VitAL Magazine - September-October 2011 by 31 Media

vital Inspiration for the modern business Volume 5 : Issue 1 : September / October 2011

Consultancy Services A buyerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s guide

Education Is it relevant to IT needs?

Enterprise Architecture & Strategic Planning Managing change in a dynamic environment Compare and contrast! 30 leading IT Service Management providers Pages 45-60

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Change: it’s always happening Leader B

y the time you read this, summer will be nearly over and the weather will have become what the meteorologists would call ‘changeable’. The problem with changeable is that you can get caught with the wrong coat, no hat, deck shoes in the rain or an umbrella that you have to lug through an Indian summer. Why is it that we’re rarely properly prepared for change? Mike Denis (cover story) would say that it’s because we rarely have enough usable information and we often don’t have a clear plan; added to which readers usually have to effect change while the business keeps running. You can read Mike’s thoughts inside. Also, looking at change, Professor Bill Buchanan considers the challenge for universities to ensure that their teaching programmes equip students for the future rather than the past. He also touches on a topic close to the hearts of many recruiters; ‘why do so many graduates seem not to have learned what is needed in the real world?’ Rob Williams offers a few controversial answers to that question. In fact, a lot of this issue considers various aspects of change, the future and dealing with the multiplicity of shifting environments in which readers have to be competent. It’s not just about being good at what you do, it’s about discerning what you’ll have to do in the future and preparing to be good at that. And that kind of managing for change can put you ahead of the pack when the change comes. Isaac Asimov said, “It is change, continuing change, inevitable change that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is but the world as it will be… This, in turn means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking” I think he meant, be prepared for everything (even the unlikely) and you’ll be ready for anything. One change for me is that I’ll be moving out of this chair after this issue. I’ve enjoyed my brief time here while a new full-time editor is sought but in this case, as the French say, ‘plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose’ (‘the more it changes, the more it’s the same thing’). Yes, Matthew Bailey has missed you all so much that he’s returning to this very desk. I wish him all success and I wish you all success; until we meet again.

John Hancock, Editor

If you have any thoughts, feedback, or suggestions on how we can improve VitAL Magazine, please feel free to email me john.hancock@31media.co.uk

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September / October 2011 : VitAL 1

vital Inspiration for the modern business

contents

Contents 6 News

VitAL : Inspiration for the modern business

vital

The VitAL Cover Story

10 Life is dynamic: business must operate dynamically too

Inspiration for the modern business Volume 5 : Issue 1 : September / October 2011

Michael Wm. Denis Enterprise Architecture is not simply something that IT adds to the business mix: it should be the architecture for success applied across the business; whose integrity relies on understanding the business, not what happens in the outside world.

Consultancy Services A buyer’s guide

Education Volume 5 : Issue 5 : September/October 2011

Is it relevant to IT needs?

Enterprise Architecture & Strategic Planning Managing change in a dynamic environment COMPARE AND CONTRAST! 30 LEADING IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT PROVIDERS PAGES 45-60

Editor John Hancock john.hancock@31media.co.uk Tel: +44 (0)203 056 4599 To advertise contact: Grant Farrell grant.farrell@31media.co.uk Tel: +44 (0)203 056 4598 Production & Design Toni Barrington toni.barrington@31media.co.uk Dean Cook dean.cook@31media.co.uk Editorial & Advertising Enquiries Tel: Fax: Email: Web:

+44 (0) 870 863 6930 +44 (0) 870 085 8837 info@31media.co.uk www.vital-mag.net

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VitAL management

14 Best Practices for Asset Management in the Service Desk Chris Williams Every business will have many IT assets but are they all known, listed and understood; are they correct for the business today and could better use be made of them? Good IT asset management can answer these questions and save money.

16 Doing more with the Same Headcount Noel Bruton Just because the service desk is busy, doesn’t mean that it’s doing what needs to be done; it might simply be doing what has just come across the desk. The manager needs to work out what matters then stop doing what doesn’t matter.

© 2010 31 Media Limited. All rights reserved. VitAL Magazine is edited, designed, and published by 31 Media Limited. No part of VitAL Magazine may be reproduced, transmitted, stored electronically, distributed, or copied, in whole or part without the prior written consent of the publisher. A reprint service is available. Opinions expressed in this journal do not necessarily reflect those of the editor or VitAL Magazine or its publisher, 31 Media Limited. ISSN 1755-6465 Published by:

VitAL Magazine, Proud to be the UKCMG’s Official Publication ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark, and a Registered Community Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce, and is Registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. PRINCE2® is the Registered Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce MSP® is the Registered Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce

VitAL suppport

20 How to buy consultancy services Huw Hilditch-Roberts Consultancy sometimes gets a bad press. But the problems can often originate in the way in which the process was started. A proper plan on the buyer’s part before any consultant is contacted can make all the difference.

Subscribing to VitAL Magazine

VitAL Magazine is published six times per year for directors, department heads, and managers who are looking to improve the impact that IT implementation has on their customers and business. For a FREE annual subscription to VitAL Magazine please visit: www.vital-mag.net/subscribe July / August 2011 : VitAL

UKCMG Forum Tuesday 22nd November 2011 Ditton Park, Datchet, Slough SHARING BEST PRACTICES & EXPERIENCES CAPACITY MANAGEMENT

PERFORMANCE ASSURANCE

SERVICE MANAGEMENT

The Forum will highlight important topics in Capacity Management, Performance Analysis, and ITIL. This event will help equip you with the knowledge you need and allow you to network with peers and industry leading vendors, so you can make the efficiencies that are being demanded across the whole industry. If you would like to present at the event the Call for Presentations is now available online. If you are interested in exhibiting at the event the sponsorship packages are listed on the website. UKCMG Members can attend the event FREE of charge. Non-member rates will apply. Numbers are limited, book now to avoid disappointment!! Platinum Sponsor

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COntents

Contents 24 Nearshoring – close enough to talk Terry Bland While offshoring may have earned a poor reputation in some quarters, the poor performance of long range outsourcing should not diminish the value of outsourcing itself because outsourcing and offshoring are not the same thing.

38 So Why Does Cloud Performance Matter? Richard Bishop The Cloud is a growing business phenomenon but it’s no panacea for all process ills. It is insufficient to simply adopt cloud services and then expect things to improve: IT leaders will have to understand the cloud to know how to get the best from it.

VitAL eyes on

25 Cookies in the mix Jonathan Westlake The EU e-Privacy Directive shifts the onus of cookie control from users to operators which means that traditional ways of introducing them may not be enough in future.

VitAL new blood

26 How academic IT departments manage changing IT environments Prof. Bill Buchanan How do academic IT departments match what attracts students to what industry requires of graduates and how do they maintain up to the minute teaching programmes in IT, an area where change is ever present?

VitAL signs – life in a world with it

41 The dangers of ‘Thrownness’ Steve White Like martyrs meeting lions, support engineers often find themselves thrown into dangerous situations with little preparation and no means of defence.

VitAL planet

42 Privacy, trust and identity in the cloud Mike Small Trust forms the basis upon which personal and commercial transactions take place. But trust and privacy are in conflict since knowing who you are dealing with is essential to trust. So how can identity, privacy and trust in the Cloud be reconciled?

32 A fear of doing difficult things Dr Rob Williams The problem for IT teaching and recruitment is that, all too often the subjects are chosen through the immature likes and dislikes of sixteen year old ‘A’ level entrants whose preferences may not extend to more disciplined and structured subjects.

45 30 LEADING ITSM VENDORS 2011 VitAL process

34 The impact of Cloud Computing on your business Mark Skilton The Cloud is increasingly talked about as the business IT platform of the future but do all businesses considering their cloud computing options fully understand its implications on ROI and governance or the decisions that will have to be made?

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30 leading ITSM vendors set out their stalls for VitAL readers to browse and compare, in their own time, what’s on offer before making informed choices as to which vendors’ they solution they would like to investigate further with the vendor.

64 Secret of my success Mark Lyttle, Founder & CEO at Fusion Business Solutions tells all

July / August 2011 : VitAL 5

news

VitAL launches annual ’30 leading ITSM providers’ section

itAL readers tell us that one of the things they want is to be able to compare vendors on a like-for-like basis, not always easy when you can only see their offers one at a time. So, in response to reader demand, this issue of VitAL includes our newly built ’30 leading ITSM Vendors’ section. It’s like a market… but it isn’t: nobody will be shouting for your attention, you won’t be distracted by ‘piled high’ displays and you won’t be caught in the crush to see what’s new. This is an altogether more exclusive affair for readers only. The VitAL ’30 leading ITSM Vendors’ section has, as the name suggests, brought together 30 leading vendors with the space on our pages to set out their

ICM Business Continuity Invocation Statistics Reveal UK Businesses still weak on IT

n 5th July 2011, 15 companies joined forces to launch the UK Cloud Alliance www.ukcloudalliance. co.uk, a collective of UK-based technology firms and service providers aims to guarantee the full transformational benefits of cloud computing. The Alliance will empower and enable UK businesses looking for new ways to answer their biggest challenges. The objective is to provide medium sized UK businesses with a collection of technology choices that can be delivered via Star’s private cloud platform and serviced by local specialists. This initiative brings together the best that cloud computing has to offer but delivered via local infrastructure and by local partners. The 15 founding members of the UK Cloud Alliance span the breadth of enterprise IT and communications from telephony to security and from hardware migration to virtualization. They support customers by adhering to a strict Code of Conduct that provides transparency and guiding principles to guarantee the customer’s best interests, in addition to Service Level Agreements and any contractual terms. UK businesses now have clarity and confidence in their choice of cloud computing provider. Ricky Hudson, CEO of Star said, “Beneath all the hype, cloud computing is very much in demand by a significant and growing proportion of medium sized UK businesses. This is about serving up UK technology to UK businesses because they like being served by local organizations that they can get to know, grow with and trust.”

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stalls. Readers can browse what’s on offer in a time to best suit their busy schedules before making informed choices and then contacting the selected vendors to discover more about what is offered and how it could add value to their business. Look inside on pages 45 to 60 and you’ll find that all 30 vendors have put out their wares in a way that makes it easy for you, the reader, to judge what’s available from each firm, how they differ from one another and how their offers match your needs so that you’ll be better informed about whether they might be a suitable solution partner for your business. We’ve put it all there; you only have to look.

Is crime paying? T

he A n ti - Phishing Working G roup (A P WG) www.apwg.org reported in the second half (H2) of 2010 Phishing Activity Trends Report published August 2011 records that the development of crimeware surged in the half-year period ending in December, 2010 with one data contributor registering more than 10 million new malware samples in the period, while other analysts describe important shifts in approaches to crimeware deployment by cybercrime gangs. Cybercriminals repurpose base code of existing crimeware using polymorphic techniques to craft new variations of crimeware to evade detection by filters reliant on fingerprints of known crimeware. In H2, 2010, however, cybercriminals’ crimeware development efforts were more than redoubled with PandaLabs reporting 10,425,663 new malware samples being registered in that period – some 17 percent of all samples the company has recorded since 1990. Patrik Runald, Senior Manager, Security Research for Websense and Trends Report contributing analyst said his laboratory noticed a shift toward a binary weapons approach to infecting PCs with crimeware, assembling the final crimeware code from several components that arrive through different mechanisms and at different times. Highlights of the report include: • Unique phishing reports submitted to APWG in H2 2010 steadily decreased over the half, after reaching a previous high for 2010 in June with 33,617. • Unique phishing websites detected by APWG during H2, 2010 saw a fluctuation of more than 5,000 sites month to month within the half-year period. • The high number of unique brand-domain pairs, 16,767 in November, was down nearly 32 per cent from the record of 24,438 in August, 2009. • The number of phished brands reached a high of 335 in September during the half, a decrease of 6 per cent from the all-time high of 356 in October, 2009. • Financial Services returned to being the most targeted industry sector in the 3rd and 4th quarters of 2010. • Sweden jumped to the top of countries hosting phishing sites reported during Q3, 2010 with 83.12% of all hosting sites reported in August. • The top 10 most prevalent families of fake anti-virus software are responsible for more than 59 per cent of rogueware infections. The full text of the report is available at: http://www.apwg.org/reports/apwg_report_h2_2010.pdf www.vital-mag.net

news

UK Cloud Alliance formed O

private cloud platform and serviced by local specialists. This initiative brings together the best that cloud computing has to offer but delivered via local infrastructure and by local partners. The 15 founding members of the UK Cloud Alliance span the breadth of enterprise IT and communications from telephony to security and from hardware migration to virtualization. They support customers by adhering to a strict Code of Conduct that provides transparency and guiding principles to guarantee the

customer’s best interests, in addition to Service Level Agreements and any contractual terms. UK businesses now have clarity and confidence in their choice of cloud computing provider. Ricky Hudson, CEO of Star said, “Beneath all the hype, cloud computing is very much in demand by a significant and growing proportion of medium sized UK businesses. This is about serving up UK technology to UK businesses because they like being served by local organizations that they can get to know, grow with and trust.”

UK Government announces shared services vision and considers a shared Cloud based platform but can it cope with such sophistication?

s part of Government Shared Services: A Strategic Vision, published July 2011, the UK Government Cabinet Office has noted that ‘a number of Government Departments are due to upgrade their supporting IT systems for back office corporate services in the coming years. A co-ordinated management approach by Government,’ says the report, ‘will lower the cost of reinvestment whilst enabling a rationalisation of the current landscape. For example, a number of large Departments who have implemented and operate an Enterprise Resource Platform (ERP) solution need to plan for the expiration of support to the current instance by 2013.’ The report goes on to say, ‘This presents an opportunity for UK Government to source a ‘vertical’ solution for a ‘cloud based’ ERP standard platform which Departments could buy into and from.’ But UK government IT initiatives are often fraught processes and almost always run over their budgeted costs. As the UK Parliament’s Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) warned last week, while the notion of standardizing UK Government IT services seems superficially attractive, we have been here before. The committee offers less than enthusiastic support and says even that would not remain if standardising means giving even more control of government IT to a few large, monopolistic suppliers. Not to put it too obliquely, the committee’s report blasts “the Government’s over-reliance on large contractors for its IT needs combined with a lack of in-house skills”, branding that a “recipe for rip-offs”. The committee found that as a result IT procurement too often resulted in late, over budget IT systems that are not fit for purpose. Bernard Jenkin, Chair of PASC said: “[During our research hearings] we [have] heard truly worrying accounts about the amount of money successive Governments have wasted on failed IT projects. According to some sources the Government pays between seven and ten times more than the standard commercial rate for its work: however the Government does not collect the information needed to verify these claims.”

of suppliers; some witnesses went further and described the situation as a ‘cartel.’ Whatever we call the situation it has led to an inexcusable situation that sees governments waste an obscene amount of public money.”

Breaking out of the relationship

The report argues that the Government needs to do four things to break out of this relationship: • Improve the information it holds on IT expenditure, without which the Government is unable to secure the best possible price for goods and services. • Publish more information about IT projects. The committee argues that the Government should make public information about how much its IT costs, and how its systems run. This would allow external experts to challenge current practices and identify ways services could be delivered differently as well as more economically. • Widen the supplier base by reducing the size of its contracts and greatly simplifying the procurement process to engage with innovative small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Most importantly, departments need the capacity to deal directly with a wider range of suppliers, especially SMEs. • Work in a more ‘agile’ manner. The Government needs to move towards the use of more iterative development methods which enable IT programmes to adapt to ever changing challenges. Bernard Jenkin, Chair of the committee said: “To address these challenges successfully the Government needs to possess the necessary skills and knowledge in-house, to manage suppliers and understand the potential IT has to transform the services it delivers. Currently the outsourcing of the government’s whole IT service means that many civil service staff, along with their knowledge, skills, networks and infrastructure have been transferred to suppliers. The Government needs to rebuild this capacity urgently. This Government, like many before it, has set out an ambitious programme aimed at reforming how it uses IT. We are greatly encouraged by the Government’s plans, Dominance and we promote a number of solutions which can transform how we One of the report’s recurring themes is the dominance of Government deliver public services online. We will need to wait and see whether IT by a small number of large companies. Bernard Jenkin commented: it can make progress in an area that has resisted so many previous “The Government has said that it is overly reliant on an ‘oligopoly’ attempts at reform.”

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September / October 2011 : VitAL 7

news

Hackers Bypass Google Security to Execute 80,000 Daily Queries For Cyber Reconnaissance

n August 2011: Imperva’s Hacker Intelligence Initiative (HII) revealed that hackers are leveraging the power of search engines to successfully carry out attacks – and it’s risk free. Hackers, armed with a browser and specially crafted search queries (‘Dorks’), are using botnets to generate more than 80,000 daily queries, identify potential attack targets and build an accurate picture of the resources within that server that are potentially exposed. Automating the query and result parsing enables the attacker to issue a large number of queries, examine all the returned results and get a filtered list of potentially exploitable sites in a very short time and with minimal effort. As searches

are conducted using botnets, and not the hacker’s IP address, the attacker’s identity remains concealed. Commenting on the report, Imperva’s CTO, Amachai Shulman claimed, “These attacks highlight that search engine providers need to do more to prevent attackers from taking advantage of their platforms.”

Recommendations for Organisations: Organisations need to be aware that, with the efficiency and thorough indexing of corporate information – including Web applications, the exposure of vulnerable applications is bound to occur. While attackers are mapping out these targets, it is essential that organisations

prepare against exploits tailored against these vulnerabilities. This can be done by deploying runtime application layer security controls: • A Web Application Firewall should detect and block attempts at exploiting applications vulnerabilities. • Reputation-based controls could block attacks originating from known malicious sources. As the 2011 H1 Web Application Attack Report (WAAR) showed, attacks are automated so, knowing that a request is generated by an automated process and probably coming from a known active botnet source, should be flagged as malicious. To download the full report, go to: www.imperva.com/download.asp?id=171

Venafi report – 64% of organisations failing to encrypt data in the Cloud Research Study discovers an epidemic of security worst practices

(CA) compromise. Failure rate – 55% • Best Practice 5: Rotate SSH keys every 12 months to mitigate risk incurred by the average employee life cycle of 2 years of service. Failure rate – 82% The assessment further revealed that almost 100 percent of evaluated organizations had some degree of unquantified or unmanaged risk. • When asked if their organisations encrypted data stored in leading public clouds such as Google Apps, Salesforce.com and Dropbox, 40 percent said they did not know. • When asked how often critical encryption assets such as SSH keys were rotated, 41 percent responded that they did not know. • When asked if their organisations were using encryption keys and certificates for data security and system authentication, 10 percent said they were not. “The biggest security struggle organisations face today is managing the unknown – aka the unquantified and unmanaged risks. Your best security assets can easily turn into liabilities if not managed properly,” Top 5 Best Practices and Failure Rates said Jeff Hudson, CEO of Venafi. “If this assessment demonstrates The assessment evaluated where organisations rank in the anything, it’s that IT and security departments have got to gain greater implementation of 12 IT security and compliance best practices, visibility over all of their security and compliance activities, and take ranging from how organisations leverage and manage encryption to steps to better understand and manage them.” how often they conduct security awareness and training programs. Methodology The top five best practices and their high failure rates include: The Venafi 2011 IT Security Best Practices Assessment evaluated 420 participant • Best Practice 1: Perform quarterly security and compliance organisations through an independent online survey conducted in July. Sixty training. Failure rate – 77% percent of the evaluated organisations employed 5,000 or more. Respondent • Best Practice 2: Encrypt all cloud data and transaction. organisations came from multiple industries, including banking and financial Failure rate – 64% services (27 percent), high tech (14 percent), government (11 percent), and • Best Practice 3: Use encryption throughout the organisation. manufacturing (8 percent). Questions and best practices baselines were Failure rate – 10% established in conjunction with IT security research firm Echelon One, under • Best Practice 4: Have management processes in place to the leadership of founder and CEO Bob West. ensure business continuity in the event of a Certificate Authority n August 2011, Venafi released the 2011 IT Security Best Practices Assessment. Echelon One led the effort to establish a set of 12 best practices and worked closely with Venafi to evaluate how well 420 enterprises and government agencies implemented them. The assessment reveals an epidemic of security worst practices, where a majority of organisations fail to adhere to simple data protection standards and, in many cases, are fully unaware of what security practices are currently in place. “The assessment findings were startling. We suspected we would find that many organisations were challenged, but we had no idea that failure rates would run this high,” said Bob West, founder and CEO of Echelon One. “The good news is that with this information and selfassessment, organisations can see where they rank in comparison to peers, determine where weaknesses exist and identify steps they can take to significantly reduce security and compliance risks by leveraging automated processes and multi-layered data security strategies, including managed encryption.”

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news

Lieberman Software calls for companies to go wired only as free Android man-in-the-middle and trojan attack app is about to be released

s a new wireless network sniffing app for Android – reportedly with attack, man-in-the-middle and remote trojan facilities – was about to be released in August 2011, Lieberman Software warned companies that wireless connections should no longer be considered the best option for network deployments. According to Philip Lieberman, President and Chief Executive Officer, the development of dark apps such as the Android Network Toolkit means that anyone armed with an Android smartphone or tablet computer can now become a wireless network hacker. “The fact that this app has been released by a security vendor is actually irrelevant. As Russia’s Elcomsoft has proven, it is possible to release software that allows hackers to dramatically speed up their rate of attack analysis on networks and corporate computer system, apparently under the guise of offering `security analysis software’ to the industry,” he said. “The release of Android Network Toolkit, however, pushes things to an entirely new level, since it means that hacker script kiddies and newbies can play with IT resources that are accessible wirelessly. Words like ‘irresponsible’ and ‘short-sighted’ spring to mind here, but the bad news for corporate IT managers is that these discussions are now irrelevant, as the genie is now truly out of the bottle,” he added. Against this backdrop, Lieberman is advising companies to “think wired security” when it comes to network planning and deployments,

as it is now clear that wireless connections have to be considered as an insecure networking medium. The problem facing IT security managers, he explained, is that the development of on-demand WiFi password cracking services such as WPAcracker.com and ‘password recovery’ applications from Russia’s Elcomsoft, mean that even novice hackers now have the capability to launch successful incursions into most wireless networks. With wired networking connections being far more secure and offering far higher speeds than those achievable using WiFi technology, there is now a pressing argument to opt for wired connections only. By all means, Lieberman says, install a guest WiFi network in an office building to offer a wireless networking option to guests in the lobby or meeting rooms, but only hook the service up to the public Internet and not the corporate IT resource. “That way, if a guest wants to access their email or other resources, they can do so without increasing the risk to the company’s IT systems. With apps like Android Network Toolkit around for free, the barrier to would-be wireless hackers is now so low as to be non-existent,” he said. “All it takes is one wireless configuration error, and Android-equipped hackers can gain access to the corporate network - and then all hell can break loose. IT managers now need to think seriously about ditching their wireless networks and going over to the security benefits that only a hard-wired company network environment can offer,” he added.

Loughborough University, Logicalis and Janetò move hybrid cloud into mainstream S

olutions provider, Logicalis UK, announced in August 2011 that in conjunction with Loughborough University it has successfully moved a complete enterprise application stack – including both virtualised and non-virtualised workloads – back and forth between an on-campus private cloud and Logicalis’ hosted cloud, via JANET (Joint Academic Network). The exercise has validated Loughborough’s conviction that hybrid cloud is a viable IT service delivery platform, and demonstrates the true capabilities of cloud as far more than just a hypervisor workload enabler. Leveraging Logicalis’ cloud infrastructure capability and its own connection into JANET, Loughborough automated a total infrastructure move between data centres located over 200 miles apart, within minutes. Phil Richards, Director of IT Services at Loughborough University, comments, “If it sounds groundbreaking it should do. We have just demonstrated that Loughborough’s strategy of leveraging JANET-connected cloud services can transform the way we deploy ICT infrastructure forever. Very simply,

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we picked a number of virtual and physical servers running key applications, along with the associated networking, storage and security elements, and moved them to Logicalis’ data centre in Slough. The applications had no understanding they had changed hardware platform or that they had been moved or modified in anyway, and we did it within five minutes.” The exercise demonstrates the real potential of cloud to organisations that traditionally only perceived it as suitable for hypervisor enabled workloads. Simon Daykin, CTO at Logicalis UK, explains; “What we have achieved in this exercise rips up the rule book on what cloud means to customers. The industry has been so inwardly focused on hypervisor-based clouds that it has forgotten that real organisations, like Loughborough, have a myriad of operating systems and workloads. “In successfully automating the move of an entire infrastructure and application stack in this way, we have proven that cloud is more than a vanilla slice of hypervisor paid for with a credit card. This is not an engineering

experiment; this is a real, live, demonstrable and adoptable approach for secure enterprise application cloud deployment.” In 2010, Loughborough University adopted Logicalis’ Cooperative Cloud as its strategic ICT platform, leveraging Logicalis’ JANETconnected hosted cloud as the institution needs new capacity in the future. This enables Loughborough to move real IT services between on-site private and off-site shared hosted clouds rapidly, reliably and without application or infrastructure changes. Moreover, the University’s use of private cloud has enabled it to save over £2million in data centre regeneration costs. The cloud solutions are based on Cisco’s unique Unified Computing System (UCS), NetApp Storage platforms, and CA Technologies’ automation and orchestration tools. Tom Kelly, MD of Logicalis UK, concludes, “This is a significant achievement. Loughborough, with their foresight and innovative spirit, have just changed thinking around cloud forever, and proven that enterprise cloud has come of age.”

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cover story

Life is dynamic: business must operate dynamically too In business transformation, the value of Enterprise Architecture & Strategic IT Planning, argues Michael Wm. Denis, Principal at ICF SH&E, is that it is able to adapt to change while continuing to function

urveys regularly report upwards of 70% of IT initiatives as failing outright, failing to deliver business value and return on investment or running over time and over budget. No wonder businesses stick to decades old custom coded legacy systems. While the quality of commercial off-theshelf solutions has advanced considerably in terms of functionality and technical platforms, the ability to plan, schedule, test, implement and train for new technology based capabilities remains a daunting task. Enterprise Architecture (EA) is a framework that provides structure and simplification to IT planning and capability maturity focused on enabling business processes, goals and transformation.

Who should own Enterprise Architecture? Before delving into the detail of ‘what’ EA is, the most vital decision for corporate success is ‘who’ should own this discipline and responsibility. At a recent Gartner conference on IT Planning and Enterprise Architecture, Vice President for IT Strategy and Research, 10 VitAL : September / October 2011

Philip Allega stated, “By 2016, 30% of EA efforts will be supported as a collaboration between business and IT (up from 9% in early 2011).” While the trend in who runs and owns EA is definitely headed in the right direction, the current situation shows the IT origins of EA and the fact that most business units still rely on the IT department to define and enable their business strategy and operations success or failure. Dr. Pallab Saha, professor at the National University of Singapore, Institute of System Sciences (and self-proclaimed EA Evangelist), has a running debate on the Enterprise Architecture Network group of Linkedin on why EA should not reside in the IT Department. His top six reasons are: 6. Notwithstanding history and evolution, EA does not equal IT Architecture. 5. True EA leads to redistribution of authority and reallocation of accountability, both beyond the CIO’s jurisdiction. 4. EA value proposition and benefits are solely business realisable. www.vital-mag.net

cover story

The current situation shows the IT origins of EA and the fact that most business

3. The primary goal of EA is to build coherent enterprises, not better IT systems. 2. Organisations are complex adaptive systems, hence holistic synthesis takes precedence over fractional analysis. 1. EA failure is a business organisational failure, not an IT failure. Resistance to EA is a consequence of failure, not the cause of it The natural fit is for EA to reside within the business and not IT. The proper allocation of roles, responsibilities and authority for the various domains of EA are shown in Figure 1.

units still rely on the IT department to define and enable their business strategy and operations success or failure.

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What is Enterprise Architecture? EA is multiple architectures (the art and science of designing ‘something’ for a specific purpose). Most people identify architecture with the design of physical spaces. In the traditional IT sense, architecture is used in the design of systems. The word prior to architecture is the ‘context’ or ‘focus’ of a design, thus Business Architecture, Data Architecture, Infrastructure Architecture, Technical Architecture and Solutions or Application Architecture are all elements of architecting or designing an enterprise. An enterprise can be an entire corporation or a significantly unique or independent business unit. Figure 2 shows the relationship of the elements and sub-domains of EA. As the diagram below shows, EA starts with BA, which includes Business or Corporate

September / October 2011 : VitAL 11

cover story

Involving everyone responsible, rather than relying on a small group of experts who monitor changes is critical. It is the difference between the supply department taking inventory once a month and ‘real time inventory management’.

Governance, Business Strategy, Business Capability Maturation, Business Process Management and Reengineering (BPR/ BPM), Business Requirements specification, Organizational Design, Human Capital development, and Business Performance Management. Capabilities are, by definitions, the combination of people, organisation, process, infrastructure, tools and technology that enable a business to source, transform and deliver products and services to customers and end consumers. Therefore, maturing or improving capabilities are solely the responsibility and domain of the business. The context of EA starting with BA and the definition of success being measured by business performance is why Gartner research analyst Julie Short predicts, “By 2014, enterprises will make no distinction between IT governance and corporate governance.”

Managing change whilst continuing with ‘business as usual’ Building architects get to design their structures on a clean sheet of paper, when nothing exists: in a corporation, on the other hand, the formalisation of the architecture has to take place while the enterprise continues to function and change. Every enterprise starts with huge amounts of legacy ‘stuff’ including hardware, applications and processes, much of it unwieldy and requiring constant maintenance. Creating competitive strategic advantage, business bonding to customers and implementing a new IT landscape that best enables the business while keeping operations running, is a massive challenge. The role of IT is changing. From automation and transactional support, IT has grown to be an indispensable part of operations. As technology transforms the way that organisations do business, the IT function plays a vital role in articulating the business strategy and objectives of enterprises. There is a good solution guide by alfabet that contains five basic rules to leveraging EA to add business value. Rule 1: Know where you are now. You can’t get where you want to go if you don’t know where you are. This is the single

12 VitAL : September / October 2011

most important rule of EA. Many enterprises attempt to transform their business and IT landscape without a clear understanding of their current processes, systems and capability maturity. They rely on ‘tribal knowledge’ and approximate descriptions based on out-ofdate information in PowerPoint presentations, Visio diagrams, Excel spreadsheets and Word documents, often scattered across different locations. This inaccurate picture of the current process and technology map will undermine every planning effort. Rule 2: Articulate the business strategy and goals to know where you are going. A clear picture of corporate goals and the contribution of people executing processes makes all the difference to the effectiveness and efficiency of an organization. This is closing the strategy to execution gap and aligning IT to business operations. A clear picture of the business goal also makes a difference when creating the IT vision. IT is not an end unto itself but a business enabler. So it is essential to understand the business strategy first – including the goals and capabilities required to deliver them and then tie that to the lifecycle management of data, applications, infrastructure and enabling middleware such as enterprise service bus technology. Rule 3: ‘All do some’ not ‘some do all.’ The only way to get an accurate, real time view of the current IT landscape is to ensure that all changes are carefully tracked and the information is stored in one place, system or tool. This cannot be done by one person alone or even by a dedicated team. It requires everyone who alters processes or technology to document changes, when they are made, to a central source. Involving everyone responsible, rather than relying on a small group of experts who monitor changes is critical. It is the difference between the supply department taking inventory once a month and ‘real time inventory management’. The same is true of enterprises and their complex process and technology landscapes – a real time view is essential to make good decisions. Yet, in a recent study, Nucleus Research found that enterprise IT decision www.vital-mag.net

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One critical role of EA is to define and translate business and technology entities and artefacts to ensure that these definitions become a common language shared by all business units.

makers rely on information that is, on average, 14 months old. No software solution can provide accurate IT asset data on its own. It requires the right processes and the engagement of everyone responsible for business and IT change. Susan Green, Global Head of Business Enterprise Architecture at Bank of America, puts it like this: “It’s vital to know what we have, if we want to manage our business and technology from application portfolio management through to strategy definition and capability alignment.” Rule 4: Collaborate and communicate to enable Enterprise Decision Making. Many ancient civilizations have a ‘Tower of Babel’ myth, in which the world is thrown into confusion by the sudden appearance of different languages. It is impossible to collaborate if you can’t communicate and if there are no agreed words to describe objects and ideas, communication is impossible. One critical role of EA is to define and translate business and technology entities and artefacts to ensure that these definitions become a common language shared by all business units, technology vendors and the IT department. Only when a common lexicon exists is it possible to create an accurate model of the IT landscape. Accurate and consistent terminology is vital, but not sufficient. Terminology needs to be ‘rich,’ able to address both business and IT realities. The manner in which you describe your landscape determines what you can do – e.g. it is only possible to manage vendor contracts if all necessary contract and license information is captured. Ideally, IT planning forms part of business strategy development, informing executives of opportunities, risks and solutions, and suggesting clear roadmaps that maximise value and minimise disruption to operations. It’s vital to know what we have, if we want to manage our business and technology from application portfolio management through to strategy definition and capability alignment. Rule 5: Use Enterprise Tools to transform Enterprise Capabilities It is also critically important to both realise and embrace change. When planning a route,

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it is not enough to know where you are and where you want to be – you have to understand the road and environment in between. Every IT roadmap is based on a host of assumptions that can change during execution. A vendor may discontinue one of its technologies; a merger or acquisition may transform the business; new external regulations may be enforced. If you are always ready to react to these changes quickly with real time knowledge, they will be less of a challenge. Transforming the IT organisation is like being in command of a ship – it needs a lot of notice to change direction. If you can see the iceberg – it’s already too late! In order to benefit from dynamic navigation, it is vital that you keep all information and plans together in one enterprise class system, the map of your current location and situation, the vision of your future landscape, knowledge of the environment in-between and road map for the journey. Microsoft PowerPoint, Excel, Visio and Word are not enterprise collaboration tools, even with the addition of Outlook and SharePoint. Even Microsoft Corporation uses specialized EA technology. Enterprise Architecture tools are the only way to ensure that the impact of any environmental change is fully understood in advance and that your navigation system is constantly updated to support corporate decision making in a way that will best achieve business goals.

Conclusions Enterprise Architecture (EA) is a framework and human capital skill set that provides structure to capability maturity; simplifying, de-risking and improving the success probability of technology implementation and business transformation. EA must be led by business leaders supported by IT experts. Many doing a little is preferable to a few doing a lot and ensures accurate information. Documenting the lifecycles of organisational structures, roles, workflows, processes, applications, data and infrastructure is critical to optimal decision making. VitAL www.icfi.com/aviation September / October 2011 : VitAL 13

vital management

Best Practices for Asset Management in the Service Desk Chris Williams, Manager of IT Service Management Product Marketing, BMC Software

o you have a good handle on your organisation’s IT assets — do you know what is and isn’t being used, and whether they are best suited to meet business needs? Could you be saving the business large sums of money through more strategic use of IT assets? These questions can easily be answered if IT has asset management tools available. But it’s also important to determine whether you have fully utilised the tools and embraced the entire lifecycle of the asset management process. You should furthermore be able to identify whether you have the right types of assets to meet your needs. IT asset management, when performed holistically with an eye toward all of the supporting and managing processes, should focus on how to manage the entire lifecycle of your IT assets. The following tips should help you to address the challenges of asset management in the service desk.

Know What You Have It is important to find out exactly what you have and how your assets are being used. 14 VitAL : September / October 2011

Without automated discovery, reconciliation, and normalisation, it’s very difficult to gain an accurate picture of what software is deployed within the service desk. The use of purpose built solutions enables users to better understand each asset’s use, deployment, records, and listings within a product catalogue. Gaining a configuration item (CI) view with a complete, normalised, and reconciled set of information gives you the intelligence to manage these assets better. Without conducting discovery on a regular basis, an organisation will lack visibility into what is being consumed, who is consuming it, whether it should deployed on an as-needed consumption model, or whether there is a need to increase the license count. Discovery solutions can be leveraged to identify this information and reveal whether you have what you need to support the business. However, having an asset, and knowing what it is, is only part of the equation. You also need to know how it is being used and configured, and how it is impacting your business. These rules come into play when you are looking at a configuration and when you are setting up www.vital-mag.net

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information about the asset. You need to know what you are actually doing with the physical component, as well as the data residing in – or accessible from – that component.

incidents, and its total cost. In addition, service request management can provide a console for personnel to use to request assets.

Get Control over Compliance

There are costs related to parts, service, labour, incident administration, problem diagnosis, and more in the service desk. When you take these factors into consideration and multiply them by the number of times users need help, you could discover that the cost to support the asset could far outweigh the benefits of the software. It is always advisable to buy quality and be mindful that some software can end up costing more due to the additional requirements and support. Good asset management can help to not only pinpoint such potential cost-benefit improvements, but also make a powerful financial argument for purchases. When evaluating assets in the service desk, also look at what assets you need in the longterm, short-term, strategically, and tactically to roll out a new service. Think about future needs so you can better plan your IT cost portfolio. For example, if you will be rolling out new assets in six months, look in advance at the expected supply and service costs for that asset. By thinking long-term, you can also more effectively plan out your asset stack. For example, you may discover that you have 112 extra licenses for an asset that you purchased last year that are just sitting on the shelf. If you can pull those licenses back and redeploy for a future use, you’ll be saving money.

It’s very challenging to conduct effective auditing of your service desk without good reporting and analytics. You need to have the end-to-end scope of what each asset is, what it does, why you bought it, who (if anyone) is using it, and whether it is being used correctly. For example, for compliance purposes, the person who requested an asset or has access to an asset is not likely to be the same person who approves its purchase. Centralised asset management can help visualise how assets are being used, reported, and measured. Metrics will help understand overall compliance at a glance through dashboards and summary statistics. It’s also important to visually understand where your company is coming from in terms of compliance. You need to determine whether there are certain aspects of the business that are more loosely protected and that don’t fit with your corporate agenda for governance. You also need to be able to identify whether there are assets in house that people have downloaded of which you are unaware. It all comes back to discovery, the importance of one centralised view of your environment that tells you what you should have and what you need to be compliant. This should provide information on any vulnerability so you can protect your organisation from violations. It all ties back to vulnerability, governance, and risk. A federated configuration management database (CMDB) provides one central repository for all asset information from an asset configuration management point of view and how the assets relate to the services they support. Service management solutions are available that can provide a one-stop, ata-glance look at what you own, how it’s used, its effectiveness, any related problems and www.vital-mag.net

Look to the Future

IT asset management, when performed holistically with an eye toward all of the supporting and managing processes, should focus on how to manage the entire lifecycle of your IT assets.

The Time Is Now Given the complexity of today’s IT environment, effective asset management is essential, particularly when managing assets in the service desk. By following the best practices described here, you can get a better view into your organisation’s assets, protect the business from risk, and save a significant amount of money. VitAL www.bmc.com September / October 2011 : VitAL 15

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Doing more with the Same Headcount It’s less whether you have the right people but rather, consultant and trainer Noel Bruton believes, that they’re doing the right things

hese are financially challenging times, which have now been with us for nearly three years, and the belt is unlikely to be slackened any time soon. Staffing budgets are particularly under pressure. Increasing headcount is the same as increasing liabilities, putting up costs, which have to be paid, thus eroding the company’s bottom line. At the same time, the IT Support Desk is constantly meeting new challenges. Increases in the number of users, new technology, migrating to new operating systems, growth in the business, growth in the amount of technology deployed and so on. All this growth and change continues, and does not necessarily result in an increase in the size of the IT Support Desk to meet the challenge. One way to deal with this is to link the cost justification of the IT Support Desk to the 16 VitAL : September / October 2011

company’s profit margins. There are formulae for this, but they are indirect, so must be negotiated rather than simply installed. But do not underestimate the impediment in the perhaps unstated but nonetheless potential corporate belief that the IT Support Desk is not making the best use of the resources it has. So the financiers are unlikely to endorse the justification link until the IT Support Desk proves that it can absolutely get the best out of any resources it may be given. The answer for the IT Support Desk manager is to prove that he or she is continually striving to improve services and introduce new ones without necessarily increasing resources.

Lack of Time Good idea, in theory. But of course you can’t because you’re already up to your neck. Staff are running as fast as they can just to keep up. www.vital-mag.net

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And if your IT Support Desk has been reduced to mere reactivity in order to keep up with the workload, the idea of introducing new services into this mêlée may be beyond consideration. But providing new services can be done, almost always, in any IT Support Desk, no matter how reactive. First, you may have to deal with the illusion of busy-ness. I see this, especially in second-line groups, time and time again.

The ‘Busy-ness’ Illusion This is how it goes. In the first place, there is scant real measure of the separate service activities. Staff have historically been hired reactively as the workload has increased. The work is not seen as the production of separate services, but as lots of things done by lots of people. Everybody has at least a few outstanding calls sitting in their queue that have been there an uncomfortable amount of time, and barely ever get looked at (I’ll let you decide why that is – it takes a bit of honest soulsearching). The queue bobs along, at about the same size, give or take a bit, so you’re handling the work, you just seem busy. But you’re busy because you’re reacting. You can’t really concentrate on important stuff because your department is designed so that you constantly get interrupted. So first, get rid of this ‘busy-ness’ illusion caused by interruption. Organise yourselves so that somebody is designated as interruptible while the rest get on with dealing with the workload. After that, to use the old cliché, it is simply a matter of priorities, comparing the importance of what you are doing now with the importance of what you should be doing. www.vital-mag.net

Of course, the first hurdle is finding the time to draw up that comparison. There is a risk that when you have made the comparison, you may find that you are already doing the most important things. This will make consideration of new projects pointless. To make things worse, you will have taken resources away from currently important tasks only to find that they were the most important things after all. You will have reduced services to conduct an exercise which proved fruitless. That can leave you open to criticism of wasting time and resources you could not afford to waste. Given this risk, it can be easier just to carry on as ever before and not make the comparison, just in case it turns out to have been pointless. However...

Considering Risk

Growth and change continues, and does not necessarily result in an increase in the size of the IT Support Desk to meet the challenge.

...this is not just about doing more with the same headcount. It is about being able to cope with the future. Both issues benefit from the same approach. And the fact that it is about controlling the IT Support Desk’s future workload introduces a new risk and one that will help you to decide to reconsider IT Support Desk priorities. Instinctively, you may feel that given the change taking place all around you, given the uncontrolled reactivity of your department, things are likely to get worse rather than better unless you start to examine your priorities. The risk that you waste time is nothing compared with the risk that the IT Support Desk may not be ready for the next change, the next pressure. Because if that happens, the IT Support Desk will be in an even worse state than it is now. Imagine what September / October 2011 : VitAL 17

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Consider how to stop doing the jobs at the bottom of your list of priorities. Yes, that’s right. Stop doing them.

will happen to computing in your company, to user productivity, to corporate profitability, to your career prospects and to your staff’s job satisfaction if the IT Support Desk loses its grip on the future. Which is worse? Conducting the comparison and finding it fruitless, or not conducting it and finding the IT Support Desk irrelevant a year from now? There is also the question of the role of the support manager here. I’ll leave you to decide whether you are in control of the workload, or it is in control of you.

Table of Benefits Draw up a table. In the first column, write down the jobs you are doing now and the ones you think you should be doing. If you have a Service Catalogue already, so much the better – if not, this is a good place to start said catalogue. The ideal is that you arrive at the stage where you see these activities not just as jobs you are doing, but service products you are producing. At this stage, make no distinction between the two types, ‘current’ and ‘desired’ service activities. In the next column, write down the amount of resource in terms of man-hours per period each job takes. It will probably help to carefully measure this for a week or so, with your people counting their activity, so your figures are fairly accurate. Do not consider who does which job, that doesn’t matter for now. In the next column, write down the benefit that the company extracts or will extract from each job. If you can bring that benefit down to amount of money saved’ (e.g. by comparing the contribution to user productivity), so much the better. Then prioritise the jobs against one another, according to company benefit.

Amalgamate and Prioritise Now look at the jobs in terms of resources. Which jobs could be placed together to make up one person’s job? Don’t look at it purely in terms of what people you have now doing what jobs. They may be the wrong ones. Finally, consider how to stop doing the jobs at the bottom of your list of priorities. Yes, that’s right. Stop doing them. Where’s the problem? It’s only the same as before the exercise, when you were not doing stuff you’ve now found to have been important. And if your boss or your 18 VitAL : September / October 2011

users complain, explain about the business benefits column. If they want everything, they will have to pay for it. So anticipate the cost. If there is likely to be any damage to any one user department, take the issue to your manager first, then to that department. It is hard to cease to deliver a service, but if you have scientifically and financially arrived at the necessity of doing so, the choice must be made. For if not, you risk committing resource to conducting a service activity that is a lower business priority than one you cannot do well due to the consumption of resources lower down the priority risk.

Managing the Change Of course, once you have decided upon which jobs you should be doing, things are going to have to change in the IT Support Desk. Specifically, you are going to have to update your services, and that means changing either your people, what they do or to whom they do it. That’s the hard part of all this - telling your staff to stop what they are doing right now and start doing something different. They may not have the skills to make that change. They may simply not have the desire. You may be asking them to forego some comfortable little job-niche they have carved for themselves, and they may find that unacceptable. You may, in effect, be telling them that the skills and knowledge that have been held in such high regard for so long are no longer relevant. They have to start doing something new, which they may not be very good at, and they will have to suffer the humiliation of ignorance or incompetence, stemming from trying to learn a new job from scratch. That is why they will have to be involved in the whole process from the beginning. Not just at the end, when the manager hands out new job descriptions. But right at the start when the whole department begins to realise what has to change. This is because that realisation has to be made on the part of, rather than on behalf of the staff. They have to see the problem so they can understand that the only solution is for them to change. They will change the job they do or how they do it, not because the manager tells them to, but because they have seen the need for them to act in a new way. VitAL www.noelbruton.com www.vital-mag.net

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embrace best practice from COBIT®, ISO/IEC 20000, SFIA/SFIAplus and ITIL® enable job specific skill development are industry-relevant and internationally recognised are endorsed as ITIL Complementary Products attract credits towards ITIL Expert

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How to buy consultancy services If you’re thinking of engaging consultants, Huw Hilditch-Roberts, Director in Charge of the Institute of Consulting explains how to get the best from the arrangement

ou only have to glance at the newspapers to read negative stories about spending on consultants; the press typically focuses on fees rather than the value added by the consultants, the scope of the project or the client’s return on investment. There are of course cases where hiring consultants has not worked and, at the Institute of Consulting, we have developed a best practice guide to buying consultancy services that helps businesses assure project success and obtain best value for money when engaging consultants.

Clarifying the need – do you really need a consultant? A common driver for businesses buying consultancy is the need for skills or resource that cannot be sourced internally to solve complex, pressing or novel business problems. It is important that the scope and requirements of the engagement are fully defined – a key question to answer is whether the need is for true consultancy or simply for additional resource. Hiring a consultant on a long-term basis to manage on-going operations is more closely aligned to outsourcing than consulting ‘per se’ and should be managed as such. External consultants bring additional benefits that internal teams may be unable to provide. Speed of action is a key benefit: consultancies can typically start work sooner and deliver faster than internal teams because they are not encumbered by day-to-day operational duties. Further, consultants typically have a wide experience of effective solutions from within the buyer’s industry, other sectors and geographies, enabling them to bring new ideas and ‘best practice’ solutions to a business issue. 20 VitAL : September / October 2011

Best practice behaviours for buyers: • Be clear whether consultancy or resource is required; • Ensure the project objectives have been identified and given due consideration.

Getting internal buy-in In most consultancy engagements there will be a number of groups within the business that have an interest in the procurement and management of the project. Employees should be told in good time of plans or changes that may affect them and early communication and transparency is a good basis for building trust. A managed stakeholder map is a good way of tracking the buy-in of each group, the stakeholder map can be used to support communication and stakeholder engagement activity for the project. Information commonly included in a stakeholder map includes: • Job roles and job titles; • Expected involvement with the project team; • Attitude toward the project (positive, negative, indifferent, ambitions, fears); • Communications or activities aimed at influencing the group. Best practice behaviours for buyers: • Establish a communications plan early and explain why consultants are being used

Managing the procurement, evaluating quality In general, buyers should invite proposals from multiple suppliers and sole-bidder tenders should be a rare exception. An effective way to compare alternative bids is a formal tender process based around a structured set of evaluation criteria. www.vital-mag.net

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In general, buyers should invite proposals from multiple suppliers and sole-bidder tenders should be a rare exception. An effective way to compare alternative bids is a formal tender process based around a structured set of evaluation criteria.

The project specification, against which bidders will tender should contain as much factual information as possible, avoiding opinion or bias – the aim should be for the consultants to offer the most appropriate solution, not what the buyer wants to hear. When evaluating proposals, key factors to consider include: • Understanding of the issues – as evidenced by the proposed approach and plan; • Ability to meet proposed deadlines; • Specific expertise – track record in the industry or in solving similar business issues elsewhere for organisations similar to yours; • Evidence of competence – the Certificate in Management Consultancy (CMC) is the only competence-based award in management consultancy and is only awarded by the Institute of Consulting to consultants who can demonstrate successful experience and practice in consultancy; • Breadth and depth of resources – the consultants proposed for the task should be of an appropriate level of seniority and expertise; • Complementary culture – a consultancy with a reputation for cost-cutting may not be appropriate for a project aimed at improving customer service; • Costs and fees (noting whether these are inclusive or exclusive of expenses). Buyers should recognise that successful bidders will expect to recoup the cost of winning the work and protracted negotiations with short-listed suppliers should be avoided where practicable. Best practice behaviours for buyers: • Invite proposals from multiple suppliers; • Look for independent evidence of competence, such as CMC accreditation.

Managing the engagement Employees throughout the business may be affected by the project and it is important that the work of consultants and staff is managed, both to minimise disruption to on-going business and to ensure that the consultants receive the help and information they need promptly. 22 VitAL : September / October 2011

A project manager should be appointed to manage the project to ensure that a complete record of the engagement, variations and payments is maintained. The project manager will be responsible for monitoring project process and for making interventions, as required, to facilitate the successful running of the project. The project manager may also act as a communications channel between the consultant and stakeholders within the business; for example, it may be appropriate for key findings, particularly around sensitive topics, to be communicated to senior stakeholders by the consultant (through the project manager) before formal reports are issued. Finally the project manager will carry out a review of the project and its outcomes. Best practice in evaluation of consultancy projects requires both an internal review within the business and a joint consultant /client review. The review should examine the delivery and results of the project as well as looking at lessons learned for future projects and any remedial action required to realise goals that were not met. Best practice behaviours for buyers: • Key questions to ask at the project review are ‘did we manage this adequately?’ and ‘did we achieve the goals we set out to achieve?’

Good consultants mean good business Despite much of the bad press around the consulting industry, we have seen that consultants, who are certified, qualified and have the experience to match, make a significant, positive difference to the businesses with which they work. While buyers may be wary of engaging consultants, by adopting the best practice procurement processes, buyers can ensure that they hiring the right consultants to help them solve their business problems. VitAL www.iconsulting.org.uk The Institute of Consulting guide to buying consultancy offers best practice procurement advice for buyers of consultancy and can be found at http://www.iconsulting.org.uk. www.vital-mag.net

vital support

Nearshoring – close enough to talk All the benefits of offshoring without the headaches as Terry Bland, managing director of GodelTech explains

During recessional times, the need for cost reduction has only been heightened, and companies are still looking for ways to outsource functions within their business in order to remain competitive.

24 VitAL : September / October 2011

t’s safe to say that the trend for businesses to outsource over the last decade has been driven by a need to cut costs and, in many cases, offshoring has been the chosen method for driving costs down in an organisation. Whole departments including customer services and product development have been offshored to locations such as India, and the horror stories associated with some offshore investments have been all too well publicised, resulting in many organisations retrenching back in the UK. But during recessional times, the need for cost reduction has only been heightened, and companies are still looking for ways to outsource functions within their business in order to remain competitive.

Addressing real concerns The fears cited by companies specifically considering offshoring software development range from a loss of control over processes, language barriers, time zones affecting delivery of service and the general culture gap that can exist when working with employees in other geographies which creates an inability to work together as a cohesive team. And whilst these have sometimes been the case, ‘nearshoring’ eradicates many of these worries. To all intents and purposes, nearshoring is offshoring, but closer to home in countries such as Belarus and other ex-eastern bloc nations. It is fast becoming the preferred method for outsourcing in the UK providing only a two hour time difference, staff that speak fluent English and have a hungry ethos to work with English companies whilst being excellent software developers. It’s scalable – clients can flexibly increase or decrease the team should the need

arise, providing a balance between efficiency and resource costs which allows them to keep control over development and project costs. Further it’s possible to build a skilled dedicated team, regardless of geography, which is tailored to the experience the client requires – something that is fundamental to the success of the software development team. Nearshore software developers must be part of the wider UK team; accountability to each other is a big part of the success of the business model. When the development team in the UK makes a commitment to the client, employees must feel the same pressure to succeed as each other and must want to achieve the same goals. For that to become a reality there must be a strong relationship between the team members regardless of their geography - everyone must trust each other and work together for common goals and customer satisfaction. To facilitate this, most nearshoring companies will allow employees to develop close relationships face to face by allowing team members to travel between the locations to get to know each other. Activities outside of the work context also help relationship building allowing employees to learn more about each other – just as many UK companies would hold ‘team building’ activities, it’s even more relevant in a nearshoring business model.

Leveraging proximity The advantages of nurturing such a close team relationship include yielding dividends in communication for all parties; the employees, the organisation and its clients. The outsourced team are more able to interact directly with a client and appear a seamless part of the team www.vital-mag.net

VitAL eyes on

Cookies in the mix

Jonathan Westlake considers the impact of the e-Privacy Directive on Cookies

and the company, whilst getting to know the client directly. Once again this provides a feeling of accountability and a desire to do a good job for a client they get to know. It also means that the outsourced team is happy to go the extra mile to help out at weekends or out of hours if the job requires it and that is reciprocated with a robust HR policy including flexible hours and time off when required. Looking after an outsourced team is as important as taking care of UK based employees. And when it’s not possible to meet face to face, what of intra team communication? Many offshore teams have relied heavily on a Skype connection or dealing with each other over the telephone which is not ideal for long protracted conversations about software development. It’s great to have physically met someone face to face, but on-going team communication is much easier by videoconferencing. The technology exists to bring disparate teams together in the boardroom virtually, and teleconferencing between not just the development team, but also the client can help to move along issues in product development at a much faster and more effective pace. Regular meetings via videoconferencing maintain a project’s momentum whilst keeping travel costs down to a minimum. In short, the nearshoring delivery model provides customers with a strategic software development partner that provides a high quality of expertise, a seamless team to work with and use of high definition video conferencing for project communication – a far cry from the problems often associated with offshoring. VitAL www.godeltech.com www.vital-mag.net

n the specials menu board today – internet cookies. Readers will no doubt recall that cookies are files that sit on a user computer and allow web sites to record user preferences, for example how many times the user has visited a particular site. It can be argued that they are helpful to the consumer and add value in terms of the user experience particularly speed of navigation. The main issue with the use of cookies is that they are not usually overt and so it might be argued that they are being intrusive. They can be switched off as a browser preference but this can diminish the user experience. In May 2011 the EU passed the e-Privacy Directive to encourage more transparency with cookie use. In essence the directive requires that EU based websites gain informed consent from the user before a cookie is deployed. In the UK the ‘The Privacy and Electronic Communications

(EC Directive) Regulations 2011’ has been amended to account for this change. Traditionally information about the use of cookies has been in the small print of a website privacy statement but it is clear that this will no longer be enough. Somehow the website provider will need to ask for user consent regarding the use of cookies and how to effectively implement this is not yet clear. Also it will be a question of balancing the mechanism of getting consent with the user experience. Given that no uniform solution has yet come forward The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has taken the practical view that enforcement of the new cookies regulations will not be until May 2012. So if you have a website it is time to review it and the use of cookies. Solutions may emerge from the web browser vendors but my advice is to provide your own solution via terms of use box or pop-up box and hence self-regulate your compliance for example… The ICO would like to use cookies to store information on your computer, to improve our website. One of the cookies we use is essential for parts of the site to operate and has already been set. You may delete and block all cookies from this site, but parts of the site will not work. To find out more about the cookies we use and how to delete them, see our privacy notice. r I accept cookies from this site. VitAL

Useful references: www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/ privacy_and_electronic_ communications/cookie_rules _prepare.aspx September / October 2011 : VitAL 25

vital new blood

How academic IT departments manage changing IT environments Some of the methods that academic IT department use to handle changes in the future IT environment are discussed by Prof. Bill Buchanan, Professor of Computing, Edinburgh Napier University plus how they can interpret trends and spot new capabilities

26 VitAL : September / October 2011

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vital new blood

Matching what industry wants with what applicants want A major problem for any IT academic department is matching jobs market requirements to courses which appeal to applicants. There is currently massive industry demand for software and embedded engineers, but IT academic departments have generally struggled to recruit candidates to these types of courses. At present, courses focused on gaming, computer security, digital forensics, cybercrime, and digital design, are seeing a fast growth in applications. These hotspots, though, can create considerable problems for departments, especially as popular courses are often initially starved of teaching resources, because staff cannot, or do not want to, move quickly enough into the new areas. Overall this tends to be the problem for the head of school who must judge whether something is a short-term â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;flash in the panâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; or a long-term trend. Good examples of courses which had a peak and then settled down well to good amounts of long-term recruitment have been in software engineering, computer networking, and multimedia. A major problem is in creating courses which are appealing to applicants and any existing student base, but which might not match the requirements of industry. The way that academia often deals with this is to focus a great deal of attention on the programme title, making it attractive to candidates, while also being useful in defining the scope of the programme to recruiters. Buried within the programme, though, are the areas of study which are key things that industry actually needs. This is why many IT programmes often do not mention the words software development, business studies, project management, and ethics within the programme title, but still teach them. Useful within the title would be things such as media design, digital forensics, and gaming, as these are likely to attract candidates. Employers often need to avoid looking at the programme title, and look in more detail at the actual modules used in the programme, to see www.vital-mag.net

the scope of any software development and business integration. Within many programmes in IT there can be a marginalisation of the subject area due to demands of students currently on the courses. This has been seen with computer networks, where programmes were created with a wide range of modules, in areas such as business studies and software development, which generally enrich the scope of the programme. Over the year, though, students often demand more modules in their focus, which can be to their disadvantage when they join the jobs market.

The push of the major vendors In the IT industry one of the major moves over the last few years has been from vendors such as Cisco Systems, Microsoft and Juniper, providing a wide range of professional certification, intended to match training to the actual needs of industry. Academia has a difficulty in whether to adopt and integrate the professional certification into their programmes, or to continue to focus on core academic skills development. Applicants, though, are now becoming generally savvy in spotting where this type of infrastructure has been created, which makes programmes which integrate the material more attractive in future job potentials. Thus many programmes now highlight the integration with Microsoft and Cisco Systems, in providing relevant professional skills. A major worry for many, though, is that academic programmes are far too focused on material produced by the major vendors, which limits the scope of knowledge that students can gain. While there has been a reduction in the focus of vendor derived material on their own product range, there still seems to be a lack of strong academic underpinning in much vendor-produced material. A good academic department will understand the importance of following parts of the vendor certification, but giving a wide coverage of the key academic principles behind any topic. Along with this it is important that academic departments encourage their

Employers often need to avoid looking at the programme title, and look in more detail at the actual modules used in the programme, to see the scope of any software development and business integration.

September / October 2011 : VitAL 27

vital new blood

students into continual professional study, to gain advantage in the jobs market.

Differing departmental profiles One thing for sure is that every IT academic department has a different profile in terms of its focus, and it is often this focus which can define how innovative a department is, and how much they need to be. In traditional research areas, there are many distinguished seats of learning, which have long track records for excellence and innovation in research and teaching. Medical and Business Schools, for example, have generally built up their expertise over many decades, and continue to be known for their lead in their domain. Computing and IT, though, is ever-changing, and each department has the opportunity to gain a lead over others by gaining a first-mover advantage. Over the past few decades this has happened with digital electronics, signal processing, microprocessor design, and so on. Each new technology brings opportunities to move and gain an advantage. Often this movement can fit into various profiles: â&#x20AC;˘ Old School, Slow Mover. Often a traditional learning institution, which does not need to adapt to new teaching environments and subjects, as it can easily recruit without showing new innovations. Over time it will generally adopt new subject areas depending on factors such as their research profile. â&#x20AC;˘ New School, Fast Mover. This is a department which bases its growth on identifying new and exciting areas, and has key innovators who can move quickly and change their environments and subjects to match. If they move fast enough they can gain a significant lead on the rest of academia, and gain a significant reputation, especially if they can support the development of a research infrastructure with the growth of the newly developed teaching area. This profile can be further split into schools which pick the right things, and then move in resources to expand the 28 VitAL : September / October 2011

area, and ones which fail to sustain the investment, and lose out in the long term as the resources do not follow the initial lead. Some new subject areas can be slow burners, where a significant growth in applications is not seen for a year or two, while other can sparkle for a short time, and then fail in the medium term. â&#x20AC;˘ Old School, Late Mover. This is a department which generally does not innovate, but watches how other departments are performing in terms of recruitment, and adopts ideas that have been proven to be successful. There is generally less risk, but it can suffer from general down-turns in recruitment in the short-term, as there are no programmes giving a recruitment spike to overcome the general downturn. IT has been shown to be ever-changing, with new technologies springing up on a regular basis. This often leaves great opportunities for first movers, which could prove a winner in gaining a reputation in certain technological areas. The University of Abertay with Computer Games, and the University of Glamorgan with Computer Forensics, are good examples of how leadership can be gained with departments which move quickly and focus their resources into appealing areas. Without a sustained investment in research and knowledge transfer the first mover advantage can often lead to very little overall advantage, but the benefits can be great, in terms of the long-term sustainability of the whole department. Often, subjects which do not recruit well need the new areas to be able to justify their long-term base. Any department needs bright sparks, the people who are willing to move into new areas and take risks. Thus it is likely that new blood needs to be brought in on a regular basis, as departments can often stagnate around their existing expertise, leading to a long-term decline. Generally it is unusual to see new programmes filled with completely new modules. The most common is to see one or two new modules, often in the later years of courses, which start to show some www.vital-mag.net

vital New blood

appeal to existing students or to industry. This appeal is then often used to justify the development of a programme of study, in which the department needs to decide whether it can be sustained, given a few years to prove itself. Academia in the UK has often seen the creation of programmes which have failed due to a lack of market demand. A major problem is that it is often difficult to get real-life market assessments, and most departments will typically try an idea, and see if it attracts students. If it does, the resources will generally follow.

Cloud-based Teaching A major problem in academia is to try and keep up-to-date with subjects and technologies, so that it often lags industry. The use of virtualised and cloud-based environments, though, provides an excellent opportunity to enhance learning and to provide students with skills which exactly match the requirements of industry, along with integrating with professional certification. At Edinburgh Napier University, a VMware vCenter Cloud infrastructure has been created to teach computer security and digital forensics, where students can learn on an enhanced infrastructure which would not have been possible before the extensive development of virtualised and cloud-based infrastructures. For enhanced methods used within computer security, a private cloud can be used, and for more general teaching, such as in databases and operating systems, a public cloud can be used. This then provides exposure to a wide range of environments which are pre-build, or which are built-up throughout the module, and thus supports the students within a safe environment in which they can learn without any danger, and where errors can be easily undone. The environments can thus be created to use industry-standard tools and infrastructure, and these can be joined together to create collaborative work, along with the continuation of work after the practical lab work has been done. In fact virtualisation offers academia the opportunity to create infrastructures that would be difficult within a real-world, and also matchup with the requirements of professional certification, as illustrated in Figure 1. 30 VitAL : September / October 2011

Figure 1: Creating virtualised infrastructures allow for more complex and in-depth analysis of how intruders might attack a system

Figure 2: Using virtualised environments

A survey of student perceptions has shown one of the key factors is that they can work in real-life and complete environments, and on a range of systems, which are well matched to the needs of industry. It also supports both blended and distance learning students, using the same labs which are accessed within a face-to-face practical session, but done through a virtualised environment, all through a Web browser or remote desktop connection. The usage of virtualised environments could thus give academia the possibility to catch-up with industry and use state-of-theart infrastructures, along with having other advantages, as illustrated in Figure 2. It may also give academia the opportunity to share resources across traditional boundaries, and even start to engage further with industry in creating community clouds. VitAL www.cdcs.soc.napier.ac.uk www.vital-mag.net

vital new blood

A fear of doing difficult things Why do students prefer Games, Multi-media and Music Technology? asks Dr Rob Williams, at the University of the West of England (UWE)

A dearth of useful technology skills Despite the recent improvement in take-up of Maths A-level, there is an alarming aversion amongst UK school kids to technical subjects. Perhaps because these subjects demand skills and knowledge which lend themselves to assessments with answers judged as simply ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. Other subjects are not so rigid and can be considered less harshly, more subjectively. Given the option of taking A-level Physics or Creative Drama Studies, who would blame anyone choosing the latter? Despite this view, results for A-level Maths, Physics and Modern Languages gain a high proportion of A-C grades, but the number of pupils going on to study these subjects at university has also dwindled over recent decades to such an extent that some universities have even decided to close complete departments in the face of the trend. As a consequence, UK employers working in the technical sector find it increasingly difficult to recruit UK graduates with a sufficient level of skills. It is not uncommon to speak to managers, even from relatively small firms, who 32 VitAL : September / October 2011

feel that they have no choice but to employ young engineering graduates from India, China and Malaysia. This situation is neither good for the UK economy nor for a generation of UK students who are missing out on rewarding and interesting careers. Undoubtedly this increasing fear, in the UK, of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) subjects is fomented by several systemic factors which all work together.

A diminishing interest I have been the Award Leader for a Computer Systems degree for over 25 years, and have seen its recruitment levels diminish from 75 to a scarcely viable 25. This has happened despite our energetic attention to publicity, schools partnerships, an employer support group, out-reach activities and attention to making course content attractive to youngsters. The particular course in question, BSc Computer Systems Integration, delivers graduates to a voracious market; we can practically guarantee third year placements and sustain a GLER (Graduate Level Employment Rate) of over 80%. And starting salaries are considerably www.vital-mag.net

vital new blood

A serious dilemma faces the UK, and other western economies, as their reliance on off-shore manufacturing is starting to extend to new product research and development activities.

above the national average for graduates! As part of the course we have included a core module in Systems & Network Administration, and an advanced final year option to follow. Employers recognise the skills and enthusiasm of our graduates, but we struggle to recruit new intakes to the course. Frankly, we are losing the battle with Games, Multimedia and Music Technology. Another worrying aspect which extends across all STEM subjects is the low participation rates for girls and for some ethnic minority groups compared to other countries. Such under-representation has been highlighted, particularly in the OECD report [Schleicher A. 2005], as a significant contribution to the poor economic performance of the UK relative to the Far East.

Knowledge gaps A serious dilemma faces the UK, and other western economies, as their reliance on offshore manufacturing is starting to extend to new product research and development activities. With the introduction of remotely accessed Cloud Computing facilities, even contracts for service activities will be handed to off-shore organisations. My own recent experience with local employers around Bristol, leads me to believe that part of the reason for this disastrous change is the dearth of technically skilled UK graduates. Criticisms are raised by recruiting managers with regard to graduates’ limited breadth of knowledge (single programming language), lack of depth of understanding (no appreciation of computer hardware), little business experience, lack of technical curiosity (content to use the system with the lid firmly closed), depleted theoretical grasp (no interest in maths), and several more besides. Older colleagues recall the previous arrangement, pre 1992, which split the HE www.vital-mag.net

sector between Polytechnics and Universities. This enabled the former to concentrate effort on their Vocational Mission and the latter on speculative, academic research, an arrangement which benefited the individual graduate, the employer and the wider UK economy. With John Major’s ill-advised merger of the two groups, much which was good about how the Polytechnics were run was lost in their striving to gain a secure foothold on the national university rating scale.

Changing expectations Recently we organised a questionnaire for school pupils who attended our CST Schools Workshops. As an ‘after’ question, degree aspirations were probed. This returned somewhat random results, across all the provided possibilities. Only ‘Computer Science’ and ‘Don’t Know’ accumulated visibly higher numbers, indicating that the students had not given university much thought and that our Workshop had failed to focus their minds towards specific careers in Computing. Their favourite school subjects offered few surprises, from most to least popular: • Computing, IT, Science, Mathematicss, PE, English, Modern Languages. But expectations of salaries for different jobs seemed surprisingly moderate and reasonable: • Sales manager (£36k), Bank manager, Accountant, Programmer, Engineer, Teacher, Musician, Designer (£21.5k). (The relegation of Designer to the lowest position is probably due more to its unfamiliarity than anything else.) Their personal rating of job status was as follows: • Programmer, Engineer, Designer, Bank manager, Teacher, Sales manager, Accountant, Musician.

The lack of correlation between the two orderings is interesting. Clearly financial reward is not a serious consideration when deciding on a career path. Unfortunately for the reader of this journal, the topic of Systems Administration and Management occupies an especially lowly position in the academic hierarchy established at most UK universities. In fact, it can rarely be seen at all on the curriculum list. In response to this situation, UWE is already offering the BSc Information Technology Management for Business which combines Business understanding with IT management skills. In addition, we are collaborating with HP in the development of a new BSc Enterprise Computing course which focuses on the emerging area of Cloud Computing.

Selling graduates Until schools and universities can gain financially from promoting and supporting their more challenging technical courses, the graduate supply situation in the UK will continue to deteriorate from the point of view of employers. The competing economies of China, India and Malaysia benefit from their own universities’ graduates, while Britain struggles to survive with an educational sector being strategically directed by the illinformed choices of sixteen year olds. Only when the HE funding model is fundamentally changed will the situation be rectified. My final suggestion is that 15% of university funding should be derived from a new Graduate Employment Office. We should directly profit by selling graduates. Then, at last, universities would start to recognise the need to work seriously towards graduate employability rather than easy course recruitability. VitAL www.uwe.ac.uk September / October 2011 : VitAL 33

vital processes

The impact of Cloud Computing on your business Mark Skilton, co-chair of The Open Group Cloud Computing Work Group considers key challenges, ROI, governance and the future of your organisation in the Cloud

34 VitAL : September / October 2011

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vital processes

In order for a business to embrace new technology, it must first understand what it is embracing. Cloud Computing is defined by several essential characteristics.

of the key challenges facing businesses considering the switch to Cloud, as well as aspects such as return on investment (ROI) and governance.

A clear view of the Cloud

hile Cloud Computing has been a major topic of interest and excitement in the IT world for several years now, many businesses are still only just beginning to understand what it might mean for them and what impact it could have on their bottom line. If there’s anyone out there still new to the term, Cloud Computing, although difficult to define, refers to the provision of up-to-the-minute and on-demand flexible IT services via an external computer network. Cloud-based applications are able to support most forms of computer-based process in the current marketplace and offer great benefits for business. Part of this is because of the removal of the requirement to install and update new software every time there is a new release or update and this equates to significant savings, both in terms of time and money. This article looks at some www.vital-mag.net

In order for a business to embrace new technology, it must first understand what it is embracing. Cloud Computing is defined by several essential characteristics: on-demand self service, broad network access, resource pooling and location independence, rapid elasticity, and measured service. When a business opts to migrate and engage with the Cloud it must remember that Cloud Computing is about embracing standard process in exchange for improved collaboration and effectiveness. When it comes to choosing a path to the Cloud, both private and public Clouds exist as options for businesses to launch their organisation into virtualisation. Whereas public Clouds rely on a ‘mainstream’ feed from an off-site utility provider, private Clouds are established as remote, virtual data bubbles, reserved solely for the private use of one organisation. More recent developments have also seen the appearance of hybrid Clouds; a combination of both private and public Cloud facilities, the primary function of which is to handle archived and back-up data. When considering which route to explore, it is important that businesses opt for the type of Cloud that best suits their individual requirements. For a quick overview of Cloud uptake as it stands, The Open Group’s ‘State of the Industry’ Cloud survey, released earlier this year, provides some interesting insights into how user enterprises currently perceive the

Cloud. The first point to make is that on the whole, respondents had a clear idea of how they will use the Cloud. The majority expected to have some element of private Cloud, with 29 per cent saying that it would best meet their organisations’ business requirements. At 45 per cent, nearly half of those questioned said that hybrid Cloud would be the best solution for their needs, as opposed to 17 per cent for public Cloud. Only nine per cent of respondents remained unsure. It will certainly be interesting to see how these figures look in one, two and five years’ time.

Virtualisation and governance Having taken a look at the different options of Cloud available to businesses, we now turn our attention towards the topics of governance and virtualisation, and more specifically, how businesses should be thinking about them. Virtualisation is necessary for establishing, deploying and maintaining a successful Cloud. In fact, deploying a Cloud would be impossible without it. When developing the Cloud for an organisation, it is also important not to just virtualise a ‘server stack’ but to also actively consider how your technology and hardware will work with your storage. A successful virtualisation interface must also encompass a firm definition of governance within the infrastructure. Governance is defined as the accountability for consistent, cohesive policies, processes and decision rights. It is key to a successful Virtualized Cloud, without governance the operation is simply a group of Cloud services and the system will become hard to maintain and debug. There would also be a hugely noticeable redirection in service devices. September / October 2011 : VitAL 35

vital processes

In order for successful governance of a Cloud facility, an organisation first needs to define clearly the budget it has available to manage, clearly identifying and outlining the costs to the company. After successfully documenting and assessing these variables it is also essential to determine a unified view of the Cloud and establish an executive sponsor. Governance is essential to virtualised success, maturity and positive growth, and development; it needs to be correctly implemented in order to keep systems secure. If an organisation is to ensure positive growth of its newly developed Cloud Computing system it must successfully embrace and deploy established governance within the Cloud. If this is achieved, a Cloud deployment will mature and achieve success.

Challenges facing Cloud deployment One area where the Cloud has come under some scrutiny is security. Companies that host Cloud services have well-documented legal access and the ability to monitor all data passing between the Cloud and the company using the Cloud. Both the types of data and the frequency it is transmitted make security in the Cloud a key issue for an organisation to consider when assessing the possibility of migration. However, security is less of a concern for someone deploying ‘private Cloud’, but it is almost impossible in the current environment to find someone who has deployed a truly private and individual Cloud. In general, companies seem to have a clear view of both the potential advantages and drawbacks of migrating to the Cloud, with security ranked as the highest concern from businesses. The Open Group’s ‘Building Return on Investment from Cloud Computing’ whitepaper, released last year, revealed that cost, agility, and resource optimisation came out as the three main reasons for using Cloud Computing, with business continuity also a significant factor. Security, integration issues, and governance were the three biggest concerns, along with ability to cope with change, vendor lock-in, cost to deploy, and regulatory compliance. As a rule of thumb, performance, reliability and accessibility are three key factors that businesses must consider when contemplating the introduction of Cloud 36 VitAL : September / October 2011

to an organisation. As the Cloud acts as a complete remote data solution, it is vital that information is permanently accessible and the resource is reliable. Recent Amazon outages are an indication of exactly what can happen if the Cloud does fail and the potential losses incurred as a result.

Measurement of results When it comes to assessing the success of technical change, ROI is probably the most commonly used measure. So how can we go about measuring ROI for Cloud? Respondents to the ‘State of the Industry’ Cloud survey felt on balance (by 55 to 45 per cent) that Cloud ROI should be easy to evaluate and justify. Cost, quality of delivered result, utilisation, speed of operation, and scale of operation were felt to be the most useful Cloud ROI metrics. However, interestingly only 35 per cent of those questioned actually had mechanisms for measurement in place, as opposed to 45 per cent that did not. The remaining 20 percent were unsure. The business impact of Cloud should also be a key consideration. While 82 per cent said that they expected their Cloud initiatives to have significant impact on one or more business processes, only 28 per cent said that they were prepared for these changes. Despite the intricacies, potential cost and meticulous careful planning involved in the successful migration of a business to the Cloud, the concept at least has found its way into the lexicon of businesses. Just eight per cent of survey respondents said that Cloud was not currently on their business’ IT roadmap. However, it seems that caution is still very much at the forefront of most companies’ agendas and substantial take-up is only just starting. Nearly half of those with Cloud on their business roadmap have not yet begun to use it.

While 82 per cent said that they expected their Cloud initiatives to have significant impact on one or more business processes, only 28 percent said that they were prepared for these changes.

Conclusion Cloud Computing has the ability to transform business. It enables new ways of collaborative working and can support new processes. However, more needs to be done to develop understanding of the business impact of Cloud Computing and a focus should be placed on this, as well as on the technical possibilities. VitAL

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vital processes

So Why Does Cloud Performance Matter? And how, asks Richard Bishop, senior performance testing consultant at Intechnica, can users get the best from it? Some do’s and don’ts for potential cloud adopters

loud performance matters for many reasons. One is that Gartner predicts that, by 2015, 50 per cent of CIOs expect to operate their applications and infrastructure using the cloud. IT leaders will need to be equipped with reliable and robust data in order to make informed purchasing decisions. Also, end users are demanding ever faster response times. 57 per cent of online consumers will abandon a search result after waiting three seconds for the site to load and 80 per cent will not even return. And, for companies with revenue generating websites, there is a direct correlation between performance and revenue. If a site is not performing, then it is losing money. Increasing numbers of business critical functions are being carried out online; the impact of poor performance or failure of these systems could be catastrophic. In addition, web applications are becoming increasingly complex and

38 VitAL : September / October 2011

rich, so delivering performance is getting simultaneously more important and more difficult to achieve. If, as analysts predict, we will see an annual double digit growth for the next five years at least, a clear understanding of the cloud is vital for businesses and specifically for IT leaders.

An enabling technology For decades the IT leader has been split between how they can add strategic value to a business through technology and the tactical day to day running of a reliable IT system. It was often a thankless task for CIOs who found themselves struggling to juggle the two. However, with cloud computing CIOs can ‘rent’ the technology; potentially reducing costs and management overheads whilst gaining greater flexibility and autonomy. It can enable greater risk taking, allowing new approaches, environments and application to be created, trialled and taken down again in a www.vital-mag.net

What tool do you use to turn traditional customer support into dynamic customer service? Kepner-Tregoe’s Problem and Incident Management programme. Think dynamically. Kepner-Tregoe’s Problem and Incident Management programme offers unrivalled insight into how to align your organisation’s most powerful assets. We can reduce time-to-close, increase first time fix-rate, reduce no fault found, increase customer satisfaction and lower the operating costs of your customer support centre. The result? Service can now be a direct driver of revenue and profit. Find out how Kepner-Tregoe’s knowledge could help power your business by contacting our European Head Office on 01628 778776.

vital processes

matter of days, and at much less cost than on conventional infrastructures. This frees up the CIO to add real value to a business and concentrate on strategic management issues that will save money or, even better, drive revenue growth. As well as taking away some of the challenges of running an effective IT resource, the cloud can be used to achieve competitive advantage, to create efficiency, stimulate collaboration and facilitate easier information sharing.

The challenge is how best to use the cloud Insights into the cloud and its performance Recent research by Intechnica, ‘How Fast is the Cloud?’ http://intechnica.co.uk/events/ how-fast-is-the-cloud has shown that the cloud can be at least as fast as conventional hosting environments, and when the total cost of ownership is considered, it becomes an extremely compelling solution that businesses cannot ignore. This research should reassure any IT leader who has been cautious about adopting the cloud because of uncertainty about performance. However, what the research proves is that good performance comes by design, planning and good management, not by accident. The research helped reaffirm a number of fundamental truths about The Cloud. 1. The cloud is different from conventional physical hosting environments, and it requires intelligent upfront and on-going management to maximise the benefits and avoid the pitfalls. 2. Not all cloud solutions are the same; consequently, they need to be considered separately and dealt with differently to achieve optimum performance. 3. Applications need to be designed or modified specifically for the cloud – simply migrating conventionally hosted applications is likely to result in failure. 4. The cloud is a liberating and enabling technology: businesses can have the confidence to conduct proofs of concept, and take greater risks with technology choices without the fear of large costs, 40 VitAL : September / October 2011

significant deployment of resources and long term commitments to third parties. As a result of this work and on-going research into the cloud we’ve also establish a check list of ‘Do’s and Don’ts’ to achieve cost-effective performance in the cloud: • Do adopt the cloud – the benefits far outweigh the downsides. • Don’t treat the cloud the same as conventional hosting environments. • Don’t think of all cloud solutions as the same. • Don’t migrate applications to the cloud without properly assessing their suitability beforehand. • Do research and plan ahead – know the pros and cons, the benefits and pitfalls before you launch into it. • Do design and build applications to be suitable for the cloud. • Do consider hybrid options, for example where sensitive data remains in a secure environment, but front end processes are carried out in the cloud. • Do a proof of concept for the cloud, choosing low risk, short term, discrete projects that are likely to gain from the main benefits of flexibility and scalability. • Do establish a different set of internal working practices and disciplines to ensure you maximise the benefits and avoid the pitfalls on an on-going basis. • Do put in place tools and processes to monitor performance. • Don’t assume your knowledge is transferable; consider engaging independent consultants before selecting your cloud platform and before migrating your applications. In summary, contrary to some widely held beliefs, the cloud can be just as fast if not faster than physical environments. The fact that the cloud is different to physical servers cannot be stressed enough and the role of performance testing is integral to getting the most out of it. In fact, one of the key strengths of the cloud is that it allows for environments to be modelled and tested in ways that are practically impossible with physical servers and it is this versatility that is one of its most useful facets. VitAL www.intechnica.co.uk

End users are demanding ever faster response times. 57 per cent of online consumers will abandon a search result after waiting three seconds for the site to load and 80 per cent will not even return. And, for companies with revenue generating websites, there is a direct correlation between performance and revenue.

www.vital-mag.net

vital processes

The dangers of ‘Thrownness’ Steve White speaks up for the support engineer

”There is only one beginning, one end, and the rest is middle.” Steve White, 16th August 2011.

am sure that I’m not the first person to say this, I’m certain I won’t be the last, but this really, really matters when thinking around the tooling and processes that companies supply to their staff and allow to develop to handle major incidents.

Decline and fall of expectations In the lifetime of a tool there seem to be distinct phases which staff have to endure; surprise (that someone will invest in the next tool), disbelief (that it does the things the current tool does not), anticipation (of the release), learning (how it works), frustration (that it doesn’t do all the things that were promised), disappointment (that these things cannot be fixed in this version) and resignation (to the poor quality that has actually been delivered). However, in the flow of support work there was only one first call from a customer, and there will, one day, be the final call from the last customer. The rest is middle.

Everybody’s in the middle of something Support teams spend their time in the middle… customers are in the middle of design, deployment, production, operations and decommissioning – they are all in the middle of something. And thrown into the middle of the middle is the poor support engineer. This ‘thrownness’ can sometimes be a specific interpretation of ‘thrown’ as in ‘the experience of acting without the opportunity or need to disengage and function as detached observers’. There is no time. Here is what it feels like to be a ‘thrown’ incident manager: • You cannot avoid acting. Doing nothing or something will affect the course of the incident, yourself and the trajectory. • You cannot step back to reflect on the situation. You rely on your intuition and have to handle the developing situation as it unfolds. • The effect of any action (or inaction) on the incident and people involved cannot www.vital-mag.net

be predicted, and rational planning is not much help. • There is no stable representation of the incident. Recognisable patterns are only visible after the effect. During the incident there are only fragments of a pattern without time to piece them together. • Every representation is an interpretation of incoming information, there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, just facts as understood at the time. • Language is action. Whenever people say anything they are creating (rather than describing) a situation. It is only possible to stay detached by saying nothing, which may deflect the situation away, but not solve it.

Tools for the job Rhona Flynn, a leading researcher of ‘incident command’ argues that the challenge of the incident commander is to continually make sense of the unexpected and dynamic situation that is characterised by unfamiliarity, scales and speed of escalation. She goes on to say that a person thrown into a critical situation faces extremely difficult decisions, ambiguous and conflicting information, shifting goals, time pressure, dynamic conditions, complex operational team structures, poor communication and that every course of action carries significant risk. If we know in advance… if we can predict with absolute certainty that every now and again IT systems will tip from smooth running into chaos. If we know that there will be Major Incidents, and that when handling a Major Incident we need to surround the Incident Manager with systems to maximise the quality of information, maximise the quality and appropriate detail of communication… then why, oh why, oh why do we end up saddling support staff with tooling which does not facilitate the management of this predictable event? Tooling which we know will help them become better, more effective incident handlers?

Delinquent behaviour Beyond tooling, I’m seeing two delinquent behaviours which cannot be allowed to proliferate. Firstly, instead of mandating an improvement in the work environment to drive down the stresses of Incident Management, groups are being allowed by their management to handle incidents exclusively by email. ‘Thrownness’ only increases when incidents are handled by email. It increases the predictable stresses of Incident Controllers and is a nightmare to manage and measure: email has unpredictable latency and facilitates a loss of certainty which extends fix times. The second delinquent behaviour which must stop is that incident control is devolved to individual experts or huddle groups, who are given some hacking time to serially disprove their technology’s involvement in the cause of the incident before assigning control back to the Incident Controller without a clear list of learned information. When these two practices are combined, poor Major Incident performance is the only guarantee. Since Incident Managers spend all their time in the middle, let us support and nurture excellent behaviour, processes and tools to minimise the predictable ‘thrownness’ stress inducers, and facilitate excellence in the Incident Management teams. Stop managing incidents by email. Stop abdicating responsibility for the management of the incident to technical staff by handing over control to them. Manage the middle. References: Flin, R. H. 1996. Sitting in the hot seat: Leaders and teams for critical incident management. New York: John Wiley. Winograd, T., and F. Flores. 1986. Understanding computers and cognition. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Dreyfuss, H. L. 1995. Being-in-the-world. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

September / October 2011 : VitAL 41

vital planet

Privacy, trust and identity in the cloud Privacy tries to protect information while social networking sites encourage sharing personal information to build trust but, as Mike Small London Chapter ISACA Security Advisory Group and senior analyst with KuppingerCole sees it, the two are not irreconcilable

Privacy The internet and social networking sites like Facebook are redefining privacy in the world today. Privacy means that people are able to control what information about themselves is made available to other people. There is no universal agreement on what is private; different cultures hold different views on this, and what is considered private changes over time. For example, while in the UK the tax returns of individuals are private; in Norway the earnings of every citizen are publicly available1. This openness is good to ensure that people are correctly taxed but could put people with high incomes at risk of theft, 42 VitAL : September / October 2011

kidnapping and extortion. Therefore privacy has to be a matter of balance. Governments have recognized the importance of privacy and have legislated on this issue. The European Convention on Human Rights2 was adopted by the UK in 1998 and Article 8 of this convention guarantees a right to privacy. In Europe privacy of personal information is principally covered by two directives: 95/46/EC on personal data processing and 2002/58/EC on privacy of electronic communications. These directives provide a common approach; nevertheless, laws vary in detail from country to country. However, this legislation is primarily aimed at governments and organisations holding www.vital-mag.net

iCore www.icore-ltd.com

service management at its best

IT Service Management for the Cloud

Thursday 15th September Our free breakfast briefing

The session will also allow you to make contacts with like minded people who have been through, or are going through, this challenging exercise. Finally the briefing will include an open discussion with the attendees to explore who is moving services to the Cloud and why.

The key to realising the benefits of moving elements of your IT services into the Cloud is in clearly understanding the business drivers and fully focussing on achieving the business objectives. It is not enough to simply target the reduction of IT costs or to see this as a technical innovation.

ITSM for the Cloud

will take the form of a ‘Master Class’ for IT Service Management for Cloud Services, looking at the IT Service Management considerations from both the Provider and the Customer perspective.

• IT Service Management remains a key strategic and operational component

• Choose your Cloud Partner wisely as they will become an inherent part of the Service Delivery Model

• Entry into the Cloud should be a fully considered process supported by a convincing business case

• Key areas to address include operational responsibilities, IT security, business continuity and service maturity capability

• The benefits should be assessed over 3 − 5 years not 1 or 2

If interested contact

info@icore-ltd.com or call 020 7464 8883

• As services move to the Cloud you will need different skill sets to manage the services

• Plan for significant restructuring of the in-house model

vital planet

In the cloud no one knows who you are, a self-created user identity is no longer adequate. The threat of impersonation is very real; individuals have had their Facebook identities stolen and adult criminals pose as

personal data. It does not protect the individual from themselves3 or the organisation from the employee acting as a private individual. The person using a social networking site is at liberty to give away personal information about themselves – even to their own detriment. They can also deliberately or inadvertently pass information or make comments that could damage their employer: or even send ill-judged messages that are publicly visible using Twitter4.

Trust Trust is important since it forms the basis upon which personal and commercial transactions take place. Trust is, in some ways, in conflict with privacy. Privacy can be the friend of the confidence trickster and criminal by allowing them to conceal their identity and their previous activities. What happens when there is a breach of trust – how is trust policed? Commerce is based upon legal enforcement of agreements; this can be very fast and effective. However Internet commerce has challenged this because it is not always easy to identify individuals and because transactions may take place across geographical boundaries. An alternative approach is that adopted by eBay’ where each buyer and seller has a feedback rating. This is an example of a trust metric where participants in a transaction rate each other and these ratings are publicly visible. If an eBay seller consistently behaves in a trustworthy manner their rating increases, conversely if they do not it decreases. People can choose whether or not to transact with another individual based on this rating.

Identity

children to groom and lure children .

44 VitAL : September / October 2011

In the cloud no one knows who you are, a selfcreated user identity is no longer adequate. The threat of impersonation is very real; individuals have had their Facebook identities stolen and adult criminals pose as children to groom and lure children5. One solution to this is through ‘claims based’ authentication. Traditionally the authentication and authorisation system is co-located with application and the organisation controls the provision of credentials. In the Cloud the authentication may be performed remotely from the Cloud application. The remote authentication system them makes a ‘claim’ of identity to the Cloud system which relies upon this claim. This is similar to a citizen of one country using a passport to enter another country. Identity federation is a technology for claims based authentication between organisations. The user is authenticated by logging into their organisation: when they access a Cloud

application their identity is passed to the Cloud provider. This typically uses SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) or ADFS (Active Directory Federation Services). The technology is secure but identity federation depends upon trust between the two organisations which needs to be underpinned by legal agreements. Identity 2.0 provides the means for individuals to build their own electronic identity – independently of their employment based around their personal associations (school, college, interests, etc.). This also contains the mechanisms for these individuals to use trusted third parties to substantiate their claims.

Content Sensitive IAM Identity and Access Management normally controls access to specific resources. This form of access control does not help where data is unstructured and messages are being created on the fly. Mandatory Access Control or more recently Digital Rights Management allows the owner of certain information to retain control over how this information is used but it is limited to special cases. Content sensitive IAM extends control to cover data based on its content. The control is enforced at the time that the data is created, discovered, or transmitted.

Summary The Cloud now provides many services that are used by individuals to network and to buy services they need, in turn. This has created new challenges relating to privacy, trust and identity. Privacy legislation is principally aimed at protecting the individual’s personal information from misuse by governments and organisations. It does not help to protect the individual against their own misjudgements or the organisation against the mistakes of their employees. Identity 2.0 allows individuals to create and manage their own identities but this raises the risk for others, unless these identities can be affirmed by trusted third parties. Content sensitive controls may provide a solution to some of the issues. VitAL

www.isaca.org 1

http://www.barentsobserver.com/norways-tax-listrevealed.4832722-116321.html

C onvention for the Protection of Human Rights and

Dangers of loose talk online with Facebook ‘friends’:

Fundamental Freedoms, Rome; 4th November, 1950. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-11098396 4

D oncaster man guilty of Twitter airport threat http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/south_ yorkshire/8673196.stm

Facebook and Bebo child sex abuse postman jailed: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englandcornwall-11403984

www.vital-mag.net

Leading IT Service Management Providers

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30 Leading IT Service Management Providers APMG-International

APMG-International is an Accredited Examination Institute offering the full suite of ITIL® V3 certifications. ITIL is a personal development map for IT Service Management Professionals, with each certification building towards the ITIL Expert in Service Management. APMG will be offering candidates the ITIL Master certification as soon as it is released in late 2011. As well as the whole ITIL V3 certification suite, APMG offers a range of additional qualifications to inspire service management professionals. These qualifications allow candidates to focus on certain aspects of their roles as ITSM professionals while gaining credits towards the ITIL® Expert certification. Our ISO/IEC 20000 Certification scheme is based on the globally recognized standard and we have 3 certifications on offer at Foundation, Practitioner and Auditor levels. This standard ensures that organizations can achieve evidence-based benchmarks to continuously improve their delivery of IT services. APMG’s Service Catalogue certification looks at new ways to control demand, publish and track service pricing and cost and automate service request management and fulfilment. It teaches candidates to implement a role-driven, searchable and easily accessible catalogue with standardized services within an IT service environment.

We also offer a suite of certifications for analysts working in service management. Our Change Analyst certification provides service managers with the expertise and skill to assess, authorize and manage changes. A Change Analyst Practitioner can calculate the benefits, risks, impacts and costs incurred through change. Our Problem Analyst certification is for those specializing in problem resolution and for those who wish to extend or formalize their understanding of IT problem solving.

We also offer a certification for Service Level Analysts – this focuses on giving students the knowledge and skills they need to fulfil their roles competently.

APMG-International’s qualifications are available through our network of Accrediting Training Organizations. These organizations have all been rigorously assessed to ensure they deliver the highest quality of service possible, reflecting our commitment to providing the highest standards of service in the market. For more information, email servicedesk@apmg-international.com or visit www.apmg-international.com. ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark of the Cabinet Office

Our CMDB certification gives service managers a comprehensive knowledge and understanding of the terminology and principles of the CMDB, as well as the confidence to put it into practice.

Number of sites: United Kingdom – 2 Globally – 11

Sword House, Totteridge Road, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire HP13 6DG T: 44 (0)1494 452450 E: servicedesk@apmg-international.com www.apmg-international.com Contact: Service Desk

axios systems assyst from Axios Systems – Service Management that Performs

In the modern age of commerce, IT is a fundamental enabler of business performance. Rapid growth in an ever-changing market is the key to survival and profitability in the global market. Axios Systems’ focus is to support your business success through our innovative Service Management platform, assyst. The assyst solution enables the rapid design, deployment and support of the new services your business needs right now. With options for onpremise ownership and subscription-based SaaS access, we have a solution to fit your organization.

In an increasingly unstable vendor market, Axios Systems has the longevity, continuity and experience to deliver results to large enterprise organizations across the globe. Our track record of delivering success for household brand names speaks for itself. We stick with our customers for the journey, which is why 97% of our customers come back to us year on year. Find out more about how you can optimize IT and gain that vital business edge with assyst – www.axiossystems.com.

Combining over two decades of R&D with the latest Web 2.0 technologies, assyst is one of the most mature and innovative solutions in the market. Encapsulating full-spectrum ITIL functionality, assyst was architected as an all-in-one solution with a uniquely configurable design to support the rapid change you need to continually align IT capability with business direction. Our team of industry experts have been there and done it. Our unparalleled experience, spanning all industries, allows us to cut to the chase and work with you to get demonstrable results that impact the bottom line fast.

Number of sites: United Kingdom – 1 Globally – 13

60 Melville Street, Edinburgh, EH3 7HF T: 0131 220 4748 Fax: 0131 220 4281 E: assystuk@axiossystems.com www.axiossystems.com

International

0 3 BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, is the leading institute for IT professionals around the world. Through our extensive certification and professional development portfolio, we continue to set professional standards and raise levels of competence and professionalism in the industry. As the professional body for IT, we’ve an unrivalled insight into the industry and are ideally placed to guide IT professionals through their career and provide employers with expertly trained employees that add real value to their business.

We have been at the forefront of ITIL’s® development and growth, delivering over 300,000 certifications around the world since 2000. Our ITSM and ITIL certification portfolio

The Institute’s IT Service Management (ITSM) certification portfolio includes the ITIL scheme, the Kepner Tregoe® ITSM in Problem and Incident Management certificate and also our own Specialist certificates in IT service management.

Our Specialist certificates draw on a broader range of best practice, enabling job specific skill development by focussing on individual roles within service management. Each Specialist certificate concentrates on a single IT service management process, providing detailed information about how the particular process operates within an organisation. They are endorsed as ITIL Complementary Products and each attract 1.5 credits towards the ITIL Expert award. They draw on a broad range of best practice in IT service management including ITIL, COBIT®, ISO/IEC 20000 and SFIA/SFIAplus.

The BCS difference

We’ve aligned our full certification portfolio to the Institute’s associated services, providing IT professionals with more comprehensive and valuable career support. This includes our IT skills and competency framework, SFIAplus, and our membership grades providing a clear development path for IT professionals. For organisations, defining career paths through industry recognised and relevant certifications will ensure they have the skills and capabilities needed to grow their business. BCS ITSM career path

Our new BCS career framework demonstrates the positioning and alignment with the Institute’s services. And our individual BCS career paths provide an additional level of detail and support for IT professionals progressing within a particular area of IT. The BCS ITSM career path shows IT professionals how to transition into this area and outlines the characteristics and development needs that will help them progress their career in ITSM. Full details of our career framework and career paths can be found at: www.bcs.org/careerpaths ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce in the United Kingdom and other countries. COBIT® is a trademark of the Information Systems Audit

and Control Association and the IT Governance Institute. Kepner-Tregoe® is a registered trademark of Kepner-Tregoe, Inc.

www.bcs.org/servicemanagement

First Floor, Block D, North Star House, North Star Avenue, Swindon SN2 1FA

BMC Software

BMC Remedy OnDemand

The power of Remedy… with all the benefits of SaaS Available only from the Pioneers of Business Service Management and the modern Service Desk

Business thrives when IT runs smarter, faster and stronger. That’s why the most demanding IT organizations in the world rely on BMC Software across distributed, mainframe, virtual and cloud, and mobile environments. Recognized as the leader in BSM, BMC offers a comprehensive approach and unified platform that helps IT organizations cut cost, reduce risk and drive business profit. BMC Remedy OnDemand is the most feature-rich and user-friendly IT Service Management (ITSM) solution available in the cloud today. Built on more than 20 years of leadership and innovation, and the industry’s #1 Service Desk, OnDemand IT Service Management is robust enough to satisfy the most complex, demanding IT enterprises in the world. It’s truly enterprise-class The most demanding IT organizations choose BMC Remedy OnDemand because it has everything an enterprise needs from the moment you log in. It’s far more than just a service desk. With built-in change, asset, and knowledge management (and so much more), you’re aligned with certified ITIL-compliant best practices from day one.

It brings everything together Manage all of your enterprise software licenses – take action to respond to incidents, and enable self-service and more from a single cloud-based ITSM solution. It’s ITSM on the go Never before have help desk agents and end users been able to do so much, so easily. With self-service and apps designed for the mobile worker, providing and getting help is easier than ever. It’s a no-brainer Join our family of over 100 global customers enjoying the benefits of Remedy OnDemand who have realized their value in just 30-days. No kidding. And you’re always running at optimal Total Cost of Ownership – no patches or upgrades to manage, and no hardware to buy or maintain. And now, we bridge the gap between the business and the service desk… The industry has always talked about the need to really understand the “cost” of delivering IT services… but delivering that kind of financial transparency has been elusive. With BMC’s Service Cost Management & Remedy OnDemand SaaS applications, organizations can now measure, manage, and report to their stakeholders the actual cost of running IT as a business.

Number of sites: 100+ globally Entry Level Price: $149 per month

Assurance House, Vicarage Road, Egham, Surrey, TW20 9JY T: 01784 478 228 Ext 53 6966 E: david_flusk@bmc.com www.bmc.com Contact: David Flusk

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30 Leading IT Service Management Providers Bomgar About Bomgar Corporation

Today’s enterprise IT departments are challenged to support an increasingly remote and mobile workforce. People and systems are dispersed far beyond the network, where access barriers can complicate the support process. Plus, end-users are working from a wider variety of devices and operating systems, further increasing platform complexity. Traditional remote support tools do not offer the security or flexibility required by today’s security-conscious enterprise environments. That’s why enterprises need Bomgar. Bomgar is the worldwide leader in secure, enterprise remote support. The Bomgar Remote Support Solution frees help desks from the inefficiency of traditional phone-based and on-site support by making support more responsive, reducing incident resolution time, and bridging the geographical and technological barriers between endusers and IT. Providing support via Bomgar helps enterprises respond faster, increase the productivity of current staff, improve security, and resolve incidents more cost-effectively.

With Bomgar’s award-winning solution, organizations can securely access and manage virtually any system, including Windows, Mac, Linux, BlackBerry, Android, the iPhone, iPad, and most Windows Mobile devices. Bomgar also enables support organizations to access and fix unattended systems, such as kiosks, POS systems, servers and routers. No matter what systems a company supports, the Bomgar solution records and logs every remote support session,

creating a centralized audit trail that’s housed securely behind the company’s own firewall. Bomgar also integrates seamlessly with most service desk solutions, enabling IT organizations to capture the remote support session data within the service ticket.

The Bomgar Remote Support Solution is offered in three versions. The SMB solution is tailored for small to medium sized businesses and enables help desks with up to 20 concurrent users. The Enterprise solution can empower up to 10,000 concurrent help desk users and is uniquely designed for large support centers with a global customer base. Finally, Bomgar offers a Government solution, which is the only remote support solution to receive the U.S. Government’s Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 Level 2 certification. All three solutions can be used to securely support end-users both inside and outside an organization’s firewall.

Today, more than 5,500 customers across 65 countries have chosen Bomgar as their remote support solution of choice, rapidly transforming their IT support functions and significantly improving operational efficiency and customer satisfaction. Bomgar clients include some of the world’s leading IT outsourcers, systems integrators, software vendors, healthcare organizations, government institutions, colleges and universities, and financial institutions. For more information, please visit www.bomgar.co.uk.

Oakridge House, Wellington Road, High Wycombe HP12 3PR www.bomgar.co.uk.

Cherwell software

THE COMPLETE IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT SOLUTION Cherwell Software is the developer of Cherwell Service Management™ and acknowledged by leading industry analysts as ‘an emerging leader of ITSM solutions’ – provides a fully integrated service management solution for IT and support professionals. Cherwell offers you complete choice of software deployment and licensing models; on premise, Cherwell hosted, hosted by preferred 3rd party; perpetual purchase or subscription; you choose! Designed using Microsoft’s .NET platform and Web 2.0 technology Cherwell delivers 11 fully integrated ITIL v3 PinkVERIFIED management processes straight ‘out-of-the-box’, including; Incident, Problem, Change, CMBD, Request, SLA, Service Catalogue and Knowledge. Cherwell licensing delivers all product functionality based on a concurrent user model and includes all 11 ITIL v3 management processes, plus additional modules including; our unique CMDB visualisation, dynamic dashboards, unlimited end user self-service, graphical workflow, mobile device and social media integration, an Outlook email add-in which eradicates the need to ‘cut and paste’ emails ever again, plus much more.

Service (PaaS) offering, empowering customers to develop integrated business applications such as; CRM, HR, Purchase Ordering, Project Management, Student Records and Facilities Management systems. All product upgrades are completely seamless, ensuring lower system management overheads and enabling customers to realise the benefits of new functionality more quickly. In a recent Total Economic Impact (TEI) study by Forrester Consulting, for an organisation where Cherwell were selected to replace a legacy ‘Enterprise’ class solution, the financial analysis calculated an ROI of 108% and a total payback period of less than 10 months. This demonstrates truly significant cost savings for organisation currently using any legacy ‘Enterprise’ class service desk products. Visit our website at www.cherwell.com for more information, you can also watch a number of short video clips designed to give an introduction to Cherwell and a clear overview of product features and functionality.

Cherwell Service Management is 100% configurable by its end users and provides a highly scalable and extensible development platform. Our unique CBAT development platform delivers a true Platform as a Number of sites: 375+ Entry Level Price: POA

Lime Kiln House, Lime Kiln, Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire SN4 7HF T: +44 (0)1793 858181 E: sales@cherwell.com www.cherwell.com

0 3 e-warehouse

Oxygen Service Desk Solutions

The Service Desk has evolved over the years and we are all looking for the “Utopian Application” to manage our Help Desk requirements. We can offer you a true multi-layered Service Desk solution, a service desk application that can manage all of your service requests from any department within a single deployment.

Oxygen Service Desk and Oxygen Help Desk are used by small and large organisations in many sectors and have been deployed for a number of different service scenarios. We can provide a broad range of professional Service Desk solutions all built around our award winning web-based application Oxygen.

As part of the service we can offer you full consultancy on how to set up your service desk and are there to help you through out the process until you are completely satisfied that your help desk is running how you expect it to be. Whether you are supporting internal or external customers, Oxygen is aimed at the service desk where speed of deployment, ease of use, low cost of ownership and rapid user adoption are paramount. Oxygen Service Desk gives you the Tool set to: • Prioritise and manage multiple tasks • Coordinate multiple services • Implement & automate process methodologies • Deploy easily with simplified and flexible pricing • Remain flexible • Measure & report on performance

Oxygen Enterprise Help Desk is our flagship Help Desk application and jam packed full of features, in fact we offer about 90% of the top four Help Desk software providers but at a fraction of the cost. Whether you are looking to displace an existing help desk system because you are running on an antiquated version and the costs are inhibitive to upgrade or perhaps the support costs are too costly to entertain, Oxygen Enterprise could well be the Help Desk software solution you need. Out of the box features include :• 100% Web Based • Incident & Event Manager • Request Fulfilment • Self Service Portal • SLA/OLA Management • Extensive Email Management • Quick Call Templates • Business Process Mapping • Problem & Change Management • CMDB Management • Service Reporting • LDAP and Active Directory Synchronization So why not visit oxygenhelpdesk.co.uk today and find out why organisations such as Virgin Holidays, Domimos’s Pizza, Fujitsu, Molton Brown, Leonard Cheshire and the RAC choose to implement Oxygen Service Desk.

Number of sites: United Kingdom – 250 Globally – 25 Entry Level Price: £495 (perpetual) £39.99 (SaaS)

Hampden House, Monument Park, Chalgrove, Oxfordshire, OX44 7RW T: 0845 299 7539 E: oxygen@e-warehouse.com www.oxygenhelpdesk.co.uk Contact: Andrew Hill

fox it

Fox IT is a global independent Service Management specialist having undertaken transformation engagements in over 50 countries. Recognised as the premier supplier of consultancy, education and tools Fox IT has the most extensive ITIL based ITSM and Governance practice in the world.

Training

Consultancy and Mentoring

At Fox IT we see Education as being more than just training courses and pass rates. We believe that the education should also provide a more thorough understanding of the subject matter, sharing knowledge and real-life experience. This covers ITIL® V3, ISO/IEC 20000 and COBIT®.

Business Justification: Establish your business case and return on investment targets.

Assessments: Baseline your people, organisation and processes against best practice. Consulting and Mentoring requests onsite or over the telephone. Assistance and help from our ITSM practice, from Managing Consultants to Subject matter experts.

Interim: Short or long term interim cover for onsite contract positions or Holiday/Sick cover. ITSM Tool Set Consulting: Ensuring your ITSM Tools functionality and implementation are aligned to and support your business and service requirements. Accelerators

foxPRISM is a web-based process documentation tool and knowledgebase that assists in the design, management, and implementation of service management processes and supporting technology. Based on ITIL® and ISO20000 processes, foxPRISM provides a customizable framework onto which organisations can build and publish their own process models.

Fox IT is the longest established and premier supplier of Service Management education services, with the largest portfolio of courses leading to recognised professional qualifications.

Solutions

Fundamental shifts such as cloud computing, mobile technology and social networking are redefining IT. Managing these next generation environments is highly challenging given the increased speed and fluidity of change and interaction. In partnership with VMware, Fox IT has created the ITSM 2.0 framework to address the challenges of delivering both next generation and existing services effectively. Organisations planning to leverage these technologies should start by understanding their current delivery capability. Mapping this against the business and IT drivers will identify a roadmap with implications on people, processes and technology. The foxSELECT™ service facilitates independent analysis of all Service Management tools to provide a view of how they compare to your actual business requirements. foxSELECT™ can also aid your decision by evaluating tools to see how well they support ITIL® Service Management best practice. The foxFLOW™ suite of software and services is a heterogeneous software system that links to all the information silos from BMC, IBM, CA and a myriad of other vendors.

Number of sites: United Kingdom – 2000+ Globally – 400+

Chester House, 76-86 Chertsey Road, Woking Surrey, GU21 5BJ T: 01483 221200 E: enquiries@foxit.net www.foxit.net Contact: Elaine Drury

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30 Leading IT Service Management Providers frontrange Established market leading ITSM vendor

For over 20 years FrontRange solutions has been developing award winning software solutions which are used by more than 1.2 million users in more than 120,000 companies world-wide. We are proud to have customers from many diverse fields and industries such as Local Government, Universities, Financial Services, Utilities and IT to name but a few. IT Service Management for Enterprise to SMB

Pioneers of Help Desk software with the acclaimed HEAT product we now have a wide range of IT Service Management solutions for companies of all sizes. From HEAT to ITSM Enterprise, either as on premise or as a SaaS solution our comprehensive set of service and lifecycle products are designed to improve service levels and productivity whilst delivering best practice and standardisation. Unique Voice IP Solution

A fully integrated voice solution enables intelligent routing and the automation of routine tasks such as password reset. When you consider that up to 43% of service desk calls (Gartner research) can be password related you can see the huge savings that automation can bring. Tickets can be both opened and closed without any agent intervention, thus freeing them up for other tasks.

Pink Elephant approved ITIL processes

Meeting or exceeding ITIL requirements our ITSM software empowers you to improve service levels and productivity whilst delivering best practices and standardisation. Flexible delivery options

Our ITSM solutions are available as on premise, SaaS or even as a hybrid solution with the choice of concurrent or named users. Our SaaS2 – Solutions as a Service suite includes our asset management products to give you the industry’s most comprehensive suite of IT management products. We even offer the option to migrate back to on premise from SaaS should your needs change in the future. Complementary IT Asset Management Products

Our Licence Manager, Discovery and Desktop Server Management products interface seamlessly with our ITSM products for a true one vendor solution. More information and demonstrations

For online demonstrations and more information visit our website at www.frontrange.com or call us on 01635 – 516700 to arrange a demonstration at your site.

Number of sites: United Kingdom – 1 Globally – 20 Entry Level Price: Our Help desk and Service desk solutions are suitable for companies from 1 to 1000 service desk agents.

Benyon House, Newbury Business Park, Newbury, West Berkshire RG14 2PZ T: 01635 - 516700 E: _salesemeauk@frontrange.com www.frontrange.com Contact: Richard Walker

fusion business solutions

Fusion is a Service Management and IT Operations specialist that helps organisations improve their service performance, quality and efficiency. As a trusted advisor to over 200 IT organisations we are renowned for helping transform IT departments using BMC Software and other world-class IT Management software. BMC Remedy OnDemand

Fusion people are BMC Software experts, with a deep and broad expertise in their products, like BMC Remedy ITSM. This market leading ITSM solution is available on premise or as a SaaS solution – Remedy OnDemand. This SaaS-based offering gives your organization access to all the benefits of BMC’s industry leading IT service management solutions – without the costs and overhead associated with hosting and managing on-premise software. Some key features of BMC Remedy OnDemand include: » Delivered OnDemand, powered by industry leading BMC Remedy technology »A rchitected with the BMC Atrium CMDB for centralized IT management »O ngoing administration, backup, and maintenance handled by BMC » Subscription-based, “pay-as-you-go” pricing »B est-in-class consolidated service desk with ITIL and other best practices built-in » Trusted configuration data and service maps »A t-a-glance analytics that reflect how effectively IT is supporting critical business applications and services »A lignment of the IT service management lifecycle to your business requirements

The accredited BMC Remedy OnDemand is the most comprehensive and widely used ITSM solution.

For information on BMC Remedy OnDemand: Visit http://www.fusion.co.uk/remedyondemand.html or contact Parm Powar at Fusion on 0208 814 6162 or email parm.powar@fusion.co.uk

Fusion delivers superior performance and efficiency through advisory and strategy services like Benefits Realisation, Transformation to Private Cloud and Green IT and Data Centre Efficiency. We help organisations “industrialise” their IT Operations to improve productivity. Solution Areas – Fusion works in five core areas:

• IT Service Management (ITSM) which includes Service Desk, Incident and Problem Management, Change and Release Management, Self-service and Service Request Management, Asset Management, Discovery and CMDB • Server Automation which includes planning, discovering, provisioning and management of servers

• Monitoring and Event Management which includes Service Impact management and business transaction monitoring

• Virtualisation including the management of virtual infrastructures transformation of virtual data centres into private clouds

• Green IT and Data Centre Efficiency and EU code of Conduct assessments and programmes to ensure organisations conform to the latest legislation and trends to take advantage of the cost savings that can be achieved while reducing environmental impact.

Unit 1, Wallbrook Business Centre, Green Lane, Hounslow Middlesex TW4 6NW

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G2G3 is the leading provider of Simulations, Serious Games and Organizational Change Management (OCM) programs which create IT organisations that are ready, willing and able to change. Engaging G2G3 will drive the success and raise the profile of your IT transformation initiative, project or product, ensuring the effective onboarding of all involved, and creating a culture of change by choice. G2G3 solutions include: In-room Simulations

G2G3 offers a range of high-impact, ready-to-go, in-room business simulations that accelerate learning, change and transformation initiatives. These are available in a number of variants for ITSM, ITIL, ISO/IEC 20000, Lean IT, Project Portfolio Management, Business Continuity and many more. G2G3 can also design and develop bespoke in-room simulations solutions to meet your specific requirements. Virtual Simulations

G2G3 are experts in creating virtual serious games and simulations. Our power lies in our ability to combine advanced 3D technologies with gaming dynamics and unsurpassed IT enterprise industry knowledge. Virtual simulations are ideal for marketing, education or cultural change purposes.

and create exciting gamification solutions within IT enterprises to help drive innovation, transformation programs, marketing, training, employee performance, health and social change across organisations. Organisational Change Management (OCM)

The G2G3 OCM approach drives successful transformation through the delivery of a bespoke combination of G2G3 solutions, including Simulation, Communications, Contextual Learning and Training, Infographics and more. This proven and highly-contextual methodology helps manage complex organisational and workforce transition to the desired transformation end-state, ultimately helping realise the long-term value from business improvement efforts. Infographics and Knowledge Visualisation

By combining collaborative consulting with information design, G2G3 can create a visual knowledge strategy that will deliver tangible results across your transformation, change or communication program. Our infographics cut through the complexities traditionally associated with IT to design solutions that create immediate visual clarity and understanding.

Serious Games and Gamification

G2G3 is different from other vendors; we use our energy, enthusiasm and creative flair to create your competitive advantage. Our enviable list of clients include: Microsoft, BP, Intel, DHL, HP, Johnson & Johnson, Thomson Reuteurs and many more.

G2G3 are experts in ‘gamification’ – the act of applying gamelike techniques to non-game environments. G2G3 can design

To find out more about how our solutions can help you, contact us today.

Number of sites: United Kingdom – 150 Global Partners, and 1 million+ people globally have participated in G2G3 simulations Globally – As UK Entry Level Price: POA

Panama House, 14 The High Street, Lasswade, Midlothian EH18 1ND T: +44 (0) 131 461 3333 F: +44 (0) 131 663 8934 E: info@g2g3.com www.G2G3.com Contact: Linda King

hornbill service management Hornbill’s Supportworks

Service management with the ‘Human Touch’ for IT and business service desks Hornbill offers three ITSM solutions, each designed to match different levels of IT Service Management maturity. Supportworks applications enable customers to get up and running quickly with minimal need for professional services. Unique Human Touch features improve the service experience, whilst powerful workflow automates ITSM processes. The highly configurable Supportworks platform and design tools enable customers to tailor the application, or build service desks for HR, Facilities, Customer Service and other areas of the business. Founded in 1995 in the UK, Hornbill’s award winning technology supports thousands of commercial and government customer sites world-wide, setting high standards for the global Service Management marketplace. Service Management software from Hornbill enables organisations to work more efficiently, improve service quality and increase customer satisfaction. Supportworks Essentials Entry level Service Management. The building blocks of core behaviours for the Service Desk. Supportworks ITSM Foundations Supporting the early steps towards service desk maturity. Fast and easy to install, configure and deploy in days, not weeks. Supportworks ITSM Enterprise For service desks looking to progress the maturity of service delivery. Rapidly deployed IT Service Management out of the box but also easily configurable without specialist knowledge.

Multiple service desks, one technology Supportworks is used by both public and private sector companies tasked with delivering efficiencies through shared services or internal consolidation projects. The Supportworks Enterprise Platform (ESP) underpins all Supportworks applications, enabling deployment of out-of-the-box service desks using standard templates that are also fully customisable. A service strategy built on Supportworks ESP allows organisations to realise many measurable benefits through consolidation. Running multiple desks on a single Supportworks Enterprise Support Platform offers economies of scale that decreases the cost of service provision by: • Reducing hardware and software licensing costs • Decreasing administrative overhead and demand on IT resource • Reducing demand for training • Providing a consistent interface for process and workflow management. Once Supportworks is installed, these organisations boast increased levels of internal and external customer satisfaction and improved efficiency across the board. The Human Touch Supportworks places the customer at the heart of every request. Each Supportworks service desk is designed with the purpose of enabling service desk staff to provide their customers with a first class service experience. Discover, react and resolve issues using social channels With Supportworks ITSM Enterprise v3.2, service desks can discover, react and resolve requests via Twitter and create an auditable record of these interactions in the Supportworks database. To explore further, visit www.hornbill.com

United Kingdom: Hornbill Service Management Limited, Odyssey Business Park – Apollo, West End Road, Ruislip HA4 6QD UK T: +44(0)208 582 8282 F: +44(0)208 582 8288 www.hornbill.com North America (CST): Hornbill Service Management, Inc., 300 East John Carpenter Fwy, Suite 110, Irving TX 75062 USA T: +1 972 717 2300 F: +1 972 717 2331 www.hornbill.com

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30 Leading IT Service Management Providers iccm solutions

One of the overriding directives of ICCM Solutions is the simplification of complexity in service management environments.

Founded in 1998, ICCM provides sophisticated ITIL aligned service management solutions built on Business Process Management (BPM) architecture, from Metastorm BPM®. This partnership delivers unparalleled service management capabilities across all industries and business functions in almost every geographical region.

The BPM platform provides opportunities to implement and deliver successful technology strategies to ensure the collaboration between the business and IT – ultimately reaping the rewards of business innovation and competitive advantage. ICCM’s software allows organisations to support and drive best practice, via a turnkey technology. With 33 modules and ITIL® best practice processes available ‘out of the box’, e-Service Desk is industry recognised as a highly transferable service management solution, which can be implemented with minimal disruption to an organisation’s working practices. This enables the business to deploy ITIL® best practice in a matter of weeks as opposed to months, or in some cases years. ICCM’s e-Service Desk tool, coupled with the business process functionality of Metastorm’s BPM® solution, delivers a radically different approach to service management. By developing its

technology from the process up around the ITIL ® framework ICCM’s solutions allow customers to tailor processes around their company’s actual needs giving better value and ensuring a smooth implementation into any environment. Because the ICCM solution easily integrates into existing software, but also has the ability to evolve for future environments, customers experience unprecedented flexibility. Additionally, flexible pricing modules allow companies of all dimensions to find a pricing structure that suits their needs.

This flexibility goes further still; ICCM’s 100 per cent web-based technology allows full access for remote working service teams, including wireless PDAs and Blackberry® devices. A self-service portal also gives customers a window into the status of their service request at any time or place.

A successful service management solution is not only based on the product. ICCM believes customers are entitled to service and support when they need it, and delivers on a commitment to provide outstanding service and support from initial deployment through to everyday operation. This is underpinned by a global support network and extended support hours, which offer assistance around any schedule.

Number of sites: United Kingdom – 150 Globally – 50 Entry Level Price: £15,000

Riverside Business Village, Swindon Road, Malmesbury, Wiltshire, SN16 9RS T: +44 (0) 1666 828600 F: +44 (0) 1666826103 www.iccm.co.uk Contact: Service Desk

icore

iCore is the largest independent IT Service Management Consultancy in the UK. iCore has a long and impressive track record for providing pragmatic consulting solutions that deliver and embed effective IT service delivery and reduce the cost of provisioning the operational services. This is achieved through strong leadership; a disciplined approach to process; outcome driven projects; and by drawing upon the deep, real world experience of our mature consultancy team who have a passion for excellence and who are determined to ensure we deliver successful and sustainable solutions.

Embedding the operational knowledge and skills required to carry out effective service provision and innovation. We frequently work alongside the clients’ own staff in coaching roles, as interim managers or in hands-on roles in the operational environment. For more information about our services visit our website or for a more personal touch, call us on 0207 464 8414.

Working with many global, blue chip clients across market sectors, our solutions are focused on strong management, process discipline and pragmatic application of service management and governance best practice, with the primary aim to drive service improvement and commercial advantage into our clients’ IT service delivery. iCore focuses on providing practical IT Service Management and IT Governance expertise, underpinned by a blended approach utilising all recognised best practice frameworks and methods, e.g. ITIL, COBIT, CMMI-SVC, Lean Six Sigma, SFIA, and PRINCE, and ones which have been used to meet various standards and regulatory requirements, e.g. ISO20000, ISO27001, SAS70. Embedded within client teams, iCore has many years experience of driving them to deliver world class IT services, and our Service Management offerings are focused on: -

The design and implementation of the organisation, processes and technology required for a successful service operation, utilising our impressive background with best practice frameworks. Number of sites: United Kingdom – 1 Globally – 1 Entry Level Price: N/A

60 Lombard Street, London, EC3V 9EA T: 0207 464 8414 F: 0207 464 8888 E: Info@icore-ltd.com

www.icore-ltd.com Contact: Tony Jupp

0 3 ilx group

ILX Group is a global software technology company that specialises in delivering engaging learning experiences to consumers and corporate clients across the world.

We create both formal and informal learning products, including interactive multimedia e-learning, games, simulations and mobile apps, as well as employ innovative software applications and other technology in the classroom.

With both intentionally accredited ATO and ACO status, ILX Group delivers learning products and services in over 100 countries across 5,000 organisations worldwide and is a global leader in IT Service Management, Project Management, Business Financial Literacy and Implementation Consulting. As IT Service Management evolves and the framework continues to mature, organisations are discovering the benefits reach beyond the IT department and are beginning to be adopted within different scenarios throughout the business.

ILX Group is committed to building awareness and helping organisations mature towards adopting a more synergised approach to improving business capability.

ABOUT OUR PRODUCTS

We are specialists in ITIL, PRINCE2®, MSP®, APM as well as ISO/ IEC20000 through ILX Consulting services. Our learning is differentiated by the innovative use of technology both within our formal learning products and the constant development of informal learning support tools such as games, apps, demos and live webinars to provide superior learning services to our clients and learners alike. Within a classroom environment we know the power technology brings to increasing delegate interaction and creating really engaging and memorable learning experiences. From live delegate surveys and Q&A sessions, remote voting systems through to multi-player interactive informal gaming tools we strive to make every learning session as effective and fun as possible. OUR SERVICES

ILX Consulting helps organisations all over the world obtain an external accreditation which recognises not just the capability of the individual but more importantly the maturity of the organisation as a whole:

ITIL Experts

Delivering our hybrid products across our ITIL portfolio Improved business capability within IT Service Management through the ISO/IEC20000.

We provide the full ITIL® suite of products from Foundation through to achievements of the ITIL Expert status as well as products and services that help businesses achieve up to the internationally recognised standard ISO/IEC 20000.

ILX Consulting is commited to, and continues to deliver tangible improvements in capability, productivity and customer satisfaction to a wide range of businesses and organisations.

Number of sites: United Kingdom – 3 Globally – 7 Entry Level Price: From £399 + VAT

115 Hammersmith Road , London , W14 0QH T: 01270 611600 F: 020 7371 6556 E: training@ilxgroup.com

www.ilxgroup.com Contact: Samantha Sullivan

infravision

InfraVision delivers and supports BSM, Business Service Management, including IT Service & System Management solutions from a number of the world’s top vendors like BMC, LANDesk, Bomgar and Planon. BSM helps you to efficiently manage business services across their lifecycle. This allows us to implement high quality, ITIL based service management for every type of organisation including fully outsourced environments and shared service centers, HR departments, Facilities and Customer Service Teams as well as internal IT departments.

By using the Alignability Process Model, also known as APM or SMPM (Service Management Process Model) we are able to deliver Service Management processes based on 12 years of experience of over 300 organisations worldwide. This represents a huge saving in process design and tool customisation and at the same time delivers unprecedented process quality, not to mention shorter implementation cycles.

onitor and Operate – Proactively identify and resolve issues across M cloud, virtual, distributed, and mainframe environments. Plan and Govern – Manage your supply, demand, and budget and ensure compliance with policies and regulations. Integrate and Orchestrate – Discover, model, visualise, and assign priority to business services. Design services based on service blueprints and a unified service model. Federate and orchestrate data and workflow to improve efficiency With every implementation we focus on immediate productivity gain for the support organisation and a positive return on investment within a few months. InfraVision delivers results on time and within budget! With BSM, you will:

* Optimise IT costs by improving staff efficiency by up to 30% * Demonstrate transparency by gaining 95%+ visibility into IT spend * Increase business value by rolling out new services up to 50% faster

We specialise in the following areas of Business Service Management;

* Control risk by automating controls and processes to meet internal and external compliance requirements

Request and Support – Simplify and automate processes for requesting, changing, and supporting business services.

* Assure quality of service by cutting downtime by 75% or more and decreasing service-impacting events by 35% or more.

Provision and Configure – Consistently deploy business services across applications, servers, networks, databases, hypervisors, and clients.

Number of sites: United Kingdom – 50+ Globally – 300+ Entry Level Price: 39 GBP per month

Delegate House, 30a Hart Street, Henley on Thames, Oxon RG9 2AL UK T: +441491 635340 F: +441491 579835 E: info@infravision.com www.infravision.com Contact: Nigel Todd

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30 Leading IT Service Management Providers it governance

IT Governance is the single source provider of your complete IT Service Management (ITSM) resources. We offer a comprehensive range of ITSM books, toolkits, training and consultancy as well as practical advice and guidance. Our goal is to promote best practice IT Service Management and to support Service Managers in their endeavour to structure their IT related activities providing greater business value. www.itgovernance.co.uk Publications

IT Governance is an official distributor of all the major publishers, including the TSO and Van Haren Publishing. We are always at the forefront by providing the most up-to-date titles for pre-order before they are released. Through our online store you can purchase the books you want in the format you want, including: soft cover, e-book and Kindle compatible formats, multi-user licence and online access. www.itgovernance.co.uk/catalog/7 Toolkits

Our unique ITSM, ITIL and ISO 20000 toolkits are designed (in collaboration with industry experts) to help small and medium organisations quickly adapt and adopt best practice in IT Service Management.

IT Governance’s toolkits are fit for purpose – they will give you the knowledge and information you need to cost-effectively implement the ITIL® framework in compliance with the ISO 20000 standard and prepare for successful certification. www.itgovernance.co.uk/products/3370

Classroom training

IT Governance offers an integrated education programme with Foundation and Advanced Level courses for ISO 20000 and COBIT® (an ISACA® defined course). Our ISO 20000 Practitioner course leads to the APMG-accredited ISO 20000 Practitioner Certificate.

We also offer an Exam Preparation course for the Certified in the Governance of Enterprise IT (CGEIT®) qualification. www.itgovernance.co.uk/training.aspx Distance and e-learning

Our comprehensive range of e-learning and distance learning packages help our customers to achieve ITIL® certification in record time, whilst studying at a time, place and pace that suit them! Additionally, IT Governance can provide you with all the information necessary to enable you to book your exam, thus offering a best-inclass alternative to classroom-based training. www.itgovernance.co.uk/catalog/51 Consultancy

Our IT Service Management consulting team are experts at designing and deploying IT Service Management structures, and at integrating them with other management systems, such as ISO/IEC 27001, the information security management standard. Our consultancy approach focuses on transferring skills and knowledge through mentoring and coaching. Thanks to being a single source for everything related to ITSM we can offer a bespoke mix of services and support tailored to any budget. www.itgovernance.co.uk/consulting.aspx

Unit 3, Clive Court, Bartholomew’s Walk, Cambridgeshire Business Park, Ely, Cambs CB7 4EH T: +44 (0) 845 070 1750 F: +44 (0) 1353 662 667 E: servicecentre@itgovernance.co.uk www.itgovernance.co.uk Contact: Customer Service Team

landesk

Since 1985, LANDesk Software, has created innovative technologies and products for enterprise IT management. LANDesk Software provides Systems, Security, Process and IT Service Management solutions for desktops, servers and mobile devices across the enterprise. Through a singular focus and commitment to understanding customers’ real business needs, LANDesk is able to provide easy-to-use solutions for those needs.

customers a step-by-step approach to service management that’s easy to implement and doesn’t require complex and costly added infrastructure.

With long-standing partner relationships and solutions successfully deployed at leading enterprises worldwide, LANDesk continues to deliver rapid innovations which help organisations achieve their business objectives.

Through its IT service management solutions,LANDesk helps customers streamline operations and maintenance tasks, automate and standardise processes, reduce errors, and transition from a reactive environment to one that’s more proactive and service oriented.

This enables organisations to reduce operating costs, simplify management, and increase the availability of critical IT environments 24/7 via integrated, centralised software. These solutions – LANDesk® Service Desk, LANDesk® Process Manager, and LANDesk ® Asset Lifecycle Manager – offer

Dukes Court, Duke Street, Woking, Surrey GU21 5RT T: 01483 744444 F: 01483 744401 E: contactus@landesk.com

www.landesk.com Contact: Sarah Lewis

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ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus

ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus is a help desk tool that delivers ITIL-ready service management out of the box, including Incident, Problem and Change Management; Configuration Management Database (CMDB); Service Catalogue; and more. ServiceDesk Plus integrates your help desk requests and assets to help you manage your IT effectively. The suite also has an integrated asset lifecycle management solution that supports automatic scanning of Windows, Linux and Mac systems. It helps you implement ITIL best practices and troubleshoot IT service requests faster. ServiceDesk Plus is highly customizable and easy-to-implement help desk software. Customers can choose between an on-premise and on-demand service (SaaS).

“ServiceDesk Plus is an ITIL wizard, makes ITIL easy” says Aaron Bockelie, Warner Bros. • Technicians love it At the end of the day, there are two things that count: the tool has to be efficient and the users should love it. ServiceDesk Plus delivers that! “ServiceDesk Plus made the technicians more compliant and it delivers meaningful reports” says Kirk Patten, IT Director, RotaDyne More than 10,000 IT managers worldwide use ServiceDesk Plus to manage their IT help desk and assets. ServiceDesk Plus is available in 23 different languages. Download free 30-day trial from www.ServiceDeskPlus.com

Benefits of ServiceDesk Plus:

About ManageEngine:

• Up and running within hours With ServiceDesk Plus, there are no consultant bucks needed to have the solution up and running. You can download and install ServiceDesk Plus in approx. 15 minutes and the configuration and deployment can be done within hours.

The ManageEngine suite offers enterprise IT management solutions including Network Management, ITIL based Help Desk, Bandwidth Monitoring, Application Management, Desktop Management, Security Management, Password Management, Active Directory reporting, and a Managed Services platform. ManageEngine products are easy to install, setup and use and offer extensive support, consultation, and training. More than forty-five thousand organizations from different verticals, industries, and sizes use ManageEngine to take care of their IT management needs cost effectively. ManageEngine is a division of ZOHO Corporation. Visit us at www.ManageEngine.com

• No add-ons, no additional complications! ServiceDesk Plus packs help desk, asset management, Incident, Problem, Change Management, Service Catalogue, CMDB, Contracts, Purchase Orders, and Reports. Makes it easy for you to understand, maintain, and manage. • Built-in ITIL Framework We have defined about 80% of the ITIL processes templates such as Incident, Problem, Change Management, Service Catalogue and CMDB. Let ServiceDesk Plus take you through your ITIL enlightenment!

Number of sites: United Kingdom – 980+ Globally – 10,100+ Entry Level Price: Starts at $495

T: 0800 028 6590 E: sales@manageengine.com www.ManageEngine.com

marval

Marval’s integrated approach, as a single-source supplier of IT Service Management (ITSM) solutions, delivers more than just a 100% web based ITIL® and ISO/IEC 20000 compatible software tool. It also provides comprehensive ITSM consultancy and educational services.

MSM software delivers the ultimate combination of ITSM process automation, continual service improvement, functionality, flexibility and scalability. It provides everything needed for a totally integrated service management solution that can be used by your whole organisation:

With many years’ practical experience and knowledge from working with different types of organisation in the public and private sectors throughout the UK and globally, Marval is able to offer not only ITSM solutions but also invaluable advice, guidance and assistance to match specific business needs, helping organisations:

It provides user-friendly, web self-service capability

It is fast, flexible, easy to use and deploy

Drive down costs – do more with less

Standardise and optimise the way services are delivered

Drive ICT efficiency and effectiveness

Minimise risk

Keep customers better informed and satisfied

Improve control and accountability of ICT infrastructure

Improve the quality of ICT support services

MSM software is an innovative ITSM solution that ensures a reliable IT and service infrastructure, increased productivity and adaptability in service provision. MSM software is used for internal and external support and by providers of outsourced and managed services.

I t puts you in total control of all your IT and related business activities by providing you with extensive, accurate and up-to-the-minute management information for making informed decisions I t makes your staff more productive and your processes easier to manage, ultimately saving you time and money It provides you with instant access to knowledge I t demonstrates what a great ‘value for money’ service your IT service and support staff delivers

Designed by the co-authors of ITIL and ISO/IEC 20000, MSM encompasses full support for these standards and best practice frameworks and will meet an organisation’s current and future needs, ITSM maturity and budget. MSM is certified under the PinkVERIFY 3.1 toolsets for compatibility against the maximum 15 ITIL processes. Marval, a registered ISO/IEC 20000 company, supports customers to international standards.

Number of sites: United Kingdom – 100+ Globally – 400+ Entry Level Price: £5,500

Stone Lodge, Rothwell Grange, Rothwell Road, Kettering, Northamptonshire, NN16 8XF England T: +44 (0) 1536 711999 F: +44 (0) 1536 712999 E: info@marval-group.com www.marval-group.com

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30 Leading IT Service Management Providers monitor 24-7 inc

Are you looking for a professional service desk solution? One that makes life easy for your support team, plus gives management the information they are looking for in an instant?

IncidentMonitor’s™ intuitive interface provides the option to personalise your home page dashboard and gives immediate oneclick-filtering which shows exactly which requests need immediate attention. Of course accompanied with some nice charts which not only make it look nice, but also give you direct information you need to manage your support efficiently. IncidentMonitor™ has automated many actions to make your support teams’ life simple. Automatic classification, matching to historical input, direct presentation of knowledge articles while recording the issue, workflow based actions driven from the service catalog, scheduled automatic creation and sending of reports, engaging customers and support team via the simple to use service portal. Offering the full ITIL suite at no additional cost, accessible via a web and windows client and of course via the iPad / iPhone, Blackberry or any Android system.

IncidentMonitor™ has grown since 1999 and today has thousands of users worldwide, supporting not only the 10 ITIL processes for which we are PinkVerify certified, but also unlimited processes from RMA, to sales. IncidentMonitor™ is used by a large variety of companies, for internal as well as external support. The unique approach we took with our software gives both types of companies the possibility to configure any processes and actions they need. Alternatively, simply use our built in processes straight out of the box. We believe that by providing you with ITIL best practice processes you have an ideal starting point, but as every organization is unique, the service management software you use needs to be able to commit to your preferred process. That’s why we have developed our software as a platform which you can easily configure to your own needs. You choose the workflows you desire and if you want to use something proven in the market you simply use our free ITIL applications. IncidentMonitor™ is available either on premises or in the cloud (SaaS). It’s up to you.

Number of sites: United Kingdom – 35 Globally – 500 Entry Level Price: On premise: GBP 6,000 Cloud / SaaS: GBP 3,000

Farnborough Old Police Station, 3 Locks Court, Locksbottom, Kent BR6 8NL UK T: +44 (0)20 8123.3126 E: uksales@monitor24-7.com www.servicedesksoftware.co.uk Contact: Darrell Mott

netsupport

For 22 years, IT departments have turned to NetSupport for help maximising the value and effectiveness of their IT spending. Today, in excess of nine million machines are supported by NetSupport technology.

ITIL Service Management

NetSupport’s complementary software solutions deliver the tools needed to support the modern IT infrastructure, from powerful IT asset management and web-based ITIL helpdesk to market-leading service desk remote control.

Three time winner of Network Computing’s Service Management Product of the Year award, NetSupport ServiceDesk helps you deliver fast, effective and measurable IT support. Web-based and fully compliant with ITIL standards, customers can log incidents online and track progress in real time while automated workflow processes backed by a wealth of reporting options improve your ability to manage and prioritise fault lists.

IT Asset Management

Service Desk Remote Control

If you are to make informed purchasing decisions, then information is key. Having an accurate inventory of your IT assets is critical when deciding whether to purchase more assets, redistribute current assets, or retire them completely. Providing the tools needed to effectively manage the ‘true’ cost of IT, NetSupport DNA is a modular solution that delivers powerful hardware/software inventory, licence management and more. NetSupport DNA’s core inventory module also includes, as standard, real-time PC and system alerting and a unique energy monitor that provides a high-level summary of potential energy wastage across your organisation. To this, you can add internet and application metering, software distribution and, to leverage even more value from your investment, NetSupport’s web-based ITIL helpdesk solution, NetSupport ServiceDesk, and market-leading remote control tool, NetSupport Manager.

The ideal support tool for the modern business environment, marketleading remote control solution NetSupport Manager provides a single operator console that delivers a unified approach to the connectivity and management of multi-platform computers, including Windows, Mac®, Linux and mobile, across LAN, WAN or the internet. Real-time visual thumbnails of all connected computers enable you to identify all activity across the environment and pinpoint where assistance is needed. With one click you can interact with the remote machines and utilise a range of desktop management tools, while a powerful scripting and scheduling suite allows you to automate repetitive tasks, running them at a time most convenient to you.

Number of sites: United Kingdom – 13,000 Globally – 72,850 Entry Level Price: From £12.60 per machine

NetSupport House, Towngate East, Market Deeping, Peterborough PE6 8NE T: 01778 382270 Fax: 01778 382280 E: david@netsupportsoftware.co.uk www.netsupportsoftware.co.uk Contact: David Turner

0 3 partners in it

Partners in IT is a specialist ITSM technology and consultancy business focused on bringing true end to end service management to life. From small company engagements to large scale enterprise deployments we focus on the implementation and long term support of IT Service Management solutions and therefore: • Controlling and Reducing Costs

• Improving the quality of IT services and processes • Aligning IT better with the business • Meeting compliance requirements

We have been working with IT Service Management for nearly 15 years and work with a portfolio of technologies underpinned by a robust and well proven implementation methodology for IT Service Management.

ServiceNow is the technology that is disrupting the Service Desk industry in many positive ways. Not only is the delivery mechanism of the software the most cost effective and flexible, a pure Saas model, but the entire philosophy of the application means that it is cheaper and quicker to implement, cheaper to own through free and automated upgrades and more flexible and extensible through a powerful and intuitive development platform.

TransformIT – The Partners in IT approach to the implementation of IT Service Management solutions is structured, low risk and highly value based. We can benchmark IT Service Management performance against industry and world class best practises and build a plan to meet the aspirations of our customers. Implementation takes the form of changes to processes, people and technology to meet the objectives of the business. ServiceIT – our own ServiceNow based platform for smaller IT teams. We have built our own Service Management platform on ServiceNow which means you can get the best technology in the industry even if you only have a very small number of users in your team. GovernIT – a detailed process model for ServiceNow and other technologies that we have built to accelerate implementation and provide consistent and rapidly adopted processes across an organisation. A World Class deployment framework for the World’s best Service Management tool! VisionIT – a low cost subscription service for IT management and monitoring that provides enterprise functionality at entry level price with minimal ongoing cost of ownership. VisionIT is a managed service that is based on a core set of Open Source tools and delivered as a software subscription providing a low cost, low maintenance management platform for infrastructure, network and application monitoring.

Number of sites: United Kingdom – 1 Globally – 1

7 Bracknell Beeches, Bracknell, Berkshire, RG12 7BW T: 01344 488123 F: 01344 488456 E: paul.cash@piit.co.uk

www.piit.co.uk Contact: Paul Cash

realvnc

RealVNC’s software is used by hundreds of millions of people around the world in both desktop and mobile platforms for remote access and control of one device from another. VNC has an extensive range of applications, from providing IT departments with the ability to perform remote support and maintenance without needing to travel, to telecommuting and facilitating training across classrooms, offices or continents. The technology is used in every sector of industry, commerce, government and education.

With its simple peer-to-peer architecture, VNC Enterprise Edition comprises a lightweight VNC Server (host) application on the machine to be controlled and a VNC Viewer (client) component on the controlling machine. With no agents or centralised servers required, VNC Enterprise Edition enables trouble-free installation and use.

One of the many benefits of VNC Enterprise Edition is its support for the widest range of operating systems to meet the needs of multi platform corporate environments, from Windows and Mac through to Linux. Using VNC, IT support teams no longer have to make desk-side visits in order to troubleshoot and fix problems; faults are resolved quickly, downtime is reduced and ticket throughput is increased. The result is improved IT productivity and better resource utilisation as technicians can spend more time providing expertise and support in other areas.

to the office and reducing disruption to employees during the working day. VNC Enterprise Edition integrates industry-strength security, providing an authenticated and encrypted connection.

RealVNC’s groundbreaking collaboration with Intel takes VNC to a new level by enabling users to connect to a VNC Server embedded directly onto the chipset of supported computers with Intel® Core™ vPro™ technology. VNC Viewer Plus connects directly to the VNC Server embedded in the hardware – no additional software needs to be installed on the operating system for full graphical KVM out-of-band access. IT professionals can remotely watch a full PC boot sequence, manipulate BIOS settings and re-install an operating system without the need to take a trip to the console. VNC Viewer Plus provides a unique and highly effective approach to solving complex systems issues, ensuring reduced downtime and increased productivity. Learn more about how VNC can benefit your organisation by visiting www.realvnc.com.

In addition to providing remote troubleshooting, VNC is an essential tool for routine administration, maintenance and software upgrades for both desktops and servers. This can be done from home or a remote location in a different time zone, eliminating after hours trips

Betjeman House, 104 Hills Road, Cambridge CB2 1LQ UK T: 01223 310400 Fax: 01223 310411 E: contact@realvnc.com www.realvnc.com

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30 Leading IT Service Management Providers rms

RMS Services provides the people, processes, software and solutions to guide you through each step of the ITIL process.

Achieving Service Management maturity and the efficiencies and cost savings that go with it is the aim of every organisation – but is a long, complicated and continual journey, requiring changes to people, process and the underpinning solutions which, without expert advice and support, often grinds to a halt. To assist with this, the RMS Business Transformation Team works with the RMS CSI Compass methodology which incorporates a suite of ITSM tools, including RMS, Business Intelligence, and Automation, to guide our customers through the journey to full IT maturity.

querying and interrogation of data at the desktop. Other features include the ability to easily adapt and re-run searches ‘on-the-fly’, as well as drill down to multiple levels of detail and explore different hypothesis at the same time. The launch of this Google-like BI tool highlights a new and exciting addition to the RMS portfolio.

Enhancing this existing range of “across the board” ITIL modules is RMS Vision – an agile business intelligence tool with outstanding self service capabilities. RMS Vision combines a powerful keyword search engine, with comprehensive graphical reporting to deliver real-time business intelligence and analytics on terabytes of data, eliminating data silos and permitting unrestricted cross-dimensional associations between data entries and spanning multiple data sources.

RMS Vision enables real time in-depth analysis of information across an organisation, exposing previously unnoticed trends and anomalies, speeding the decision making process and enabling agile decision making without the need for comprehensive training. Unlike other analysis tools of this type, the Vision interface has been designed to provide a search window that enables real language

RMS Services Ltd, 6 Mead Court, Cooper Road, Thornbury, Bristol, BS35 3UW T: 01454 281265 F: 01454 281267 E: L.edge@rms.co.uk www.rms.co.uk Contact: Lee Edge

servicenow

ServiceNow was created to break all the old rules of enterprise IT management software. Born in the cloud, ServiceNow makes IT immediate, social and intuitive. From the beginning, the company set out to give IT people powerfully simple cloud services that just work. Today, the world’s most recognizable and innovative companies rely on SaaS from ServiceNow to transform IT. Founded in 2004, ServiceNow is the fastest-growing IT management software company and is the undisputed market share leader in SaaS for IT. ServiceNow is ranked as the leading ITSM offering in the recently released “Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting an IT Service Management Vendor.” Based on its analysis of 13 ITSM tool vendors, the Ovum report states, “Considered one of the most innovative vendors in the ITSM space, ServiceNow has registered the highest growth rate in the market over the last two years and is set to significantly augment its presence and recognition in the next few years. Ovum believes that ServiceNow has both the vision and the capability to mount a clear and credible challenge for market leadership.”

Also, ServiceNow recently announced continued significant momentum with more than $125 million in annual recurring revenue as leading industry analysts recognize the company as the fastestgrowing, market-share leading cloud service for IT management. This marks the sixth consecutive year ServiceNow recurring revenue has at least doubled year-over-year. The ServiceNow modern approach to ITSM is drastically different from legacy alternatives.

To learn more about SaaS for IT and an evolved approach to IT service management, please listen to a recorded webinar, featuring Malcolm Fry, titled, “Making ITIL Work for You” available at http://info.service-now.com/LP=292. Alternatively, a live, noregistration-required instance of ServiceNow is always available at http://demo.service-now.com/.

The report evaluates the ITSM tool market based on “strength of the vendor’s technology offering, reputation among customers, and impact in the market.” ServiceNow was the only company to score a perfect 10 out of 10 in the “Technology” category, alongside a correspondingly high “Customer Sentiment” rating. To download the report, please visit http://info.service-now.com/LP=304.

Number of sites: United Kingdom – 105 customers headquartered in the UK Globally – 800 customers Entry Level Price: An all-inclusive subscription license of £71 per IT process user, per month

Ambassador House, Paradise Road, Richmond TW9 1SQ, UK T: +44 20 8939 2976 E: info@service-now.com www.service-now.com

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MAKING SERVICE MANAGEMENT HAPPEN We educate; We train; We motivate; We advise; We deliver

Sysop has been serving the IT service management community since 1985 – making us most mature of all the independent service management providers. We have deservedly earned a reputation for innovation and quality – one without equal in the market place. Sysop has always played a constructive and supportive role in the industry – contributing frequently to itSMF conferences and seminars. Sysop trainers were finalists in each of the last two itSMF Industry awards. Head of Service Management, Michelle Major-Goldsmith was awarded the prestigious accolade “IT Trainer of the Year” in November 2010.

Innovation continues. From October 3rd, starting with PRINCE2®, Sysop will offer a unique approach to training – banishing the ubiquitous PowerPoint slide forever!

Using practical exercises instead of “show and talk”, students will work through a series of facilitated and very logical case-studies which will enable them to understand the subject matter in a much more effective and practical way. It includes creating a positive physical environment; having a wall-chart of the agenda; getting them to contribute to the event ‘ground rules’; recording their objectives on the flipchart; and creating an open environment by discussing any fears or insecurities and removing them.

This innovative approach is based on the firm principle that people learn more effectively when: • both their mind and body are involved in the learning experience • they actively create knowledge, rather than passively store information • there is collaboration between the learners • learning events are activity-centred

• there is a good mix of moving and doing (somatic learning), talking and hearing (auditory learning), observing and picturing (visual learning) and problem solving and reflecting (intellectual learning). The Apollo 13 ITSM Experience is a respected one-day workshop for bringing about the culture changes necessary for a successful ITSM implementation. Almost everyone knows the story of Apollo 13. Indeed it was made into a highly successful film starring Tom Hanks as Jim Lovell the mission commander. The parallels between Houston Mission Control and IT Service Management are striking. The workshop illustrates how human ingenuity and carefully thought-out processes can be used in even the most challenging of circumstances to deliver success.

Byron House, Green Lane, Heywood, Lancashire OL10 2DY T: 01706 361110 F:01706 362111 www.sysop.co.uk

techexcel

TechExcel, a leading provider of IT Service Management software, has 2,500 customers in 42 countries and maintains offices in USA, UK, China and Japan.

process automation, knowledgebase management, workflow, and customer self-service to improve business processes that translate into better customer relationships.

ServiceWise is a customisable and comprehensive internal Helpdesk, ITSM and ITIL compliant solution. It can enforce business rules and optimise business processes regardless of the size of your organisation. Automate and streamline services and helpdesk activities with configurable workflows, process management, email notifications and a searchable knowledge base. Provide support from a browser by creating a customised self-service portal that matches the look and feel of your company’s website. The selfservice portal includes online incident submission, status updates, online conversations and a knowledgebase. ServiceWise includes modules such as incident management, problem escalation and analysis, change management and asset management.

AssetWise aids the process of monitoring, controlling and accounting for assets throughout their lifecycle. A single and centralised location enables businesses to monitor all assets including company IT assets, managing asset inventories, and tracking customer-owned assets. All asset changes, including maintenance information, trouble ticket data, status inventory, utilisation metrics and usage, are recorded in the central repository and linked to other Service and Support tasks. As part of the TechExcel Service Suite, AssetWise can be accessed by members of TechExcel. CustomerWise and ServiceWise and provides a single version of asset truth for sales, service, help desk, IT, and other teams.

CustomerWise is an integrated CRM solution focused on customer service throughout the entire customer lifecycle. Provide your support, sales, and marketing teams the necessary tools, processes, and information they need to meet customer demands and improve the customer’s experience. CustomerWise allows you to refine sales, customer service and support processes to increase cross-team communication and efficiency while reducing your overall costs. Combine sophisticated

Number of sites: United Kingdom – 300 Globally – 2500 Entry Level Price: £1,500

Crown House, 72 Hammersmith Road, London W14 8TH T: +44 207 470 5650 Fax: +44 207 470 5651 E: emeainfo@techexcel.com

www.techexcel.com Contact: Gregory Andrews

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30 Leading IT Service Management Providers top desk

TOPdesk: Service Management Simplified TOPdesk in front

TOPdesk has been a leader in innovation within the service management software industry since 1993. Our combination of unrivalled integration, quick implementation, outstanding support and value for money has earned our ITIL-based service management software numerous awards. TOPdesk was listed 52nd of Europe’s 500 Top Growth Companies in 2010 and was recently voted one of the Most Popular SaaS Providers by SaaS Directory UK. Global Success

Our application is tried and trusted across the service management industry. Over 4,000 customers in 45 countries worldwide have already made TOPdesk their first choice; from small service desks to logistics experts, health services, thriving multinationals and top academic institutions. TOPdesk is a state-of-the-art tool for optimizing efficiency, enhancing performance and increasing customer satisfaction in all areas of service management. Effortless synergy

Available in seven languages, TOPdesk offers exceptional integration possibilities. TOPdesk is the only tool that seamlessly integrates multiple support processes in a single system: IT, FM, HR, Maintenance Management and more.

We guarantee a smooth transition to TOPdesk from every existing or self-made service desk application and every data management

system. TOPdesk is platform-independent and has been integrated with tools such as Active Directory, HR or CRM systems, monitoring tools and SAP thousands of times already. Instant gains

In TOPdesk, clear and insightful KPIs and reports are at your fingertips. Easily identify bottlenecks, make well-informed business decisions and improve the quality of your service. Our online Self Service Desk lets your customers log calls, look up standard solutions and make reservations twenty-four hours a day, further easing the pressure on your service desk while extending your availability. Low-cost benefits

In today’s economic climate, you do not want to risk paying too much. TOPdesk has a modular structure, which means you only purchase the features you require. Furthermore, as your organization evolves, upgrading or expanding is straightforward and inexpensive. Not only can operators can be added at no extra cost, but TOPdesk’s awardwinning user-friendliness enables you to introduce new operators with a minimum amount of training. Finally, our entirely web-based software includes excellent twenty-four hours a day support, whether installed locally or as a SaaS solution.

Our consultants are highly experienced in implementing processes and software, and are experts on ITIL, Prince2, ISO and SOx. TOPdesk will streamline your organization, reducing your workload and strengthening your relationship with your customers. To find out more, visit www.TOPdesk.co.uk.

Number of sites: United Kingdom – 1 Globally – 6 Entry Level Price: TOPdesk lite: £500 Professional: £5,000 Enterprise: £10,000 TOPdesk as a Service £1 per end user per month

61 Southwark Street, London, SE1 0HL, United Kingdom T: +44 (0) 2078034200 Fax: +44 (0) 2078034215 E: info@topdesk.co.uk www.topdesk.co.uk Contact: David Brown

vitility

Vitility are the UK Distributors of ChangeGear the fully integrated IT Service Management solution from Sunview Software. ChangeGear is relatively new to the UK market however has been quickly adopted by organisations in the UK to help them automate their ITIL processes, because the solution is simple to use and easy to deploy. ChangeGear has been certified as ITIL V3.1 compatible by Pink Elephant and has modules to provide incident management, problem management, change and release management, configuration management, CMDB, SLA management and new to version 4.6 a service catalogue.

ChangeGear Change Edition can help your organisation automate change control and simplify the adoption of IT controls such as ITIL and COBIT. ChangeGear incorporates the best practices defined in the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) out of the box and harnesses the power of Microsoft’s .NET architecture. The intuitive web interface makes ChangeGear easy to use and deploy in your environment. Whether it is upgrading a server or changing a password, ChangeGear will help you combine people, process, and technology to simplify change management.

ChangeGear Service Desk Edition is a web-based IT Service Management (ITSM) software solution that enables IT organisations to efficiently resolve IT requests and track, manage, and control IT services. ChangeGear includes the seamless integration of key ITSM processes: Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, Release Management, and Knowledge Management.

ChangeGear CMDB features built-in auto-discovery, dependency mapping, and configuration auditing that allow organisations to easily manage their entire virtual and physical infrastructure. ChangeGear was built with simplicity as its principal design component - featuring an intuitive user interface. You can rapidly utilise ChangeGear’s advanced capabilities to map and manage critical resources such as business services, hardware, software, users, documentation, and configuration within one federated database ChangeGear Service Catalogue Manager is the latest module to be launched. It provides a powerful and intuitive design tool to quickly and easily model your service portfolio in line with the ITIL V3 best practices. The modern design allows you to take full advantage of HTML to develop robust catalogue entries using automated workflows, custom forms, approval processes, and templates to streamline the request fulfilment process. Vitility’s range of professional services, consultancy and training ensure a rapid and successful implementation of ChangeGear. Customers range from medium enterprises with as few as 5 user support teams through to large enterprise customers with over 100 support analysts, change and configuration managers regularly accessing the system.

Number of sites: United Kingdom – 30+ Globally – 300+ Entry Level Price: ChangeGear Express: Free ChangeGear Enterprise: £5,400.00

Liberty House, 516 Walton Road, West Molesey, Surrey KT8 2QF T: 0870 034 8288 Fax: 0870 034 8266 E: dsilsby@vitility.net www.vitility.net Contact: David Silsby

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