Great sponsors make great events.
We are delighted to welcome 4me as our platinum Service North Sponsor in 2021 – their third time at our event. We couldn’t be more grateful for their support.
In this blog, the CEO and co-founder of 4me, Cor Winkler Prins talks about the journey of 4me and about the next-generation enterprise service management (ESM).
About 4me
4me is the first enterprise service management application specifically built to support the service integration and management (SIAM) approach. 4me was designed from the ground up to allow enterprises’ internal and external service providers to collaborate while 4me keeps track of the service levels. 4me has an unparalleled track-record of fast implementations, quick response times, and high service availability.
Next-Generation Enterprise Service Management
A little over ten years ago, around the time 4me was founded, it was already clear for most people in our industry that the cloud was the way of the future. Enterprises would no longer need to maintain servers, configure databases, install application software or perform upgrades. And their employees would be able to work from anywhere on any device with an internet connection.
What surprised the founders of 4me was that most enterprise software vendors only aspired to hosting the software for their customers in a SaaS model, failing to architect their software to make use of the cloud’s full potential. Specifically, they did not realize that they could allow these customers to collaborate since all their customers would be working in the cloud.
For most enterprise software solutions, that might not have been so important. But for IT service management solutions, it seemed entirely obvious that this would become a standard requirement. After all, enterprises were consuming more and more application services, and they were asking specialized firms to configure and maintain these for them. Just think of services like Salesforce, SAP Hana, Office 365, MailChimp, or WordPress.
So when the development of 4me started, it was clear that it had to enable enterprises to work together securely with all these external companies. The next generation of service management solutions would do this without the need to build integrations. It would also keep track of the quality of the delivered services. Each customer would be able to see how well each of its providers is performing, and each provider would be able to see how well it is doing for each of its customers.
That was ten years ago. Today, 4me is still the only service management solution built to support a multivendor environment. It seems strange because organizations increasingly rely upon specialized internal and external teams to keep their services running.
The realization that service management does not stop at the boundaries of an enterprise is setting in, though. Service integration and management continues to gain recognition as a digital ecosystem management approach. It fits neatly on top of the ITIL practices that are mostly already in place. And it can be a huge help to regain control over the multitude of relationships enterprises maintain with external partners they rely on for (parts of) their service delivery.
This standardized approach can provide a common understanding within our industry. It shows enterprises how to manage all these parties in a way that reduces risks. And it also permits them to be more adaptable so that they can innovate faster. Not having the rights tools is what has kept many organizations from putting SIAM into practice. That is where 4me comes in. We have made it our mission to help organizations get from SIAM theory to an easy-to-manage reality where the number of services, and the number of players, continues to increase.
About the author
Cor Winkler Prins
Cor is the CEO and co-founder of 4me. He started his career in the service management industry in 1996 helping to set up the global consulting organization for what later became HP OpenView Service Desk. As a consultant, Cor has assisted many large enterprises over the years with their global ITSM deployments. These include Procter & Gamble, Philip Morris and Roche.
