Delivering a wealth of data for the target machine, NetSupport DNA is recognised as providing one of the most comprehensive and detailed hardware inventory modules available on the market today. Compatible with Android phones and tablets, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, the new DNA mobile app connects with your central DNA inventory database, giving you access to accurate, up-to-the-minute asset management data wherever you are.

Key features include the ability to instantly call up the current hardware inventory for the target machine; view a detailed list of any historical changes to the hardware and software, and assess the cause of any logged PC alerts.

Expanding on the latest release, NetSupport’s Development Director Rob Hawkins explains: “Knowing the inventory of your IT assets is essential to the successful day-to-day management of any IT infrastructure. By making this data available on the move with our new mobile console, support engineers can now provide a much more effective service to customers while improving their own productivity.”

The NetSupport DNA mobile console app can be downloaded for free from the Android Marketplace or the Apple iTunes App store and is for use in conjunction with the NetSupport DNA Asset Management suite. Visit www.netsupportdna.com/mobile.asp for more information.

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 querying and interrogation of data at the desktop. Other features includes 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 hypotheses at the same time.

“Our expertise in business intelligence technology is of the highest calibre ensuring we provide both a deep understanding of Business Intelligence practices, and a thorough appreciation of the challenges and limitations faced by business decision makers and IT professionals today,” said Christine Headford, CTO at RMS Services.

“RMS Vision builds on this experience to deliver relevant information quickly and intuitively, allowing both strategic and operational management decisions to be agile, effective and responsive.”

The launch of this Google‐like business intelligence tool highlights a new and exciting addition to the RMS portfolio. The Business Optimisation Department at RMS is finding RMS Vision invaluable.

“The ease of use and depth of knowledge accessed from Vision has removed the need for dedicated analysts within the department and enabled everyone to interrogate data themselves,” continued Headford.

“With Vision, far more comprehensive information is provided in a fraction of the time, enabling better decisions to be made much more quickly than before.”

About RMS Services

www.rms.co.uk

RMS Services is based in Bristol, UK and was founded in 1987. Since then, it has been committed to designing, developing and supplying innovative IT management solutions and services – RMS provides the people, processes, software and solutions to guide you through each step of the ITIL process.

RMS’ experienced Business Management team is comprised of successful business leaders from a range of backgrounds including Computing, Service Management and Financial markets ensuring both a deep understanding of Business Process Management (BPR) and a thorough appreciation of the challenges and limitations faced by business decision makers and IT professionals today

Customers include Northern Rock, London Boroughs, University of the West of England, Capita Secure Information Systems and Howdens Joinery

The software also generates monthly savings reports, which can be shared with the Authority’s head of IT, management and ‘green team’ for further review. The energy savings contribute to the Authority’s Carbon Management Plan, which includes aims to help the Council cut its carbon emissions, reduce its environmental impact and improve its reputation within the community.

The largest market sector for PC power management segment solutions over the next five years will be public sector, followed by financial services and retail/wholesale. Pike Research says that the PC and server power management software market will grow from $168m in 2010 to $783m annually by 2015. The report forecasts that PC power management software alone could be saving almost 47 metric tons of C02 emissions by 2015, about the same as taking nearly eight million cars off the road.

“The software is deployed on our fleet of PCs, which are distributed across multiple sites throughout the authority. We can centrally manage the entire fleet on our central, corporate network,” says Janice Woodley, technology services manager, South Lanarkshire Council. “By centrally powering down PCs at 7pm each night – or 10pm for local leisure centres – and allowing users to power back up when they return to work in the morning we are achieving savings of £40,000 per annum. A simple action, which is achieving significant carbon and cash savings. We started with a slow, tiered roll-out of the software and we still managed to achieve ROI in year one. We did review multiple power management software products available on the market and chose Power Manager from Verismic Software because of its low cost, simplicity and ease of deployment.”

Ashley Leonard, CEO, Verismic Software adds: “Right now every local authority, NHS trust, emergency service, and education establishment is aiming to cut costs without affecting front line services. South Lanarkshire Council is one of an increasing number of public sector organisations that view power management as a route to achieving savings quickly and easily while protecting critical services. South Lanarkshire has seen great results already with a simple ‘turn off’ policy and can increase savings available in the future with the option to introduce more detailed, intelligent power management policies.”

RES will enable the University’s ICT team to control and maintain the mix of desktop platforms and applications used to deliver vital IT resources to students and staff on and off campus from a single point. RES will support roaming user profiles, ensuring users have fast and secure access to their personal desktop services – or workspaces – from any device and location.

Kingston University has also selected the RES Virtual Desktop Extender (VDX) reverse seamless technology to blend applications provisioned from its virtual and physical desktop infrastructure, so that the experience of accessing resources from different platforms appears seamless to the user. VDX will make it easier for the University to manage and deploy thousands of applications within its virtual environment.

“The solutions from RES will be instrumental in helping us achieve our vision of creating a ‘university without walls’, where our users can access managed resources from anywhere, any device, and whenever they are needed. RES Workspace Manager and VDX will be critical to delivering our ultimate goal of improving the experience of using IT and providing better desktop services to our staff and students,” said Daniel Bolton, system architect at Kingston University. “We looked at a variety of solutions to help us create a dynamic desktop environment. The solutions from RES provide powerful desktop management capabilities. They stood out for their advanced functionality, price point and ease of use.”

Kingston University will use the solutions to manage a hybrid desktop environment. The university runs a variety of virtual technologies including Quest vWorkspace, a desktop virtualisation platform, and Microsoft App-V, an application virtualisation solution and is transitioning 3,000 desktops to its virtual infrastructure starting this summer. The University will begin the migration of 7,000 physical XP endpoints to Windows 7 this summer as well.

“Innovative organisations are harnessing virtualisation in the quest to provide more agile services to users, whatever platform they are working on or where they happen to be. To deliver the agility benefits of desktop virtualisation, it is vital to have control over service provisioning and ensure the user has fast access to their personal desktop environment regardless of where or how they log on,” commented Chris Hammans, regional director UK for RES Software. “However many users you have or whichever technology choices you have made, the RES Software approach is based on providing user workspaces that will fit with those requirements.”

What is fascinating about Bytes’ strategic service improvement programme is that it is being pioneered by the financial director, Brad Fraser. Fraser identified a number of new business opportunities within the Bytes Group as well as undertaking a technology review of the service management processes, behaviours and working practices.

Bytes had become aware of its own requirements to rationalise its client support systems. Each business unit had its own way of operating, applications and software, which needed to be incorporated into the combined Bytes infrastructure and supported in a centralised model. This segmented approach had arisen as a direct result of the organisation’s growth strategy through company acquisitions, resulting in a complex IT infrastructure and client support matrix.   

Through ICCM’s e-Service Desk, Bytes established a progressive service management strategy. In addition, Bytes also initiated a technology strategy that has helped the company differentiate itself from competitors by creating new services for its product portfolio. As a result, the solution has enabled Bytes to generate new revenue opportunities.

Fraser, an experienced executive, is responsible for the financial direction of the business as well as the operational support systems. This ensures there is a continued focus on value, efficiency and vision, something which Fraser believes he has seen in this project.

He says, “Obviously having an ITIL-aligned service desk that operates smoothly is our immediate priority, but we see e-Service Desk being utilised across a number of different business units, effectively streamlining far more processes than we had originally anticipated. Our service management strategy has taken on a new direction which we are delighted to drive forward, particularly as it will help generate new revenue opportunities for the company.

“We have been able to distinguish between ‘incident management’ supported by SLA’s and ’change requests’, which require additional effort and scoping. This has enabled Bytes to generate revenue from the change requests that were previously dealt with under ‘problem management’. Other revenue opportunities are developing by offering e-Service Desk as a ’Managed Service’ to existing clients who do not wish to establish their own Service Desks.”

Bringing together offerings

The company needed a solution that encompassed and integrated the business intelligence that had gathered. The largest problem was ensuring the management of the clients’ IT infrastructure was correct.  Many different business managers needed to be able to use the technology, all with different skills, service sets, needs and priorities. 

Fraser explains, “We needed to revolutionise the way our business operated.  A number of strategic acquisitions in South Africa led to a range of different systems that had been inherited and utilised without a common approach. In order to maintain a smooth running of the client support systems, it was necessary to overhaul the service strategy, design and continual service improvement processes – and not just to cope with the current requirements, but to future proof.”

During the technology selection, each manager was asked for input into the process and base their decision on the results that could be generated from each solution – not just the technology.  Bytes needed a solution that would not only satisfy requirements on a tactical level, but actually solve problems they were thinking about. Nine out of the ten managers voted to implement the ICCM e-Service Desk solution.

Hidden gems

At the outset Bytes’ key driver in this service improvement project was the standardisation of its many service desks. The company soon realised the e-Service Desk solution offered a return on investment far beyond its original remit.

The solution has enabled Bytes to implement value added services and differentiate itself from key competitors in seven key ways:

•             total transparency of service;

•             bespoke client support;

•             proactive support and disaster avoidance;

•             business continuity;

•             bespoke SLA agreement levels;

•             consolidated view of data and third party information; and

•             the use of a portal to up-sell products and services.

By using the solution to its full advantage the company is offering improvements in its service and product portfolios and creating new business opportunities. As a result Bytes will be turning the client support function into a revenue-generating unit, rather than just cost-centre.

This has been achieved by allowing recognition of non-billable calls to billable calls. Anecdotally, the team has found that for larger customers, requests would be generated through the service desk. Previously, requests were undertaken without question because the particular customer was important. The priority for the service team was to keep the customer rather than ensuring the request was justified and could be completed within the service level agreement.  Now, each request is logged and, by implementing this process, the revenue opportunities have been identified. 

The entrepreneurial spirit of the organisation has also shown through during the process of moving from a cost centre to a profit centre – the business managers are now identifying new opportunities to generate additional revenue streams from the business intelligence obtained through ICCM.

ROI

Whilst Bytes has seen a return on investment beyond its initial expectations, the hidden gems of the e-Service Desk solution are central to Bytes’ key consideration during its purchasing decision: value.

Fraser says, “ICCM is a beautiful fit; we can literally change almost any parameter and it adapts accordingly, due to the operational platform based on Business Process Management.  And it’s not just about delivering service management process deployment, it enables us to demonstrate clear operational business value, efficiency and return on investment.  Without a doubt, this is the most effective solution I have ever worked with.”

“Many companies make claims in the market about their solutions but ICCM has propelled our service management, a core business process management function that delivers full business technology integration in line with our requirements and objectives. We’ve benefited enormously across every single business unit.”

http://www.iccm.co.uk/

The Queen’s Awards for Enterprise are a prestigious UK award, celebrating outstanding business success. HM The Queen makes the awards annually on the advice of the Prime Minister, who is assisted by an Advisory Committee that includes representatives from government, industry and commerce.

RealVNC receives the prestigious awards for the first time for its outstanding and sustained achievement in developing VNC technology into innovative new products, and creating a significant international commercial success. The Cambridge-based company has rapidly expanded its overseas sales, with exports comprising 90 percent of turnover.

Hundreds of millions of VNC users are spread across over 175 countries. VNC is used by IT professionals and individuals for applications such as remote IT support, maintenance, training and teleworking. Founded by the original inventors of VNC, RealVNC has continued to develop and drive forward the technology with a number of market-making initiatives. 

In an industry first, RealVNC has collaborated with Intel to embed VNC technology directly into the latest chipsets for built-in remote access to provide IT professionals with the ability to solve complex issues such as Operating System (OS) failures and boot problems without needing to make desk-side visits. The company also recently announced a major collaboration with Google to supply technology and expertise to enable remote access capability in Chrome products.

RealVNC has also developed VNC technology for mobile devices, with an application for iOS and Android launched through the Apple App Store and Android Market. This gives users the ability to access their desktop computers from Smartphone or tablet devices.  A recent entry into the automotive market has also led to the adoption of VNC as a standard for integrating mobile devices with in-car infotainment systems.

“It is the highest honour to receive the Queen’s Awards for Enterprise in not one but two categories,” said Dr Andy Harter, CEO of RealVNC. ”The award is testament to the enduring success of VNC technology and the dedication and enthusiasm of our staff. We are all very proud and will strive to continue to deliver UK innovation to the rest of the world.”

Automating day-to-day IT management tasks such as deploying applications, planning a major operating system rollout like Windows 7, provisioning new employees, patching software, and re-establishing desired user settings, can be the key to reducing IT expenditure by as much as 40 percent. The DSM 7 software helps organisations realise these goals by providing a unified management solution, unlike anything that is available in the marketplace today according to FrontRange.

“We are continually looking for ways to improve the products we provide to our customers,” said Michael McCloskey, CEO of FrontRange. “Our new DSM 7 solution, born from a year and a half of research and development, provides customers with the ease of use expected from FrontRange products, while also reducing the total cost of ownership of IT within an organisation.”

DSM 7 is a highly integrated technology that manages heterogeneous environments and enables IT organisations to standardise the management of software, hardware, and processes across the software lifecycle. DSM 7 also provides out of the box solutions for efficient IT management from initial deployment of applications to daily operations; patch management, maintenance and compliance verification.

According to Gartner analyst Terrence Cosgrove, “Buyers are increasingly driven by factors relating to ease of use and lower total cost of ownership, rather than comprehensive functionality. The vendors in this market are lacking in some key areas, most significantly non-Windows device management, management of desktop virtualization technologies and software-as-a-service (SaaS) delivery models.”

FrontRange says DSM 7 solution significantly lowers total cost of ownership for IT management and provides unified management for desktops, laptops, servers, virtual, Linux and MAC environments, supports desktop virtualization & cloud initiatives, and accelerates remediation in the service desk.

Additionally, it reduces the administrative burden on IT staff by automatically ensuring the configuration on laptops, desktops, servers and virtual environments complies with pre-defined policies. The IT department is alerted if a device falls out of compliance and they can quickly remediate issues, automatically.

www.frontrange.com

e-Service Desk also allows MSPs to put all of their clients’ technical, contractual and asset inventory information within easy reach for the customer, for complete transparency in managed services delivery. Jason Gardiner, ICCM’s technical director explains, “This new partnership will allow MSPs and IT service managers to combine the service desk and network management functions; providing a comprehensive live view of, and reporting capability for, an IT estate. In turn, they can continually demonstrate improvements in productivity and return on investment. Business leaders take a huge leap of faith in selecting an MSP – putting such a fundamental business function in the hands of third party. So MSPs need to be able to prove their worth in measurable terms.

“Equally, IT service managers need to be visible and demonstrate the value of the IT service team to the rest of the organisation. A key outcome of the partnership is that it will enable usually reactive IT departments to become proactive: consistent and reliable monitoring means that a potential problem is highlighted when it is only at warning level. This means the problem can be resolved before it becomes a critical level issue.”

Dr Andy Murray, CTO at Mutiny adds, “The ability for the service desk to monitor and report network performance is a significant business benefit.  It’s all about demonstrating they are cutting out quality-of-service problems before they happen. This is precisely what our partnership will mean for MSPs and IT service managers alike.”

www.iccm.co.uk

According to the company, with its iPhone client, organisations can manage all service requests, incidents, problems, changes, and deployments remotely. It enables users to communicate directly with customers and monitor SLA achievement and CMDB changes from the iPhone.

It was developed natively using LiveTime’s rich web services infrastructure, according to LiveTime the interface has the benefit of delivering the user experience iPhone users expect from their mobile device. Features include:

•             Service metrics dashboard;

•             Geolocation mapping of customers;

•             GPS tracking of field technicians;

•             Customer direct dial;

•             Request filters;

•             Request history;

•             Adding notes and time to requests;

•             Request, incident, problem, change and release management;

•             Knowledge management;

•             Configuration management.

www.livetime.com

“We wanted something different that would meet our needs both now and in the future,” said Bob Eastoe, Hypnos’s finance director. “Changing to a web-based system gives us that flexibility and offers many other advantages such as lower initial charges and ongoing service costs.  We liked the way the people at Web Office Systems presented their case and we felt they were on the same wavelength.”

Hypnos had been using a conventional locally hosted system since the early 1990s and it was clear that an upgrade was essential to meet the growing needs of the business. “Things change very slowly day-by-day and it’s easy not to notice how out of date a computer system has become until you take a serious look at it,” said Eastoe. It’s called the ‘boiling frog` syndrome, where the frog gets boiled alive because he doesn’t realise the water’s getting hotter until it’s too late. We managed to jump just in time.”

Security was another reason Hypnos chose a web-based system. Because all the data and software is stored and backed up off site on FuseMetrix’s secure servers there is no need to buy and maintain expensive back up devices.  Even in the worst possible scenario, such as a serious fire, the vital information needed to run the business will always be available.

Apart from supplying hand crafted beds to the Royal Family and the Royal Household, Hypnos makes beds for some of the world’s top hotels including Rocco Forte, Marriott and Holiday Inn, as well as the general public through an extensive network of retailers, so keeping track of every order is a major task. The new IT system will enable managers to control every aspect of each bed’s production from processing the initial order and configuring the specification, through to delivery, invoicing and credit control. All that is needed to access the system is a simple Internet connection, so managers and authorised staff can get the information they need at anytime from anywhere without the need for dedicated terminals. 

Web Office Systems’ managing director, Paul Smith said. “We were delighted to be chosen to develop the new operating system for Hypnos based on our core FuseMetrix infrastructure. Our flexible approach will enable us to work to their requirements and build a system that is capable of not only meeting current needs but one that can quickly be adapted in the future as the business evolves. The project will allow us to develop new and exciting features and grow the experience of the Web Office Systems team in general.”