Servicecenter’s New Service Catalog Looks Nice
In the past few weeks I’ve been getting my first close look at HP / Peregrine software’s ServiceCenter Service Catalog module in the 6.2 release that’s just out, and frankly it’s changing my standard opinion about Service Catalog tools, and “ITIL software” in general.
My old stock answer to “which software should I use for ITIL?” is that you could “do” ITIL with almost any of the toolsets out there advertising. I’ve personally worked with Remedy, Peregrine, Mercury, some of IBM’s Tivoli stuff, some of CA’s products, plus other niche or point products like NewScale. And the painful honest truth was, you still had to do a bunch of “make your own” integration and customization to make any or all of these products really work in an ITIL environment.
But, with HP’s acquisition of Peregrine and Mercury, things are already looking much better. The 6.2 ServiceCenter suite has a really strong, “straight out of the box” Service Catalog module that allows easy configuration for your unique set of IT Services and Products (and doesn’t require Admin skills to build the Services and Products), it’s tightly integrated with other modules like Service Management, Incident Management and Change Management, and frankly I haven’t been able to find a big hole in the product at all.
So, I’m usually very reluctant to talk glowingly about any software vendor’s product, because I know from painful experience that they all have holes and quirks and time-consuming workarounds. And I’m sure that’s true with the new ServiceCenter suite. But, I haven’t found any yet.
It’s looking like I may be managing a project to use ServiceCenter 6.2 ServiceCatalog soon, so watch this space and I’ll keep you posted.
Also, check out our new White Paper on “How To Develop a Service Catalog”.
Till next time, keep up the good work.
Scott Braden
Technorati Tags: help desk software help desk helpdesk software itil software
—–
We will be hitting it hard from now until the end of year to find a complimentary Service Catalog and Service Desk solution . And I expect we will be required to integrate with our Change Management system which is a Mercury product. I would be very interested in getting feedback about your experience with this product suite.
I am also curious that from what I have read….HP chose to implement Newscale.
The thing I find with most of these LARGE software vendors that are trying to catch the ITIL gravy train is that they take a bunch of disconnected products, put some lipstick on the bulldog and call it a well oiled machine but on the back end and from an administration level…..it’s a big convoluted mess.
That being said…..has anyone designed a comprehensive ITIL toolset that really IS well supported and easy to integrate?
Why does a Service Catalog need to be integrated with Incident Management and Change Management?
I agree with Miller - large vendors often force you into suites that take forever to implement and are just too darn expensive. Perhaps as an HP partner you have a different perspective.
Vijay Singh
Hi Vijay,
Let’s start with Change:
- One working definition of a “change” is anything done to modify a Service or any of the underlying CI’s of a service. For example, if you are about to patch several hundred Windows servers, and some of those are running your email service, then that patch is a change that affects the email service. So obviously you’d want to assess risk, priority, impact etc in light of all the services affected.
- Service Requests frequently result in Changes… And Service Requests are to be defined / managed via the Service Catalog.
- the Service Catalog / SLA’s define business priorities. So if you have a large list of proposed Changes that can’t all happen at the same time, your Service Catalog / SLA’s will be the tie-breaker.
- SLM is represented in the CAB. If a change has a major impact or high risk, its implementation and the timeframe will always be discussed with the customer. Change Management reports to SLM in the form of a Projected Service Availability (PSA) report. In this report, Change Management lists the changes to the agreed SLAs and the impact of the Forward Schedule of Changes (FSC) on service availability. Most IT shops today do this by sending out the occasional mass email “the X server will be unavailable from 10pm Saturday till 4 am Sunday.”
Now Incident:
- When an Incident happens, you want to associate the ticket with the affected Service, which is probably the way the customer defines the issue. For example, a user calls saying “I can’t print”…. Well we both know that could be because of any number of root causes… Anything from user error to application issues to network to printer hardware. But from the customer’s perspective, it’s the “print” service that’s affected. This means that when negotiating and tracking SLA’s, one service might be “print” and you might decide that it gets a different service level than “email.”
- Incident Management must be familiar with the SLA so that this information can be used when communicating with users. The Incident Management records can be used to generate reports to determine if the agreed level of service is being provided.
Regarding large vendors forcing customers into expensive suites… I respectfully disagree. The customer always controls the checkbook; no vendor can force any customer to buy anything. The only reason a customer should buy anything is in the clear-eyed belief and expectation that the purchase will result in improvements to the business that increase shareholder value.
But I think there’s an underlying mis-conception that needs addressing and is more important.
Specifically, I get a lot of questions and comments along the lines of “why is it so complex, why can’t it be simpler?”
IT is a very complex business. There’s no getting away from that. For example, the client where I’m working at the moment is only a medium-sized insurance company, but they have over 600 unique business applications, hundreds of IT staff, business departments and locations and product lines scattered all over the place, all of which is in constant change. Technical projects, tool upgrades, patches, process changes, etc etc etc.
IT has “grown up” very organically, chaotically, and is still a young industry… there’s a lot of chaos out there and relatively little degree of order and management (especially when compared to other, more mature industries).
It’s unrealistic to expect that a long-term solution to managing this complexity is going to be cheap, simple, quick and easy.
Best regards,
Scott
Hi A. Miller, good questions and comments.
Since HP bought both Peregrine and Mercury I have seen a couple of
roadmap presentations, and though it’s painfully slow they really do
seem to be on the true integration path. And I agree that lots of
vendors “say” that but never actually do it. So I guess it remains to be
seen.
I’m not as experienced w/ Mercury. Some of our other consultants have
done a lot of work with their stuff, so if you’d like to set up a
conversation just let us know.
ServiceCenter, Remedy, and a few others, I have done plenty of work with
so I can comment on those. Those 2 in particular are just fine to get
the job done.
My usual advice is to not rip n replace your service desk tool unless
it’s really in bad shape or inadequate somehow. Not knowing your
situation that’s about all I can give you.
I don’t know about the HP / Newscale thing, can’t comment on that.
Re: “has anyone designed a comprehensive ITIL toolset that really IS
well supported and easy to integrate?” I’d give a qualified yes to HP’s
suite, with ServiceCenter at core. Especially with the 6.2 suite, the
only piece that’s really missing is a true CMDB mapping / relationship
discovery tool, and that’s where Mercury comes in.
In fact I just saw an email this morning that HP has released “Universal
CMDB 7.0, Discovery and Dependency Mapping 7.0 ”
I would caution you on a couple of things
- first, the administrative / backend burdens are only a part of the
tool decision matrix. Sure, you need to go into a project with “eyes
open” but at the same time don’t let technical considerations
automatically overrule the business drivers.
- second, the technical challenges tend to be routine integration
issues like most shops deal with all the time. The big project killers
or winners are the user training, process design and adoption, and good
old management commitment. You can install the best tool in the world
that runs beautifully… Well you know the rest of the story.
Thanks again, and all the best,
Scott
comparatively speaking, I am not seeing anything to “pretty” with HP’s Service Catalog. What do you like?