The IT Evolutionary Path - Evaluating IT Solutions for ITIL® Enablement.  Learn new lessons with ITIL v3.

A prescriptive path for implementing the service catalog and the CMDB together.  Common CMDB pitfalls and how to avoid them.

Using automation to optimize the service desk.  Discover how automation can help you decrease call center costs, better manage your software licenses and optimize your IT asset investment.

Jumpstart IT innovation with unified service management and infrastructure management.  Service Examples – tying it all together.

Explore the fundamentals required to experience the transformation.  A service-oriented architecture, asset management essentials, the compliance conundrum, ITIL v3.

Tired of fire fighting? It’s time for a Service Desk.  A path to implementing essential process automation.  Three keys to lowering your total cost of ownership.

The efficient and effective delivery of IT services is an obvious goal for every organization. Process models, such as the one documented by the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), provide a set of common definitions and descriptions that can be used as a starting point for an improvement program. Likewise, maturity models such as the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) provide a framework to assess the maturity of processes and to establish targets for improvement programs. IT organisations must formalise the improvement process itself with a self assessment, gap analysis, and improvement plan toavoid the application of scattershot changes that do not address core deficiencies in existing processes that drive up cost and reduce effectiveness.

In a world of increased competition, organizations increasingly are turning to support as a way to achieve long-term differentiation for their products and services. Customers often see as much or more value in the support that an organisation offers as a part of its products and services than in the products and services themselves. Best-in-class support organisations confirm that the optimal way to master support is to achieve success initially from within the organisation, and then expand these efforts outward through the distribution channel and ultimately to their customers.

Business processes are a set of programmatic activities that perform a specific task. For example, a business process could be something as simple as calling an external web service to get a quote for a loan, or as complex as a complete Service Level Agreement (SLA) system. The SLA system could handle support tickets, perform escalations, and automatically create change requests to handle those support tickets. In this way, your business processes can provide the glue in a complete Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) based software system.

Good IT governance ensures that organisations obtain the maximum business value from their IT investments. IT demand management is a critical IT governance process that extends beyond merely aggregating requests for IT resources and automating workflow. Best practices in IT demand management: align the supply of IT resources to optimise business value; influence and modify end user behavior by providing meaningful information; and enable a more complete understanding of the costs and tradeoffs associated with the consumption of IT services and resources. This increased transparency leads to improved decision-making and increases the business value of IT investments — the goal of good IT governance.

Business relationships trump technology concerns for IT execs in 2007, despite unfinished or vexing technical tasks, based on a recent survey of 239 IT executives. These respondents picked the longstanding issues of alignment, governance, and communicating value as their top concerns. Below these, but still important, were cross-unit business initiatives, migration to shared services, and the exploration of business process management (BPM) technologies as a way to formalise the management of business processes. These areas of concern highlight the growing realisation among CIOs that while technology prowess and depth is critical for their organisations, they must help the business units of their enterprise achieve still-elusive efficiencies from technology.

For over 15 years, FrontRange Solutions has been a leading worldwide independent provider of Service Management and CRM solutions specifically for the small and medium sized enterprise (SME) and distributed enterprise markets. Our award-winning GoldMine® and HEAT® software products have enabled companies of all sizes to improve service delivery and minimise the impacts of change.

Building upon the unequaled success of our HEAT® Service & Support. product line, our new IT Service Management solution combines ITIL best practices, along with the experience gained from over 15 years of improving the way IT organisations worldwide deliver services. The resulting solution represents a feature rich set of Service Management modules all leveraging a common platform that allow you to transform your IT organisation from proactive to reactive, while reducing the overall costs associated with service delivery.

The purpose of the research was to identify IT service management issues facing companies at both a strategic and operational level. FrontRange Solutions commissioned independent researchers, Vanson Bourne, to undertake the survey. The results reflect the views of 102 IT directors and 100 IT managers of medium (1,000+ employee) and large (3,000+ employee) businesses across the UK.

Despite the well-used phrase ‘a fool with a tool is still a fool’ there are still many service catalogue initiatives that start and end with the selection of technology. These initiatives are doomed for failure. Armed with technology alone will be extremely dangerous to the success of your service catalogue. This paper discusses how to implement a successful service catalogue with technology selection a crucial component but one of many critical success factors.