisition has impacted Pink Elephant, which has long been the “go-to” certifier of vendor solutions for ITIL in the North American market. With PeopleCert’s acquisition, Pink Elephant is no longer able to use ITIL in the same way. The company has certifications that remain active and in place but will expire for vendors over time. Pink Elephant is changing PinkVERIFY to shift its focus to a broader market perspective for service management that encompasses multiple best practice frameworks in addition to ITIL.

The reason for this change is that Pink Elephant views best practices holistically, being influenced by the collective perspectives of vendors, the market, and users. It is considering other best practice frameworks along with ITIL and remains open to covering any that impact ITSM and service management. Some considerations for Pink Elephant include agile development methods, DevOps, LEAN IT, ITAM, and others.

This change is no doubt confusing to the market in the short term, as PinkVERIFY has long played a role in, and been a highly visible verification organization for, ITIL. Over time, it may have a beneficial impact, providing buyers with a wider lens through which to consider their service management deployments and complementing the trend of using ITSM solutions both within IT and across the enterprise.

Implications for ITSM Buyers

The net result of ITIL’s new ownership has already created confusion. It was an abrupt change in a stable IT market segment. The understanding of what qualifies or does not qualify a vendor to claim ITIL certification for their solution moved from a known to an unknown for all buyers; vendors’ understanding was also tentative. Many solution providers have quickly shifted to adopt PeopleCert ITIL certification, but others have not.

From GigaOm’s perspective, this represents a transitory change in ITIL best practices. Time will tell how the transition continues forward. In a best-case scenario, there will be clear and concise understanding about vendor solutions and what they do and do not offer in the context of ITIL verification. At the same time, Pink Elephant’s shift to a wider scope of work will add value for some buyers, and for service management as a whole. All evidence points in the direction of better clarity long term for ITIL-certified solutions and more insight around maturity levels that further extend ITSM.

Short term, it will be a challenge for buyers to understand what they can rely upon for confirmation of their vendor choices in an ITIL best practices shop. GigaOm’s report takes this into account and provides information on solutions that have shifted to PeopleCert as well as those that worked to achieve PinkVERIFY for ITIL 4 prior to this change. It is focused on ITIL 4-certified solutions. There are many ITIL 3-certified offerings that have heavily invested in ITIL and are moving along the path to ITIL 4, and will achieve that validation coincident with the settling out of the certification landscape.

Next Steps

To learn more, take a look at GigaOm’s ITSM Key Criteria and Radar reports. These reports provide a comprehensive overview of the market, outline the criteria you’ll want to consider in a purchase decision, and evaluate how a number of vendors perform against those decision criteria.

If you’re not yet a GigaOm subscriber, sign up here.

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GigaOm Radar for IT Service Management (ITSM)

Lisa Erickson-Harris — Tue, 30 Jul 2024 15:00:28 +0000

Information technology service management (ITSM) is a toolset domain that provides both a methodology and technology that can define and manage IT services and their respective value delivered throughout an enterprise. The service desk staff provision, manage, and measure service quality needed for business value and ensure the required technology that underpins ITSM is capable of delivering reliable service.

Services are defined according to service catalog definition and then provisioned in response to service requests run by the IT team. Services encompass infrastructure, assets, people, uptime, configuration, and cost. Workflow management is a core component for handling incidents, service requests, problems, and changes—as well as automation—to drive efficiencies within the organization. Collectively, these factors demonstrate IT’s business value and its contributions to the success of the organization.

The domain of ITSM has grown substantially over a number of decades. With that growth, vendor solutions designed for small-to-medium businesses (SMBs), large enterprises, and managed service providers (MSPs) are commonly developed in accordance with a best-practices framework, usually the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), which defines specific processes for handling IT services. ITIL is in its fourth generation and demonstrates business value and digital transition of all service management functions, representing significant change.

Since the publication of GigaOm’s ITSM Radar during 2023, there has been a disruption in the transition from ITIL 3 to ITIL 4. The ownership and rights of ITIL have been transitioned to PeopleCert, an independent company that acquired Axelos Limited, a joint venture previously created by the UK government. As a result, the structure for ITIL 4 vendor certification, which had been spearheaded by Pink Elephant in North America and SerView in Europe and other parts of the world, is being shifted to a new approach being defined by PeopleCert. Pink Elephant no longer relies on the ITIL branding. However, it continues to support and advocate for ITSM disciplines as it had for decades. Vendors are adjusting, though are not yet fully adjusted to the change in certification authorities. All are focused on delivering best practices that suit customer needs and are aimed at consistency in approach.

This change leaves buyers with a lag in transition to ITIL 4 from its vendors while the market change settles. During 2023, market estimates suggested 20% of ITIL shops had already transitioned to ITIL 4 while another 30% are considering making such a move. GigaOm believes the transition in the certification landscape has impacted the 30% of buyers expected to shift to ITIL 4. While customers want and need reassurance that vendors are committed to best practices, the slowing of the pace from vendors inevitably impacts the adoption by enterprises as well while they rely on tools other than those with already well-established support for ITIL 4. Regardless of this shift, CxOs will be interested in solutions that help them proactively manage IT services, avoid disruption, create efficiencies, and track service costs to deliver and support their enterprise.

GigaOm is evaluating vendors that have committed to ITSM essentials as defined by ITIL 4, an approach that was verified with evidence provided by vendors from SerView, PeopleCert, and Pink Elephant. Scoring will provide a more granular perspective on ITIL 4 with regard to ITSM infrastructure insight and ITSM business value. ITSM essentials are a required item for a vendor to be included in the report. Our scoring examines vendor offerings in these areas and on other key features and important evaluation metrics. The report covers vendors from North America, South America, Europe, and Asia.

This is our third year evaluating the ITSM space in the context of our Key Criteria and Radar reports. This report builds on our previous analysis and considers how the market has evolved over the last year.

This GigaOm Radar report examines 18 of the top ITSM solutions and compares offerings against the capabilities (table stakes, key features, and emerging features) and nonfunctional requirements (business criteria) outlined in the companion Key Criteria report. Together, these reports provide an overview of the market, identify leading ITSM offerings, and help decision-makers evaluate these solutions so they can make a more informed investment decision.

GIGAOM KEY CRITERIA AND RADAR REPORTS

The post GigaOm Radar for IT Service Management (ITSM) appeared first on Gigaom.

GigaOm Key Criteria for Evaluating IT Service Management (ITSM) Solutions

Lisa Erickson-Harris — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 18:07:55 +0000

Information technology service management (ITSM) is a solution that helps organizations define, provision, support, and deliver IT services throughout a company and beyond. It is important to businesses as they become increasingly reliant on IT departments and technologies as foundational components of their products and delivery to the market. The expectation is that IT will provide services and solutions to support every need, from providing access to mission-critical back office applications to ensuring uptime of customer-facing portals and processes. ITSM is designed to ensure the quality and reliability of these services and products.

The underpinnings of an ITSM solution are broad and provide IT teams with transparent insight into current IT services and the potential impacts of change on their value and availability. Similarly, ITSM improves flexibility through better collaboration with the business side while creating a highly visible IT discipline. It enables IT to reduce the mean time to resolution (MTTR) when incidents occur, thereby improving user experiences and creating better outcomes.

Selecting an ITSM solution is a multifaceted undertaking that should consider the size of the organization, its IT maturity, and the future development of both the business and its IT systems. The use of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) framework, processes, and practices provides both guidance and a structure for assessing and selecting an ITSM solution, enabling businesses to deploy that solution with confidence. This report focuses on ITIL 4 certification and solutions.

Business Imperative
ITSM matters to a wide-ranging audience, including IT technical staff and management, C-suite executives, and department heads seeking to manage business services. All stakeholders have service visibility through a variety of views. Executives have visibility into ITSM and its relative success. For IT teams, ITSM is crucial for avoiding business- or revenue-impacting downtime. ITSM is generally applied across all vertical market segments, though it can be customized internally within some departments outside of IT. C-suite executives will appreciate the ability to manage service quality and uptime of all IT and business services, along with insight and analytics for all IT services and supporting asset mapping.

Sector Adoption Score
To help executives and decision-makers assess the potential impact and value of an ITSM solution deployment to the business, this GigaOm Key Criteria report provides a structured assessment of the sector across five factors: benefit, maturity, urgency, impact, and effort. By scoring each factor based on how strongly it compels or deters adoption of an ITSM solution, we provide an overall Sector Adoption Score (Figure 1) of 4.2 out of 5, with 5 indicating the strongest possible recommendation to adopt. This indicates that an ITSM solution is a credible candidate for deployment and worthy of thoughtful consideration.

The factors contributing to the Sector Adoption Score for ITSM are explained in more detail in the Sector Brief section that follows.

Key Criteria for Evaluating ITSM Solutions

Sector Adoption Score

Deters
Adoption

Discourages
Adoption

Merits
Consideration

Encourages
Adoption

Compels
Adoption

Figure 1. Sector Adoption Score for ITSM

This is the third year that GigaOm has reported on the ITSM space in the context of our Key Criteria and Radar reports. This report builds on our previous analysis and considers how the market has evolved over the last year.

This GigaOm Key Criteria report highlights the capabilities (table stakes, key features, and emerging features) and nonfunctional requirements (business criteria) for selecting an effective ITSM solution. The companion GigaOm Radar report identifies vendors and products that excel in those decision criteria. Together, these reports provide an overview of the market, identify leading ITSM offerings, and help decision-makers evaluate these solutions so they can make a more informed investment decision.

GIGAOM KEY CRITERIA AND RADAR REPORTS

The post GigaOm Key Criteria for Evaluating IT Service Management (ITSM) Solutions appeared first on Gigaom.

Making Sense of ITAM Investments in 2024

Lisa Erickson-Harris — Thu, 21 Mar 2024 20:59:35 +0000

In the mature market landscape of IT asset management (ITAM), you might wonder “what’s the rush?” to invest in a long-run, stable technology solution. ITAM must compete against priorities from AI to cloud and front-running development technologies. Making the case for ITAM in 2024 is both economic and control-based while offering IT greater visibility and spreading value across the enterprise with optional expansion into enterprise asset management (EAM).

In short, ITAM is the inventory and financial management of all types of IT assets. Historically, this mission has emphasized the management of hardware systems and sometimes components, along with close attention to software asset management (SAM). The scope has evolved and now covers all types of IT assets including network and cloud assets, consumables, and perhaps most importantly, security assets.

The Return on ITAM Investment

For most IT shops, the return on an investment in an ITAM practice is significant. Some buyers approach ITAM simply as a process control mechanism to assign and track assets through their lifecycle. However, those that embrace ITAM and its financial components will realize additional value for IT and for the enterprise overall. Benefits include:

Reduced IT spending: IT will save measurable dollars when implementing an ITAM solution. Understanding which employees are using what licenses for any assets offers the ability to move those assets around, predict when additional licensing is needed, and moderate the purchase of assets and the license to use them. More recent developments in ITAM available in a wide range of vendor offerings also allow proactive monitoring of actual usage. Some users will anticipate a need that may not be realized. This creates another cost saving opportunity.
Improved control and security: The ability to discover and monitor IT assets is at the heart of automating any ITAM solution. However, in addition to understanding what you have and where it is being used, organizations need to know how those assets impact security. Vulnerabilities can arise from location as well as lack of control outside of the enterprise firewall. As such, ITAM solutions should provide robust inventory management capabilities as well as financial and process controls. Additionally, security assets require management in the same way as other hardware and software components. This is a growth area for ITAM. Approximately 30% of the vendors in the ITAM space are currently adding security devices to their portfolios and another 20% have plans to do so. At the same time, security asset management is available from some security focused solutions.
Risk avoidance: Avoiding licensing audits continues to be a factor for large enterprises investing in solutions from vendors such as SAP, Microsoft, and Oracle. This has been an important consideration for more than a decade. Some shifting has occurred with SaaS-based solutions, and this will likely have a long-term impact on this need to avoid audits because solution providers have much more control over license use. For 2024, it remains a decision-factor for adopting ITAM. Security is another dimension to risk avoidance that can be achieved in deploying or upgrading an ITAM solution. The risk here is more about negative media coverage of security failures that may occur due to licensing challenges.
Management beyond IT assets: ITAM vendors are also demonstrating that traditional hardware and software asset management is simply the tip of the iceberg. Visionary vendors show how ITAM solutions have value for managing corporate assets as well. Many solution providers have case studies and proof points revealing the broad utilitarian nature of their ITAM deployments. While the solutions are designed for the management of desktops, laptops, and mobile devices, they are equally helpful in tracking other corporate assets and for overall EAM. The question is how this more diverse inventory is incorporated and managed in a similar way. It is the case that most corporate assets either need to be uploaded or tracked from an external system. Some vendors have success in using RFID tracking mechanisms for non-IT assets. Many have plans to use internet of things (IoT) network systems in the not-too-distant future. Examples of the application of ITAM to corporate assets include: manufacturing equipment and consumables, high-value artwork owned by the corporation, facilities and the equipment needed for operations, and farming applications including tracking growing fields and livestock. The expansion beyond IT assets is fascinating and exponentially changes the value of an ITAM investment to IT teams and to the C-suite.

Beyond the Business Case

ITAM’s business case is easily justified with robust features that support the above cost savings, control, and security value in today’s solutions. This value can also be realized in mid-market solutions, so it’s not reserved only for large enterprises. Small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) will require the manpower to design and implement a program that supports and sustains an ITAM implementation that is augmented with process and best practice.

Our research into the ITAM market revealed that while a large percentage of vendors are focused on ITIL best practices and position ITAM closely with IT service management (ITSM), not all are relying on IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL). One vendor is now adhering to the International Association of Information Technology Asset Managers, Inc. (IAITAM) guidelines, and other vendors are not linking ITAM to ITSM but instead embracing it as an independent discipline.

Going forward, investment in emerging technologies will drive future innovation and value for ITAM, and this discipline is advancing. Vendors are investing in many related technologies from the types of assets managed to the connection points with IT financial management, corporate financial management, the ability for ITAM to provide insight and opportunity to impact environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting and investment decisions. Consolidation is also underway as we’ve seen with the ITSM market. Flexera’s acquisition of Snow Software is the most recent evidence. Clearly, there is more to come on the ITAM front.

Next Steps

To learn more, take a look at GigaOm’s ITAM Key Criteria and Radar reports. These reports provide a comprehensive overview of the market, outline the criteria you’ll want to consider in a purchase decision, and evaluate how a number of vendors perform against those decision criteria.

If you’re not yet a GigaOm subscriber, you can access the research using a free trial.

The post Making Sense of ITAM Investments in 2024 appeared first on Gigaom.

GigaOm Radar for IT Asset Management (ITAM)

Lisa Erickson-Harris — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 15:00:31 +0000

Information technology asset management (ITAM) provides insight, compliance, and cost management for all IT assets in every technology domain, from hardware to software to cloud computing assets. ITAM solutions are designed to track an abundance of business and technical data related to assets and their use within the digital network environment. Fiscal management of all IT assets is enabled in the areas of process control, compliance, and financial management.

Demand for ITAM is becoming increasingly important as the need to better manage assets expands for economic and control reasons. ITAM solutions offer visibility and actionable insight that can reduce the costs required to purchase IT assets and maintain them for the life of the asset. Other cost factors come into play when considering the millions of dollars spent on IT assets and the potential fines that may occur upon being audited for any asset use that is not in compliance with applicable government regulations. ITAM technology applies across all vertical industry segments and business models. It is crucial to helping IT remain compliant and minimizing asset costs.

ITAM provides inventory and data collection, oversight and compliance, financial management, risk control, and vendor and contract management for all IT assets via the following: hardware asset management (HAM), software asset management (SAM), network infrastructure devices, and cloud asset modules (CAM). It is closely aligned with FinOps in that it offers finance and risk capabilities while also aligning with information technology service management (ITSM), especially for organizations that have adopted the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) ITIL 4 process standards.

Implementing an ITAM practice and toolset is crucial to many audiences both inside and outside of the IT domain. C-suite executives and legal professionals are likely to be the most focused on managing risk and reducing spending. Yet, technologists will also want to implement an ITAM practice to better track, manage, and plan for IT assets and their deployment.

Organizations are investing in ITAM solutions for several reasons, including:

Avoiding the possibility of compliance breaches, primarily for software assets, which occur when software is being used in some places around the corporate environment without legal rights to do so. This typically happens inadvertently in large, enterprise environments where operational and system controls are inadequate to ensure that compliance is in alignment with purchase agreements and distribution of any type of asset.
Management and control of IT assets that support technology staff and all employees across the enterprise. The rollout of an ITAM program and associated toolset empowers asset managers to track detailed data, plan for purchases, automate lifecycle triggers and policies, and ensure that assets purchased are in active use.
Serving C-level executives’ interest in the bottom-line and top-line usage of their investments. Understanding the need for IT asset spending and oversight of prudent management of all investments is important to this group. Additionally, they will appreciate controls that are in place to avoid the possibility of unwanted press or other hits to reputation related to contract non-compliance.

This is our first year evaluating the ITAM space in the context of our Key Criteria and Radar reports. This GigaOm Radar report examines 18 of the top ITAM solutions and compares offerings against the capabilities (table stakes, key features, and emerging features) and nonfunctional requirements (business criteria) outlined in the companion Key Criteria report. Together, these reports provide an overview of the market, identify leading ITAM offerings, and help decision-makers evaluate these solutions so they can make a more informed investment decision.

GIGAOM KEY CRITERIA AND RADAR REPORTS

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GigaOm Key Criteria for Evaluating IT Asset Management (ITAM) Solutions

Lisa Erickson-Harris — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 23:11:43 +0000

Information technology asset management (ITAM) enables fiscal management of IT assets, providing controls and financial management for all IT assets. ITAM is becoming increasingly more important due to economic factors related to IT spending. ITAM solutions offer visibility and actionable insight that can reduce the cost of IT assets now and in the future. The technology applies across all vertical segments and is crucial to helping IT operations remain compliant and minimizing asset costs.

At its core, ITAM offers inventory of assets and data collection, oversight and compliance, financial management, risk control, and vendor management through contract functionality for all IT assets: hardware asset management (HAM), software asset management (SAM), network infrastructure devices, and cloud asset modules (CAM). ITAM is closely aligned with FinOps because it offers finance and risk capabilities while also aligning with information technology service management (ITSM), especially for organizations that have adopted Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL 4) certification and training.

Business Imperative
ITAM matters to a wide-ranging audience, including IT technical staff and management responsible for tracking assets, C-suite executives, and legal professionals focused on corporate compliance. From a risk management perspective, ITAM monitors asset deployment and usage for contractual compliance. Assets can be reallocated as needed to remain compliant and avoid additional spending. C-suite executives will appreciate avoiding the risk of potential fines because ITAM provides insight and analytics for all IT assets. Finally, distribution, discovery, and control functionality support “feet on the ground” asset management and ITAM staff.

While ITAM solutions have been available for decades, the expansion of their feature set to address cost and risk management in recent inflationary times has once again raised the visibility of the need for and desirability of ITAM solutions. Economic pressures along with increasing labor costs are driving corporations to focus on reducing costs and improving efficiency. ITAM provides a means to automate processes and identify unused or limited usage resources that can be reclaimed to avoid ever-expanding acquisition creep.

Sector Adoption Score
To help executives and decision-makers assess the potential impact and value of an ITAM solution deployment to the business, this GigaOm Key Criteria report provides a structured assessment of the sector across five factors: benefit, maturity, urgency, impact, and effort. By scoring each factor based on how strongly it compels or deters adoption of an ITAM solution, we provide an overall Sector Adoption Score (Figure 1) of 4 out of 5, with 5 indicating the strongest possible recommendation to adopt. This indicates that an ITAM solution is a credible candidate for deployment and worthy of thoughtful consideration.

The factors contributing to the Sector Adoption Score for ITAM are explained in more detail in the Sector Brief section that follows.

Key Criteria for Evaluating ITAM Solutions

Sector Adoption Score

Deters
Adoption

Discourages
Adoption

Merits
Consideration

Encourages
Adoption

Compels
Adoption

Figure 1. Sector Adoption Score for ITAM

This is the first year that GigaOm has reported on the ITAM space in the context of our Key Criteria and Radar reports. This GigaOm Key Criteria report highlights the capabilities (table stakes, key features, and emerging features) and nonfunctional requirements (business criteria) for selecting an effective ITAM solution. The companion GigaOm Radar report identifies vendors and products that excel in those decision criteria. Together, these reports provide an overview of the market, identify leading ITAM offerings, and help decision-makers evaluate these solutions and make a more informed investment decision.

GIGAOM KEY CRITERIA AND RADAR REPORTS

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Key Criteria for Evaluating IT Service Management (ITSM) Solutions

Lisa Erickson-Harris — Wed, 24 May 2023 18:48:20 +0000

Today’s businesses are more dependent upon their IT departments than ever. The expectation is that IT will provide the necessary services and solutions to the business, whether that means providing access to mission-critical applications or ensuring uptime of customer-facing portals and processes. Information technology service management (ITSM) focuses on continuously improving the quality and reliability of these services and products offered to a business and its customers. Key to this endeavor is enabling an unobstructed view of IT capabilities such as:

Transparency of current IT services and potential impacts of change on their value and availability.
Improved flexibility through better collaboration with the business.
Reduced mean time to repair (MTTR) when incidents occur.
Improved user and employee experience and better outcomes for all.
Faster cycle time for changes and shortened time to market (TTM) for business initiatives.

Operational size and scope matters in considering a solution. The entire ITIL framework may prove daunting and unnecessary to small-to-medium businesses (SMBs), yet the adoption of an ITIL-based solution offers a pathway and support for growth and expansion. For larger SMBs or departmental use cases, IT operations teams need at least functionality for event, incident, change/release, and major incident management. As the SMB or department grows, it can then build on its core ITIL-framework foundation. Large IT organizations benefit from the entire ITIL 3 or ITIL 4 set frameworks.

This is the second year that GigaOm has reported on the ITSM landscape and the need for IT to provide quality services to their organizations. While this year’s report builds on the research done for GigaOm’s first ITSM report, it now provides detailed focus and analysis of the market’s transition from ITIL 3 to ITIL 4 in the context of buyers’ and vendors’ movement towards best practices deployment.

This GigaOm Key Criteria and Radar report provides an overview of vendors committed to certification of ITIL 3 and ITIL 4 for the ITSM market. Additionally, the report identifies capabilities (table stakes, key criteria, and emerging technology) and non-functional requirements (evaluation metrics) for selecting a best practices-oriented ITSM solution, and details vendors and products that excel and are committed to supporting customers on their own adoption path for ITIL 4. These reports give prospective buyers an overview of the top vendors in this sector and help decision-makers evaluate solutions that align with organizational priorities to decide where to invest.

How to Read this Report

This GigaOm report is one of a series of documents that helps IT organizations assess competing solutions in the context of well-defined features and criteria. For a fuller understanding, consider reviewing the following reports:

Key Criteria report: A detailed market sector analysis that assesses the impact that key product features and criteria have on top-line solution characteristics—such as scalability, performance, and TCO—that drive purchase decisions.

GigaOm Radar report: A forward-looking analysis that plots the relative value and progression of vendor solutions along multiple axes based on strategy and execution. The Radar report includes a breakdown of each vendor’s offering in the sector.

The post Key Criteria for Evaluating IT Service Management (ITSM) Solutions appeared first on Gigaom.

GigaOm Radar for IT Service Management (ITSM)

Lisa Erickson-Harris — Tue, 09 May 2023 14:59:15 +0000

Information technology service management (ITSM) provides a structured means for IT operations to define and deliver services to an organization, its partners, collaborators, and others requiring service value from IT. In its current evolution, ITSM is geared to deliver business value to the organization. As a result, services and their respective catalogs often look like a business service being run by IT. The components of a service encompass infrastructure, assets, people, uptime, configuration, and cost. Workflow management is a core component for handling incidents, service requests, problems, and changes—as well as automation—to drive efficiencies within the organization. Collectively, these factors demonstrate IT’s business value and its contributions to the success of the organization.

The domain of ITSM has grown substantially over a number of decades. With that growth, vendor solutions designed for the enterprise, medium-sized businesses, and service providers are commonly developed in accordance with a best-practices framework, usually the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), which defines specific processes for handling IT services. ITIL is now in its fourth generation, which represents significant change. The goals of each version are as follows:

ITIL was originally developed to guide the provisioning of IT services by the Central Computing and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA), a government agency in Britain.
ITIL 2 added definitions related to service support and delivery.
ITIL 3 established a five-part service management lifecycle: service strategy, service design, service transition, service operation, and continuous improvement.
ITIL 4 shifted focus to demonstrate business value and digital transition of all service management functions.

The transition from ITIL 3 to ITIL 4 is underway, with some vendors offering both. Buyers committed to best practices are either currently in the midst of adopting ITIL 4 or still evaluating the impact of migrating to the new version. Some market estimates suggest that 20% of ITIL shops have already transitioned to ITIL 4 while another 30% are considering making such a move. For non-ITIL shops that are just starting, best-practice adoptions can begin with ITIL 4. Note, however, that ITIL 3 shops will still benefit from creating ITIL 3 workflows and leveraging prior efforts as ITIL 4 does not eliminate the need for most of those functions.

Importantly, for this report, we’re evaluating ITSM vendors that support the transition from ITIL 3 to ITIL 4 and already offer ITIL 4 certifications, while also assessing the level of ITIL 3 and ITIL 4 framework support in three different categories: ITSM essentials, ITSM infrastructure insight, and ITSM business value. Our scoring examines vendor offerings in these three areas and in other important key criteria and evaluation metrics. The report covers vendors from North America, South America, Europe, and Asia.

This GigaOm Radar report highlights key ITSM vendors and equips IT decision-makers with the information needed to select the best fit for their business and use case requirements. In the corresponding GigaOm report “Key Criteria for Evaluating ITSM Solutions,” we describe in more detail the capabilities and metrics that are used to evaluate vendors in this market.

How to Read this Report

The post GigaOm Radar for IT Service Management (ITSM) appeared first on Gigaom.

Lisa Erickson-Harris, Author at Gigaom

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