Released on = April 4, 2007, 5:30 pm

Press Release Author = Infra Corporation

Industry = Software

Press Release Summary = Infra Corporation's Andy Wade takes a look at four key
trends in IT Service Management with the potential to drive efficiency, transform
the service desk and shape the role of IT within the enterprise.

Press Release Body = IT Service Management (ITSM) has undergone a transformation in
the last decade. Tools and technologies have become increasingly sophisticated and
processes more streamlined. But all the while customers' expectations have leapt
ahead to the point where the commonplace workarounds of just a few years ago are no
longer acceptable. Today resolving the issue 'somehow' will not suffice; the service
desk must now ensure that the whole customer experience is slick and easy as well.

Beyond the frontline, the pressure has also been mounting on IT departments to align
their services more closely with the wider business and to demonstrate how they are
contributing to the success of the enterprise. Budgets are being squeezed and in
some cases companies are having to spend IT money originally intended for other
technology investments in order to achieve regulatory compliance, Sarbanes Oxley,
COBIT and ISO 20000 being prime examples.

The burning question for IT departments is how to do more with less whilst
delivering greater benefits at the same time.

1. Automated Service Management

Recent years have seen the rise and rise of ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) best
practice as the accepted basis of improved service delivery and as a framework for
the closer alignment of IT with the business. ITIL is also fundamental to ISO 20000,
and therefore an essential for many organisations.

Today ITIL training for staff is often the starting point for those seeking to
implement a new service desk solution. When it comes to choosing a software
solution, care is taken to select an ITIL-certified solution that spans the range of
IT Service Management disciplines - Incident and Problem Management, Asset
Management, Change and Configuration Management, Release Management, Capacity
Management, Availability, Financial and Service Level Management.

With the prevalence of ITIL, another consideration has moved into focus - the degree
to which it is now possible to automate key ITIL processes. Given that people tend
to "adapt" manual processes over time to suit their own needs, automation has a
critical role to play in the elimination of service desk inconsistencies and the
reduction of errors. It enables the establishment of consistent and repeatable rules
for Incidents/Problems/Known Errors (IPK) and enforces their use.

Automatically ensuring that the defined business process is always followed creates
a 'win win' situation: for managers the task of training and deploying new staff
becomes much easier. Service desk analysts need allocate less time to routine
issues, while customers benefit from faster, slicker service.

This is just a foretaste of the power of automation. The technology can be used in a
myriad of ways: setting up automatic alerts so that managers become aware of
critical/hot issues at a very early stage (decreasing service downtime as a result,
and even allowing such issues to be resolved before the customer realises there is a
problem); ensuring that calls from 'VIPs' within the organisation are always handled
appropriately; generating customer surveys automatically after each call; creating
workflows that assign work automatically, removing the need for detailed management
of service requests. And much, much more.

Automation is on the up not only as a means to faster implementation of ITIL, but as
an easy way to drive service desk efficiency and reduce costs. Critically for many
organisations, automation also holds the key to cost-effective regulatory
compliance, because it can easily enforce required best practices and generate the
audit trails that prove compliance.

2. The smaller, smarter CMDB

To manage services from a business perspective, IT staff need to have visibility of
the components of the IT infrastructure and all related business services. A
Configuration Management Database (CMDB) should provide a model of this
infrastructure, offering detailed information on all ITIL configuration items (CIs),
including each item's location, configuration, and physical and logical
interrelationships with other items.

However, to be effective the CMDB must ensure that all processes are working from
consistent and accurate data. Herein lies the problem: because of the complexity and
fluidity of the IT infrastructure, developing an efficient CMDB within a reasonable
budget can prove a sticking point for ITIL implementations.

In response to this challenge, a new model for the CMDB has emerged which relies on
the 'federation' of existing data sources rather than the creation of another
separate centralised database that is inherently difficult to maintain. The new
federated CMDB model allows IT to take advantage of best-of-breed asset discovery
tools with their own dedicated resource, and requires only core configuration data
to be stored within the CMDB, making it much simpler to maintain.

The infraEnterprise Federated CMDB can also plug into multiple LDAP Directory
services on different platforms simultaneously. This enables the IT department to
rapidly populate the CMDB with officer and customer information and greatly
simplifies the entire process of providing detailed audit trails for financial and
data protection compliance.

Having this "helicopter view" of the IT infrastructure is key to improving
traditional IT services. Not surprisingly, finding the smartest way to achieve this
visibility now forms a vital stage in any ITSM implementation. The prize is an
effective CMDB that enables IT staff to make decisions based on business impact and
business priorities - the end goal for many organisations today.

3. The significance of self-service

Implementing self-service has become a pertinent consideration for organisations
when planning a new Service Management solution. Once the core Service Management
processes, such as Incident, Change, Configuration and Service Level Management are
in place, the next step for many companies is to release functionality through a
Customer Portal. This use of self-service technology not only enables more efficient
Service Management in terms of cost reduction, but is also an important means of
improving the customer experience.

The cost benefits of self-service are generally well understood. A well-constructed
system can have a significant impact on cost per transaction and an initial 10-20
per cent reduction in calls to the Service Desk is not unusual. Some of Infra's
clients have managed the transition so effectively that around 80 per cent of calls
to their service desk are now logged via a customer portal with many of those calls
resolved using self-service options

The potential for self-service to improve service delivery is also coming to the
fore. Often there exists a subset of customers who prefer not to call a service desk
- mainly due to the perception that they will be placed in a queue. Others simply
prefer to troubleshoot problems on their own. These customers represent a pool of
previously unmet demand, to which self-service delivers.

Moving IT operations online neatly dovetails into the current trend away from paper
based processes and manual audits. Implementing self-service allows requests to be
kicked off by the customer (via the portal); once logged, an audit trail of the call
is automatically produced. Applying online workflows also enables specific workflow
tasks to be automatically completed, speeding up the end-to-end process and meeting
customer expectations for more mature service and delivery models.

4. Open Knowledge Management

IT service management is a knowledge intensive activity where the skills and
experience of staff play a key role in determining success. As not all analysts can
be experts in everything, having a comprehensive, up-to-date Knowledge Base directly
integrated with the service desk makes life a lot easier and minimises time spent on
routine requests such as password resetting.

Customer self-service also depends to a large extent on the quality of information
available via the portal. Integrating internal Knowledge Base content into a
customer self-service solution is an effective way of ensuring that users have
access to the content they need.

It is therefore not surprising that promoting the sharing of skills and experience
amongst IT staff through a Knowledge Management strategy is fast becoming a critical
factor in Service Management outcomes. But inspiring analysts to pool and use
knowledge can be far and away the biggest challenge.

A highly effective option that is currently gaining ground is Knowledge Centered
Support (KCS). KCS is an open approach, where knowledge creation is closely bound to
the support resolution process. Articles are created directly from logged calls, and
the original problem description is preserved as part of the knowledge article.
Subsequent calls that are resolved using particular articles are linked to those
articles, and their problem descriptions added to the document.

A major advantage of this approach is its capacity to encourage knowledge sharing.
The immediate nature of knowledge creation and the fact that authors of knowledge
are automatically recognised for their work encourages the creation of material. In
addition, the link back to the initial call maintains the connection to original
context, which provides the best of both worlds - a refined knowledge article that
is bound to the raw problem description.

ITSM solutions from developers such as Infra are important enablers of Knowledge
Management. For organisations seeking a more open approach, KCS Verified status
provides independent assurance that their selected ITSM solution is based on
industry best practice.

(ends)

Andy Wade is Managing Director at Infra Corporation, an international developer of
software that automates IT Service Management processes within the enterprise.

Infra is the international developer of infraEnterprise, a 100% Web solution that
automates IT Service Management processes (including Incident, Problem, Knowledge,
Change, Configuration, Release, Availability and Service Level Management).
infraEnterprise supports industry best practice methodology such as ITIL and KCS and
delivers the best upfront and ongoing value for comparative depth of functionality.

Established in 1991, Infra has regional head offices in the UK, North America and
Australia and a worldwide network of partners and distributors. www.infra.com.au

Web Site = http://www.infra.com.au

Contact Details = Infra Corporation
Level 18, 8-20 Napier Street
North Sydney NSW 2060
AUSTRALIA

info@infra.com.au