SaaS for ITSM: Getting Past The Hype

For many organizations, the key benefit of SaaS is its simple, subscription-based pricing model that provides a lower and consistent level of expenditure which is Opex rather than a Capex investment – highly suited to those organizations wishing to invest limited Capex into business innovation projects rather than into IT.  

Stephen Mann deliberately did not state that SaaS is cheaper as “it depends” ... 
Many tools have a “breakeven point” in the three to four year timeframe where SaaS becomes more expensive to customers than on-premises,  according to Stephen Mann. To me it all depends on...

The simplicity of pricing can also be viewed from a value-for-money perspective, in that a per-seat subscription it will usually cover access to capabilities across multiple ITIL (or ITSM) processes rather than the traditional need for organizations to buy multiple licenses across multiple ITSM products (or modules), giving an organization the freedom to increase its ITSM maturity without extra cost (unless additional people need access to the solution).

The third main benefit is also cost-related – the effort and associated costs required to achieve ready-to-use status for the tool. Whether it is the time to initially deploy (and thus to start to realize value from what is a significant IT investment) or the upheaval involved in upgrading to the next release of the solution. Even more inportant to my experience is the cost of maintaining the knowledge and train and motivate professionals to stay on this one engagement of being an employee versus a professional supporting multiple different customers.

A SaaS-delivered ITSM tool only requires a Web browser and an Internet connection to function so scarce IT resources can be redirected away from IT-internal systems to focus on the delivery of business-critical IT services. 

A benefit that also resonates strongly in a service integration model where the SaaS-delivery and the subscription model make it easier to add in new suppliers and give them access to the tool’s capabilities.

But, in reality, are these not just things we are concerned about when buying software per se whether SaaS or on-premises?

So how important is delivery model?
Stats from the Forrester Forrsights Software Survey Q4 2011 
(“How important are the following criteria to your company when selecting software products?”) show delivery model in just seventh place:

1. Features and functions (92%)
2. Price (86%)
3. Simply manageable (77%)
4. Scalability/performance (71%)
5. Integrations with other software applications/tools (68%)
6. Customizability (58%)
7. Type of software deployment (44%)
8. Vendors brand/market position (30%)
9. Part of an application of office suite (23%)

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