On February 19, 2014, Research and Markets predicted that the global cloud-based ITSM market is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 16.82% over the period 2013-2018.
Such prediction doesn’t come as a complete surprise considering the increase in popularity of devices such as tablets and smartphones at work. While this may seem good news considering that ITSM software vendors will invest more and more in making these tools better suited for these mobile devices, the challenge however will be the integration possibilities these solutions will come with.
ITSM tools are not standalone tool solutions. They ideally need to integrate with tools such as:
1. Infrastructure monitoring and event management tools
2. Asset and configuration item discovery tools
3. Customer relationship management tools
4. Third-party incident management tools
5. Documentation management tools
6. Interactive voice response tools
7. Knowledge management tools
8. Source code control tools
9. Process automation tools
10. Reporting tools
11. Self-help tools
12. Etc., etc.
With your ITSM solution “in the cloud” and not in your datacenter within your realm of control your dependency on the openness of the ITSM software vendor with their cloud-based ITSM tool solution just doubled, tripled, quadrupled, or even more…?!
Today, we are already experiencing these vendors limiting your options and steering you towards their own solutions… One of the leading vendors recently announced to no longer support the integration with a leading infrastructure monitoring and event management tool to “force” its customers to go with its own solution. We have seen this trend before. The major four, BMC, CA, HP and IBM pulled off the same “trick” during the previous decade for their integrated system and service management tool suites. History is repeating itself.
What can you as a customer do about this? Here are a few options:
1. Go with the most “open” vendor
2. Include in your contract a clause that your vendor ensures supporting existing integrations
3. Don’t hesitate making it publicly known when a vendor “turns off” an integration in favor of its own solution; this shouldn’t be too hard in today’s world of social media and instant information sharing with your “friends”, “circles”, “communities”, etc.
In conclusion we can only recommend is paying close attention to this trend and keeping in mind that no single ITSM software vendor is offering all the integrations you need. Even when they claim they do…
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