Published on the 10/09/2013 | Written by Newsdesk
By moving to a cloud-based IT service management platform chemicals giant Orica has upgraded its processes to be ITIL compliant, improved services levels, and kept a tight rein on costs…
As part of a restructure intended to deliver globally-focused services rather than regional ones, chemicals giant has reorganised its IT operations and implemented a cloud-based IT service management (ITSM) solution from ServiceNow.
According to Hubert van Dalen, global IT infrastructure and operations manager, an on-premises ITSM solution had been ruled out because of the capital costs involved and the time needed to deploy such a platform globally.
Instead the organisation selected a US-hosted instance of the ServiceNow cloud-based ITSM system and has so far implemented nine processes with a further two going live this month.
While the system manages IT service workflow and delivers IT management with improved transparency into the processes, it also allows Orica personnel to log incidents directly to the cloud portal. Previously each region was supported by regional support teams, proving only 9×5 support. The global cloud solution offers 24×5 support by dealing with service requests on a follow-the-sun basis (24×7 support is available for critical incidents).
Shortly after going live, an Orica systems fault in New Zealand discovered on a Saturday morning, was logged to the ITSM portal and fixed within two hours, forestalling a potential $500,000 service level agreement penalty with a client.
“We could have done this with an on-premise system…but the timeframe to globalise would take three years for an on-premise system where we have done nine processes in six months. The development cycle was shortened dramatically,” said van Dalen. Orica was also cost constrained. Van Dalen noted, “I have never seen a company that spends so little on IT”. He said that he would not have been able to find the capital to implement an on-premise solution, whereas the cloud alternative is billed as an operating expense.
He said that the ability to implement ITIL compliant processes was also important to Orica although he noted, “there are a few anomalies in ServiceNow where the terminology does not line up, which I find is a pity”.
The organisation worked with Keystone and UXC Consulting on the cloud deployment, which last month won the ITSM project of the year award from the IT Service Management Forum.
As the first organisation in the world to deploy the so-called Calgary release of the system, van Dalen plans to upgrade to the Dublin release of the system scheduled for January 2014.
