Cloud-based IT Service Management pioneer, Service-now.com is holding their annual user conference titled “Knowledge” at San Diego on April 18 – 22, 2010 at the Omni San Diego Hotel. The 4th annual conference of the SaaS player will officially start on April 20, with pre-conference sessions happening on the days before. The agenda has not been fixed yet and the call for papers is on.

Last year’s user conference was attended by 300 people, most of them being customers and partners from the Service-now eco-system.

User conferences are a good thing. It brings customers together with both the company and fellow customers. They learn from each other’s experiences and strategies. The vendor gets the opportunity to talk about best practices that can be used in the product(s). Case studies help understand different perspectives to tackle a problem. It can also be a great place for solution providers and partners to highlight their presence and expertise.

Some of the topics that could be covered in Service-now’s conference include:

• Creating a service catalog
• Designing an effective CMDB
• Workflow Automation
• Adopting ITIL v.3
• The full list is here.

I checked with Service-now and they have opened the conference to other vendors and speakers – it is not just restricted to people using/deploying Service-now. That is a good thing because finally the customer benefits.

Other interesting shows that you may be interested in going are:
- HDI’s 2010 Annual Conference and Expo – March 16 – 19, 2010 at Orlando Florida (http://www.thinkhdi.com/hdi2010/)
- Forrester’s Infrastructure & Operations Forum 2010 – March 17-18, 2010 at Dallas, Texas (http://www.forrester.com/events/eventdetail?eventID=2436)
- Interop Las Vegas – April 25 – 29, 2009 (http://www.interop.com/lasvegas/)

More details on upcoming events can be found on our events page.

What would happen if our regular help desk integrated with social networking platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google Docs, etc. Would it be possible? Will it be useful? Will it increase the load on the help desk or reduce it? Will it help the end user or hamper him?

ITIL itself defines the help desk as a “single point of contact”. Social networking talks about collaboration – multiple points of contact. Aren’t they really paradoxical?

Let’s look at how organizations function. They have multiple end users, an IT department with a support team  that helps the end users with most of their IT problems. The end user contacts the support team when he/she has a problem. The support team resolves the issue. And they have a system to keep track of all this work. Most companies are like this. Throw in a few ITIL concepts, and you set up processes for incident, problem, change management. Keep an inventory of all the assets in the organization. Call it the CMDB. And so it goes on..

Now let’s add some of that social networking in there. Let’s take Facebook as our first example. There is no doubt that Facebook is a popular web application and many users spend their daily time on this service. So why not integrate your help desk into Facebook? What does that mean? One possible meaning is that your users could directly report the problem to you via Facebook. So you build an app that integrates with your office helpdesk and users can directly report problems or request services from there. The support team can look into the request and close within the help desk and let the user by writing on his wall. There is one problem though. Would you want to tell the whole world about all the problems you are having at work? Are IT support teams confident to go out in the public space and show the world the stuff they are made of.

Twitter. The user tweets his problem to the support staff. Staff resolves the problem and tweets back. There could be an implementation of this for the intranet, where the user can simply open a common portal and enter their request and hit the send button. Other end users can see the common tweets and they can simply retweet it. So now the IT team knows they have a problem at hand. Yammer is like Twitter for an organization but I am not sure if it can be used as an alternative to a help desk software. It is not going to be easy to convince everyone to tweet their problems, when we are so used to email.

Twitter is already being used by the external help desk or the customer service department. We have heard of how Comcast and Dell have tracked end-user user conversations on Twitter and how this has become a whole new channel of communication for customer service.

Let’s take a look at some collaboration software like Google Docs & Spreadsheets. Would that be useful to the IT support enterprise? They could be used to edit technical documents among the IT staff (Wikis can be very useful for this). The end user can view these collaborated documents and use them to resolve the problem or access the service themselves. The IT team can check out what document has popular demand and take appropriate action.

So let’s come back to our first question – Would it be possible? Yes. But I don’t know of any vendor who has got these features already. The more time people are going to spend on the Internet and the more social networking sites become popular, people will only become more comfortable with this type of usage.

Will it be useful? Yes. But IT teams are not going to want a lot of exposure to the outside world. Most of the requests that come to the help desk and incidents and problems and we don’t want our users talk about our problems in the outside world. But we could try internalize it – use social networking features within the organizations and leverage the power of the cloud within your network.

Will it increase the load on the help desk or reduce it? Will it help the end user or hamper him? It would definitely help the help desk reduce its work load but I think it will only work for help desk that are open to new technologies. Let’s face it – there are many managers out there who are not going to like other people doing their job. But for the open-minded help desk, social networking would be the added advantage.

What do you think? Do you think social networking would help the help desk or the IT support team? Will it benefit the end user? Let us know in the comments below.

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?

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.

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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.

When talking about the advantages of the SaaS Service Desk, vendors often (appropriately) focus on Return on Investment, through the elimination of the infrastructure and maintenance costs associated with the service desk.  However, this neglects one of the most powerful selling points of the SaaS approach when applied to the Service Desk; specifically that it supports our mobile, distributed workforce much more effectively than the traditional approach.

First, let’s understand when we’re talking about the Mobile Workforce, we’re really talking about two different communities:

• Supporting the Telecommuting/Mobile End-User
• Supporting mobile Service Desk personnel

The SaaS model provides a huge benefit for the service desk supporting a mobile end-user base.  By putting the end-user or Self Service interface to the service desk on the web, SaaS puts the ability for end-users to enter, track, and correspond with tickets on any computer with a browser that they can access.   It’s outside the corporate firewall, so no complicated VPN software, or security set up is required for end-users gain access to the service desk.  Think through the scenario… A travelling sales person needs to get a laptop repair scheduled.  His/her laptop isn’t working, but they can still get all the information to the Service Desk to schedule the call via the publicly available computer located in their hotel’s business center.

A similar benefit is given to mobile service-desk personnel, however this time it extends to the ability to “work tickets” at any computer connected to the internet.   How many times has the person needing to update information on a ticket, or even get contact information for a user calling in found him/herself at a family member’s house on the weekend, without their company laptop.  But with SaaS, they can again get at the information they need to at least perform initial response to the call via whatever computer they can access, improving customer response times, even when support personnel are caught away outside business hours.

These benefits are in contrast to the traditional implementation, which usually involves setting up additional web server(s) in the corporate DMZ.  Handling all the security issues of poking holes through the corporate firewall to make the service desk visible to the web are also a concern in these instances.  Meanwhile, the SaaS model gives all of this functionality, accessible through a simple internet connection, “out of the box”.

So why should you be worried about this?  We’re living in a recession after all, right?  In the 2009 US Hiring Forecast by CareerBuilder.com, seven major hiring trends were identified.   Two are of great interest…

31% of US Employers say they plan to provide more flexible work arrangements in 2009.  40% of which include telecommuting.

13% of employers are also indicating that they are planning on adding “Green Jobs”.  Telecommuting is one of the most efficient ways to make a job “Green” by eliminating the carbon footprint associated with commuting.

So is your Service Desk organization ready to support a more mobile workforce?  As you consider your service desk software options is this part of your thinking?  Maybe it should be…

Vernon Palango is the Principle Consultant for InteQ Corporation’s On Demand ITSM & ITIL Solutions organization. www.inteqnet.com

On-demand software is becoming more popular these days with the growth of broadband and faster computing. Services like Gmail, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Flickr and Facebook have become part of our every day lives. People don’t write diaries anymore, they blog. They don’t create albums anymore, they post pictures online.

That has happened in the corporate space too, where native applications have moved to the cloud. This solves a lot of problems for the organization or business.

• They don’t have to install/maintain hardware for serving those applications.
• They don’t have to spend on power to maintain that hardware.
• They don’t have to have the workforce to take care of that setup.

On the cloud means someone else has your server, application, support personnel. The only thing you need to do is sign up for the service. And they will help you get up and running.

In the help desk software space, there are a number of vendors who provide help desk on-demand. Service-now.com, Parature and Zendesk.com are some prime examples. Cherwell Software made an announcement on Thursday that they have come up with an on-demand version of their help desk. ManageEngine announced their on-demand network monitoring solution last month. Along with that annoucement, they mentioned that they will bringing out their service desk application on the cloud too.

So many vendors going on the cloud. They should see some trend. But are they getting customers? Of course they do. But are they getting any big customers. Are businesses really cutting down their IT workforce? The question really is – do they trust a third-party vendor to take care of their infrastructure. What about stability? Will these vendors be able to provide stable apps 24×7. We have heard of downtimes from even the giants – Google and Yahoo!

But I am still optimistic. I think on-demand is the next logical step. It makes a lot of sense to me. Any business can go the cloud and avoid expenses on infrastructure and personnel. It is easier to get started and you are up and running faster than you would with on-premise software.

I would love to hear what you think. Post your comments.