I have to agree with you there, Norm. They took a necessary risk, and we'll see how it turns out. The bottom line is that BMC had a responsibility to make money however they could (within their business model), they saw ITIL as a means to do that, and ITSM 7 appears to be successful for them in that way. Until it isn't as lucrative as some other acronym, I don't see much changing.
ITIL may indeed turn out to be like so many other acronymed initiatives - time will tell. In the meantime, those companies not embracing it will have a couple of years still in support to make up their minds before going to the expense of upgrading. This is a case where BMC's extended release intervals (12-18 months) work in the customer's favor. Rick On 1/26/07, Kaiser Norm E CIV USAF 96 CG/SCWOE <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
** Rick: On your point…So for those with limited budgets and/or no compelling ITIL initiative, staying with ITSM 6 is probably a better bet. My concern is this—Remedy only supports so many versions. When we get to, say, version 8 or 9 of ITSM, BMC drops support for version 6, the non-ITIL compliant version. Additionally, I don't want to sound cynical, but my impression of ITIL is that it's an industry buzz…like TQM, CMM, CMMI, ISO, QAF, etc. While I understand that there may be great benefits to implementing ITIL, my research indicates that it's a huge commitment and a huge undertaking. And many big enterprises may well balk at the idea of embracing ITIL just because Remedy made their product that way. It seems to me Remedy took an awful risk retooling ITSM the way they did. ------------------------------ *From:* Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *On Behalf Of *Rick Cook *Sent:* Friday, January 26, 2007 10:18 AM *To:* [email protected] *Subject:* Re: OT: ITSM Total Cost of Implementation Discussion ** To answer your first question, the thing I have always liked about Remedy was that I never had to tell a customer that Remedy couldn't be made to conform to existing business practices. With ITSM 7, I'm not sure that would still be the case. In any event, the corporate ITIL initiative would be the driver on this, not BMC, IMO. This may be just my opinion, but I think that a lot of companies are having to decide whether to jump on ITSM 7 or stay with 6 for the foreseeable future, and customizing it to fit their needs. For companies not really into ITIL, they just don't see the value add to retrain everyone on a new app. and end up with no discernable value for the money they invested in consultants and training to upgrade. So I'm seeing two large buckets of work out there - Fresh ITSM 7 installations and ITSM 6 customizations. The first thing I thought of when I saw ITSM 7 almost a year ago was that Remedy PS was going to make a mint doing the installation and customizations, because few customers will have enough staff time to invest in learning it well enough to make anything resembling a major customization to it. The fact that until very recently, only BMC and its partners were able to even get the training on how to install and configure it only cements that impression. So for those with limited budgets and/or no compelling ITIL initiative, staying with ITSM 6 is probably a better bet. ITSM 7 will cost a bunch to get in place, and a bunch more to change as time goes on. And that's not even taking into consideration the potential upgradeability of the v7 application, which is a complete unknown at this point. Rick On 1/26/07, *Kaiser Norm E CIV USAF 96 CG/SCWOE* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: ** Hi list: I apologize for not being a more active participant of the ARS list community recently…work has had me tied up more in red tape than in real development lately. Anyway, I put this in as off topic, but I think it's only a bit off topic. I would like to get any and all viewpoints on the subject of implementing ITSM vs. another product or a custom product. Specifically, how do you feel about the following points (some are from a devil's advocate perspective): - ITSM 7.0 was overhauled from the previous version to be "ITIL compliant". An organization that does not want to embrace the ITIL model, however, is stuck because BMC only supports so many versions back. Eventually support is dropped on the non-ITIL compliant versions. Thus, doesn't the vendor effectively control your organization's process and not the other way around? What are your thoughts on that? - ITSM 7.0 has some 26,000 code objects (forms, ALs, filters, and escalations). Doesn't that make the tool nearly impossible to reverse engineer? And a bear to customize? - Isn't customization unavoidable…especially in large enterprises with longstanding, proven business practices? - If customization is unavoidable, how do you handle configuration control? That is, how do you know the next version won't wipe out all the work you did on your customizations? All thoughts and opinions are much appreciated. Norm
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