ManageEngine announced a managed services edition of their help desk software – ServiceDesk Plus. The new release is a complete web-based integrated package, including incident and service request management, self-service portal, knowledge base, IT asset management, even purchase and contract management. The new software is available in either a Standard Edition, providing the full range of basic help desk management functions, with a knowledge base and self service portal; or Professional Edition, which includes all the features found in the Standard Edition plus complete asset management.

Managed services allow organizations outsource the regular tasks like IT/network/help desk management to third party service providers. This helps those organizations focus on their core business and keep costs low because someone else is taking care of those problems. With the right service levels, managed services can help reduce the ticket resolution times and bring expertise to the table, something which the regular organization does not have to invest in. The service provider, of course, gets the advantage to  share his expertise and costs among multiple accounts getting better ROI.

The new offering from ManageEngine gives the service provider the software to manage the help desk services of multiple accounts. It covers basic ticket management with service levels, knowledge base, self-service portal, asset management. Interestingly, the new edition derives from one of their flagship products that comes ready with ITIL modules like incident, problem and change management. But it looks like the new MSP edition will not have the ITIL modules built into it for now.

A simple Google search will tell you there are many companies who provide such services to their clients. One of them has been quoted in the official ManageEngine press release – “As a Managed Service Provider who has been in the IT helpdesk industry for over 18 years and used a number of different helpdesk applications to support over a hundred customers, we believe that we have finally found a solution that fulfills our requirements,” said Jason Roberts, Technical Manager for TCNS, an IT and Network Support provider. “ManageEngine allows our customers to be kept up-to-date on a three-tier level – telephone, web and email – provides excellent SLA options based on individual customers, allows our technical staff to be kept updated instantly on all requests, and most of all, provides an easy-to-use reporting facility, which can be pre-scheduled, giving me the time to concentrate on other business requirements! It has all the features an MSP needs at a very affordable price. Now I can focus on my customers without worrying about the software, features or prices.”

The economy, rising prices and how-do-you-keep-your-costs-low-question are helping managed services. Companies like ManageEngine make that process easier. What do you think? Do you think managed services in the help desk market will help? Have you thought of going the managed services route or are you already in the path? Let us know. We would love to hear your views.

Spiceworks, the Austin-based free IT management software vendor, is making strides with the release of a new version of its software. The new version – the 17th release from the company – comes with support for larger networks (upt0 1000 computers). To put this in perspective, the previous version supported networks with fewer than 500 computers. Other key feature additions in this version include real-time SQL Server monitoring, enhanced scan scheduling, editable network maps, help desk queues and SSL support.

For the uninitiated, Spiceworks offers free IT management software that lets you monitor your network, manage IT assets and run a help desk. The company claims to have over 830,000 business users in 196 countries worldwide. The software can also be run in MSP mode for service providers who provide network management and help desk services for their clients. How do they keep it free? They run ads inside the user interface.

Some of the features they announced in this release includes:

• Real-Time SQL Server Monitoring – provides real-time monitoring of key SQL Server performance metrics, including transaction load, I/O throughput and disk space consumption.
• Dynamic Scan Control – gives users more flexibility and control over how their networks are scanned, including allowing individual and customized scans by device, subnet and department. Better support for remote locations is also included.
• SSL Support – offers full SSL encryption to provide greater security within organizations and for MSPs and businesses using the software to remotely manage multiple offices and locations.
• Customizable Network Maps – provides the ability to create and view multiple network maps, edit existing network elements and add new elements, change the layout and organization of the elements, and add annotations.
• Help Desk Routing and Queuing – allows users to group and work help desk tickets based on the content or source in the ticket – such as “all printer problems” or “tickets from the marketing organization.” Rules can be based on any data attribute in the system, including title, summary, source, severity, employee, or user defined attributes.

Spiceworks also reached out to its community to add support for multiple languages in the software – 10 languages to be exact including German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Danish and Croatian. The Spiceworks community continues to add more languages to the software.

Spiceworks also told me that most Spiceworks users are located here in the USA but they also have users in parts of Europe, Australia, India, Brazil etc.

Spiceworks has an interesting business model when it comes to IT management software and there are a lot of eyes on it to see how it performs. More details on the release here.

HDI Announces the 2009 Annual Practices & Salary Report, Presents an Overall Look at the State of the IT Support Industry

HDI, the world’s largest membership association for help desk and IT service and support professionals and the premier certification body for the industry, today announced the 2009 Annual Practices & Salary Report, a comprehensive study that presents an overall look at the state of the IT support industry. The report shows that the technical support industry is working hard to maintain its commitment to the service and support of end-users and customers, despite the difficult economic backdrop.

“The Annual Practices & Salary Report takes a deep dive into the state of the service and support industry. It offers an inside look at support centers’ practices used throughout the industry which assists managers and directors to validate existing practices, showcases new ideas for improving methods and procedures in support centers and also provides a set of data to which support centers can benchmark against,” said Rich Hand, HDI Executive Director of Membership. “Given the world’s current economic climate, support centers are working hard to maintain their commitment to the industry and meet the needs of their customers.”

The study was conducted with 1,053 participants from 11 industries between May and July 2009 from the United States, Australia, Canada, India and Philippines. The results illustrate behaviors and opinions of support centers in a wide array of industries, sizes, and organizations that range from local to international. The report is broken down into six categories, including Incident Management; Support Tools; Process, Procedures, and Strategies; Performance Metrics; Training, Certification, and Satisfaction; and Salaries.

Report highlights include:

• Even though support centers in general do not appear to be supporting more customers, the large majority of support centers continue to see an increase in their number of incidents. The leading contributor to increased incidents, once again, is attributed to changes in infrastructure and/or products.
• Self-help tools are the primary implementation initiative for 13 percent of support centers. This is up from 10 percent in 2008.
• The telephone continues to be the leading communication channel for incident management, followed by email. One-third of support centers respond to email incidents between 15 minutes and one hour and over one-third respond between one and four hours. Additionally, 70 percent of incidents are resolved with two or less email exchanges and fewer e-mail incidents are being converted to phone support than in 2008.
• The number of support centers whose employees are receiving bonuses is down five percent. Still, there are 19 percent of support centers whose management receives bonuses and 45 percent whose management and staff receive bonuses.
• Fewer support centers are outsourcing services in all areas except for one, hardware support and repair. The top reasons support centers are not outsourcing more are due to concerns about control of service, service quality, customer acceptance and then cost.
• Support managers foresee both hiring freezes and salary freezes in their support organizations. This is up 21.4 percent and 23.6 percent, respectively from 2008.
• Although the primary training focus for new hires is product knowledge, customer service remains the number one area that support staffs are being trained in overall. The Computer industry is currently providing the most training for its IT support staffs while Manufacturing and Retail provide very little.
• Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) seems to be particularly popular in Australia as well as large support centers and with those who provide internal support. Forty-three percent of support organizations are currently using or implementing ITIL and 21 percent are planning to implement some part of it.
• Sixty-five percent of support centers said that there is no direct charge to their customer for support services. This is up 5 percent from 2008.
• Sixty-three percent of support centers currently use Knowledge Management Software, while 20 percent are planning to add it. In addition, over 13 percent of support centers are calling it their primary initiative for tool implementation.
• While many support centers are embracing collaborative tools such as Share Point (30 percent) and Wikis (17.4 percent), they do not widely use social networking tools such as blogs, Linked IN, Twitter, Face Book, or My Space to provide support.

For more information about HDI or the 2009 Practice & Salary Report, contact HDI Executive Director of Marketing Allison Wroe, 719-785-5355, awroe@thinkhdi.com; or visit http://www.thinkhdi.com.

About HDI

HDI, a Think Services company, is the world’s largest IT service and support membership association and the industry’s premier certification and training body. Guided by an international panel of industry experts and practitioners, HDI is the leading resource for help desk/support center emerging trends and best practices. HDI provides members with a vast repository of resources, networking opportunities and the largest industry event – the HDI Annual Conference and Expo. Headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colo., USA, HDI offers training in multiple languages and countries. For more information, visit http://www.thinkhdi.com or call +1 719.268.0174.

About Think Services

Think Services connects specialized communities worldwide using educational events, consulting, training, certification, membership, and innovative media. Providing comprehensive opportunities for people to learn from, network with, and inspire each other, Think Services builds strong brands and works within communities to foster a unique affinity with its products and services. The division’s flagship products include the Game Developers Conference, the Webby Award-winning Gamasutra.com, Game Developer magazine, the International Customer Management Institute (ICMI), and HDI. Think Services is a subsidiary of United Business Media, a global media and marketing services company with a market capitalization of more than $1.6 billion. To learn more, visit www.think-services.com.

So finally one of the Big 4 – BMC Software has taken their service desk offering to the cloud. BMC Software announced this strategic alliance at Dreamforce 2009, Salesforce.com’s premier cloud-computing event. This new alliance will help BMC put its IT management solutions on the Force.com platform.

Not Remedy
BMC is planning to put the Service Desk Express application on Force.com and will deliver cloud-enabled service desk, self-service and inventory management capabilities.

BMC mentioned that it is currently scheduled to be available in the second quarter of calendar year 2010. This is interesting because Microsoft is also planning to release their version of the service desk technology sometime in 2010.

New Beginnings
This announcement among others at Dreamforce 2009 is a new beginning for both Salesforce.com and BMC Software. Salesforce.com has been trying to tell its client base that it is not a CRM company and with vendors like BMC and CA, it is able to provide a set of enterprise apps on the cloud. This will help BMC Software move away from its traditional software delivery method to the cloud.

Pricing for the new service has not been revealed yet.

Interesting Times Ahead
It will be interesting to see how this new service from one of the Big4 fares with established service-desk-on-demand players like Service-now.com and Zendesk. HP and CA have on-demand versions of the service desk technology too. What do you think?

AUSTIN, Texas – (Business Wire) Spiceworks™, Inc. released a new plug-in for its free social IT management software application, which enables IT professionals to automatically regulate the power consumption of networked computers. The downloadable Power Manager plug-in – developed in cooperation with Intel Corporation – is designed to link everyday network and systems management tasks with green IT initiatives. Spiceworks estimates that if half its 800,000 users worldwide deploy the new power management plug-in, they could save more than $500 million in annual electricity costs and eliminate 3 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions. Currently more than 28 million desktops, laptops and servers are managed by the free Spiceworks IT Desktop.

“Building more energy-efficient PCs and devices is only one step in making IT green,” said Scott Abel, co-founder and CEO of Spiceworks. “The software that manages networked devices can also play a more active role in saving energy. Today with the help of Intel, we’ve tuned the Spiceworks IT Desktop software to do just that so our growing network of businesses can do more to save money and help the environment.”

The new power management plug-in can be downloaded for free from the Spiceworks Plug-in Center at http://community.spiceworks.com/plugin/172 and includes the following features:

* Remote Power Consumption Management – allows users to remotely manage the power consumption of PCs, laptops, and other networked devices. This includes the ability to use Wake On LAN and Intel® vPro™ technology features to power-on and -off devices based on schedules and other criteria;
* Power Management Dashboard – shows a visual map of networked machines and devices that are powered on or off; and
* Dollar Savings View – displays estimates of dollars saved per day and month based on current price/kwh and watts used by networked devices.

“Many organizations are adding environmental sustainability goals to their constant search for new opportunities to be socially responsible and to save money,” said Rick Echevarria, vice president and general manager, Intel Business Client Platforms. “Our collaboration with Spiceworks to develop the Power Manager plug-in for Intel® Core™2 processors with vPro™ technology-based PCs, provides businesses a cost-efficient way to more carefully and actively manage the valuable energy consumed by their IT networks.”

The Spiceworks IT Desktop is a free social IT management application that’s used by over 800,000 IT professionals and 75,000 managed service providers (MSPs) worldwide to automatically inventory, monitor, troubleshoot, report on and run a help desk for IT networks. It is the first business application to embed crowdsourcing, social networking and community collaboration features directly into an IT professional’s daily workflow. Currently Spiceworks is used in 196 countries worldwide to support 26 million employees and manage 40 million technology devices.

More information on Spiceworks can be found at www.spiceworks.com. Follow Spiceworks on Twitter: http://twitter.com/spiceworks. To connect with Spiceworks on Facebook visit http://www.facebook.com/pages/Spiceworks/15382903707.

About Spiceworks

Founded by network and systems management software pioneers, Spiceworks develops the first free social IT management application that incorporates crowdsourcing to help over 800,000 businesses and 75,000 managed service providers (MSPs) simplify everything IT. Spiceworks makes it easy for IT pros to manage their networks, collaborate to solve technology problems, and find the best practices, products and services they need day-to-day. Through its Voice of ITTM market research program, the company also publishes data on important technology usage, staffing and purchasing trends by small and medium businesses worldwide. Spiceworks is a privately held company headquartered in Austin, Texas with funding from Austin Ventures and Shasta Ventures. For more information visit www.spiceworks.com.

Spiceworks and Voice of IT are trademarks of Spiceworks, Inc. All other names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

For Spiceworks
Karl Scholz, 512-493-0909
karl.scholz@virtualprdirector.com

Survey responses collected from ITSM professionals visiting the InteQ booth at the itSMF Fusion 2009 Conference indicate ‘ease of adoption’ as their most important factor when choosing a service desk solutions provider

BEDFORD, MA, November 17, 2009 – InteQ, a leading provider of SaaS and On Demand IT Service Management solutions, has released the survey results of a study conducted at the itSMF Fusion Conference in Dallas last month which polled visitors to their booth on the most important factor when considering a service desk application. Nearly 82% of ITSM professionals surveyed indicated ‘ease of adoption’ as being the most important factor in their consideration process.

IT organizations continue to struggle with the challenges of managing and maintaining enterprise service desk applications due to the impact across the enterprise. The results of this survey indicate that professionals have recognized the disruption brought on by a forced upgrade resulting in a re-implementation or application change and value a solution that is easily adopted. InteQ recognizes adoption as the ability to fully implement the application in conjunction with the pace at which the staff is trained and end users are actively utilizing it. InteQ clients have typically rolled out the SaaS service desk application within 30-90 days across the enterprise.

The second highest factor according to survey results was the ability to automate ITIL best practices. As IT organizations continue to take on more projects that have a direct effect on the business, automation becomes an essential consideration due to the ability to conserve and reallocate time and resources previously devoted to manually ensuring processes were adhered to. InteQ customers have experienced the application ensuring 100% accuracy due to its unique data-driven and action-based application architecture.

“The service desk may be the only IT resource guaranteed to touch everyone within an organization and an application change effects everyone, not just the IT support team. It was no surprise to us that ease of adoption was valued as the most important factor when considering a change and we take pride in our ability to promise this to our clients,” Yash Shah, President and CTO, InteQ. “Our service desk application, InfraDesk, is simple to deploy and simple to use. Client have adopted and fully implemented this solution in weeks and through its SaaS delivery model, upgrades to the application are seamless and non-disruptive; both important factors to consider when choosing a service desk application.”

In addition to ease of adoption and automation of ITIL best practices, the total cost of ownership (TCO) and time to production ranked considerably high. The following were the results based on feedback provided by a sample of the over 1500 ITSM professionals surveyed by InteQ at the 2009 itSMF Fusion conference:

Gartner indicates “IT organizations are looking to IT service desk tools to help reduce service and support costs, increase end-user productivity, align themselves closer to the business, provide high-end user satisfaction, and be the hub for a larger IT service management (ITSM) suite of tools…. Clients want quicker implementations due to limited budgets and a need to prove quicker return on investment (ROI), but also because they want to follow industry (ITIL) best practices and don’t want to customize.” *

The company’s ITIL SaaS Service Desk solution was designed and developed based on the company’s historical knowledge both implementing and actively using service desk tools. The result was a solution that is easily adopted and implemented due to pre-configured workflows based on ITIL best practices and built-in auto-routing functionality. InfraDesk clients are up and running within weeks (days in some cases) and have noted a significant increase in end-user adoption through the self-service portal; a clear validation of the ease and value of the application.

InfraDesk – ITIL SaaS Service Desk

InfraDesk is an ITIL SaaS Service Desk application delivered as a service over the web based on InteQ’s unique ITIL process automation approach and experience. The simple and robust enterprise service desk solution provides the foundation for IT organizations Service Delivery and Operations to ultimately support overall Service Strategy. Through its Software as a Service (SaaS) delivery model, InfraDesk enables large organizations to eliminate costly maintenance upgrades and lengthy implementation cycles commonly associated with traditional on-premise software while providing the affordability to small and medium-sized organizations without sacrificing functionality or flexibility. Since its introduction to the service desk market, InfraDesk has been implemented in organizations globally accelerating value and savings for clients. InfraDesk was also the recipient of the Network Product Guide ‘Best in SaaS’ and the American Business Awards ‘Best New SaaS Product’.

About InteQ

Founded in 1995, InteQ is a leader in on demand IT Service Management (ITSM), providing a comprehensive suite of managed services (IT Monitoring-as-a-service and IT Management-as-a-service), an ITIL SaaS service desk solution, and award-winning training and consulting in ITIL – the IT Infrastructure Library. InteQ’s on demand solutions have been successfully implemented in over 90 countries through its global service delivery model with operations in the United States and India. For more information, visit www.inteqnet.com or contact 888.4IT.MGMT.

###

InteQ Corporation, InteQ, the InteQ logo and InfraDesk are registered trademarks of InteQ Corporation. All other product and company names mentioned are used for identification purposes only and may be property of their respective owners.

*Gartner Magic Quadrant for the IT Service Desk, published October 16, 2009

Combination of Modern SaaS and PinkVERIFY Designation Provides Customers With Unrivaled ITSM Tool Purchasing Confidence

SAN DIEGO, CA–(Marketwire – July 16, 2009) – Service-now.com, the pioneer of modern SaaS for IT service automation, today announced the achievement of PinkVERIFY status for support of eleven IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) processes. The designation is only applied to IT service management (ITSM) tools objectively assessed by Pink Elephant as meeting the functional requirements for ITIL compatibility.

“Service-now.com has shown a commitment to IT best practice with the PinkVERIFY certification,” said David Ratcliffe, President of Pink Elephant. “ITIL is recognized today as the most credible framework from which companies can align their processes and procedures. With this certification, Service-now.com now offers customers and prospects an extra level of assurance that their SaaS application for IT service management meets the industry ’stamp of approval’ for ITIL compatibility.”

Service-now.com is the first enterprise IT service management application to be delivered via modern software-as-a-service (SaaS). Service-now.com invites people to try a live instance of the application at http://demo.service-now.com. No registration is required.

IT organizations considering Service-now.com can now look to PinkVERIFY, the live Service-now.com demo instance, and more than 280 existing customers to validate Service-now.com support for ITIL best practices.

According to the PinkVERIFY assessment, Service-now.com effectively supports ITIL activities and IT best practices for:

--  Incident management
--  Problem management
--  Knowledge management
--  Request fulfillment
--  Change management
--  Release and deployment
--  Service asset and configuration
--  Service level management
--  Service catalog management
--  Service portfolio management
--  Financial management

“Service-now.com has almost 300 happy customers today because they were able to test drive the car before buying it. Now, with the addition of PinkVERIFY, prospective Service-now.com customers have the equivalent of a Carfax report. Service-now.com is dedicated to transparency and simplicity in the IT service management tool-buying process. With Service-now.com, there are only pleasant surprises,” said Fred Luddy, Service-now.com CEO.

Pink Elephant is celebrating 20 years of ITIL experience — more than any other supplier. Operating through many offices across the globe, the company is the world’s number one supplier of ITIL and ITSM conferences, education and consulting services. For more information, please visit http://www.pinkelephant.com.

About Service-now.com

Service-now.com enterprise IT service automation software combines ITIL v3 process support, software-as-a-service (SaaS) delivery, and Web 2.0 functionality to provide a flexible, intuitive and self-managing application. Service-now.com was founded by Fred Luddy, former CTO of Peregrine Systems and Remedy. The company is based in Solana Beach, Calif. and has more than 280 enterprise customers worldwide. For more information, please visit http://www.service-now.com/.

InfraDesk, InteQ’s On Demand Service Desk, was recognized with ‘Best New Product – Software-as-a-Service’ Stevie Award from the 2009 American Business Awards for its innovative approach to deliver IT Service Management through a SaaS model

We are honored to earn this recognition for InfraDesk which we developed to enable IT organizations to adopt a full-featured service desk application without the high costs and complexity associated with on-premise enterprise applications

Bedford, MA (PRWEB) July 7, 2009 — InteQ, a leading provider of On Demand IT Service Management solutions, announced today that their On Demand Service Desk , InfraDesk, has won the Stevie Award for “Best New Product” in the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) category from the 2009 American Business Awards . Since 2002, the Stevie Awards has created an opportunity for solution providers to be publicly recognized for their achievements and positive contributions to organizations. Thousands of entries are received each year and only a handful are selected as Finalists.

“We are honored to earn this recognition for InfraDesk which we developed to enable IT organizations to adopt a full-featured service desk application without the high costs and complexity associated with on-premise enterprise applications,” stated Santhana Krishnan, Chairman & CEO InteQ. “Over a decade of consulting and implementing solutions such as BMC Remedy and HP Service Desk allowed us to experience the unmet needs our clients faced; a cost effective solution based on ITIL with full functionality they require to support their business. Our experience with IT service management has enabled us to develop a greater solution for our clients and prospective clients and that is validated by the awards we receive, such as the Stevie, and by the 50,000+ users who access InfraDesk daily to solve problems globally.”

Recognizing the pain felt throughout the market due to legacy architectures and administrative costs associated with on-premise help desk and service desk software solutions, InteQ developed InfraDesk to enable IT organizations to easily adopt a fully featured, ITIL-based application via a SaaS delivery model. Software-as-a-service is consistently recognized as a cost effective alternative to traditional enterprise software due to the elimination of in-house infrastructure, costly upgrades and annual maintenance and administration costs. Upon provisioning, InfraDesk is delivered with out-of-the-box ITIL-based modules and processes which customers take less than 30 days to roll-out with a base cost of less than $1000 per month.

The awards were presented during ceremonies at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City. The ceremonies were hosted by Cheryl Casone of Fox Business Network and broadcast nationwide on radio by the Business TalkRadio Network. More than 200 executives across the country participated in the judging process to determine the Finalists and Stevie Award winners. To view a complete list of the honorees, visit http://www.stevieawards.com/aba/ .

InfraDesk is also the recipient of 2009 Network Product Guide’s Best in SaaS award. The solution is actively used to support internal external users in organizations such as Timberland , Eastern Mountain Sports and Sierra Atlantic. For more information please visit www.inteqnet.com/web-based-help-desk .

InfraDesk – an On Demand Service Desk Solution

InfraDesk is an On Demand Service Desk application delivered as a service over the web based on InteQ’s unique ITIL process automation approach based on over 15 years of delivering IT service management solutions to enterprises. The simple and robust enterprise service desk solution provides the foundation for IT organizations Service Delivery and Operations to ultimately support overall Service Strategy. Through its Software as a Service (SaaS) delivery model, InfraDesk enables large organizations to eliminate costly maintenance upgrades, complex customizations and lengthy implementation cycles commonly associated with traditional software while providing the affordability to small and medium-sized organizations to adopt ITIL based solution without sacrificing functionality or flexibility.

About InteQ

Founded in 1995, InteQ is a leader in on demand IT Service Management (ITSM), providing a comprehensive suite of managed services , an on-demand service desk solution, and award-winning training and consulting in ITIL – the IT Infrastructure Library. InteQ’s on demand solutions have been successfully implemented in over 90 countries through its global service delivery model with operations in the United States and India. For more information, visit www.inteqnet.com or contact 888.4IT.MGMT.

About The Stevie Awards

Stevie Awards are conferred in four programs: The American Business Awards, The International Business Awards, The Stevie Awards for Women in Business, and the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. Honoring companies of all types and sizes and the people behind them, the Stevies recognize outstanding performances in the workplace worldwide. Learn more about The Stevie Awards at www.stevieawards.com.

InteQ Corporation, InteQ and the InteQ logo are registered trademarks of InteQ Corporation. All other product and company names mentioned are used for identification purposes only and may be property of their respective owners.

Axios Systems, the world’s leading provider of IT Service Management (ITSM) solutions, announces its partnership with GroundWork Open Source, the leader in commercial open source systems and network management software.

Axios Systems and GroundWork have partnered to provide the integrated solution, assystMonitor, that can provide end-to-end monitoring of operational infrastructures with full integration to the assyst IT Service Management suite.

assystMonitor can provide complete availability, performance, capacity, utilization and fault information, as well as the full range of hardware and software. assystMonitor can integrate directly with your existing monitoring solutions from HP, IBM, Microsoft and other vendors.

This information is correlated and presented to the assyst IT Service Management suite to allow you to detect, diagnose, isolate and correct events, allowing you to provide effective Operational Support and Analysis (OS&A).

Alan Cooke, Vice President Worldwide Field and Channel Operations at GroundWork Open Source, said, “Axios is a recognized thought leader in IT Service Management and ITIL Best Practices. The joint solution combines Axios’ ITSM expertise with the system management prowess of GroundWork for a powerful option to more expensive alternatives.”

Ailsa Symeonides, Sales and Marketing Director at Axios Systems says, “Using GroundWork’s monitoring tool, we have created an integrated solution that can help organizations reduce their total cost of ownership (TCO) and measure the performance of applications, giving complete peace of mind and adding value by incorporating monitoring into their ITIL processes.”

About Axios Systems

Axios Systems is the world’s leading provider of IT Service Management (ITSM) solutions. Its customer-centric approach, combined with its award-winning software, enables customers to improve their Service Delivery and Support and deliver Continual Service Improvement (CSI) by helping to align and realign IT services to changing business needs, supporting business processes and improving productivity.

Benefiting from more than 20 years of development and investment around Best Practice principles, Axios Systems’ core solution, assyst, built around our market-leading Configuration Management Database (CMDB), intuitively steers users through the ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) processes which help organizations transition toward the next generation of ITSM and Service Desks. assyst offers a unique lifecycle approach to ITSM with the integration of all ITIL processes (including Incident, Capacity, Problem, Change, Asset, Configuration and Service Level Management), twelve of which have been verified by Pink Elephant’s PinkVERIFY service as compatible with industry best practices (Based on ITIL V3), in a fully integrated, out-of-the-box application. It empowers management with a dashboard-based transparent view of real-time performance against Service Level Agreements (SLA), and Operations Level Agreements (OLA) using Web 2.0 technologies.

Implementing assyst into an organization optimizes IT Infrastructure efficiency, reduces overheads and lowers the total cost of IT ownership (TCO), helping to ensure a significant return on investment (ROI) with rapid time-to-value. Axios also offers a comprehensive set of consulting and training services to support ITSM best practices in an organization.

Axios is headquartered in the UK, with offices across Europe, the Americas, Middle East and Asia Pacific. Axios’ global presence is further strengthened with a worldwide network of partners. For more information, visit: www.axiossystems.com.

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.

About GroundWork

San Francisco-based GroundWork Open Source, Inc. (http://www.gwos.com) is the market leader in commercial open source network and systems management software, delivering enterprise-class network, system and application management solutions at a fraction of the cost of proprietary solutions.

GroundWork’s best of breed approach gives customers the flexibility to use diverse open source and proprietary technologies together under a unified interface, allowing users to leverage the advantages of open source while simultaneously preserving existing investments in legacy management tools. GroundWork’s solutions are in use at organizations like Crocs, National Australia Bank, Siemens, Travel Click and World Bank.

More information from:

Axios Systems plc
60 Melville Street
Edinburgh
EH3 7HF
United Kingdom
E-mail: assystuk@axiossystems.com
Website: http://www.axiossystems.com

Eastern Mountain Sports has chosen InfraDesk, On Demand Service Desk, to increase help desk application functionality not available in previous app TriActive

BEDFORD, MA, June 10, 2009 – Eastern Mountain Sports, a leading outdoor retailer, has replaced their TriActive help desk application with InfraDesk, an On Demand Service Desk. By implementing InfraDesk, Eastern Mountain Sports has reduced infrastructure costs, adopted a streamlined workflow and integrated a complete knowledge base.

Key drivers for making the switch included the cost associated with an upcoming renewal of Eastern Mountain Sport’s existing TriActive help desk software in addition to the lack of functionality the software afforded specifically as it related to the workflow engine and knowledge base integration. InfraDesk provides a streamlined workflow that enables the ticket to move through a pre-defined path in a measureable and controlled manner. The integration of a Knowledge Base was also essential to Eastern Mountain Sports to enable accelerated issue resolution by providing the ability to query and record solutions.

“In addition to reducing our costs and removing our need to budget for renewals, InfraDesk will increase our productivity and time to resolution due to the integrated Knowledge Base. We expect to notice a significant uptick in the time to resolve issues as well as the time required for new hires to get acclimated to the system. This is a direct result of InfraDesk’s Knowledge Management module which enables our IT Support Agents to query solutions populated by historical data,” stated David Lemaire, Director of Information Technology Services, Eastern Mountain Sports. “The Adaptive Workflow Engine within InfraDesk has also streamlined the movement of our tickets by driving the action based on the user’s role and the content within the ticket.”

InfraDesk is delivered as a complete out-of-the-box ITIL-based Service Desk suite with built-in adaptive workflows which enables organizations to complete implementation in less than 30 days. In order for IT organizations to gain the full benefits upon implementation, InteQ takes a partner approach and provides training and consulting to organizations to successfully plan a roadmap for implementation and process improvements.

“Similar to stories we have heard from other clients, Eastern Mountain Sports had not recognized the capabilities, let alone the cost savings, that a SaaS-based application provided. We are pleased that InfraDesk has been an asset to them since implementation by enabling them to adopt a help desk solution that is both measurable and controlled,” Yash Shah, President & CTO, InteQ. “Our partnerships with our clients are what make them successful. Not only do we provide a tool that is cost effective, but we educate them on how to maximize its use to reach their individual goals.”

InfraDesk – an On Demand Service Desk Solution

InfraDesk is an On Demand Service Desk application delivered as a service over the web based on InteQ’s unique ITIL process automation approach. The simple and robust enterprise service desk solution provides the foundation for IT organizations Service Delivery and Operations to ultimately support overall Service Strategy. Through its Software as a Service (SaaS) delivery model, InfraDesk enables large organizations to eliminate costly maintenance upgrades and lengthy implementation cycles commonly associated with traditional software models while providing the affordability to small and medium-sized organizations without sacrificing functionality or flexibility. A complimentary demonstration of the product is available at http://www.inteqnet.com/id_tech_demo/id_tech_demo.html .

About InteQ

Founded in 1995, InteQ is a leader in on demand IT Service Management (ITSM), providing a comprehensive suite of managed services, an on-demand service desk solution, and award-winning training and consulting in ITIL – the IT Infrastructure Library. InteQ’s on demand solutions have been successfully implemented in over 90 countries through its global service delivery model with operations in the United States and India. For more information, visit www.inteqnet.com or contact 888.4IT.MGMT.

About Eastern Mountain Sports

Founded in 1967 by two New England rock climbers and based in Peterborough, N.H., Eastern Mountain Sports is one of the nation’s leading outfitters of outdoor gear, clothing, footwear and accessories with 64 retail stores in 12 states. Eastern Mountain Sports designs and sells products for outdoor adventurers who participate in a variety of sports, such as mountaineering, backpacking, camping, hiking, adventure racing, climbing, kayaking, mountain biking and snow sports. Eastern Mountain Sports product and technology is tested by its product development and quality assurance teams in conjunction with the Eastern Mountain Sports Climbing, Kayaking and Ski Schools. More information is available at www.ems.com.

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InteQ Corporation, InteQ and the InteQ logo are registered trademarks of InteQ Corporation. All other product and company names mentioned are used for identification purposes only and may be property of their respective owners.