What Forrester, Gartner, and IDC, the most respected research specialists are saying about SMAX (Service Management Automation Next Generation)
Forrester
Forrester Research Inc. is one of the most trusted business, marketing and technology analyst, research, and consulting company. Forrester has 18 global offices and over 35 years of expertise.
According to The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Service Management, Q4 2019 published on October 10, 2019, Micro Focus - SMAX was appointed as a leader among 15 providers. The same category where ServiceNow, Cherwell, BMC, Axios, and USU are also included.
“Micro Focus injects actionable analytics into service delivery. Micro Focus’ ESM platform, SMAX, comes from an ITSM background and emerged from the 2017 spinout and merger of Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s software business and Micro Focus. In addition to a strategy focusing on increased ESM and intelligent service management, Micro Focus has centred its platform and vision around the IT4IT framework. With in-market awareness of its offering increasing, Micro Focus has a broad portfolio covering both IT operations management (ITOM) and DevOps and is showing signs of a commercial comeback.
SMAX has evolved to expand the scope of services beyond IT and integrate further intelligence into the service delivery lifecycle. Micro Focus provides one of the most intelligent service management platforms currently available, including uniquely advanced automated change risk scoring and
proactive change optimization suggestions. It also supports proactive knowledge creation suggestions, incident correlation, suggested incident resolution, and a virtual agent. Deployment is via a fully containerized solution, one of only a few in the ESM space. However, reference customers did note that certain features in the platform didn’t appear complete. Micro Focus’ SMAX platform is a good choice for customers that wish to adopt a comprehensive ESM platform and take advantage of emerging intelligent service management features.”
Gartner
Founded in 1979, Gartner is present in 100 countries and has provided business insights, advice, consulting and tools for over 14,000 enterprises.
The last report published by Gartner, “Magic Quadrant for IT Service Management Tools”, October 6, 2020 states:
“Micro Focus is a Niche Player in this Magic Quadrant. Its Service Management Automation X (SMAX) is focused on providing core ITSM capabilities on a no-code platform integrated into Micro Focus’ broader suite of enterprise software products. It is targeted at organizations of intermediate to advanced I&O maturity. Since the last publication of this Magic Quadrant, Micro Focus added a SaaS offering, natural language understanding to its virtual agent and the ability to extend SMAX with custom apps.
Strengths
Bundled AI: Micro Focus includes its embedded AI/ML capabilities as part of its standard license, which can lower the barrier of entry for customers looking to explore the use of this technology to enhance ITSM processes.
Product Portfolio: Micro Focus has a broad portfolio of software including ITOM and development products for customers looking to extend their ITSM investments.
Codeless Configuration: Micro Focus has designed its product around a codeless workflow configuration. This addresses a key challenge of buyers to reduce implementation time and ongoing administrative resource requirements.”
*AI/ML – Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning
“Cautions
Buyer Mind Share: Among Gartner clients, Micro Focus has not generated increased interest around its SMAX product. Based on Gartner client inquiries, Micro Focus seldom appears on shortlists for ITSM tools.
Decreased Revenue: While SMAX as a new product is gaining customers, both Micro Focus and its overall ITSM portfolio had decreased year-over-year revenue in 2019.
Limited SaaS Experience: Although Microfocus has a SaaS offering, it lacks an established customer base. Customers looking for the convenience of a SaaS implementation may be concerned that this service is currently only available in North America and Europe.”
Justifying the “cautions” reported by Gartner, the reasons are:
Buyer Mind Share: SMAX is a relatively new product, commercialized under this nomenclature since 2017. It was known before by “Service Anywhere” when Micro Focus decided to create from scratch SMAX to include Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Micro Focus is more famous by its subsidiaries (Borland, COBOL, Novell, etc.) than its own brand, which justifies appearing on shortlists for ITSM for now.
Decreased Revenue: In 2017 Micro Focus merged with Hewlett Packard Enterprise, a non-core software division, as understandable, it takes time to “reorganize the house”. Micro Focus is still a solid company, reaching USD $3.348 billion in revenue in 2019.
Limited SaaS Experience: Micro Focus offers SMAX deployed on-premise, in the cloud or via SaaS in the US, Canada, Europe, Middle East, Africa, South America, and regional service providers globally. Probably when researched information was reached by Gartner it was under expansion, nowadays the flexibility of SMAX SaaS is also supported in other continents.
IDC
International Data Corporation (IDC), founded in 1964, is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets.
With more than 1,100 analysts worldwide, IDC offers global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries.
The “IDC MarketScape: Worldwide IT Service Management 2020” published in March 2020, has reviewed SMAX, and “according to IDC analysis and buyer perception, Micro Focus is positioned in the Major Players category in the 2020 IDC MarketScape for IT service management.
Strengths
The Micro Focus Service Management Automation X (SMAX) containerized platform is a reimagining of the original Service Anywhere toolset with modern architecture and a focus on collecting and labelling data to enable the creation and continuous operations of discrete artificial cognitive skills
(AI/ML). Micro Focus has combined this reimagining with a simplified licensing scheme and a full spectrum of ITSM asset, change, incident/request, and problem management capabilities.
Customers cited SMAX's flexibility, rapid implementation, and data integration as key features of interest, along with the rapid pace of new AI skills being brought to bear in practical scenarios.
The strong AI focus of the SMAX suite suggests that the company will rapidly develop the ability to manage opportunities (business value emerging from the chaotic work environment) as well as incidents/requests. This is a critical capability for workspaces in the future of work, but not one that has
yet been successfully implemented on a broad scale.
Challenges
The speed of implementation and change in the system is appropriate for a modern platform, but it also poses a challenge to organizations that have not yet adapted to control the rate of change in modern SaaS environments. In addition, customers have indicated that, although the platform is highly
capable, it is still too new to have a highly experienced group of partners that can fully support complex implementations. Micro Focus is actively attempting to address this second point, but it will take time and multiple efforts to build experience in the delivery ecosystem.
Further, Micro Focus' platform is more capable of delivering on digital transformation than their current thought leadership approach indicates. The company is still evolving from a provider of software into a digital operations enablement business partner. This does not position the company to help guide other companies along the transformation journey. All assessed indicators point toward the company successfully completing this journey over the next few years.
Consider Micro Focus When
Customers should consider Micro Focus when they want to migrate from their existing ITSM/ITOM solution into a modern platform and when they have sufficient innovation and visionary skills to adapt the platform to the future of work.”
Source
https://www.gartner.com/doc/reprints?id=1-249JQ650&ct=200929&st=sb
https://reprints.forrester.com/#/assets/2/158/RES146855/reports
https://www.microfocus.com/media/analyst-paper/idc-marketscape-worldwide-it-service-management-2020-vendor-assessment-analyst-paper.pdf
https://www.microfocus.com/media/data-sheet/service_management_automation_x_ds.pdf