Microsoft’s Virtual Machine Manager Release in September
Microsoft’s answer to VMware’s systems-management product will be released commercially in September according to Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s chief operating officer.
These remarks are in contrast to those made by Diane Prescott, product manager for System Center. She said on the team blog that Virtual Machine Manager 2008 would be released in the fourth quarter of 2008. This however contradicted what Microsoft said back in April, that VMM would ship 30-60 days after Hyper-V, which was released on June 26th.
Virtual Machine Manager 2008 is Microsoft’s long-awaited answer to VMware’s systems management product. VMM is the management companion piece to Microsoft’s Hyper-V hypervisor. Not only will VMM support Hyper-V, but also hypervisor technology from VMware and Xen.
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Empowerment For Better Customer Service
Many companies have found a direct correlation between customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction. Companies like Disney and FedEx are known for their strong customer service. They understand that to provide outstanding customer service, employees must be empowered.
Empowering employee’s means giving them or someone who manages them the authority to do whatever it takes to satisfy the customer. Often you have to trust your employees to make the right decision without waiting for management to provide approval.
This level of empowerment requires that employees be trained to recognize and act on opportunities to improve customer service. Managers must remove the constraints that keep employees from making decisions on their own. They also must give the employees the confidence that their contributions do make a difference.
It is not just “being nice” to employees that leads them to provide better customer service. The continuous improvement of the organizational processes removes many hassles that produce disgruntled employees, who in turn produce dissatisfied customers.
Empowered Employees
Some of the benefits of employee empowerment for the employee include:
- Workers feel they are given the opportunity to do what they do best every day.
- They believe their opinion counts.
- They sense their fellow workers are committed to quality.
- They’ve made a direct connection between their work and the company’s mission.
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Accenture IT Green Maturity Assessment
Accenture has released the Accenture Green Technology Suite. It is a set of tools to help an organization assess its environmental standing and provide some recommendations to reduce its carbon footprint by improving the way IT is managed.
The flash based tool gives a view across the entire IT organization. It provides detailed assessments of where the company is within a maturity spectrum and suggests IT initiatives to address the company’s carbon footprint.
The tools also help calculate the impact of specific initiatives in terms of workplace environmental efficiency and data center energy savings.
The Accenture Green Technology Suite includes:
The Accenture Green Maturity Model – assesses the environmental efficiency of IT, suggesting actions to improve the organization’s overall environmental standing.
Based on the responses to 300 questions across five key areas – working practice, office environment, data center, procurement, and corporate citizenship – on topics ranging from commitment to reducing CO2 emissions, to type of enterprise network, the maturity model produces a comprehensive scorecard that rates where the organization sits on the green maturity spectrum on a scale from zero to five.
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newScale IT Service Catalog and Portfolio Management
newScale Inc. provider of IT Service Catalog and Service Portfolio Management software solutions, today announced the latest additions to its libraries of pre-built Service Portfolio and Service Catalog templates. Each library contains pre-built service components that can be used “as-is” to get up and running immediately, or configured to suit each organization’s unique environment. This robust pre-defined content helps accelerate the development, deployment and maintenance of an IT Service Portfolio and Service Catalog.
More and more IT operations are embracing the concepts of Service Portfolio Management and Service Catalog Management in their journey to becoming more service-centric and customer-focused. But most IT staff have no idea how to get started.
Recognizing this challenge, newScale introduced it first pre-built library of common IT service requests in 2001. Since then, the company has continued to expand and enhance its libraries of pre-packaged and reusable content to speed Service Catalog deployment and ensure the lowest total cost of ownership for its customers. Unlike other vendors that have imitated this approach, newScale Service Catalog content has been tested, implemented, and improved upon through multiple product release iterations and nearly a hundred in-production deployments.
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Customers Vote Numara Software Best in Class
Service Desk Solution Provider Wins ContactCenterWorld.com Award for Second Year in a Row
Numara Software, Inc., a leader in service desk management solutions for IT professionals, today announced that it has been voted ‘Best in Class’ for its help-desk solution by ContactCenterWorld.com members. ContactCenterWorld.com, a global support organization for contact center industry professionals, recognized winners at its Members’ Choice Awards in June. Numara Software also received the ‘Best New Product’ Award for one of the company’s flagship products, Numara FootPrints.
“ContactCenterWorld.com’s Members’ Choice Awards continues to be one of the industry’s top honors, and we’re pleased to be consistently named among their premier providers,” said David Weiss, CEO, Numara Software, Inc. “These awards recognize the effort we put into our new product, Numara FootPrints 8, and our mission of providing a superior customer experience by incorporating solutions that meet the complex demands faced by IT service desk and customer support professionals.”
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13th Annual International IT Service Management Conference & Exhibition
Registration has begun for the 13th annual International IT Service Management Conference and Exhibition to be held February 22-25, 2009 at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The event features a Beatles theme this year, “IT Business Integration: With a Little Help From My Friends”. Early bird pricing specials are available in three rounds. The first special ends June 30, 2008, the 2nd October 31, 2008 and the third December 19, 2008.
The annual conference is recognized as the largest, most respected IT Service Management conference in the world. You can rely on us to deliver the most comprehensive, content rich program in the industry.
Here’s what the 2009 conference program includes:
- Powerful presentations by Pink Elephant’s highly sought-after consultants
- Expanded view of ITIL’s Service Lifecycle Process Model, including Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation, Continual Service Improvement
- World launch of new ITIL V3 courses
- Insightful presentations from award winning CIOs who are recognized for their business contributions
- Return of highly rated university professors profiling business and leadership excellence
- More industry experts highlighting best practices beyond ITIL (CMM, CoBIT, ISO, IT Governance, EFQM, etc.)
- Provocative keynotes and industry luminaries not found in other conference programs
- A nostalgic view of ITIL’s beginnings and interviews with the key people involved
A big “ITIL Birthday Celebration” Bash as ITIL turns 20!
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ASG’s Newest Business Service Management Solution
ASG Software Solutions, the originator of ASG’s Business Service Platform™ (BSP™), a true platform for Business Service Management (BSM), has expanded its BSP capabilities to seamlessly integrate key performance information from both distributed and mainframe environments.
The new BSP solutions responsible for this enhanced functionality include specific products for distributed performance management, virtualization performance management, enterprise performance management, and z/OS® performance and reporting management.
These strategic new developments are designed to assist in locating key performance information, federating this data into a meaningful context, and automating the performance management process for a wide range of IT environments. ASG’s BSP solutions for performance management now include seamless integration of both distributed and mainframe environments, plus turnkey support for z/OS, distributed, virtualized, J2EE and .NET systems. Because the open architecture of ASG’s BSP solutions allows integration with third-party vendor and custom-built solutions, it helps users leverage their investment in existing IT assets.
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Access ITIL Service Desk From Your IPhone
LiveTime Software, a leading provider of ITIL certified Service Management and Help Desk Software offers LiveTime Service Manager and Help Desk for the iPhone.
You can access LiveTime’s ITIL service management suite via your IPhone. This allows field technicians and customers who use the IPhone to log in and manage service request from remote.
Remote CMDB Access
LiveTime can be customized with specific column views and provide true mobility for on site technicians and customers. With direct access to LiveTime’s Configuration Management Database (CMDB), service desk staff can access the most up to date infrastructure information when working on support issues directly on the iPhone.
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Service Depot Failure Tracking
The role of a service depot is to produce a high quality product that meets or exceeds the needs of the customer. One way you can improve the quality of your products and help other IT departments is to use failure tracking.
Equipment Failure Tracking - Vendors
Your company depends on dependable and reliable equipment to keep the IT infrastructure intact and able to provide services that help drive the business. When a piece of equipment fails part it costs your company money.
When you lose the functionality of the equipment you lose money from sales or productivity. You then have to pay to replace the equipment, ship it and repair it. Purchasing quality equipment from the start is a good business practice, but some vendors cut corners and quality to increase their profits. The Service Depot is where you detect these problems.
When you track why pieces of equipment are failing you are able to spot trends. If these failures become excessive you can go to your vendor and confront them with hard data. If the vendor is reputable and still wants your business they will correct the problem.
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Free Project Management E-Book
Method 123 a company that offers a comprehensive suite of Project Management templates is now offering a free project management e-book.
The free e-book covers the project life cycle from initiation, planning, execution to closure.
This e-book helps you manage projects more successfully by describing each of the steps in the Project Life cycle. Every phase, activity and task is described, helping you to apply a best practice approach to managing your project.
If you want to deliver your projects on time and within budget, then this short e-book will give you the knowledge you are looking for. You will also learn how to manage time, cost, quality, change, risk and issues as well as manage staff, customers and suppliers.
