We recently hosted a webinar with the popular “IT Skeptic,” Rob England.  Rob has been blogging about ITSM and ITIL for many years and has had tens of thousands of visitors to his blog.  He brings an alternative, critical and sometimes controversial perspective to discussions around ITIL, ITSM, CMDB and Service Catalog.  He asks questions that the rest of the industry won’t.    During this webinar Rob shared his thoughts on how to define services for your service catalog, how to take the “journey” to develop a mature service catalog and what views of the service catalog should exist.  At the conclusion of the webinar attendees were presented with a live preview of the Numara FootPrints Service Catalog.

A recent post I saw on the LinkedIn Software Asset Management (SAM) group discussed how you compare assets that are ‘deployed’ with ‘entitled’ and asked how you ‘break up’ SAM into its constituent parts?

One suggestion was to break it up into the following:

Process: a process needs to be established and followed; Auto Discovery: a tool that needs to discover software in the environment, notably files, exe's, DLL's, on a host; a Software License Library: to translate what is discovered into software packages. (For example ABC.exe may translate to Office, and a tool is needed to perform this translation); a Repository: to store the Configuration Items, contracts, discovered data and other relevant data; a Reconciliation Engine: to translate the information from the contracts to entitlements. This engine would translate what's in the contract into something that can automatically be fed into a repository for comparison against deployment values.

One suggested tip within the process is to consider a list of known titles that the company has already purchased and to list them in general order of importance. Another tip is to educate your audit tool - i.e. wherever possible show your audit tool a standard build of the software installed on a test machine - work your way through your approved software list so that when your audit tool goes on to the network it doesn't kick back thousands of instances of the same un-recognized files for each and every installation.

You also need to make sure you have policies and procedures in place to effectively manage what is and isn't ok to do with software and hardware. In other words, your IT estate should be dynamic, not fluid – with the constant awareness that users can be – and usually are - the weakest link when it comes to self-regulation.

Another suggestion from an ITIL specialist working in local government in the West of England is to put a process in place for managing mobile assets like laptops which are not always sitting on your network.  That may mean interrogating them before deployment and then ensuring they are physically audited each year.

A set of clear pointers from the publisher of the ITAM Review is to ask yourself the following questions:

What is Deployed?

What do we have?
What is it?
What has changed?

What Are We Entitled To?

What circumstances will need to occur for that entitlement to change?
What has changed?

As some pointed out in the LinkedIn group, much of the above is not SAM, but simply software auditing. According to the ITIL v3 Guide to Software Asset Management, SAM is: "All of the infrastructure and processes necessary for the effective management, control and protection of the software assets within an organization, throughout all stages of their lifecycle."

Successful asset management starts with understanding what you have. Manually tracking IT assets not only consumes excessive time and resources, but also impacts the bottom line through duplicate software license investments, avoidable support calls, and increased risk of license non-compliance. Adopting an effective solution, such as Numara Inventory Manager, will help you gain complete visibility into your entire hardware and software asset inventory:

• Reducing Costs
• Saving up to 25 percent on enterprise license renewals by identifying and redistributing unused software licenses
• Decreasing the cost of major IT projects up to 40 percent with automation and centralized management
• Minimizing service and network disruptions by prohibiting unauthorized application use

Read more information on the complete family of Numara Software PC Lifecycle Management Solutions.

Last Saturday, I spent the day with my daughter’s Girl Scout Troop at our local recycling center. The goal was to teach the kids about recycling and help people who came to drop off a variety of recyclable items. When we got there, we were staring at these huge empty truck trailers and dumpsters for each type of item – paper, boxes, metal, computers, printers, plastic, glass, etc. It started to rain and we didn’t see anyone for a while. I thought “how will this make an impact on them”?

The rain stopped and a long stream of people came. One 1st grader said, “I’m going to ask my mom to bring some things from our house”. Then, all the other kids wanted to make calls, too. The traffic grew and lots of family members added to the crowd. As we ended our day, many of those empty containers were well stocked. It got me thinking about small changes and how one person can start a trend.

Let’s think about our daily routines at work and our own energy consumption. Do we think about this enough? What are we leaving behind for the next generation? We can start a trend - reduce power consumption and help the organizations that are trying to make a difference. Think about how many computers continue running after hours at your organization – day after day?

I encourage you to take advantage of the technology out there that can help you eliminate wasted energy spend on computers, servers, and other devices automatically without impacting service. If you would like to see a demo of our solution, I include information below. Either way, please, take a proactive approach to curbing power consumption.  You'll help your organization save money and help the environment.

Seeing Is Believing

Demo Numara Power Manager and Benefit EarthShare®

Learn how to define and implement power management in your organization. Request a free demo of Numara Power Manager today to see how easy it is to Go Green by reducing computer energy usage. When you do, Numara Software will make a charitable donation to EarthShare.

Free Power Reduction Calculator

To calculate your potential energy savings and help justify your investment, check out our FREE ROI Calculator now.

What Can Your IT Department Do for Earth Day and Beyond?

In addition to making a charitable donation to EarthShare for every Numara Power Manager demo request, Numara Software employees will continue the Spring and Summer tradition of participating in local clean-up efforts to help keep our community clean and green.

Find out how your organization can participate in local efforts to help preserve our planet's most valuable resources - 2010 Great American Clean-up.

Yesterday we held a webinar with our special guests Jean Marlow and Margaret Lane from Eastern Kentucky University.  Margaret and Jean shared their story of using Numara FootPrints over the past 10 years at the University.  They began using it for IT HelpDesk and Facilities Management.  They now use it in over 13 different areas at the University.  “FootPrints” has become a common name across the EKU campus.  “If someone has an issue or request and they don’t put it in FootPrints, it doesn’t exist.”  Numara FootPrints is their tracking tool and also a way of life for the students, faculty and staff at the university.  “FootPrints is part of our culture,” says Jean Marlow, Director of Instructional Technology at EKU.  One of the most interesting uses of Numara FootPrints is for Student Rights and Responsibilities.  This workspace tracks any student violation to University policies.  All regulations documented within the University Handbook are stored in this workspace and automatically populated based on the violation number chosen.  An email notification which includes the violator’s name, the regulation violated, case details and a narrative of the case is automatically sent to the student and the Office of Student Rights and Responsibility for further action. 

Eastern Kentucky has found that Numara FootPrints improves inter and cross departmental communication, improves customer service, satisfies management with consolidated reports, increases accountability and improves their service tracking.  They continue to receive requests from across campus for additional workspaces and plan to add them for Networking, Surplus Inventory and Library Digital Aquisitions in the future.

In today’s economic climate, organizations want to do more with less. PC Lifecycle Management (PCLM) tools are popular, because businesses see value in reducing the cost, time and complexity of managing desktops, laptops and servers.

The key to a successful PCLM implementation is to adopt an integrated solution from a single vendor, rather than a number of point solutions. The cost and complexity of a gradual, piecemeal roll-out will negate the value of a PCLM initiative.

PC Lifecycle Management with the Numara Asset Management Platform (NAMP) is a good example of an integrated solution that delivers immediate ROI.  Desktop administrators can install operating systems, inventory assets (across disparate platforms), deploy software and patches, manage power usage and remotely support end-user desktop issues from a single, centralized console.

In addition, there are business benefits of a PCLM solution that extend beyond the IT department. PCLM, as part of the Numara Asset Management Platform (NAMP), lowers PC energy consumption by using granular power management settings to reduce wasted energy spend. It also allows organizations to use one solution to manage assets across disparate platforms, eliminating the costs associated with supporting numerous inventory management tools for Microsoft® Windows®, MacOS®, VMware® and Linux®.  Lastly, PCLM enables IT to stay in compliance with software license agreements and avoid costly audits and significant fines from software vendors.

If you’re thinking about PCLM, consider adopting an integrated solution for an easier, centralized approach and to see an immediate ROI. You’ll also find this approach will provide greater business benefits that will extend beyond IT.

Please join Numara Software for a closer look at PC Lifecycle Management on April 14, 2010 at 2:00 p.m. ET in the live Webinar, “Reduce Costs and Complexities with PC Lifecycle Management”.  For more information and to register visit http://ow.ly/1vjYP.


Find out more information about the latest PC Lifecycle Management announcement from Numara Software.

Today we held a live webinar about the next generation of self-service, the Service Catalog.  The service catalog helps eliminate “no value” helpdesk tasks such as service requests.  With a service catalog these items can be taken care of via self-service.  When end users help themselves, costs are reduced and the lower cost per transaction contributes to the bottom line of the business.

The 7 keys to a successful service catalog implementation include, planning, defining your services, focusing on the customer’s needs, aligning with the business goals, integrating process, testing and reporting.

1. Planning:  Obtaining buy in from management is essential.  You need to drive service catalog adoption from the top down.  Other key players will be encouraged to be on board when upper management is. 
2. Service Definition:  Think about the services you offer.  Theoretically, if you had no business services, you wouldn’t need a service desk.  Use a top down or bottom up approach to define your services.
3. Customer Centric:  Service ordering transparency is a key benefit for customers.  Customers go 1 place and order all services in the same way.  Also, customers are very visual and using images and making the self-service easy to use and access will encourage usage and help you fulfill the promise of self service. 
4. Business Alignment:  Business unit executives and end users often don't trust that IT is working on the right things to move the business forward.  The service catalog can help address this trust issue by communicating and marketing services to these stakeholders.     Make sure that the service catalog defines what you do, why you cost money and that customers are satisfied.
5. Integration:  Integration is the primary method of gaining value from the Service Catalog.  The Service Catalog is a critical information repository that has the potential to support and enhance a variety of ITIL processes. 
6. Dry Run:  Roll out a small number of your services in the catalog to a group of select customers.  This way you can adjust and bring on more services while learning from your mistakes. 
7. Reporting:  If you remember from the beginning the reason for a service catalog is increased efficiency, reduced costs, and increased customer satisfaction.  How do you know you have achieved this?  Reporting!

You can now watch the service catalog webinar archived here for you.

A multi-tenant architecture, in its simplest definition, allows one instance of an application to be used for many distinct organizations or customers. The best example would be Salesforce.com. Many customers share an instance of the application, but each has its own data, unique business rules, users and distinct user interface securely separated from any other group. Each customer is able to operate independently and,  in essence, no one is affected by the fact that they are sharing the application.

Why have a multi-tenant architecture? Consider the alternative. Instead of having one application instance and 250 customers on Salesforce.com, for example, you would need 250 separate instances of Salesforce.com to support the same customer base. This exponentially increases the cost of support and hardware resources to manage the environment, as well as IT time to manage it all, and it’s not necessary. Imagine having to perform an upgrade on all 250 customers. Would you rather upgrade one instance of an application immediately or upgrade each of the 250 customers one at a time?

In order for a multi-tenant architecture to work, security must be well-executed and of paramount concern. You don’t want data or users crossing between customers or customer workspaces. Each customer organization must be able to leverage all of the functionality available, yet be “fenced into its own yard” to prevent security breaches.

A multi-tenant architecture makes sense for applications in the cloud, so why wouldn’t  it make sense for a single organization? Instead of having many customers running on an instance in the cloud, bring the cloud in-house and have many departments or divisions in a single organization running on an instance within your firewall. The same basic principles would apply. Each department or division should have its users, data and workflow segmented and the user interface for their application should be unique to their business area.

Why deploy a multi-tenant solution within a single organization? For the same reason Salesforce.com does - to increase efficiencies, deliver faster service and reduce the cost of IT in supporting your business. Most organizations today support multiple applications across their business: One application to manage their internal IT service desks, another for  external customer service, another for human resources to manage the new hire process, yet another for accounting to manage procurement, and the list goes on.

What if you could have one application which models all of your business tracking and automation functions in a multi-tenant environment? Each part of the business would have its own user interface, users, data and workflow. Just like Salesforce.com customers, each group would feel as if it had its own application instance. Support and upgrades would be far less complex and costly and integration of cross-functional workflows would be inherent. You could even run cross-functional reports to get a total view of activity across the business.

We know that many of our Numara FootPrints customers have taken this approach to managing multiple processes within and outside of IT to reduce their overall costs and increase productivity. They’ve essentially made their IT departments a central hub for a diverse set of workspaces for different needs, such as IT help desk, external customer support, facilities management, human resource tracking and more. They all operate from a standard set of configurable, best practice-based functionality with Numara FootPrints. And, they have the ability to choose between a hosted or on-premise solution. 

For more insights on this topic, download our latest white paper, “Working Outside the IT Service Box”.