– David Hurwitz, senior vice president of marketing at Serena Software (www.serena.com), says:
Service management systems are an IT department’s on-line face to the business. Sure, enterprise apps and personal productivity tools may be how users get their jobs done, but when someone in sales or marketing has a problem or needs something they turn to the IT service system for satisfaction.
That said, they are often disappointed, leading to dissatisfaction with the IT department in general. Left unchecked, this unfriendly face can lead to elevated service resolution costs, extended cycle times, and frustration within IT itself, all the while leaving end-users convinced that IT isn’t a suitable business partner.
Meanwhile back in IT, a process-based revolution has been declared. ITIL succeeded in defining IT service management processes in standard fashion, while shining a light on the need to become process-based. Activity-based approaches, ad hoc approaches, and disconnected silos are now properly frowned upon.
At the executive level, CIOs know all this and also know that their ongoing costs in rigid 20th Century service management systems are a disproportionately expensive part of their portfolio. Expensive, unfriendly and rigid is hardly a formula for success, especially for a system that literally defines IT in the minds of the vast majority of IT’s customers.
This untenable situation has led to the increasingly widespread adoption of SaaS ITSM offerings. These 21st century services help with the cost issue and are superficially helpful in presenting a friendlier face to the business. But, they suffer from rigidity and a failure to embrace true process automation.
The better approach is to orchestrate IT service management, whether delivered via SaaS or on-premises. Orchestrate? This means to automate ITSM processes in a way that they become transparent, configurable and connected. Orchestration leads to dramatic improvements in cycle time, compliance, adaptability and accountability, and in the end, helps bring Dev and Ops closer together.
Speaking of the “Dev – Ops Divide,” it has just narrowed significantly with the release of two breakthrough solutions: Serena Service Manager and Serena Release Manager. Serena Service Manager provides an easily configurable and flexible process-based approach to delivering IT services along with a unified service portal and integrated service management dashboards. The business user interface, Serena Request Center, gives end users one convenient view of all the services available to them and offers IT one funnel for routing requests.
Serena Release Manager dramatically speeds application delivery and introduces a new visual enterprise release calendar for both application development and IT operations. Both solutions are fully integrated and build upon Serena’s Orchestrated Application Delivery product strategy, which emphasizes process and automation.
Serena Software is a true technology pioneer. Since 1980, this Redwood City-based company has been serving enterprise customers from 29 offices in 14 countries with innovative Application Lifecycle Management solutions. Serena’s innovative line of products Orchestrate the lifecycle of an application from Demand-to-Deployment. Now Serena is doing the same thing for IT Operations: orchestrating it for efficiency, innovation and better customer service. Serena’s impressive customer lineup proves the enterprise market is paying attention.
Dev and Ops Divide. What Dev and Ops divide?
