The Issue:

A constant lament from IT executives these days is “We’re not getting more staff and we’re not getting more budget, but we always have more to manage!” Though they are not getting ongoing budget increases, however, they are still able to leverage extra money for specific projects if the case for doing so is strong enough.

The idea that IT departments need software to help them manage and support enterprise IT services is not controversial. The decision to spend a lot of money on a new tool for managing systems or problem tracking is, because it either requires displacing existing spending, or justifying spending above budget. But, since the alternatives are usually to add staff or to stretch existing staff ever more thinly, the case can be made for spending the money.

According to Nemertes’ benchmark study Delivering the Enterprise: Service Delivery and Management 75% of IT departments have a single tool to track problems from report to resolution and available to all IT staff. Likewise, essentially all IT shops use some tools to monitor networks, servers, applications, or desktops, even if only to see whether they are up or down at any given moment. Approximately 30% layer on top of that one or more “manager of managers” (MoM) products to try to create one or just a few windows on the rest.

Many of these tools are quite old – the median age for ticketing systems is about 4.5 years; most companies with MoMs have had one for that long as well. IT departments wishing to acquire or replace a ticketing system or high-level manager need to justify the expense by locating the savings they can produce by improving their ability to provide services.

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