In June 2024, the German magazine Technik Einkauf published an article detailing their experience with ITSM integration. We are excited to share that article with you here.
When the IT Solution is Tailored
An engineering-driven company will naturally try to solve all challenges on its own - even in IT. However, customized solutions are often only the second-best option in this area. This was also the experience of the mechanical engineering and electronics company Trumpf in integrating its IT service management solutions. Ultimately, it decided on a managed service platform.
Trumpf employs more than 16,500 people. At the headquarters in Ditzingen, around 350 IT specialists work in the Business Integration Services department, which includes IT infrastructure, SAP maintenance, and custom development. Their tasks also include handling incidents and service requests.
Integration specialist Andreas Ebner operates as an independent consultant but has been closely associated with the company for many years. He has observed firsthand how challenging it can be to manage complex IT governance. “Trumpf has more than 70 subsidiaries with different ownership structures, and in Asia alone, there are seven country managers,” explains the consultant. “This means there is always a need to reach a consensus or find room for maneuvering to achieve a balance between centralization and decentralization.”
An important criterion for the acceptance of IT throughout the company is smooth service management (ITSM). Any disruptions must be resolved as quickly and transparently as possible. Therefore, Trumpf had introduced an ITSM tool early on. With the best of intentions, it was customized to meet Trumpf's specific needs.
In IT, such tailored customizations are possible only to a limited extent – whether technically or in terms of personnel. This was also the case here: after about ten years, the adaptability and integration capability had been exhausted, and the internal tool could no longer be migrated to current systems. Trumpf had to look for an alternative and decided to take the opportunity to broaden the scope of IT services significantly. The product choice fell on the highly developed ITSM system of the US provider ServiceNow. In early 2019, it was decided to introduce it to all subsidiaries. The software was to be provided and maintained from Ditzingen. The headquarters also took responsibility for informing and training the service staff in the country companies.
By the end of the year, the internal Trumpf tool had essentially been replaced by ServiceNow across the board. The same applied to asset management.
ESB as an Intermediate Solution
Of course, the transition was not as simple as it sounds here. For example, the communication interfaces had to be completely redesigned. The old ticketing system relied largely on email communication – with known disadvantages: it only scaled to a limited extent and did not always work reliably. ServiceNow, on the other hand, offered so-called 'e-bonding': point-to-point connections between Trumpf and each individual IT partner. While this solution is practical, it is not technically optimal, as the numerous different interfaces can easily lead to inconsistencies between the systems used.
At this point, Trumpf realized that its internal Enterprise Service Bus, or ESB, could also be used for information exchange. Initially, an internal project was launched to establish a connection between Trumpf and an SAP-based IT provider for medium-sized businesses. This solution worked mainly smoothly and was further developed and maintained. However, it came at a price: a large number of external staff were needed for the operation, who were often also involved in other projects. Moreover, it was a partial solution that not all Trumpf employees and partners could use.
Sourcing Project as a Trigger
The demand for an alternative solution became acute when Trumpf underwent a strategic reorientation and outsourced more and more functions. The project 'Sourcing Hybrid Infrastructure' (SHI), planned in 2020 and started in 2021, aimed to have about half of all Windows servers operated by an external service provider. Other projects focused on the external operation of network components or conference technology.
Therefore, Trumpf sought 'transparent coupling' that would combine the user-friendliness of a closed system with the administrative advantage of separate environments. A preferred standard product available as a SaaS solution (Software as a Service) was sought. The vendor was to implement, configure, operate, and maintain it. “We had already gained cloud experience with ServiceNow,” says Ebner, “so we expected a relatively easy integration.”
In 2020, Trumpf began defining the process and requirements for the 'ITSM Connector as a Service' (ICaaS). Market analysis showed that there were two European providers offering similar functionality at comparable prices. They differed in the technology they used. Trumpf decided to implement the project with the Finnish integration specialist ONEiO. The decisive factor was the more innovative technology. Ebner cites scalability in the AWS cloud and 'cloud-native' development as key advantages. The solution is based on microservices, nodes, and containers; orchestration is done using the open-source standard Kubernetes. “This makes it modular and expandable as well as codeless-configurable,” says the integration specialist.
Additionally, Ebner was also convinced by the 'soft factors,' especially the 'pragmatism in practice.' “In such a project, not everything can be planned in advance. New requirements arise spontaneously, or complicated yield conditions become virulent.” Over the past two years, Ebner says he has never heard from ONEiO that they had no time, were not responsible, or needed a cost estimate first: “Listen, understand, respond,” he summarizes.
Lessons Learned
For an integration to be successful, all parties – all parties plus the integrator – should sit together before the project starts and define the necessary test cases. Initially, an inventory must be taken, which then needs to be consolidated and optimized. Otherwise, there is a risk that business cases will not be correctly represented. It is not enough to describe the process roughly. The challenges lie in the details. For example, it must be precisely clarified in advance who is allowed to initiate which processes and make which changes.
