Information technology systems have been historically viewed by their managers as closed architectures that provide services to a fixed set of users in a controlled environment that limits devices to approved, authorized and corporate owned assets. Though this may have been achievable in mainframe, midrange and early microcomputer networks, the increasing demands of users and the expansion of the user base outside of the enterprise firewall makes the concept of “bring your own device” not only plausible, but also inevitable.

As business struggle with the need to do much more …

Many technical professionals struggle with properly understanding the role of the service desk when they are first introduced to ITIL. The misconception arises when they initially equate the service desk function to the technical support desks they frequently contact at software and hardware manufacturers. Though the standard tier 1, tier 2 and tier 3 (and perhaps beyond) conventions are used to describe the stages of technical support and there are other similarities, the roles of the service desk and technical support are quite different.

The Service Desk is the customer …

One of the earliest considerations during the adoption of ITIL by a corporation is establishing a starting point or roadmap from a list of greater than two dozen processes.  Several textbook examples of implementation strategies recommend customer-facing processes, such as change management, incident management or service level management.  While choosing an approach where end-user satisfaction with services is base-lined, measured and evaluated against improvement metrics and targets, there can be an often overlooked opportunity to deploy IT Asset Management and Configuration as a starting point.

IT Asset Management and Configuration can …

Recently we looked at the implications and issues that many IT departments face when a new CIO comes onboard and offered useful tips on how to manage and adjust to this. Now you have the tools to deal with such significant business change let’s take it one step further – how would you like to learn how to speak the language of your CIO and discover how talking the talk can actually help your IT department to successfully walk the walk.

At EasyVista we have always maintained that a positive and …

In the current economic climate organizations are under increasing pressure to reduce costs and minimize expenditure and one of the first areas that always gets squeezed in this process is IT. Cutting resources and reducing services may benefit companies in the short-term, but I noticed in a recent blog post by Elizabeth Harrin on ITSM Watch, entitled: “Availability is no Longer Just an IT Metric,” she points out how difficult it is to maintain customer satisfaction, system availability and satisfactory service levels when you might potentially be reducing your investment …