Can I just point out that you have never had the image of Yosemite Sam and Mick Jagger sitting on a cloud until now? Try to erase that image from your mind.

While Sam and Mick are a very random and unlikely pair, cloud and ITSM are not.

Cloud-based ITSM is not a rage anymore, it’s the norm.

Cloud-based ITSM solutions just make sense. A CIO wants to engage on a digital strategy that focuses unique and high-value resources on driving business solutions that are core to the business operation.

IT operation functions—while absolutely critical—are commoditized and readily available through suppliers and vendors. Best practice schemes like ITIL, COBIT, IT4IT, and other reference models have driven a consistent set of functionality within the ITSM and IT operations market.

Except under rare security or regulatory scenarios, it makes no sense for an organization to own the risk and maintenance of the ITSM infrastructure.

Cloud-based ITSM can be spun up quickly, give the organization a starting point, and allow them to execute, learn, improve, repeat. Thus more and more RFP’s (requests for proposals) and Tenders (what non-US companies call an RFP) for ITSM software and solutions are stating a cloud-based ITSM as a requirement.

What is also becoming the norm is the rising frustration of customers who are already on a cloud-based ITSM solution. After purchasing a cloud ITSM solution, they soon realize that the cost of operating and maintaining this solution really did not meet their expectations. Either the licensing model has risen significantly since their initial contract, or they realize the infrastructure is not really cloud. Suffering Succotash! (I still don’t know what succotash is.)

Let’s break this down a bit then.

First off, cloud service and SaaS are two different things.

Cloud

Cloud has a lot of different definitions in the marketplace, but I like this one: Highly elastic and durable technical capabilities and infrastructure provided on-demand via the internet.

In other words, you get functionality provided to you without the risk, worries, or concern about capacity, performance, high-availability or disaster recovery. Functionality and control is enabled in such a way that a subscriber has autonomy and control over the usage of the technical capabilities, but is protected enough from causing infrastructure disruption.

SaaS

SaaS (software as a service) is a licensing model. It is purely a financial relationship between the software developer/manufacture and the consumer.

Instead of purchasing an EULA (end-user license agreement) with capital appropriations and then paying annual maintenance for upgrades and support, the purchase is made as an expense item based on subscription basis. This subscription basis can be daily, monthly, or annual, but typically you see it in terms of an annual contract.

Pricing is then set at what is called an ACV (annual contract value).

Cloud+SaaS

The benefits of a cloud/SaaS purchase offers the promise of predictability.

Predictability within IT ops is a like the Ring of Power. Wear it and you will become invisible, yet wield great power.  (If I just lost you, then you are clearly not a Lord of the Rings fan.)

However, many organizations have failed to actualize this benefit.

Here are two of the biggest complaints in the industry about cloud/SaaS-based ITSM solutions:

1. "Three years ago when I signed my contract, [vendor] was half the price they are now,” said a senior director of operations at a healthcare company.

Having an unplanned doubling of your operational expenses is not predictable. In fact, in IT, we call this a career-limiting move.

2. "The tools I need to manage my environment just don’t exist. It’s slower and more painful than if I were just on-premise," said a senior systems engineer at a financial institution.

When legacy infrastructure and technology is simply hosted over the internet and sold as a “CLOUD” solution, it usually increases the risk, cost and time from IT operations.

What makes Ivanti different?

We are IT operations experts. We intimately know the challenges involved in operating mission-critical technology for your business.

Our mission across the suite of products we bring to market is simple: Make life in IT easier by providing one place for IT to go to get its work done. We know IT needs to perform at higher levels, and our product roadmaps and customer enablement solutions are designed to do just that.

Pricing predictability

We offer multiple tiers of our cloud-based ITSM solution. This allows you the “right fit” for your purchase based on current needs and requirements, upgrading to the next tier when your organization is ready and allowing a seamless experience to gain access to this functionality.

Our "Center of Excellence" implementation ensures a rapid time to value with a predictable and transparent spend on professional services. Avoiding the never-ending “change orders” for just simply trying to get Incident, Problem, and Change working.

Cloud predictability

Imagine functionality through a web browser that was truly intuitive and scalable. So did we, and that’s exactly what we’ve brought to market.

Providing customer instances through self-service tools that enable you to design your interfaces, workflows, and reporting shouldn't be a bullet point on a product roadmap in 2017. Easy-to-use, drag-and-drop web-based administration is a must for a modern ITSM solution, and we completely agree.

From the cloud up we have designed a highly scalable, multi-tenant capable, highly secure and web-scale performing infrastructure that enables you to design process automation for the enterprise. With hundreds of pre-built best practice template designs, setting internal expectations on cut-overs, deployment and new capabilities with management is truly possible.

You can get SaaS-isfaction! Learn how Ivanti is enabling IT for the next generation of high performance through a better cloud ITSM solution.

automate itsm processes graphic