The Realities of the BSM Challenge

Michael Biddick has put together a gloomy article on the realities of implementing Business Service Management over here. While I do not agree with much of what he says, he’s certainly correct that it’s a challenge for most organizations to successfully implement Business Service Management.

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However, this promised future of BSM as a product is far from assured. We’re seeing early BSM adopters feeling downright gloomy, mainly as a result of unmet expectations. Many deployments simply don’t provide clear links between IT events and business services. In others, things start out well enough, but maintaining systems lacking in automation is not realistic given limited IT staff. The truth is, you can’t buy your way to BSM, and companies that persist in thinking a single product, no matter how big, complex, and expensive, will deliver are doomed to disappointment.

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Why are clients expectations being unmet? Is it because they’ve put their faith in a suite of tools and technologies over the changes required to implement Business Service Management successfully? IMO, yes. There are significant organizational barriers to success with Business Service Management that most IT organizations just don’t put the effort into addressing.

My challenge for Michael and his Information Week series would be to stop talking about the product and vendor capabilities and really start a series that shows companies how they can get started.

Don’t tell us we need a service catalog, CMDB, or application discovery tool, tell us how we can use the investments we’ve already made in millions of dollars worth of software to achieve service management excellence.

Tell us how to define a Business Service Management strategy that’s right for our own company, how to create a roadmap, architecture and design that guides every initiative and project at our company along the lines of service centric, top down, business aligned, operationally superior Business Service Management.

I know Michael’s company has the capability and background and hopefully they are helping establish these things when deploying software from these vendors. I challenge Michael to share these experiences. Talk about how we as vendors and you as consulting and systems integrators can improve a clients environment and chances of success with Business Service Management after the sale has been done.

The time is now to start talking about what needs to be done for clients to succeed with Business Service Management!