FrontRange ITSM Knowledge Center

A recent CIO Magazine blog posting suggests that moving IT infrastructure to the cloud was unprofessional. While it may have been a hyperbolic claim designed to evoke comment, his article nevertheless raises a number of important questions.

For those companies that adhere to ITIL practices, blogger Bob Lewis suggests that going to the Cloud will present challenges. Specifically, he sees issues with Change, Performance, Availability and Problem Management.

Problem Management in particular could present a special challenge with IT today, he said. “Unless you can get your entire technology portfolio from a single source you're going to integrate business solutions from multiple vendors, just as you do now. That means when something goes wrong you'll deal with multivendor finger-pointing, just like now.” It’s an old problem made worse by the cloud.

Out of this session we aim to provide insight into these challenges as well as hear recommendations for how you can complement your existing IT infrastructure without compromising your core IT objectives.

Regardless of company size or IT maturity, you should be looking for a solution that helps provide better service with less. The right Service Desk applications play a vital role in giving your organization this visibility. But there is a difference between what you need and what you think you want. No matter what challenges IT faces, selecting and managing your Service Desk requires a holistic point of view, built on sound practices.

- Flexible, easy to configure workflow automation

- Administration without a programmer

- Centralized reporting

Don't get caught up in the "wouldn't it be great if" mentality when shopping for a new Service Desk application. Take a hard look at what your true IT objectives are and pick the right tool for the job.

Would it not be great to have full visibility into what IT Services are offered, what costs are associated with a given service level and to have the ability to provision that service or retire it as needed? Business Service Management (BSM) promises to help organizations achieve the goal of running IT more like a business. However, there is still much confusion on the market what steps are involved in actually achieving true BSM: what do I need to do first, what best practices can I turn to for implementation, how can I measure success? FrontRange Solutions can help you turn the vision of BSM into reality. We help you manage the double-edged sword of improving quality of service, while containing costs at the same time. With a unique combination of best practices IT Service management, in depth IT Asset Management data, business process automation, advanced self-service and customizable dashboards, we can provide you the tools to proactively control and manage your service costs and leverage best practices to better integrate IT with the business.

In this webcast find out how FrontRange Solutions can help you:

- Leverage people, process and technology to optimize the end-to-end Service Delivery Process
- Gain an Understanding of the Key Steps involved in the Journey to BSM: IT Asset Management: Discovery and infrastructure awareness to give you an understanding of your infrastructure relationships as they are utilized for services
- ITIL: Best practices to establish the right processes for IT service delivery processes
- Process automation: IT management task automation to streamline processes for operations as well as service delivery
- Service Level Management: Way to define and measure KPIs to understand whether the services offered comply with SLAs
- Configuration Management Database (CMDB): Database to store information on IT assets as well as applications and services and their relationships

One of the hottest topics in Service Management today is Service Catalog. Join this Service Catalog webinar to hear how the developments in the Service Catalog marketplace can help you improve your service desk operations, service delivery and fulfillment request business. By attending you will learn about the Service Catalog market, how to build a business case with associated investment return by utilizing a Service Catalog solution, as well as understand common features and functionality available in a Service Catalog solution.

The physical desktop PC under the desk as we know it is in danger of extinction. We have arrived at the new era of “Next-generation client computing.” An IT workstation is not anymore a static, physical work place but rather an abstract concept. Users are increasingly mobile and expect access to their information 24 / 7.

MORE devices, MORE deployment models, MORE platforms – yet FEWER resources to accomplish MORE. The IT infrastructure is becoming increasingly complex and heterogeneous.
With a proper Desktop & Server Management system, you can streamline and automate the end-to-end IT management process, yielding improvements in first call remediation, compliance transparency and overall service quality, while dramatically reducing redundancies and TCO. Whether you are managing a distributed environment, juggling applications from different organizations after a merger or acquisition, planning a major operating system rollout, refreshing hardware, or simply trying to get a grip on complexity, an integrated DSM system provides a single easy-to-use solution to manage the lifecycle of your IT assets.

By 2012, approximately 85% of new software to the market will be delivered as a service. Join this SaaS webinar to hear how the development of the SaaS marketplace will affect you. By attending you will also learn the important factors for evaluating SaaS options, Jeff Moloughney will share a vital list of questions to ask any SaaS providers as well as identifying a step-by-step approach for selecting a solution that will work for you and your organisation. During this live webinar you will have the opportunity to ask Jeff your questions directly and take part in any audience votes.

Jeff Moloughney has been in the Customer Relationship Management and Service Management markets for over 15 years. During his 10 year career at Oracle Corporation Jeff fulfilled many roles in the CRM market space, including product management, project management, and his final role as Director of Product Strategy. Jeff joined FrontRange Solutions in 2006 and has fulfilled multiple roles. In his current role, Jeff serves as Global Product Marketing Director for CRM, SaaS and Service Management solutions for FrontRange. Jeff is actively involved with customer engagements and continuously leverages industry, as well as customer and market experiences to improve his knowledge of the CRM and Service Management industries.

Problem Management plays an important role in the detection and providing solutions to problems (workarounds & known errors) and prevents their reoccurrence. The objective is to minimize the impact of problems on the organization. But how do I show a real ROI to my executives?

In the past, robust IT Best Practices support from software applications was only available through on premise solutions. Now, world class best practices and business workflow and automation modeling capability can be delivered from the Cloud. For even greater flexibility, these advanced IT Service Management and Customer Service solutions can be deployed in an organization as a Hybrid model, where the Cloud and Premise solutions can be made available to meet diverse organizational needs while providing interoperability and sharing important information on a common platform. Join us to find out more about the future of IT Service Management and Customer Service.