FrontRange Adapts ITSM Tool For SaaS Environments

FrontRange Solutions, which delivers IT service management (ITSM) products to business and enterprise customers, has now adapted its flagship product for software as a service (SaaS) environments. The product, which includes comprehensive service management, service catalog and asset management capabilities, will be the first FrontRange product released under its new SaaSIT brand.

Among the 13 capabilities that the ITSM suite will deliver are incident management, advanced change management, release management, configuration management, and an internal and external customer self-service portal.

FrontRange made a strategic decision to build the right products for the SaaS environment from the ground up, while some competitors are simply hosting their legacy applications, said FrontRange CEO Michael McCloskey in a prepared statement. The SaaS option is for customers that want enterprise-level capabilities but also need flexibility and scalability as their organizations and IT needs grow, he added.

The company says additional SaaSIT offerings expected to be released later this year will provide additional IT asset management capabilities, advanced voice and customer service, patch management, software distribution and operating system deployment capabilities.

FrontRange is just one player in a robust and crowded market for ITSM software, according to market share numbers from Gartner. In 2009, FrontRange held market share of just one-half of 1 percent, based on revenue of $76.9 million.The 2010 market share report is not yet available. Revenue for the ITSM market totaled $14.237 billion in 2009, down 1.8 percent from $14.491 billion in 2008, a drop Gartner attributed to the economic recession.

The top five vendors in the market in 2009, in order, were: IBM, with revenue of just over $3 billion and a share of 21.3 percent; CA, $1.85 billion and 13 percent; BMC Software, $1.6 billion and 11.3 percent; HP, $1.2 billion and 8.3 percent; and Oracle, $474 million and 3.3 percent. Together, those top five firms control 57.2 percent of the ITSM market.

However, the Gartner report identifies a total of 25 named firms in the space, including FrontRange, that hold a combined 23.72 percent of the market. Plus, several other smaller unnamed firms together total 19 percent of the market, which would indicate that the ITSM market is dynamic. And, historically, even in a crowded market, a smaller player can be successful and profitable, even with small market share, by targeting a niche market segment or offering unique features or services.