I have to add, if you would be the one responsible for implementing SCSM, you 
will have several years of job security while trying to bring SCSM up to a 
similar level of functionality that Remedy is used for.

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: Friday, May 25, 2012 8:27 AM
To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG
Subject: Re: System Center 2012 Service Manager question

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


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