A new entrant to the Business Service Management (BSM) space emerged last week. Firmly targeting the mid-market, SMB and SaaS space, Manage Engine has released their initial beta solution called IT360 last week. (demo and download available here) (screenshots) Check out the IT360 blog here.
I classify Manage Engine’s IT360 product as a Hybrid BSM solution in that its focus is much more than pure play BSM. IT360 is built upon AdventNet’s strong heritage of building solid products in the ITSM space for the past 10 years, mainly going to market in the OEM space.
Hybrid BSM solutions are focused on delivering “just enough” core BSM enabling features and capabilities that other “best of breed” or “heavier” solutions for networks, systems, application, user experience mgmt/monitoring or service desk may not be needed. Think “BSM Lite” or “jack of all trades, master of none” in a good, cost efficient way. Many in this classification deliver their product as an appliance.
When the Hybrid BSM concept is executed and operationalized within a company correctly, this can be a great approach for delivering BSM value by driving the concepts of BSM (Think, Operate and Respond Different.) all the way down to the lowest levels within the consolidated solution making them consumable by all IT organizations, not just the operations center. There are also obvious administrative benefits here as well.
Others in this same area of BSM for the Mid-Market, SMB, SaaS, MSP, etc. include FireScope, Zyrion, Nimsoft (soon!) and potentially, at some point in their future ScienceLogic.
Welcome Manage Engine and I look forward BSM conversations, debate and competition in the future! 
by doug on February 3, 2009
Yesudas Jayson Kurisinkal posted today over on his Infosys Service Matters! ITSM & IT Management blog with commentary on the industry’s attempts at making their software or technology more consumable. He notes that this isn’t a new concept with many vendors offering “express” type products. These are often crippled down versions of their more powerful parents with the attempt at offering smaller clients an entry point with the option of easy migration or upgrade in the future to the full blown versions. Some vendors go to market with the full product and mere licensing restrictions on what can or can not be done leaving the complexity of the product.
My question to you is this. Would a Business Service Management (BSM) Appliance, Software as a Service (SaaS) or Platform as a Service (PaaS) be a means to achieve BSM Lite or BSM in general? Would you be willing to open access into your most trusted IT and business data stores to a trusted company that would help you along the path towards BSM from the technology perspective? (people, process, organization silos/politics aside) Would you consider a private, internal SaaS/PaaS delivered as an appliance a viable alternative to the “cloud”. (private cloud)
A “BSM Manager of Managers” in the “cloud” would be an interesting concept to virtually sit atop the end-to-end business and orchestrate alignment, impact, monitoring and management of the key BSM Value Proposition components?
What are the benefits, tradeoffs, risks?
Is your company considering emerging SaaS offerings such as Service-Now.com or any of the business intelligence (BI) or simple monitoring services? Do you already use vendors such as Keynote or Gomez?
Does name brand matter? Does it make it “easier” or just give you a warm and fuzzy feeling?
What value add would you expect compared to deploying your own inside the firewall? Is the cost savings approach good enough justification?
What role should the SaaS/PaaS provider play above providing the core capability? How involved should they be in helping a client get started?
What should the level of effort be for the client to design, develop and implement their specific solution on the SaaS/PaaS platform? Should this be significantly easier? Does the client need a big time SME or just a trained administrator?
What are the core features, functions, capabilities that a SaaS/PaaS provider must have to be able to deliver on a widely agreed upon vision for BSM?
