itsm saas vs. on-premises deployment: how to …itsm saas vs. on-premises deployment: how to...

6
cherwell.com © 2019 Cherwell Software, LLC. All Rights Reserved WHITE PAPER ITSM SaaS vs. On-Premises Deployment: How To Evaluate The Trade-Offs Life used to be so simple Software-as-a-service (SaaS) has effectively been around as long as the advent of outsourced IT services in the 1960’s and 70’s. However, the current notion of SaaS only became popular a decade ago, with two main drivers behind its rise. The first was subscription licensing, which lowered the upfront costs and facilitated an OpEx (operational expense) funding model. Second was faster time to value and lower upfront costs by eliminating the need to purchase, install, administer and maintain infrastructure (servers, storage and network connections) and middleware (web servers and databases). Another driver of SaaS adoption was the promise of easier upgrades, which have been the bane of IT service management (ITSM) and service desk professionals for years. However, the benefits often attributed to upgrading SaaS products turned out to be more dependent on the configuration and customization method than the hosting model. (More on this topic later in this paper.) And more recently, new cloud service deployment options blur the lines between SaaS and on-premises, especially with respect to initial setup times and ongoing administration. Service Desk deployment options – circa 2008 w/ perpetual licensing w/ subscription licensing On-premises MSP hosted or outsourced Software-as-a-Service

Upload: others

Post on 03-Sep-2020

6 views

Category:

Documents


0 download

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: ITSM SaaS vs. On-Premises Deployment: How To …ITSM SaaS vs. On-Premises Deployment: How To Evaluate The Trade-Offs Life used to be so simple Software-as-a-service (SaaS) has effectively

cherwell.com © 2019 Cherwell Software, LLC. All Rights Reserved

WHITE PAPER

ITSM SaaS vs. On-Premises Deployment: How To Evaluate The Trade-Offs

Life used to be so simple

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) has effectively been around as long as the advent of outsourced IT services in the 1960’s and 70’s. However, the current notion of SaaS only became popular a decade ago, with two main drivers behind its rise. The first was subscription licensing, which lowered the upfront costs and facilitated an OpEx (operational expense) funding model. Second was faster time to value and lower upfront costs by eliminating the need to purchase, install, administer and maintain infrastructure (servers, storage and network connections) and middleware (web servers and databases).

Another driver of SaaS adoption was the promise of easier upgrades, which have been the bane of IT service management (ITSM) and service desk professionals for years. However, the benefits often attributed to upgrading SaaS products turned out to be more dependent on the configuration and customization method than the hosting model. (More on this topic later in this paper.) And more recently, new cloud service deployment options blur the lines between SaaS and on-premises, especially with respect to initial setup times and ongoing administration.

Service Desk deployment options – circa 2008

w/ perpetual licensing w/ subscription licensingOn-premises MSP hosted or

outsourcedSoftware-as-a-Service

Page 2: ITSM SaaS vs. On-Premises Deployment: How To …ITSM SaaS vs. On-Premises Deployment: How To Evaluate The Trade-Offs Life used to be so simple Software-as-a-service (SaaS) has effectively

cherwell.com © 2019 Cherwell Software, LLC. All Rights Reserved

Here are some of the traditional pros and cons of on-premises and SaaS models:

On-Premises

Software-as-a-Service

Pros

Pros

Cons

Cons

• Typically perpetual licenses

• Security and data sovereignty

• Control over resiliency, performance, and availability

• Lower networking costs and reduced latency/bandwidth issues

• CapEx funding model, where applicable

• Easier integrations inside firewall

• Subscription licenses with support often included

• Hosted and accessed remotely

• Lower upfront costs

• Quicker time to value

• Reduced administration and maintenance costs for on-premises infrastructure and middleware

• OpEx funding model, where applicable

• Higher upfront costs

• Lengthy system and infrastructure deployment times

• Higher administration and maintenance overhead

• Ongoing software maintenance costs and license administration

• Data sovereignty can require an in-country SaaS datacenter or local storage

• Lack of control over resiliency, performance, and availability

• Ongoing subscription costs that can eventually exceed perpetual model

• Risk of subscription rates rising after initial contract expiration

Page 3: ITSM SaaS vs. On-Premises Deployment: How To …ITSM SaaS vs. On-Premises Deployment: How To Evaluate The Trade-Offs Life used to be so simple Software-as-a-service (SaaS) has effectively

cherwell.com © 2019 Cherwell Software, LLC. All Rights Reserved

Out of these pros and cons, a total cost vs. time model emerged and has been used for many years. This model took a leased (SaaS with subscription licensing) vs. owned (on-premises with perpetual licenses) approach, and assumes that while initially less expense, SaaS total costs will eventually exceed on-premises costs over a three-to five-year timeframe. (Note: This is just an approximate model and can vary widely.) Additionally, there are other important factor to consider beyond infrastructure and software license costs when making a purchasing and deployment decision.

Traditional Total Cost Over Time Model

What to Consider Beyond Cost When Evaluating Deployment Models

As SaaS delivery options for ITSM became popular, a few assumptions—or perhaps misconceptions—emerged relating to initial deployment times, upgrade efforts, and high availability and disaster recovery. In practice, however, these considerations turned out to be less dependent on deployment model and more contingent on how—and to what extent—the service desk solution is customized.

Time to Production

The time to value, or the total length of time required to get a new service desk into production, is less dependent on delivery or deployment options than on other factors. The time required to install ITSM software itself is trivial, for example, in comparison to the time and resources required to design and customize processes, configure forms, connect needed integrations, load user data, and conduct user acceptance testing. A rapid service desk deployment is measured in weeks, with six-to twelve-month deployments common. Given this, the initial setup of systems and software is small with respect to the scope of the overall project.

SaaS does have an advantage in not requiring servers and other supporting infrastructure to be set up, but new options for infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) or platform-as-a-service (PaaS) from cloud service providers oer the same benefits.

Page 4: ITSM SaaS vs. On-Premises Deployment: How To …ITSM SaaS vs. On-Premises Deployment: How To Evaluate The Trade-Offs Life used to be so simple Software-as-a-service (SaaS) has effectively

cherwell.com © 2019 Cherwell Software, LLC. All Rights Reserved

Upgrade Time, Effort, and Cost

Likewise, the time and effort to upgrade a service desk or ITSM solution are not necessarily contingent on where it’s hosted. For years, service desk software upgrades have been painful and costly. This has been especially true of legacy systems that were heavily customized with proprietary APIs. Moving between major versions of software could easily take many months, depending on the degree of customization and the legacy programming methods employed.

As SaaS became popular for ITSM, there was an assumption that SaaS models would also simplify upgrades. While there is a small grain of truth to this, in practice, the total effort is more tightly related to the customizations and configurations that have taken place, and the methods with which they were performed.

Over the past ten years, “codeless configuration” has become a popular concept, if not an industry buzzword. However, many approaches to codeless configuration are effectively graphical code generators, while others require extensive scripting or programming. In either of these scenarios, upgrades can present a considerable challenge.

Minimizing the amount of customization in the first place by adhering to out-of-the-box ITIL® processes has also become more common. This can reduce the efforts in both initial deployment and subsequent upgrades.

Today, it is clear that upgrade efforts are more contingent on the service desk solution, as well as the amount of customization required, than on the deployment model itself.

High Availability and Disaster Recovery

High availability (HA) architectures are required for many service desks. Historically, this was viewed as an advantage of on-premises deployments; however, there are commonly accepted SaaS deployment options that provide HA capabilities at a system or datacenter level. Disaster recovery (DR) often goes together with HA discussions, and the same applies: acceptable DR options exist for both SaaS and on-premises deployment models.

Page 5: ITSM SaaS vs. On-Premises Deployment: How To …ITSM SaaS vs. On-Premises Deployment: How To Evaluate The Trade-Offs Life used to be so simple Software-as-a-service (SaaS) has effectively

cherwell.com © 2019 Cherwell Software, LLC. All Rights Reserved

New Publice and Private Cloud Options

With the rise of public clouds such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS), ITSM deployment options have further expanded. In parallel, modern corporate-owned datacenters provide many of the same capabilities, giving rise to the concept of hybrid cloud.

Public clouds can provide infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), which is closer to “bare metal” virtual machines—either Windows or Linux. Public clouds will provide options that move into platform-as-a-service (PaaS) that will include common middleware and database instances. Among these scenarios, it is then straightforward to deploy all software elements required to support a service desk solution in the cloud.

The leading public cloud providers will have datacenters in multiple countries, alleviating data sovereignty mandates or concerns. They can also support security mandates and regulations such as the FedRAMP program in the US and compliance with the pending General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union.

Public and private clouds blur the lines between on-premises and SaaS and obfuscate some of the pros and cons of each, effectively providing a deployment option with the best of both.

Service Desk deployment options – 2017

including Private CloudOn-premises MSP hosted or

outsourcedPublic Cloud

(IAAS)Software-as-a-Service

Page 6: ITSM SaaS vs. On-Premises Deployment: How To …ITSM SaaS vs. On-Premises Deployment: How To Evaluate The Trade-Offs Life used to be so simple Software-as-a-service (SaaS) has effectively

cherwell.com © 2019 Cherwell Software, LLC. All Rights Reserved

About Cherwell Software

Cherwell (@Cherwell) empowers organizations to transform their business through the rapid adoption and easy management of digital services. Cherwell’s adaptable platform has enabled thousands of organizations to modernize their business operations with customizable service management, automation, and reporting across the enterprise.

For more information, visit: http://www.cherwell.com.

Cherwell Software’s Freedom of Choice

Today, freedom of choice reigns supreme, spanning licensing models (subscription or perpetual) and deployment options across on-premises, public cloud, MSP-hosted/outsourced, or SaaS. To support freedom of choice across deployment options, the same ITSM software needs to run transparently in each environment. It is even better to be able to easily move between deployment options if needs change. As customizations are such a significant part of any service desk solution, the customizations and configuration information also needs to easily move from one model to the other.

Cherwell® Service Management can be deployed on-premises or delivered via SaaS by Cherwell. Additionally, Cherwell is available on both Azure and AWS and from multiple managed service providers (MSPs). Cherwell’s unique approach to configuration allows customizations and configuration information to be easily moved between deployment options. This approach also simplifies both initial deployments and subsequent upgrades, regardless of deployment method.

To learn more or get a personalized demo of Cherwell Service Management, visit www.cherwell.com/demo.