The world of IT Services has evolved on many an occasion, however, right now it needs to prepare for another iteration of the new normal for it to continue to thrive writes Martin Summerhayes...

IT services have come a long way over the past 20 years or so. From the heyday of the hardware manufacturers, rolling out ever more sophisticated technology solutions; with faster compute power, larger storage capabilities and faster network performance; the pace of change seemed to be faster and faster.

 

Long Tail Service Support

Then the average sales lifecycle for the hardware platforms was a couple of years and services had to keep up with the ever-expanding portfolio of solutions. This meant a longer and longer list of products that had to be supported and maintained. What is known as “the long tail”.  

I was part of the long tail of support. When I first started as a field engineer for Hewlett-Packard (HP); HP had just released its first HP LaserJet printer, the 2686A and shortly afterwards its first PC. Within five years, the market had exploded and there were hundreds of different models. Combined, with the mini computers, servers, storage and network products being produced; it felt as if it was a quarterly tech refresh and learning hamster wheel.

The implications for many services companies meant, having to train the workforce on an ever expanding list of products, servicing more and more options and then having to keep, maintain and supply more and more variants of spare parts. As HP moved into the multi-vendor field of service deliver, this became even more complex. 

"As the consolidation of software operating system platforms has accelerated, so has the consolidation and merger of major hardware and solution platforms as well..."

At the same time as hardware manufacturers grew their product portfolio, the operating systems that were used to manage these diverse hardware platforms started to consolidate. From fifteen or more different types of operating system, over the past fifteen years, we have seen the standard platforms evolve to be either Microsoft or Linux/Unix based for the B2B market. For the B2C market Googles Android and Apples IOS operating systems are the two predominant variants.

As the consolidation of software operating system platforms has accelerated, so has the consolidation and merger of major hardware and solution platforms as well. What was once a diverse and jumbled array of solution providers; from an IT perspective; consolidation has meant standardisation, supply chain simplification and “more bang for the buck” that companies pay for their IT.

However, “the long tail” persists. Even today, with 70%, yep 70% of IT spend just keeping the “lights on”.

Only 20-30% of IT budgets are spent on new solutions, and the vast majority of that spend is now on software, not hardware. If you look at the hardware sale of servers, storage and networking solutions across Europe over the last few years; we have seen a steady decline in growth and a flattening of sales. It is almost at a point where customers are no longer purchasing hardware at all.

This might be an oversimplification, but the market figures do seem to indicate that the market is flat or even declining (If you are in hardware sales, and disagree, please feel free to say so in the comments below).

 

The Origins of Everything as a Service

This hardware sales decline has been driven largely by the “as a Service” models, starting with “IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service”, where customers could purchase raw hardware compute poser – be it servers, storage or network capabilities; expanding into “Software as a Service” – which has had a dramatic and completely disruptive effect on the traditional software annuity licence model and now a new variant called “Platform as a Service (PaaS)”, which wraps up IaaS, SaaS and extends it across the complete enterprise of services and IT organisation is offering to its business and end user base.

If you check out companies such as Salesforce.Com or ServiceNow, they are moving rapidly away from their heartlands of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) for Salesforce.Com which tracks the sales engagement and onboarding of new customers and IT Service Management (ITSM) on a Service Desk (for ServiceNow) where you track end-user incidents, problems and issues that they face; into a eco system called “Platform as a Service”.

This means that ServiceNow is launching solutions for HR; for Finance, for Marketing, for example. Salesforce.com is offering the ability for apps developers to develop applications, standing on top of the salesforce platform, that also expand into HR, finance and Marketing. (As a foot note, I can see a major battle developing between these two companies over the next few years).

Why are these companies doing this?

As markets exist, companies expand to meet those markets. The number one in the CRM and ITSM markets, are respectively, Salesforce and ServiceNow. To be able to continue to grow, provide shareholder value and appear to be leading edge, the local answer is to expand their market presence into similar market landscapes – hence – moving out from their core business models into parallel markets.

 

Time for Evolution in IT Service Design

So from an IT service model perspective, we need to adapt and change as well.

Too many of the service models that exist today are silo’d; focused on vertical optimisation of an element of the service lifecycle – Service Desk, Diagnosis, field service (massively silo’d), forward and return logistics and finally repair. This, I would contend, runs the risk of a continued race to bottom line, with lower and lower costs, less margin and an ever decreasing customer experience. Oh, and before you ask, when you get to the bottom, there is nowhere else to go!

"We need to think more of the lifecycle and value stream across IT..."

Whilst customers are looking to maximise the value of their IT estate, they also want to further standardise and modernise the services that they offer to their businesses. They are looking at IT service organisations and the value that they can bring in terms of supporting and transforming their IT services; bringing more of the adaptive model that we see in the consumer world; hand held devices, mobility, ease of use and adaptive adaption to rapidly changing business needs.

This needs a new set of thinking about how services need to be positioned. We need to think more of the lifecycle and value stream across IT.

I like to think that services will continue to develop and evolve and a new ecosystem will emerge where organisations strategically partner with one another; leveraging others strengths, as well as the clients they serve; to bring better value to the IT customers. This is going to need some new thinking, maybe, from learning from the software services world. I don’t have all of the answers, but have experience a number of these cyclical changes, so understand the changes companies need to make.

If you think that it is just “business as usual” and we as a community do not need to adapt, feel free to challenge.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

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Further Reading:

• Read more articles written by Martin @ www.fieldservicenews.com/martin-summerhayes
• Read more articles on IT Services @ /www.fieldservicenews.com/ITSM
• Find out about Martin's work with MDB Consulting @ www.mdbsc.co.uk
• Follow Martin on Twitter @ twitter.com/martinsummerhay
• Connect with Martin on LinkedIn @ www.linkedin.com/in/martinsummerhayes/

In today’s digitalised world, employees must have access to databases and communication applications wherever they might be and on whatever device they wish to use. The fixed workstation generation is over. With more than 140 employees in 20 countries across the globe, iba’s IT infrastructure has to be able to support mobile working, while being reliable and providing the right levels of performance.

iba AG approached data centre specialist and cloud service provider Proact to help its staff enter today’s mobile paradigm and to also optimise its existing infrastructure. Everything started with analysis - to define goals and the services that were needed. After this Proact’s experts developed a cost-efficient and future-proof concept that integrated enterprise-class technology with existing solutions to create a highly unified solution.

As a result of Proact’s solution, all workloads, including the development environment, are now underpinned by two identically equipped data centres. To establish a truly turbo IT platform, Proact consolidated data and included symmetrical replication to ensure effective disaster recovery, centralised management, data protection and efficient use of resources. Ultimately, iba AG now has the performance capabilities so staff can access IT services as and when they need them.

“Proact understood our requirements for this solution right from the start and thought very efficiently and customer-oriented when designing the systems and licenses,” says Marc Besten, IT Infrastructure & Security at iba AG.

To learn more about this exciting partnership and the benefits IBA is gaining through this solution, please visit: https://www.proact.eu/en/case-studies/iba-ag/

 

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Asolvi is establishing itself as the supplier of choice for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the service management space across Europe. One of the ways it is doing this is by helping companies like Punt NL Groep in the Netherlands keep pace in a crowded market.

Punt NL Groep is an IT services, office equipment and document management solutions provider based in Drachten. It is modestly-sized and charged with managing and maintaining between 1,000 and 1,200 machines in the field (MIF).

There is intense pressure on companies of this scale to stay relevant in the document management space, which grows increasingly competitive and is dominated by constant technological change.There is intense pressure on companies of this scale to stay relevant in the document management space, which grows increasingly competitive and is dominated by constant technological change. That is why for the past three years Punt NL Groep has been using Asolvi's leading-edge software product, Evatic, an IoT-powered platform specially designed for the office print and document management industries.

Evatic combines automated data collection and processing with scheduling and task planning functionality, business intelligence tools and mobile technology to make the service operations of SMEs more profitable. Marco Visser, founder and CEO of Punt NL Groep, explains how Evatic is saving his company inordinate amounts of time so that it can focus on more important things.

"It saves us 20 hours a month of calculating and creating invoices and manually sending them out to customers after checking and re-checking," he says. "Now every step — from collecting the data from the machines to creating the invoices according to contract conditions to sending them out to customers — is all handled by Evatic automatically. Instead of 20 hours it takes us 30 minutes. It means our staff are able to be a lot more productive."

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