Has anyone done a writeup comparing different ITIL suites

[thewraith]

I am looking for some type of comparison between BMC, CA, HP, and any other suites/software that was considered before a decision. Do any papers like this exist? I would like to make a decision and have worked with Remedy and CA products but was wondering if anyone has a good paper like this.

thanks

[Diarmid]

It is normally better to make a decision based on how the products meet your requirements rather than those of another organization; especially when you will not be in a position to know what that other organization's requirements were, nor what its circumstances were, nor, crucially, the quality of its method of assessment.

By circumstances, I mean, among other things, the nature and maturity of its operational and management processes, its business and service and quality objectives, the numbers, skills and experience of its staff, the nature of its service level agreements, the complexity and maturity of its services and infrastructure, the nature of its third party support and supply arrangements, the stability/volatility of its service portfolio and even the maturity of its customers in their understanding and use of the services.
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"Method goes far to prevent trouble in business: for it makes the task easy, hinders confusion, saves abundance of time, and instructs those that have business depending, both what to do and what to hope."
William Penn 1644-1718

[Ed]

To follow on from what Diarmid was saying,

the only way to understand if an application will do what you want it to, is to ask the appropriate questions of the supplier, take what they say with a large pinch of salt, look at the app in a working environment(site visit) nad then get your hands on an evaluation copy of the software.

So write a Statement Of Requirements (Invitation To Tender) and send it to a number of suppliers.

Here is a copy of a Contents page of a typical SOR

Introduction
Company Background
Purpose of Document
Confidentiality
Charges
Contract Statement
Selection of Supplier
Commercial
References
Costs
Contractual Issues
Technical
Development History
Software
Documentation
Software Description
Programming Language
Software Upgrade
Training
Software Support
Users
On Site Support for GO live
Back Up and Security
Desired Solution
System Requirements
Other information

I hope this helps - I have replied in more detail previously, but unfortunately I have lost the docs
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Regards

Ed

[thechosenone69]

In Addition to the detailed post of Diarmid and ED.

Sit down with each team in your company & check what their requirements are then break down those requirements into 2 parts:

1- Required
2- Desired

You can send that information to the supplier along with other contents that Ed mentioned. Afterwards you can request a demonstration from the supplier to the senior Management, consequently request a test version to be installed in your environment. Check the functionality of each software against your requirements. Check if it meets your requirements? how complex is the configuration? is it within the budget? if you are going for the cheaper solution for the time being then consider the long run costs. "The migration cost to another software for example".

As for comparison I'm sure you will find some if you google. also try going to pink elephant website > Pink verify > toolset. This will show you which processes are verified for each toolset.

Good luck with that project.

regards,

A