Is IT really listening to the business?

Steve Ingall, head of consultancy, iCore Ltd, says it’s time for IT to open its ears.

For many years there has been much talk about ‘Business IT Alignment’, yet almost daily we see situations where IT is clearly not listening or IT is hearing something completely different. Projects are cancelled because they are taking too long, not going to deliver, or have become self perpetuating. I recall a few years ago sitting in a Senior IT Steering Board and hearing the CEO clearly say to the CIO and her leadership team, “Stop breaking things and when things do break I want you to be able to fix them fast!”

… Continue Reading

Remote Monitoring in the Cloud

Cloud-based remote monitoring and management enables more effective use of resources, facilitates profitable cross- and up-selling and builds strong customer relationships. Critically, it enables clear differentiation with vastly reduced investment in resources or staff training, hence delivering a rapid return, according to Phil Bousfield, vice-president of product engineering at GFI Software.

Value added resellers and member service providers are increasingly turning to remote monitoring and management (RMM) technologies in a bid to improve managed service delivery and achieve differentiation. Yet recent research reveals that traditional on-premise RMM solutions are proving too time consuming and expensive to implement, as well as incurring significant ongoing costs and thus fundamentally constraining both the quality of service delivery and return on investment.

… Continue Reading

Keeping in the pink

A ubiquitous brand in the realm of ITIL and ITSM, VitAL editor Matt Bailey talks to Pink Elephant UK’s new chief executive Marcus Harris about the trials and challenges in the service management industry as we enter the second decade of the twenty-first century.

Established over 30 years ago, as an independent, global professional services organisation for IT managment, this year Pink Elephant celebrates 21 years in the ITIL experience business. It is the world’s number one supplier of ITIL and ITSM conferences, education, consulting and support services. According to the company, to date, close to 200,000 IT professionals have benefited from its expertise. It has championed the growth of ITIL worldwide since its inception in 1989 – longer than any other supplier – and was selected as an international expert to contribute to the ITIL v3 project – as authors of v3’s Continual Service Improvement book and through representation on the International Exam Panel.

… Continue Reading

Premier league solution

Premier Incorporated chose ServiceWise from TechExcel over a number of other solutions during its quest to bring process consolidation and automation to its IT services team.

Serving more than 2,000 US hospitals and 53,000-plus other healthcare sites, the Premier healthcare alliance and its members are transforming healthcare together in the USA. Nearly 200 hospitals and health systems created and entirely own Premier Alliance.

Background

The key objective for Premier’s CITS (Corporate Information Technology Services) Group was to implement a Help Desk solution that would provide application and technical support for its internal customers (employees). However, the vision of the CITS Group transcended the traditional ‘Break / Fix’ Help Desk as they wished to provide a centralised Service Desk that could streamline and automate business processes to benefit all its business units.

… Continue Reading

Can you lower support costs while improving service levels?

With the economic climate likely to remain unsettled for a while yet, IT departments are still faced with the dilemma of how to cut their cloth while continuing to provide the quality of service expected by their customers. Chris Lovesey, marketing manager at NetSupport, provides a timely reminder of the steps organisations can take to enable them to deliver ‘more with less’.

David Cameron’s recent stark message to government departments outlining the extent to which they will need to cut costs will not have been lost on the wider business community. In fact, in all probability, private sector organisations have no doubt become past masters at tightening their belts, and until we start to see tangible evidence that the new coalition’s plans are going to deliver the required results, the belt is likely to remain firmly buckled!

… Continue Reading