f3c4acfa3e768cd39130b7c8246f9f13Facebook SyndicationBMC Software's Facebook Wall2012-05-26T00:37:56-07:00http://www.facebook.com/favicon.icohttp://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-snc4/50274_94099042471_1551078962_n.jpg<![CDATA[ Lessons Learned when Moving to the Cloud with David Savino]]>432a7ba5a1fe893062a8cdb6b5bf693a2012-05-26T08:37:56+01:002012-05-26T08:37:56+01:00BMC Software
BMC Communities: Blog: Cloud Computing: Lessons Learned when Moving to the Cloud with David Savino communities.bmc.com Moving to the cloud is almost a mainstream buzz phrase.But moving to the cloud does not mean outsourcing the need to understand what is going on in your data center. David Savino, Chief Technology Officer for Column Technologies and one of the initial employees for the company, shares some of the misperceptions over companies using public and private clouds. Savino also includes insight for determining what’s the right fit for a company-- and when moving to the cloud is not an option. His best experiences, key lessons, and a glimpse at “Cloud Future” are all included in this 15 minute Podcast. I invite you to take a listen if you missed it earlier this week.]]><![CDATA[ ]]>8ebd5ec9db448d8a8be79aaf91f7fc692012-05-25T15:09:46+01:002012-05-25T15:09:46+01:00BMC Software The eternal start up | CIO Magazine New Zealand cio.co.nz Suhas Kelkar is unperturbed that most of the projects his team are working on will fail — they are, after all, on a mission to check which ‘radical’ ideas can be prototyped as commercial models.]]><![CDATA[ Cloud Computing you can count on. Check out this infographic based on survey res...]]>81948e738a352361a460a24a99f8049e2012-05-24T18:28:26+01:002012-05-24T18:28:26+01:00BMC Software
Guest blog: Social media and the service desk - a powerful combination - Computer Business Review www.cbronline.com Chris Rixon, principal solutions manager, BMC Software, writes for CBR on how the service desk can use social media to improve IT support]]><![CDATA[ John Vincent on DevOps - excerpt C: the post-agrarian IT future.]]>35bdd12466a1ff1791b989825e183eaf2012-05-24T13:17:59+01:002012-05-24T13:17:59+01:00BMC Software
BMC Communities: Blog: DevOps: John Vincent on DevOps - excerpt C: the post-agrarian IT future. communities.bmc.com This is the third excerpt from the podcast interview with John E Vincent in the on-going BMC DevOps Leadership Series. John makes a couple of important conceptual points in this excerpt IMO. ________ Tom Parish: OK, so let's look ahead, where do you see DevOps going over the next two to three years? John Vincent: I think the biggest thing ispeople are going to realize that DevOps is not about development and operations. Tom Parish: Yes. Despite the name. John Vincent: Yes, despite the name. It's a catchy name. It works. And right now the biggest roadblock that organizations face is their interface with the operations team. But as that gets smoothed out, I think the next big one you're going to run into is security. Your SecOps team is going to have its own concerns. And I think eventually people are going to realize the issue is not necessarily the interface between developer and operations, it is the interface between IT and the business. And then trying to possibly realize the goals that sort of agile started in aligning IT with business. I think another one is that you're going to start seeing more hardware become programmable, exposing things that were APIs. And that's going to cut further the delay between provisioning and resources. You know one of the things that people say “DevOps is sort of born in the Cloud” and there's a bit of truth to that in that when the artificial barrier to getting resources online is removed -- the one around six weeks provision and purchasing and all that -- there's no more excuse for saying, “I can't do this now.” Well, yes, you can. It’s ready now. You just need to get it ready. So, people had to become more efficient. And I think you have some companies that are coming up with programmable hardware, you've got people doing private Clouds that have programmable networking and that type of thing is going to expose even more inefficiencies that either automation or those kinds of practices will assault. Tom Parish: So what would be an example of that and it sounds like you were talking about something below -- along further down the stack? John Vincent: So, well yes, right now one of the benefits of an Amazon EC2 or, you know, installing open stack or Cloudstack to your private infrastructure is that you abstract out the configuration of the infrastructure. There's an API on top of it. Tom Parish: Exactly. JohnVincent: But obviously people still have real hardware and in cases they have real network switches and they have real routers and firewalls. Tom Parish: You bet. John Vincent: So what we’re talking about nowis there are vendors coming out with modified versions of the traditional networking hardware that is programmable over an API. So now you can write code to actually make those changes as opposed to a manual, go in and configure and sync, kind of situation. The same kind of evolution you see with the servers and infrastructure as code. I mean, we’re really moving – IT is a whole – I feel like it’s going to go from the same kind of shift that was agrarian to industrial. Tom Parish: OK, very interesting metaphor, never thought about it quite like that. So that sort of further accelerates the opportunity for being agile and quicker in the way that you would… John Vincent: Right. It’s the efficiency thing. ________________ The next excerpt from John's interview is coming up. ]]><![CDATA[ Our robust, cloud-based Service Desk is everything your IT department needs, yet...]]>70c5a6fb177fe0b848cedff340e859302012-05-23T17:11:59+01:002012-05-23T17:11:59+01:00BMC Software Register for tomorrow's webinar and get an in-depth look at Remedyforce.
BMC Communities: Blog: BMC Control-M: SaaS Service Desk BMC Remedy OnDemand comes to Control-M Workl... communities.bmc.com -by Joe Goldberg, Lead Technical Marketing Consultant, Control-M Solutions Marketing, BMC Software Inc. One of the characteristics of a true workload automation solution is integrated incident management. Automated incident creation is mandatory for many industries subject to regulatory controls and almost every enterprise today depends on incident management to ensure problems are recorded, tracked, routed to the correct party for analysis and eventually resolved. BMC Control-M offers a variety of methods to interface with incident management systems including SNMP Traps, email, command line interfaces, incident forwarding to event management systems and built in support for BMC Remedy via its standard API. It is this last option I want to discuss here. There are two possible points within Control-M where incidents can originate; job post processing defined on the Steps tab of any job and SLA event processing defined on the BIM tab of a “Control-M BIM” job. To enable this processing, Control-M requires only a few pieces of information:The name of the AR Server hosting Remedy Service DeskThe port on which AR Server is listeningA User ID and password (this is encrypted) You may be asking at this point how does this relate to a SaaS offering? Well, as it turns out Remedy OnDemand uses the same technology as Remedy On Premise. This means the built-in Remedy support Control-M provides works equally well for both flavors of Remedy. This should be comforting news for every Remedy customer because many Remedy OnDemand users also have some Remedy on premise too. This also enables a migration path or supports coexistence of these two deployment models for Remedy Service Desk. There is a minor consideration that needs to be addressed and that is the network connection between your enterprise and the Remedy OnDemand instance you are using. This is required but is a minor technical task. In addition to “just” creating incidents, Control-M can be configured to connect alerts to incidents in a variety of bi-directional relationships. In addition to the “SEPARATE_CLOSE_HANDLE” default option, you can instead choose:HANDLE_ON_CLOSE: Handle the Control-M Alert when the Remedy Incident is resolved or closedCLOSE_ON_HANDLE: Close or resolve the Incident when the Alert is closedBIDIRECTIONAL_CLOSE_HANDLE: Combine the above so that either close/resolving the incident or handling the alert will take care of the other Adoption of SaaS solutions is growing rapidly. Control-M support for both flavors of Remedy deployment means you can make your choice based on your organizational requirements without compromising the level of automation in handling your workload incidents. The postings in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent the opinions or positions of BMC Software]]><![CDATA[ ]]>c971dc739d8a37e82ace6976da7a5ce72012-05-22T16:24:30+01:002012-05-22T16:24:30+01:00BMC Software BMC Day in South Africa, May 22, 2012 Thanks to the attendees and speakers!]]><![CDATA[ Wait - What's this cloud thing?]]>6e0171ca735146672b3bf3e951fdc8922012-05-22T13:38:01+01:002012-05-22T13:38:01+01:00BMC Software
BMC Communities: Blog: Cloud Computing: Wait - What's this cloud thing? communities.bmc.com I was listening to a local, somewhat cheesy but definitely entertaining radio program here in boston this morning on Kiss 108. Matty, the morning host, has been entertaining Boston residents for over 20 years while keeping us mildly in tune with Top-40 hits (Really? Selena Gomez?) Usually, he and his co-hosts, Billy and Lisa, wax on about the latest travesty of sport or the rumors of another Kardashian pregnancy - but today Matt declared something like: Am I the only one who absolutely has no idea what this cloud is? I fear that the people who know what the cloud is will take over. Then they called in a 19 year old intern who explained that the cloud was basically remote file sharing. To this kid's credit, he did clarify that the file wasn't stored in the actual clouds, but on a server. "somewhere". If you read this blog, you take for granted that you know what the cloud is. And, that it isn't just Apple's iCloud. You can define Hadoop. You understand multi-threaded processing. You know what you'd do if a genie bestowed upon you $100,000 worth of Amazon EC2 credit (you'd ask for the same for S3!). You can parse that last sentence. But, for the rest of the world - let me try to sum it up. There are times when our computers run really slow and we curse at them. There are times when web sites load really slowly too. Sometimes, that's because your computer is old, or because it doesn't have enough memory, or because you've filled the hard drive or run out of bandwidth because your kid is watching YouTube upstairs. This happens to companies too - but they are trying to do very complicated things with their computers. Like tracking their entire manufacturing line - or calculating the best route for their delivery trucks across the country - or providing you with that very web site that is slow. The cloud is a way to tap into a seemingly unlimited amount of computing power. So, things don't have to be slow anymore. If you don't have enough, you just rent more from the cloud. Like a timeshare - but for more, faster computers. Matty, every morning, it's a pleasure. I listen to you even when I'm on the road with the new app. So, you know, you're already in the cloud. ]]><![CDATA[ In this recorded webinar, you'll learn how organizations have faced the most cri...]]>a81040aa13df02583bf0ab09b8fd9d512012-05-21T21:15:11+01:002012-05-21T21:15:11+01:00BMC Software Important lessons on transforming your ITSM operations www.youtube.com "Those who don't know their history are condemned to repeat it." If that's true in ITSM, it won't be for your organization, because we'll give you the benefi...]]><![CDATA[ Planning a move to the Cloud? Be sure to check out these lessons learned with Da...]]>fd27798d549587c6196edd9b94f7406c2012-05-21T18:37:08+01:002012-05-21T18:37:08+01:00BMC Software
BMC Communities: Blog: BMC Podcasts: Lessons Learned when Moving to the Cloud with David Savino communities.bmc.com In this Podcast David Savino says, "Moving to the Cloud does not mean that you are outsourcing the need to understand what's going on in your data center with your applications." Listen to hear more lessons that may be learned to help you moving your applications into the Cloud.]]><![CDATA[ Lessons Learned when Moving to the Cloud with David Savino]]>3fe86b602acc38b323219b77941591ab2012-05-21T14:31:38+01:002012-05-21T14:31:38+01:00BMC Software
BMC Communities: Blog: BMC Podcasts: Lessons Learned when Moving to the Cloud with David Savino communities.bmc.com Play Podcast Download mp3 (15:30) In this Podcast David Savino says, "Moving to the Cloud does not mean that you are outsourcing the need to understand what's going on in your data center with your applications." Listen to hear more lessons that may be learned to help you moving your applications into the Cloud. iTUNES SUBSCRIBE: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bmc-podcasts/id335625323 Comments, Questions, Feedback: bmc.com/podcasts ]]><![CDATA[ Using Macs at the Office]]>5b7fbf79bbbade67094d30ab1c7d0d772012-05-19T03:53:54+01:002012-05-19T03:53:54+01:00BMC Software
BMC Communities: Blog: Adventures in Linux: Using Macs at the Office communities.bmc.com I first got into Macs when I bought a used iBook from a friend. I had played around with previous versions of the mac operating system going back to the original Macintosh. I did not like the OS. It was not terrible. It just was not anything like anything else I used. it was nothing like the CMS command line on the mainframe. There was no obvious command line way to do anything. To eject a disk from the disk drive you dragged the icon to the trash icon, which I did not know until after I had taken the computer apart to get the disk out. I had considered that, but has decided that would erase / format the disk, not delete it. That was the logical action to me. I have been reading all about the wonders of OS.X. The way that Apple has basically started over. Started with BSD at the core, wrapping in bits from Next, and building a whole new thing. A UNIX OS with a better GUI than anything else out there at the time. A low hurdle Still, I figured it was worth the risk. It was UNIX. I knew that OS. There was an obvious command line. UNIX commands worked mostly like they should, as long as I remembered to do BSD style versions, not ATT System V style. Over time I learned the GUI, and when I was stuck trying to do something, it was easy to open the Terminal and do something. In some ways, mass moves and the like are still easier there. Unlike many, my path in to OS.X was not iPods, iPhones, or iPads. It was that I was comfortable with the core operating system. The iBook was nice hardware. It was the first Apple product that I liked the design of. Personal opinion. I know. The iBook that was a clamsheel before it was cute, but it did not make me personally want it. I did not like the iBook keyboard all that much, but other than that it was good hardware, Power PC CPU and all. My next Mac was a 15" Intell based Macbook with a stamped Aluminum case. Backlit keys. Nice screen. Fabulous keyboard. Everything I did not like about the iBook was fixed here, and I liked OS.X enough by then that between it and Linux, my house was emptied of MS Windows computers, one by one. If I needed a simple GUI, I had the mac. if I needed the power and flexibility, I had Linux. One by one my family members got Macs of their own. Even my extended family. My current personal unit is the 11" Air, and I like this computer better than any hardware I have ever had. But all of that is personal use, and that is the key to this post. Mac's are creeping in to offices from the people in. Corporate IT departments, with years and years of managing MS Windows, and trying to decide if they need to support a Linux desktop or not are facing the fact that, while they weren't looking, a UNIX computer crept in from a different quarter of the field. Unlike the UNIX like Linux, this was real UNIX. BSD. There are a thousand reasons why this happened, and it is not my intention here to talk about all of them. Rather, this is "Adventures in Linux" and since 2003 I have been talking here about using Linux as a full replacement for MS Windows, in what is largely an MS Windows infrastructure based world. With Linux there were and are ways to cope with the essentially closed standards world of MS Windows, and Apple has taught OS.X some of them. Part of it came about when Apple actually bought CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System) and continued developing it not just for OS.X, but most all its UNIX predecessors. There is even an MS Windows version. CUPS solved one of the major adoption roadblocks for UNIX: Making it easy to Print. Seems easy now. Used to be so very very hard. Everything I learned over the years from being a Linux desktop person in an MS Windows world (Still am: Fedora 17 Beta spun up right over there.) has applied to the Mac. In many ways its easier on the Mac, because there are things like MS Messenger, to talk to MS Communicator based colleagues. Office 2011 brings MS Word and MS Excel, in addition to being able to deal with those document formats with OpenOffice and LibreOffice downloads. Google Chrome and Firefox are here, in addition to the Safari browser from Apple. Other browsers are Opera and Camino and SeaMonkey. If you don't know SeaMonkey, but remember Netscape and Mozilla's application suites, this is that made modern. Flash can be installed, and Java is already available (though there are some issues around the versions lagging current a bit) So, coming up soon will be a diversion from Linux (though Fedora 17 will be coming in for a post soon) as I look at using a Mac desktop in an MS Windows world.]]><![CDATA[ Ready to start using Amazon Web Services (AWS)? Attend this joint webinar to lea...]]>949d4591a6d9fe9847138e4b8b36469b2012-05-18T19:39:45+01:002012-05-18T19:39:45+01:00BMC Software May 23 at 11:00 am CDT
Get your hands off my cloud - Empowering IT to govern the AWS cloud go.bmc.com Are you ready to start using Amazon Web Services (AWS) to deliver IT in your enterprise? Maybe your users are way ahead of you? BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management is the single point of control that IT needs to properly manage and govern AWS usage.]]><![CDATA[ Have you been following our DevOps podcast series with Jez Humble? Each intervie...]]>292f715136d61ca80c333bc09567528e2012-05-18T15:46:33+01:002012-05-18T15:46:33+01:00BMC Software Our last installment is available now. Jez tries to answer a big question: What is next for DevOps?
BMC Communities: Blog: DevOps: Jez Humble on DevOps (part D): What Next for DevOps? communities.bmc.com Jez: Of course the term DevOps - which never had a snappy definition to begin with - is already undergoing semantic diffusion and everyone is jumping on it and adapting it to their purposes. That's to be expected.]]><![CDATA[ From the CIO: Critical Success Factors for SaaS Purchases]]>f18aea621718c7888ba0590994cbae4d2012-05-17T23:09:54+01:002012-05-17T23:09:54+01:00BMC Software
BMC Communities: Blog: IT Service Management: From the CIO: Critical Success Factors for SaaS Purchases communities.bmc.com What are some of the most critical successful factors to consider when making a SaaS purchase? Here are seven considerations to keep in mind, which were discussed in You Believe in SaaS-First. What’s Next?, a white paper by Mark Settle, CIO, BMC]]><![CDATA[ Wiley Vasques discusses the value of an Application Performance Management syste...]]>cdd5aee46acd82c274148c7867483ecd2012-05-17T15:53:35+01:002012-05-17T15:53:35+01:00BMC Software ...A good system helps build customer satisfaction and loyalty, drives the cost of outages down and improves the time to restore services.
BMC Communities: Blog: BMC Podcasts: Wiley Vasquez on Consulting Services for Application Operations communities.bmc.com Has this ever happened to you? The first clue that your application was down or sluggish was when a customer calls support to complain? Wouldn't it be better if you got a warning before that happened? That's what we're going to talk about today, the value of an early warning system that delivers rap...]]><![CDATA[ Good things to know when using BMC Control-M - part 3]]>b297e32bdea8bb9c830522ae7ccd28e92012-05-17T08:22:25+01:002012-05-17T08:22:25+01:00BMC Software
BMC Communities: Blog: BMC Control-M: Good things to know when using BMC Control-M - part 3 communities.bmc.com Promotion of Jobs Across Multiple EnvironmentsWhen multiple environments (production, QA, test, etc) exist and are of the same release level (another best practice!) you can use the Find and Update functionality to make changes and then save to a portable file (drf or xml). You can access Find and Update in Control-M/Desktop from the Edit menu. Here is a screen shot showing just some of the powerful string match and update capabilities available with Find and Update. After you have made changes you can save the resulting definitions to a drf or xml file and load that file into a different Control-M environment. If you regularly make the same updates (like changing various fields from test to prod or dev to qa) enter them one time then save those values in the Presets pulldown. The next time you need to make identical updates (or similar ones) you can load the previously saved preset. This could save you a lot of time and reduce the chance of typos. Another option would be to use the exportdefjob command to export job data to an xml file which can then be modified and import into another Control-M environment using the defjob command. Using the latter method allows you to perform the promotion in a scripted fashion if you so choose. Return Code/Sysout Text String CheckingIn the Steps tab of a job in the JEF you can code jobs to take some automated action based upon the return code the job returns or the appearance of text strings in the sysout file of a job. Some of the actions available are to: mark a job as ok or notok, generate a shout, send an email, open a Remedy ticket or force in a recovery job. To set this up based upon return codes enter the following on the steps tab of the job:On Statement Stmt=* Code=COMPSTAT=4Do OKThe above example marks a job that ends with a completion status of 4 to be OK (successful) as opposed to the default behavior in this case which would have marked the job NOTOK (failed). Note: Check the OSCOMPSTAT value in the log to determine the completion status of the job. To set this up based upon a string in the sysout file enter:On Statement Stmt=* Code=*ERROR*Do NOTOKThe above example marks a job that ends with the text string ERROR somewhere in the sysout file to NOTOK (failed) regardless of the job’s return code. ]]><![CDATA[ Don't miss the BMC Software sessions at IDUG:
Billl Moran will be presenting Mai...]]>84a3457126a39548271df548a3fd7c5d2012-05-16T19:20:13+01:002012-05-16T19:20:13+01:00BMC Software Billl Moran will be presenting Mainframe Cost Optimization Examples for DB2 today at 1:30, and at 11:00 am Thursday, Michael Cotignola is presenting Optimize Your SQL and Save a Few MIPS…or More
Wall Photos Our booth (#206) at IDUG, Denver Colorado. Some great discussions taking place around DB2 optimization. Stop by if you are at the event!]]><![CDATA[ Chris Rixon and Chip Salyards offer advise for Measuring the Effectiveness of Sa...]]>89fc14ca0396da427f64d948edcd445d2012-05-16T19:05:45+01:002012-05-16T19:05:45+01:00BMC Software
MIS-Asia - BLOG: Re-examine your Metrics mis-asia.com MIS Asia offers Information Technology strategy insight for senior IT management - resources to understand and leverage information technology from a business leadership perspective]]><![CDATA[ Tuesday tip: Know what to expect]]>2ba675583fb5572ae2f878e9ed7ba8dc2012-05-16T04:24:25+01:002012-05-16T04:24:25+01:00BMC Software
BMC Communities: Blog: About BMC Communities: Tuesday tip: Know what to expect communities.bmc.com We have experienced the global navigation of the new UX does a great job in defining the Community and recently we've introduced our YouTube channel the Resources offered.Where am I?Communities is one information giant and one of our main objectives on this blog has been to give you tips of taming it successfully.Be it the Where to interact series by Matt or how to follow your favorite Community or even going to the detail of choosing your default tab. We are very excited to bring you the description of every community right on the banner, brought to life by our friend Mayuresh Wadekar. In one glance you get to have an insight of what the Community is all about.Better SearchCommunity descriptions are picked up in Search indexing so you can reach the right product by using your industry acronym you are used to!So for e.g. your search term 'BPM' would now suggest you the Recovery Management community because it has BPM in its Community description. To me, this means I get a suggestion of useful keywords I could bookmark a resource with. A better description?In the 'About' Community we are always thrilled to see the social interactions. As the description says, this is a place for:Resources and Training (help, feedback, tips, faq, news, and more!). Ask your questions here on how to best enjoy this site!So if you happen to come across a community description you disagree with or have a suggestion for, feel free to let us know by opening a discussion right here on the About forum.]]><![CDATA[ Check out the latest ITIL video services with Sharon Taylor and Anthony Or.
Sha...]]>56ecfaa42317a43f6f6532c2754d6c952012-05-15T17:08:41+01:002012-05-15T17:08:41+01:00BMC Software Sharon talk about her the value of ITIL and discusses her new book: Creating and Driving Service Excellence
Conversations with Sharon Taylor on business value of ITIL – CSI Management - BMC Software www.bmc.com]]><![CDATA[ What best practices do organizations need to adopt in an environment where the a...]]>7905e8127bceaea1ae6593c937666dab2012-05-14T21:31:50+01:002012-05-14T21:31:50+01:00BMC Software Learn how you can improve your change and release processes with SaaS.
Change Management in the Age of SaaS go.bmc.com How much control do you have to give up in a SaaS-based infrastructure? What can you do to manage change when the traditional roles and responsibilities no longer apply?]]><![CDATA[ From Mainframe Going Away to Mainframe Here to Stay]]>3c9e71aff6a08c125d89c755c0bc71162012-05-12T00:43:26+01:002012-05-12T00:43:26+01:00BMC Software
BMC Communities: Blog: BMC For Mainframes: From Mainframe Going Away to Mainframe Here to Stay communities.bmc.com Leveraging Mainframes for IT EvolutionA colleague of mine pointed me to this paper written by the head of Enterprise hosting at the Canada Department of National Defence. Here is an organization which went from “the mainframe is being pushed out” three years ago, to acquiring four new mainframes in the past 18 months. It’s a great insight into how mainframe management is evolving to support the changing requirements of the businesses they serve. Just like other areas of IT, ‘mainframers’ need to adapt to new ways of doing business and changing customer demands. I’m sure many of you can relate to the experience recounted in this paper about the IT department previously being divided into silos of different IT functions. They were able to tear down these silo walls by establishing the mainframe as the desired hosting platform of choice based on its stability. By focusing on the unique benefits of the mainframe like processing speed and reliability for large volumes of data, this Government Department has been able to establish their mainframe infrastructure as the basis for implementing shared services throughout their IT department and achieve a “truly cost-effective, multi-platform enterprise hosting solution”.Read more here: http://www.summitconnects.com/Articles_Columns/PDF_Documents/20120407Leveraging.pdf?S_CMP=swnews_twitter]]><![CDATA[ See how BMC Software implemented a Business Service Manager role, and and how th...]]>08804d80016727d0a938ed2cb032c0cb2012-05-11T20:17:04+01:002012-05-11T20:17:04+01:00BMC Software Successful Service Management www.youtube.com BMC's CIO Mark Settle and IT Senior Director Carrie Alston discuss what it takes to be a successful service manager.]]><![CDATA[ BMC Software's David Williams, CTO Office, takes a look at how to ensure user sa...]]>b6020e834a7a3da3198d622cc342364b2012-05-11T16:14:44+01:002012-05-11T16:14:44+01:00BMC Software
BMC Communities: Blog: IT Service Management: Dispelling Myths about SaaS and ITIL communities.bmc.com In a recent BMC Viewpoint, IT industry luminary Malcolm Fry dispels some of the misconceptions surrounding SaaS and best practices. “The Software as a Service (SaaS) model of delivering applications increases competition among software]]><![CDATA[ If you switch to a SaaS-based help desk, how tricky will it be to integrate with...]]>5a7bfe7fa3c04b93091fd8f3632789572012-05-10T21:21:47+01:002012-05-10T21:21:47+01:00BMC Software Watch this 25-minute, recorded webinar with BMC expert Marc Ferrentino, and learn about the best practices for SaaS integration
The Truth about SaaS Help Desk Integration go.bmc.com If you switch to a SaaS-based help desk, how tricky will it be to integrate with your other systems? What’s the truth behind all the myths about SaaS integration?]]><![CDATA[ Getting organized with Track-It! - Why am I talking about task management?]]>8dbc46d9513a09ef032e035910e1b3932012-05-10T06:16:59+01:002012-05-10T06:16:59+01:00BMC Software
BMC Communities: Blog: BMC Track-It!: Getting organized with Track-It! - Why am I talking about task... communities.bmc.com I'm leaving in a couple of days for Europe for a work trip. Many years ago I worked as a consultant and logged my fair share of frequent flyer miles. However, these days I don't really travel that much at all. I'm very content to spend my time near home with my wife and daughter - and my evil dog, Dixie. There was a time when I could pack for a business trip in record time without forgetting anything - but those times are long forgotten. These days I need a checklist to get ready to go to the grocery store or I will forget to put on my shoes or grab my keys. In packing and getting ready this week, I used a set of tasks in my organizational system to make sure that I didn't forget anything. Some things are a bit more important than others - passports and travel adapters being a couple of them - and I could put myself in a bad spot if I forgot some of those critical items. Task management is something that you can adopt in every part of your life or you can just keep track of certain aspects of what you do each day. For example, some co-workers keep a very detailed task list for work but they don't try to keep track of the errands they need to run or the things around the house that need to get done. I keep track of tasks in every aspect of my life - I've come to depend on them to ensure that things that are important to me, my family and my colleagues always gets done. The bottom line is that there is a lot of overlap between a task management system and software used to manage a typical help desk. The process that you go through to enter, update and close a Work Order can be very similar to the way that you track one-off and repeating tasks for work or in your personal life. If you consider a Work Order and a task to be synonymous, you can easily see that there are a number of concepts that are very similar when comparing Track-It! to a task management system. Workflow/lifecycle management - In both cases, the key to each system is how each one handles the workflow of information. The transition of a Work Order from Open to Closed often times mirrors the way that a task gets completed. For a Work Order, using fields like Type, SubType, Category, Priority and each user-defined field allows you to store many different types of information that can control the workflow through your help desk. In a task management system, fields such as context, priority, due date, tags, location and notes provide users with the ability to search, group and manage their tasks in many different ways to support numerous types of workflow requirements. In both cases, the metadata in these fields can be used to provide a number of different views into Work Orders or tasks to show you a clear picture of the work to be done.Reporting and Metrics - The ability to view trending data and other types of reports is a key component of either type of system. Often times I have taken the time to determine how long it took me to complete certain sets or types of tasks just as you would measure the average time it takes to close Work Orders in Track-It! If you can't measure something, you can't improve it - it doesn't matter if you're talking about your Help Desk or your task list for the weekend. History - Being able to search old Work Orders is incredibly useful when researching how to fix a problem or when trying to figure out how many times you've helped a particular user during a specific time period. I also search my completed tasks in my system to find out when a particular task was completed, how many times a task has been scheduled or other important information that might help me with my current tasks. Being able to see the Work Order history in the Asset and Requestor tabs in the Work Order Detail window as proven to be an extremely popular feature in Track-It! through the years. Having quick and concise access to this type of information is integral to being organized and efficient each day. Integration with other modules/systems - Task management systems have long been notorious for not having integration with other types of systems, but things are getting better in that regard. These days, when evaluating a task management system you are likely to find that it integrates with systems such as Evernote or Springpad to store notes about tasks or with social media sites to provide better visibility into your task list. Track-It! has always had powerful internal integration between modules such as Help Desk, Inventory, Software License Management and Purchasing as well as external integration with systems to extend the functionality of the product with add-ons. Having the ability to integrate smoothly with other tools allows us to provide a set of extensible solutions within the Track-It! product family to our customers. Similarly, I have found that the best task management solutions that I have evaluated give me numerous options for integrating with other web applications that I use every day. At its core, your Help Desk isn't a lot different from a task list. You still have individual tasks that must be completed and you need some visibility into them. Track-It! provides a strong family of products to help you manage your Work Orders and provide your customers with excellent service. Getting organized always starts by focusing on creating a foundation that you can build on - not shoving toys into a closet and shutting the door or cramming a handful of paper into a drawer and closing it. As important as your Help Desk is to your organization, you owe it to yourself and your users to build on a foundation that is rock solid. Maintaining a professional, organized Help Desk starts with understanding why it is important to be organized in the first place. Once that is clear, it is easy to see the benefits that getting organized with Track-It! can provide for you and your users. Well, it's time to start working on that checklist again. And some more laundry. And more packing. It should be a great trip and I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone over there. As long as I don't forget all of those chargers... ]]>
