ISG Provider Lens™ SIAM/ITSM - US 2019 - Service Operation & Delivery
SIAM / ITSM 2019
Delivering IT-driven business services is a cornerstone for agility in the digital world. As business units need to improve customer experience day after day to win and retain customers, the number of IT services underpinning business solutions is growing constantly. Most of these services need to come from a variety of outside vendors to meet the requirements companies face in the ever-increasing competitive business environment. More companies understand that running and managing the IT environment today requires an evolution in two directions. First, the operational IT service management activities must evolve from people-driven actions to automated, self-managed and machine-performed executions. And secondly, professional orchestration of the IT supply through a growing number of suppliers is needed to build a robust service ecosystem that can deliver end-to-end business services. IT operations management is evolving into managing a complex environment of service elements and providers that is changing rapidly.
The SIAM/ITSM market is undergoing a fundamental change, moving from very labor-intensive implementations to a highly automated function. Vendors are investing heavily in these automation capabilities and are using available modern technologies to unlock new value in their services. While IT environments have produced management data since they were invented, analytical tools are now used to transform correlated data into information. With this intelligent automation (often referred to as IA), IT can deliver incremental value by integrating the systems of record with the systems of engagement, even in IT itself.
This integration is being used to adopt decisions or to automatically trigger activities based on extensive solution catalogs. User experience is improved by using highly sophisticated natural language processing (NLP) techniques across a large variety of input channels, resulting in a seamless and personalized human-machine experience. Early use cases are being built using machine learning (ML) capabilities to act even faster and to try to prevent incidents from occurring.
Traditionally, IT organizations have kept core infrastructure and application management in-house. With the ever-increasing demand for more agility, a growing number of companies are realizing that they can’t cope with this evolution. Labor shortages, paired with the need for deep knowledge about a whole variety of new and complex technologies being developed, force IT departments to re-think their management approaches. The demand for managed services is growing, and vendors are developing high-tech solutions by highly automating the management tasks required to guarantee a sustainable business IT environment.
Vendors in this market can be separated into three groups. One group comprises the classic vendors that focus on developing feature-rich tool sets that are easy to implement, easy to enrich and can be leveraged by either the IT department or by third-party companies. Even though the IT market is moving toward as-a-service delivery models, there is still a favorable market for on-premises installations. Local legal requirements and legacy installations still in use are the driving forces here. This market segment is currently dominated by two vendors — ServiceNow and BMC/Remedy. However, there are some smaller players that offer feature-rich products that have gained a certain market share. A second group of vendors consists of consulting and IT service companies that use the platforms from the first group and enhance the base functionality with specific features based on their industry-specific or other specialized knowledge. These vendors range from global IT services companies to local niche players and offer a large variety of services, including implementation consultancy and managed services. The third group has IT service companies that have over time developed feature-rich, proprietary tool sets normally used only in a managed service environment. Examples of companies representing this group include TechM and HCL. This study looks at all of these product solutions independent from the delivery model and provisioning.
Given the high variances in the clients’ maturity regarding SIAM, the success of vendors in the market depends on their ability to demonstrate extensive knowledge of ITSM, SIAM and governance, risk and compliance (GRC) processes. This knowledge needs to feed an internal reference model used to define a robust, agile and secure SIAM framework that combines people, processes and tools seamlessly. In some cases, the reference model is being supplemented with some of the already established models from the market such as IT4IT™ defined by The Open Group. Proprietary assessment and coaching methodologies, together with high transformation skills and a flexible pricing model, are additional and important success factors in this market.
Even though this market is not extensively large, it is one of the fundamental pillars of every digital transformation strategy. With IT operational budgets still tight, and margins being somewhat skinny, this market is clearly a very attractive area for vendors. Given their strategic position inside client organizations, SIAM/ITSM vendors are playing a key role and are about to get a seat at the internal IT and business decision table. Achieving such a position requires a great deal of trust. This is either being gained through long-term, trusted relationships or through rigid policies set by customers, which force the SIAM provider to be excluded from any other service tower delivery.