* Mercury tackles the service desk
On June 13, Mercury Interactive announced that it is expanding its reach into the IT services management market. The company is tackling the service desk and has acquired PowerHelp IT software from Vertical Solutions Inc. and Tefensoft, as well as all of Tefensoft’s R&D staff and facilities. VSI and Tefensoft worked together to create PowerHelp IT, a product built from the ground up to be compliant with the Information Technology Infrastructure Library best practices model for service management.
The acquisition follows other key Mercury purchases of application discovery vendor Appilog in 2004 and IT governance software maker Kintana in 2003. Mercury has integrated products from the Appilog and Kintana acquisitions to create a configuration management database (CMDB), change management capabilities, and workflow processes and has brought them into the mainstream of other Mercury technologies in support of ITSM positioning.
Prior to the VSI/Tefensoft acquisition, Mercury found itself immersed in the help desk market as its customers adapted Mercury’s IT governance and change management technologies to meet their problem and incident management needs. Still, Mercury felt the market pressure to offer a full-fledged service desk – one that integrates with the entire range of ITIL-infused service models, including change management, service-level management (SLM) and the CMDB.
PowerHelp IT software will be incorporated into Mercury Service Desk and provide a link across Mercury’s existing portfolio, bridging the divide that currently exists between application development and deployment and operations. This builds on Mercury’s core strengths of supporting application development, testing and deployment – a differentiator in the service desk space that most competitors do not possess.
Mercury’s strategy is to tightly integrate the service desk with Mercury Business Availability Center, Mercury Change Control Management, Mercury IT Governance Center, Mercury Quality Center, and the Mercury Application Mapping. The CMDB is at the heart of these solutions and will serve as a centerpiece for the service desk integration.
The VSI/Tefensoft solution was built from the ground up around ITIL best practices. Many competitive service desk solutions today offer retrofitted ITIL capabilities primarily because their established product sets preceded the global trend to adopt ITIL best practices. This creates challenges such as increased cost for development and “less than seamless” features and functions. However, VSI/Tefensoft was not alone in this endeavor. There are a few other examples of service desk products built around ITIL, including Touchpaper and Axios Systems. The challenge for these smaller companies is that the service desk market is crowded and gaining visibility among the fray is a difficult challenge on limited marketing budgets. Mercury has the brand recognition and marketing dollars to make this a reality.
The acquisition enables VSI to return to its roots and redouble its efforts around CRM. VSI’s broad PowerHelp CRM suite encompasses call center and contact center management, field service management, sales and marketing automation as well as mobile solutions.
This is a significant announcement for Mercury and for the service desk market. Service desk functionality is becoming more and more critical to the ITSM market and this move will strengthen Mercury’s position. Integration and further product development lies ahead, but the initial ITIL-based functionality available off-the-shelf with the VSI/Tefensoft core technology, along with service-desk savvy personnel propels Mercury into another level of competitiveness.
Mercury appears to have moved beyond well-publicized organizational challenges that threatened to derail its hard-fought market positioning. Persistent and intelligent investments in ITSM technologies such as application discovery, change management, and now the service desk are forcing ITIL-conscious enterprises and competitors to pay attention.
This announcement also changes the dynamics of the service desk marketplace. For many years, there have been a small number of leading service desk offerings for enterprise buyers to choose from. These solutions have included BMC Remedy, HP and Peregrine, CA with its service desk, and the emerging FrontRange ITSM offerings. Frustration in the limited number of options is often expressed when talking to large enterprise buyers. Mercury Service Desk will expand this select group – something that has been needed in the industry.
A note to vendors:
EMA has just launched the industry’s first survey on vendor analytic strategies – from basic event correlation to OLAP and chaos theory. This survey takes only 15 to 20 minutes to fill out, and if you complete it, you’ll get access to the raw data in spreadsheet form. Or contact khecht@emausa.com to get the full report. You can take the survey here.
We are also conducting another important survey on the subject of IT governance. The results of this survey will be published in the near future. The survey is posted until Tuesday here.
