Wikipedia defines the IT service catalog as “a list of services that an organization provides, often to its employees or customers”. The IT service catalog describes each currently available service in great detail, as well as how it will be fulfilled, expected time frames for delivery, who is eligible to receive it, and what it costs (if applicable). While, on the surface, this may seem like little more than formal documentation, an IT service catalog [...]

Corporate networks and architectures get more and more complex as time goes by. And with more than 60 percent of IT issues caused by configuration problems, according to a report issued by Enterprise Management Associates, disciplines like IT configuration management are becoming increasingly critical in order to maintain services levels and keep all hardware and software performing at peak levels. IT configuration management is the process of “creating and maintaining an up-to-date record of all [...]

IT release management is a set of processes that can help companies formalize and standardize – and ultimately, improve – the way they create and roll out new software applications, hardware components, and other technology assets.  Wikipedia defines it as “the mechanisms of building and releasing software, and is included as a component of the Service Support Set in ITIL”. Designed to provide greater control over and visibility into the entire software creation lifecycle – [...]

A recent eWeek article states that “IT service providers struggle to make sense out of disparate data that exist in the IT universe”.  IT knowledge management is designed to change all that, providing structured processes for collecting, storing, and disseminating IT-related intelligence throughout an organization. The primary goal of IT knowledge management is to improve technology performance, accelerate technology enhancement and expansion, and increase IT efficiency of. All these benefits, ultimately, maximize the agility of [...]

In a recent survey of 40 corporate IT managers, conducted by industry expert Harris Kern, close to 60 percent admitted that their change handling processes are not effective, particularly when it comes to communicating and coordinating changes to the production environment. Among those polled, 95 percent said that not all changes were properly logged, and 90 percent believed that changes were not thoroughly tested.  That’s why the need for IT change management has become increasingly [...]

As you all know we’re busy finishing up with our new IT Service Management product. We’re truly excited about this new product and we’re getting great feedback from our beta testers. The new product enhances the existing help desk module and makes it a full ITIL-based IT Service Management product that is tightly integrated with our existing IT Asset Management service. The new product includes a Service Desk, Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management and Release [...]

IT incident management is a key aspect of IT service management (ITSM) that helps companies deal with IT-related events in the most efficient and effective manner possible.  The ITIL framework describes an incident as “any event which is not part of the standard operation of a service and which causes, or may cause, an interruption to, or a reduction in, the quality of that service”. According to Wikipedia, the primary objective of IT incident management [...]

Over the last decade, many companies have sought to improve IT service management efficiency by embracing the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) framework – and the numbers are steadily rising.  Early adopters of ITIL, which is the world’s most widely accepted IT service management methodology, include such notable organizations as Proctor & Gamble and IBM. According to Wikipedia, ITIL is “a set of concepts and practices for managing information technology (IT) services, IT development, and [...]

As companies continue to rely heavily on their technology systems to ensure smooth, successful business operations – and in particular, customer service – more and more of them are turning to ITIL as framework to adopt IT service management. Unlike traditional approaches to IT management, which focus solely on improving internal productivity and cost-efficiency, ITIL based IT service management is a methodology for managing technology infrastructures in a way that will directly, and positively, support [...]

We are off to a great start in 2010, and we’re very excited about what we have planned for the year ahead. We wanted to share some of the things we’ve been working on recently.  We’re really looking forward to launching these updates, and we hope you will be too: IT Asset Management Software Metering. Many users have asked us to add this capability.  We’re planning on releasing an updated agent with software metering capabilities shortly. You’ll [...]