Thank you so very much. This is exactly what I needed. Based what I have received from our BMC account managers and your thorough review, we are all on the same page with SCSM. I'm hoping this is enough to keep my project to upgrade our current Remedy application over moving to Microsoft.
-----Original Message----- From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:arslist@ARSLIST.ORG] On Behalf Of Pierson, Shawn Sent: Friday, May 25, 2012 9:17 AM To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG Subject: Re: System Center 2012 Service Manager question Yesterday was my company's demo of Microsoft SCSM. Overall I would say that the demo made it look promising. On the surface, it appears to have everything you need for an ITSM suite. Microsoft claims that you can do anything you want with it especially by touting the Orchestrator functionality. However, once you start digging below the surface there are several critical flaws, although it was like pulling teeth to get the Microsoft guys to admit it. The major gaps in functionality that I saw are: 1) No Mid-Tier or similar functionality without going to a third party vendor, and the Microsoft guys weren't really familiar with the options there. They don't really have specific plans for when web functionality will be rolled out. 2) No Asset Management (what they claim is Asset Management is really light Configuration Management or Asset tracking at best, not licensing or lifecycle functionality.) You have to go with Provance for that, which is another third party vendor and we didn't see how that integration works. 3) You have to install a Windows client on everyone's PC in I.T. and anyone else that plans to work with the tool. They were also vague on licensing, so my expectation would be that just like with Project Server, Microsoft is trying to slide in a ton of client app purchases in under the radar with us. 4) The Windows Client is not compatible with XP, which our office still uses. The SRM-like portion doesn't work on IE6, which half of our organization uses. 5) There is nothing like the Assignment or Approval engines. If you want to build that basic type of functionality, they suggest using templates. If you're familiar with ITSM, imagine how difficult it would be to set up a different template for every possible thing that could be assigned to every possible support group in every scenario. Approvals would be even more difficult. We currently have Change approvals based on a combination of Operational Categories, Product Categories, Change Coordinator support groups, the Change Class, and a few other factors that are used a bit less. The Microsoft guy flat out said that it's not possible to do this in SCSM. 6) The interface is much more simple than BMC's products, but would likely be harder to use. They have a bunch of tabs and a long list of menus on the right side of the requests that aren't really organized. They also don't seem to pull in AD data as well as Remedy does with the People data. 7) There is no way to recreate something like the Overview console without custom development. Within SCSM, the consoles are broken down into a folder-like structure with the root folders being Incident, Problem, Change, Release, etc. That means a typical support group with work across all modules will not be able to easily see what work they have. 8) Email notifications are terrible specifically because there is no way to embed a link or shortcut to the request. In my organization, I.T. staff really like that Remedy by default includes a hyperlink to the request when they are assigned something, so they don't have to log in and find it. They click the link and bam, they are in the Incident/Change/Task/etc. 9) There isn't any sort of delegation authority for anything. You can't set up alternate approvals, you can't use their service request interface to create things on behalf of people (and only those you have permission to.) 10) There is nothing like multi-tenancy. You can restrict templates to certain support groups, but even to hide data you have to create custom fields only used on those templates that those support groups can see. There is no way to restrict which tickets are visible by support groups or any other organization of people. There are several other potential gaps that I would need clarification on if we were looking to proceed down this path. However, that's looking not too likely since the tool really doesn't look like it can do what we need it to do. One potential good thing I learned is that there are pre-configured integrations between Orchestrator and Remedy (as well as the other major ITSM suites) so even if we don't use SCSM, we can leverage the potential benefits of automation via Orchestrator. I'm also likely to build an AIE or Atrium Integrator integration into SCCM to pull out discovered data so while I doubt we will use SCSM, we can appease the Microsoft fans by using some of their products. Thanks, Shawn Pierson Remedy Developer | Energy Transfer -----Original Message----- From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:arslist@ARSLIST.ORG] On Behalf Of Henderson, Danielle R. CNTR Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2012 1:22 PM To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG Subject: Re: System Center 2012 Service Manager question Thanks everyone for the info. It has been a big help. @ Shawn Pierson, please repost once you view the demo of the latest version. Danielle R. Henderson NMIC, ISC-O L-3 Stratis Application Admin -----Original Message----- From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:arslist@ARSLIST.ORG] On Behalf Of Pierson, Shawn Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2012 12:42 PM To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG Subject: Re: System Center 2012 Service Manager question I can't speak for all situations, but in my experience the vast majority of situations where the tool is switched, it is almost never over functionality and it's rarely due to the costs. Generally these types of changes occur due to organizational changes or desired organizational changes. Thanks, Shawn Pierson Remedy Developer | Energy Transfer -----Original Message----- From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:arslist@ARSLIST.ORG] On Behalf Of Brian Pancia Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2012 11:22 AM To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG Subject: Re: System Center 2012 Service Manager question What is their driving force to switching? I'm assuming licensing costs and O&M costs. If that is the case there are other options with Remedy OnDemand and Remedy Force that could knock out a significant amount of the costs. I think over the next few years you are going to see a significant transition to these solutions. The government may be a little slower to transition, but agencies are slowly but surely adopting cloud and SaaS solutions. BMC may have some other alternatives if you talk to the Account Manager. I have seen a ton of different ITSM solutions. Some good and some bad. A lot of them do 75% of the same thing. The difference is usually implementation. What a lot of organizations find is that they switch for whatever reasons and find that they have a lot of the same issues if not more with the new solution. Also, most organizations only use a fraction of the out of box capabilities and end up doing a lot of customizations instead of using most of the capabilities. If organizations stick to implementing straight out of box functionality first their O&M cost will greatly decrease. I have seen organizations use Remedy where a developer has not touched the system in over a year except for patching. -----Original Message----- From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:arslist@ARSLIST.ORG] On Behalf Of Pierson, Shawn Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2012 11:52 AM To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG Subject: Re: System Center 2012 Service Manager question I'm in a similar situation. BMC has put together a matrix comparing the two, but it's not very complete. According to BMC, SCSM isn't something that has been a competitor to the Remedy platform in the past, so they don't have a well put together comparison between the two. I have put together a much more detailed comparison, and I am going to be sitting in a demo from Microsoft on SCSM next week. Perhaps in two weeks I'll have more information to compare the two. Right now, there are some basic core things missing in SCSM that doesn't have me thrilled to potentially implement it. Some of the major gaps are: - No web interface (other than going through a third party add-on, although their SRM equivalent is SharePoint based.) - No Asset Management (you have to purchase something from a Microsoft partner like Provance.) - Basic configuration tasks are much more difficult (e.g. the ease of setting up an Assignment mapping in Remedy is replaced by something more manual in SCSM which I would compare to setting up an SLA in SLM.) - The product is full of hidden costs, so at least in our organization it's looking like it may potentially be less expensive to keep Remedy and purchase additional licenses rather than implementing SCSM. Microsoft tries to hide lots of expenses hidden into bundles of other products. - SCCM is not a complete overlap with ADDM. The "discovery" portion of SCSM is basically geared around Windows Servers and Clients, and it is not agentless. I'm also not surWhate that it can do a good job of mapping out relationships like ADDM does. There are several other areas, but most of my initial opinion was based off of SCSM 2008, so I have to wait to see the 2012 demo before I can confidently give a good comparison. On a personal note, I am conflicted because I know Remedy is a better product, but I am also interested in learning other applications so if I got a chance to implement SCSM that could be an interesting challenge. Thanks, Shawn Pierson Remedy Developer | Energy Transfer -----Original Message----- From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:arslist@ARSLIST.ORG] On Behalf Of Henderson, Danielle R. CNTR Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2012 10:38 AM To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG Subject: System Center 2012 Service Manager question Good Morning everyone, My organization is looking at Microsoft Center 2012 Service Manager to replace Service Desk, Asset Management and ADDM. Can anyone provide info on the differences of the 2 applications? I believe they are looking to use the complete Microsoft solution including Configuration management and Change Management. Danielle R. Henderson L-3 Stratis _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org attend wwrug12 www.wwrug12.com ARSList: "Where the Answers Are" Private and confidential as detailed here: http://www.sug.com/disclaimers/default.htm#Mail . 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