ITSM News Round Up for October 2010

Software Provider and Consultancy Join Forces

Hornbill, an enterprise service management solution provider, has partnered with consultancy and training company Pink Elephant UK to provide a one-stop solution for ITIL service management software, accredited training and consultancy services. Together, the two companies will provide customers with best-in-class offerings in support of ITIL projects, by combining consulting, training and software.

The partnership is part of Hornbill’s continuing strategy to expand its partner network and offer its clients an ever widening range of ITSM products and services. Frank McIlroy, CEO of Hornbill Service Management said, “Hornbill’s strategy is to become the dominant player in the ITSM market place globally by expanding the services we offer and the partners we work with.”

The partnership is already working with DWF LLP, a leading UK law firm. “DWF recently procured new ITSM software from Hornbill and as part of the same project we also undertook ITIL training from Pink Elephant,” said Craig Robinson, IT Services manager at DWF LLP. “The two companies working together to provide ITIL related software and services makes perfect sense, and certainly makes things easier for us, the customer.”

Service Management Company Shortlisted for Innovation Award

On demand ITSM software company Service-now.com has been shortlisted for the prestigious UK IT Industry Awards in the “Business IT Innovation of the Year” category. “Being shortlisted as a finalist in the UK IT Industry awards is a fantastic achievement,” said Chris Gomersall, Service-now.com VP of EMEA. “Businesses increasingly require more IT flexibility. Service-now.com is harnessing the powerful simplicity and elasticity of the cloud and is delivering it to our rapidly growing customer base of enterprise IT organizations.”

The Service-now.com ITSM suite is a software-as-a-service offering, designed to tackle service management challenges that, until recently, have been too complex to realistically address with software developed decades ago.

The awards are organised by BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, in association with Computing magazine. They are the benchmark for excellence throughout the computer industry and recognize the contributions of individuals, projects, organisations and technologies that have advanced information technology during the past 12 months. The winners will be announced on 11 November at a gala evening in London, UK.

Movers and Shakers: Jim O’Gara Joins PROLIN

More news from the world of software-as-a service: Jim O’Gara has joined PROLIN, the SaaS-based ITSM company, to lead worldwide sales and channel development as chief commercial officer. O’Gara was formerly VP of Business Development at FrontRange Solutions and joins PROLIN at a time when the company is seeking to accelerate its international growth by building an ITSM as a service reseller channel and field sales team.

Müller Dairy – New ITIL Adopters

Müller Dairy adopted ITIL over the summer. Now they have had a few months of using the approach, ITSMWatch wondered how they were getting on and it looks like it has been a success so far.

The company announced a successful outcome for their IT transformation project which has taken three years. The project involved a change in culture and the introduction of proactive processes, in a comprehensive adoption of the ITIL framework, underpinned by Sunrise's ITSM software Sostenuto.

The IT service desk's key performance indicator performance now exceeds 99% on an average week. The department now also scores a phenomenal 4.5 out of 5 for user satisfaction over the average month, according to Head of IT Stephen Kane. Kane’s mission when he joined the company was to introduce ITIL and improve service management.

In the wake of Müller Dairy's success, a wider rollout of Sostenuto to the company's German sites, as well as in its distribution centres in Italy, is underway. The company is also drawing up a roadmap for ITIL v3 for the future.

Using ITIL Endorsed Software? Take this Survey

Following the first anniversary of the launch of the ITIL Software Scheme, the APM Group as official accreditor of the scheme, is inviting feedback from users of endorsed software. Take the one-page ITIL Software Scheme User Survey to register your opinion.

iET Solutions First Service Desk Vendor Awarded PinkVERIFY 3.1 Certification for 12 ITIL processes

iET Solutions, a leading global supplier of ITSM and software asset management solutions, has become the first ITSM software vendor to achieve PinkVERIFY 3.1 compatibility on 12 ITIL processes.

“The ITSM market is increasingly competitive and with over 70 other vendors in this industry, vendors must always look for new ways to set their solutions apart,” said Walter Elliot, President and CEO of iET Solutions. “That’s why PinkVERIFY is one of the strongest ways to prove the abilities of your tools. Pink Elephant’s PinkVERIFY, the most mature and rigorous tool certification program in the world, and their experienced consultants have assessed almost every tool on the market and have agreed that iET ITSM is the first tool to satisfy all PinkVERIFY 3.1 criteria for twelve ITIL V3 processes.”

iET Solutions provides a flexible and comprehensive, out-of-the-box ITSM solution, available with both hosted and SaaS options. With modules for ITIL process analysis and optimization, Smartphone accessibility, CTI integration, and entitlement-based software asset management, iET Solutions offers a comprehensive package for continual service improvement.

Vodafone Ireland Taking Steps to Improve Service Assurance

Vodafone Ireland chose Systems Mechanics (SysMech), specialists in telecoms network and service management, to supply and implement its Next Generation Service Assurance solution. The solution will deliver major new functionality, simplified operations and reduced cost of ownership. Through a combination of software and professional services, it will enable Vodafone Ireland to optimise services for customers over its telecoms network, while enabling proactive fault management and monitoring.

SysMech will manage and coordinate all third party vendors and sub-contractors involved in the project, as the single point of contact for the service assurance solution, delivering the solution on a turnkey basis.

“Our task is to monitor and manage the entire Vodafone Ireland IT and Telecoms infrastructure for 2.3 million fixed and mobile customers in Ireland, in real time,” said Graham Kinch, head of Service Management at Vodafone Ireland. “Our strategic Next Generation Service Assurance project with SysMech will transform our operational support systems to allow us to focus on priority services and faults, while pro-actively monitoring quality of service for customers.”

The solution will take advantage of Vodafone’s existing operational support systems (OSS), integrating and enhancing these systems to deliver transformed services for the operator and its end customers.

It’s Conference Season

The autumn-winter 2010 conference season is now open, and wherever you are across Europe, there is an ITSM event to attend.

• 2-4 November: itSMF Denmark is holding their Fall conference in Odense
• 7-9 November: itSMF UK is holding their 19th annual conference in London
• 11 November: itSMF Italy has their annual event in Milan
• 15-16 November: itSMF Spain is holding their conference in Madrid
• 23 November: itSMF Luxembourg is holding their 6th annual event this year

Registration is also now open for Pink Elephant’s 15th Annual International ITSM Conference & Exhibition which will be held in Las Vegas, 20-23 February 2011. That event also plays host to the ITIL Awards, and Pink Elephant is now accepting nominations for ITIL Project Of The Year, ITIL Practitioner Of The Year, and Innovation Of The Year. Nominate yourself, your company or a colleague before 30 November.

itSMF International Appoints 4 New Directors

itSMF International, the ITSM Forum, held its annual general meeting in October. The proceedings included the appointments of Alejandro Debenedet (Argentina), Hon P. Suen (Hong Kong), Sallie Kennedy (USA) and Ulf Myrberg (Sweden) to the executive board as directors. They join current directors David Cannon, Marianna Billington and Michael Kum.

The new board takes over on 1 January 2011.

SupportDesk 2010 Released from House-on-the-Hill

House-on-the-Hill, a UK-based service management software company with clients in over 40 countries, announced the launch of the latest version of its service management software solution, SupportDesk 2010 at Fulham Football Club. This is the 16th major release of the software which includes among other things a Windows 7 look and feel with a navigation ribbon.

“The developments are a result of customer requests, market demands and ITIL trends,” said House-on-the-Hill Managing Director Iain Broadhead. “We’ve introduced significant and wide- ranging additional benefits. It’s another milestone in a series of improvements we are continually making to the product.” (Sounds like the software is performing better than Fulham this year.)

Epicor ITSM 2010 and Epicor ITSM Business Intelligence Released

More new software releases. Enterprise business software solutions company Epicor, who have over 20,000 customers for their products, have announced the release of Epicor ITSM 2010 and an enhanced version of Epicor ITSM Business Intelligence. The ITSM solution provides a set of service management features supporting key IT processes and methodologies. The Business Intelligence solution enables IT departments to gather, analyze and share key reporting metrics.

The dashboard improvements are supported by what’s probably the best feature in Epicor ITSM Business Intelligence: the provision of key performance indicators (KPIs). Available within the service performance cube of Epicor ITSM Business Intelligence, these KPIs offer Value, Goal, Status, and Trend indicators, which make trends easier to see and understand. The company claims this will "virtually eliminate" inaccurate reporting caused by differences in actual service level agreements and historic reports, which has to be good.

Epicor’s solutions are based on Microsoft technologies including .NET and SharePoint, while the business intelligence tool uses SQL. This underlying technology enables two new productivity features: a vertical side bar providing rapid access to commonly used actions in context, and the new drag and drop attachments function, which provides an intuitive way to link external files to records in ITSM.

Numara Launches v10 of Asset Management Platform

Even more new software releases, this time from service management and asset management software company Numara Software. Numara, which has over 55,000 customer sites, have launched the new version of Numara Asset Management Platform (NAMP). Version 10 of the software has the same core functionality of being able to centralise, automate and control the critical tasks associated with server and desktop management challenges, with enhancements to help IT reduce the burden and complexity of IT asset management and PC lifecycle management today.

A great new feature is Service Anywhere, a secure, on-demand remote service management over the Internet -- helpful for delivering consistent service to a mobile workforce. This latest release also includes enhanced software license management to aid compliance with licensing policies and Instant Expert, an in-product guided help wizard to get people operational in the shortest amount of time.

“We listened to the market and, most importantly, we listened to our customers,” said David Weiss, president and CEO of Numara Software. “Addressing their business pressures is our ultimate goal when we develop new versions of our solutions. With NAMP 10, we provide IT staff of all skill levels, the power of an enterprise solution without the complexity and rigidity. We help them address their asset management challenges head-on and we’re focused on making effective ITAM automation consumable for easy deployment and rollout.”