Are you done saving tigers? Ok, now how about discussing a bit about Remedy consultants now? I believe that there are hardly 3200 tigers left in the world today. Close to 97% of tigers got wiped out in just one century! Contrary to that, similar percentage of ‘so called Remedy consultants’ may have gotten added to market in past 5-6 years. Remedy advocates, this blog is for YOU specifically !
I don’t intend to hurt sentiments of genuine Remedy consultants; however, I think that today whoever can spell Remedy or blabber something about Active Links, Filters and Escalations tend to claim that they are Remedy experts. Are they? Ask them to explain on some of their projects and pat comes one of such replies – ‘I only worked on small part of the project’, ‘I didn’t develop it, I modified only Run If condition’, ‘I haven’t worked on Filter guide yet’ or the most standard answer – ‘I didn’t get an opportunity to work on it’ :-). Guess what? These are the replies from the people who self-rate not less than 8 or 9 out of 10 and demand double their current salary!
Let me tell you what prompted me to write this blog… But before that, let me share a brief history for few readers who may not know. Peregrine had acquired Remedy in 2001 and sold it to BMC in 2002. However, they retained Service Center under their brand name (which later was renamed as HP Service Manager after HP bought Peregrine in 2005). You may find more details in Dimensional Research evaluation.
After discussing with some of the ITSM experts who have implemented ITSM solutions, they found that it was difficult for Remedy developers to adapt to ARS 7.6 from ARS 6.x or ARS 7.1. The cost involved was way higher than training developers of other tools to move form older to higher versions. Besides, Remedy believed in making the tool flexible for customizing whereas many others product vendors limited the customizations to important and business-critical features. The net result – the impact on deploying time that it takes for Remedy applications due to its large customized and newly developed objects. Undoubtedly, many customers start complaining as the performance issues creep in. Then comes the cost factor. The list goes on.
Now, let me assure you that I am not attempting to malign Remedy tool. In fact, that always remained my first enterprise technical love :-). However, I am slightly concerned the way Remedy community is growing with unprofessional and unethical and dispassionate people who call themselves as Remedy experts. Most of the recruiters that I know, dread to recruit Remedy folks. They have had experience on people being arrogant, turning away the offers at last minute after accepting it, demanding absurdly high hikes and behaving as if they are the center of the Universe. I end up regularly interviewing many Remedy/ITSM candidates and am stunned to see the number of companies that they would have changed exceeds the number of diapers that they may have changed few years ago:-). Very few people demonstrate the passion towards the technology and to do something different. Rest of them consider only monetary aspects that do not seem to have any logic.
All I am trying to say is that Remedy is a great tool and if implemented properly, can benefit the organizations and customers significantly. Let’s not abuse the flexibility that it provides to customize. Instead, let us leverage it to build creative solutions that add values rather than introducing performance issues. And if one doesn’t know how to do it, they should learn it properly before implementing it. Remember, your monetary expectations are already high. How long do you think customers will continue to bear the spiraling cost? As you may know Remedy has already been implemented in ~90% of Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 organizations. There is enough of work to do for all the consultants. Other tools like ServiceNow, Cherwell etc are gaining prominence. Let’s not be greedy and make Remedy world more complicated than it has already become. Shall we?
