John, There are a *ton* of potential constraints here - functionality, budget, plans for ITIL implementations, etc. Probably too large to provide a precise recommendation.
In general, this issue almost always boils down to the question "how large is the gap between what I need and what I can buy?". If there's a close match between the ITSM suite and your business needs, then buy. If the ITSM suite provides *more* than what you need and you don't plan on implementing the extra features, then build. If what you need exceeds or varies considerably from what the ITSM suite provides, then you need to do a bit more analysis to determine if using ITSM as a starting point is more cost-effective than building from scratch. A few other items of note - don't forget to include the maintenance costs of application licenses when doing your comparitive budgets. If you're planning on a 4 year production run, for example, add 4 years worth of maintenance on application licenses to the budget when considering a custom build. Also, a custom app will almost always be closer to your exact needs than the out of the box products. The question comes into play when considering how mature your support processes are. In some cases, customers prefer a tool that already implements better (best?) practices since it can impose some order on poorly implemented process. If your business processes and rules are well-defined and understood, using an out of the box product may be too restrictive and require significant customizations that will exceed the cost of a custom solution. Also consider maintainability. Granted, ARS source isn't hard to reverse engineer to figure out how a custom bit of programming works. This does, however, introduce some support cost to the mix since technical support for custom workflow doesn't apply to business logic usually. In other words, if it works as it was designed, and the design just happens to suck, don't expect Tech Support to bail you out. :) Lastly, many of the stock engines are fairly easy to implement in custom apps - SLA, Approval, etc. While not precisely "drop in" solutions, they can beef up custom functionality quite a bit with a minimum of hassel. Ultimately, if you've already invested in the system and it fits your needs, don't monkey with it. If the custom apps you're using now don't provide everything you need or want, then start with what those needs and wants are and evaluate from there. Hope this helps! -Chris Woyton "John.A Simpson-contr" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: BMC/Remedy HelpDesk & Change vs ??? background... TRW Automotive has been using ARS since 1997, all custom/homegrown HelpDesk & change management. We have one production server, one test server and one development server. 41 fixed and 63 floats in production. My boss's boss, has asked us to evaluate, how much to continue just buying ARS fixed and floats and 'rolling our own', (my words not hers), vs buying and then modifying/configuration of an "off-the-shelf" HelpDesk and Change Management. I am asked to compare 3 systems, BMC/Remedy HelpDesk/Change, one other ARS based solution (Enterprise Service Suite?) plus one additional non-ARS based solution. I am hopeful I will get some very helpful opinions/recommendations... John A. Simpson TRW Automotive Information Systems Program Office Remedy Global Technical Lead Fenton MI USA [EMAIL PROTECTED] 810-750-2547 _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at http://www.wwrug.org ________________________________________________________________ This mail sent using CableAmerica WebMail (www.cableamerica.com) _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at http://www.wwrug.org
