* Results of survey on BSM and SLM
This past spring, Enterprise Management Associates solicited your participation in a research initiative called “BSM and SLM: Concepts in Transition” to explore the two most commonly used service management acronyms: service-level management (SLM) and business services management (BSM).
The level of hype in the market has certainly been staggering, with much of the discussion coming out of best-practice initiatives, regulatory requirements, and economic pressures to reduce costs and maximize value from IT purchases. It is not so often that we get to hear the perspective of IT professionals trying to accomplish long-term goals while also holding down the fort.
The study itself took a bit longer than expected, as we spent time identifying the right individuals to participate. As participants were screened out, they were asked why they would not be using service management. The most common reason was that more information was needed (61%), followed by IT support is good enough (52%), and there is no organizational push to do so (50%). These are interesting responses that largely reflect further need to educate those that have yet to take the plunge – not only within IT, but also among executives.
Among survey respondents familiar with service management and at some stage in implementing a strategy, the participants were mostly large enterprises, as you might expect. We asked them about their perceptions of the similarities and dissimilarities of SLM and BSM. Most IT professionals (45%) who participated in this research felt there is significant overlap between the two. Another 26% viewed SLM as a component of BSM, and 15% felt that they are very different. This left a small group (12%) that did not know.
Many additional questions were asked of participants to try to understand how specific service management functions are viewed by IT. With a few exceptions, the results supported the overall view that there is significant overlap between SLM and BSM.
Service management depends upon processes in the organization and within IT. With the growth of investment in the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) over the past couple of years in North America, EMA wanted to further understand how ITIL processes and other process models are being adopted. ITIL remains a strong contender (47%), though ISO 9000 or 9001 were rated just a bit higher (55%). We attribute this to the fact that there were a large number of manufacturing organizations that responded to the survey. Many enterprises are still researching ITIL, and one-fifth of the participants did not recognize the acronym – reflecting a continued need to educate the market about ITIL’s recommendations and how they related to SLM and BSM.
Market growth in the end depends on real customer purchases. Continued growth in this segment will require budgets to be established, products to be evaluated, and money to be spent. This research revealed that there are budget allocations being made to some extent, but that there are also a lot of other priorities. As we all know, there have been serious cutbacks over the past few years, and now that budgets are opening up, IT executives need to make a concerted effort to educate their respective organizations.
EMA has a couple of activities we would like to share with you. First of all, you are invited to join us to further discuss the development of service-level agreements and learn some tips on how to make sure your commitments will be manageable and effective. This webinar , entitled “Do’s and Don’ts of Service Level Agreements,” will be presented Sept. 22.
On another topic, EMA is conducting a Web survey exploring agentless versus agent-based monitoring in systems management. If you can take a few minutes to complete this survey you will be provided with the final paper when complete. This survey should take no more than 5 minutes of your time.
