Cloud computing has really become a household word with mainstream media outlets running stories on television about the growth in the space as recently as today. In the tech world, we are no stranger to this move as it has been taking place steadily for over a decade but with an extremely accelerated pace these last few years. The IT service management market is no exception and one vendor in the space, SysAid has made an aggressive prediction about the intersection of cloud and ITSM.

SysAid’s Founder and Chairman, Israel Lifshitz says his company is leading the push to cloud-based ITSM with over 1,000 customers using their solution as a service. Other important stats – the company’s customers have chosen the cloud 3x more often QoQ and currently 40% of the company’s customers are using it.

I recently sat down with company representatives Oleg Sin and Dena Wieder-Freiden recently who told me the company’s SysAid solutions are a fit for SMBs as well as Fortune 500 companies and supports 42 languages. The company integrates its service desk solution with asset management, MDM, online chat support and the ability to manage the help desk and assets from all popular mobile operating systems.

The graphic below shows a typical asset management screen.

 

Moreover, they explained the system supports an integrated monitoring model for network devices and integrated password services for resets and to unlock accounts. This is in addition to integrated task and project management as well as calendar and scheduling features.

There is SLA management as well and utilizing the ITIL CMDB performance benchmark you can compare your company’s performance to other SysAid customers around the globe.

The company certainly touts its integrated solution as a differentiator, pointing out that competitors require you to glue separate software of varying costs together.

They also showed me a demo pressing the F11 key which allows rapid service desk submission – a screen shot is taken instantly and the user has to choose a problem category and add a description. Since the screen shot is sent automatically, users do not need to report the specific error message they receive. Other nifty features include remote-control based on HTML5 and the ability to have users submit requests for things like gaining access to resources such as files, printers, scanners or storage devices.

You can further configure the solution to require manager approval for the installation of freeware and the system also allows a user to request budget to purchase software.

Another area of differentiation is the customization of the software allowing a form to be prepopulated with choices. The system is flexible enough in fact to allow it to be used for hiring by HR. The company’s category driven templates come with the system and comply with ITIL best practices.

Another challenge the company helps customers with is minimizing traffic over the WAN. This is done through the use of the its RDS software which the company says is the next generation of remote discovery services functioning like a proxy server in order to optimize the communications between devices and the cloud. The system can even integrate with LDAP behind the firewall without opening ports.

Oleg mentioned that the MDM functionality was added recently at no charge for customers. In separate conversations, MDM vendors acknowledge the threat from ITSM companies and generally believe their increased feature-sets are a reason to pay for a standalone MDM solution. Customers of course will make the final decision on the matter.

In the future we can expect a SysAid patch management module with automated control via policies as well as a manual option.

Perhaps the most fascinating part of the meeting was the focus on MDM support as this space is turning into a huge opportunity for standalone players. Sure, this story lead with cloud growth but at this point, many of us aren’t too surprised to hear this news. The question of more interest perhaps is whether we will begin to see the ITSM and MDM markets merging and if there will be acquisitions in the space as a result.

As companies are faced with managing an ever-increasing amount of devices and software systems, having more automation in their ITSM makes a lot of sense and this is where SysAid continues to invest with its goal being to become the ITSM company providing superior value for your organization.