Observations On ITSM, Or Should I Say Service Management, In Israel

[stephenmann]

Last week I was lucky enough to spend a week working in Israel. While there I met with a number of customers and potential customers along with two of my local ServiceNow colleagues Limor Afik and Gidi Alfassi.

As with previous blogs I've written on IT service management (ITSM) in different geographies (such as the Middle East and Norway while at Forrester) this is not a scientific or statistically robust piece of research or analysis. I merely offer up a series of observations based on a limited number of in-person interactions.

My ITSM observations …

It's worth stating that it was an interesting mix of organizations from a size, global presence, and industry vertical perspective. Also, from a potential customer perspective, you couldn't escape the evidence of Israel's thriving technology industry that we read about in the press.

And, while all the companies were different, there were definitely some common themes:

• ITIL, the IT service management (ITSM) best practice framework formerly known as the IT Infrastructure Library, was a common across all conversations. But importantly it didn't drive the conversations — it was more that the companies wanted consistency of process/operations based on industry best or good practice. The real drivers were operational efficiency and delivering better services. It was business and customer driven.
• An affinity for SaaS/cloud delivered services. I guess you could argue that they wouldn't be using or looking to use ServiceNow otherwise. So I'll move on quickly here.
• A desire to move beyond incident, problem, and change. There was another common theme here too. In my opinion, the next steps related to better stewardship of the IT estate and operations (including third-party provided services) through better financial management, asset management, and configuration management
• The use of ITSM, or service management, outside of IT. What ServiceNow calls service relationship management, or enterprise service management, was a common conversation. As was talk about the impact of Consumerization on all corporate service providers, not just the IT organization.
• The future direction of ServiceNow. From what was delivered with the Dublin release through to the Eureka and Fuji releases. Not that I can claim to know much about what my product management colleagues have planned for Fuji … other than a jaw-droppingly amazing new UI that ServiceNow Founder and CPO Fred Luddy demoed in January.

A couple of other interesting observations …

Limor and I also spoke with a local industry analyst, Pini Cohen of STKI. It was an interesting conversation but one of Pini's comments was a real surprise. That one of the traditional Big 4 ITSM tool vendors, and not one of the two you would expect, has a larger than usual historical ITSM footprint in Israel due to ruthlessly dropping prices to win deals. While price is always important I wonder how many of these low-price investments really paid off for the customer?

Finally, and this might be an indication of my inherent, standoffish Britishness, I was amazed at the relationships between Limor, Gidi, and their customers. It was all hugs and smiles, a real familiarity and even friendships. When I asked about it, Limor explained that she hadn't just sold them technology; she had sold them a solution. And that she was still part of delivering that solution post-sale; she was part of the customer team, working along with local ServiceNow partners, to deliver against ServiceNow's promises.