RMS Services • Market leaders in resource management solutions throughout Europe • Thornbury, Bristol

Freedom from facets

Discovering the data you really need

Imagine a naïve business intelligence user simply typing “Sales of dis- counted women’s footwear in Manchester this month” into a search box and receiving back a ranked list of 35 valid, current query results that satisfy this search. Imagine her eyeballing the graphical represen- tations of these results, noticing an unusual spike in sales returns...

Written By: Dr. Barry Devlin, 9sight Consulting

The Score Sheet Cometh

Six Things To Consider When Choosing a Service Desk

Fit for purpose?

What do you actually need a Service Desk to deliver?  It may seem an obvious answer to an obvious question, however the conflicts of interest generated can be frankly unbelievable....

Self-Service Business Intelligence

In today’s economic environment, organizations must use business intelligence (BI) to make smarter, faster decisions. The business case for BI is well established. Access to BI is what gives companies their competitive edge and allows them to discover new business opportunities. Yet, in too many organizations, decisions are still not based on business intelligence because of the inability to keep up with demand for information and analytics. IT has been stripped down to the barest numbers, even while information workers are demanding more control and faster access to BI and business data.

The management of service availability

Keeping services running

IT based services are intrinsic to every aspect of daily life and we take them for Contents granted – so much so that when they don’t work it is a big issue for the service provider. Service providers have responded to these expectations by trying to improve availability – the measure of how reliable a service is – typically by investing heavily in redundant hardware and network links. Experience has shown however that the actual causes of unavailability are frequently nothing to do with hardware and networking, and more to do with human factors and software issues. This should raise alarm bells in every CIO’s mind – am I spending money wisely and will it actually deliver the availability that the business is expecting?

(Repoduced with permission from ITSMF)

CSI Culture Living Improvement

Ensuring Continual Service Improvement lives and breathes. With the explicit inclusion of Continual Service Improvement in ITILv3 there is a danger that it is seen as simply a seven step process to better processes and services. We believe that in order to truly achieve Continual Service Improvement within any organisation you must embed a culture in which continual improvement is seen as living and breathing – through all areas of your business.

(Repoduced with permission from ITSMF)

Licence Management Solution Review

RMS takes a modular approach to SAM. The products have been developed to embrace the ITIL methodology and as such have some design elements that are not seen in other offerings. In particular the system is heavily focused around the CMDB, the core database element of ITIL, and it is from this that the UI and processes are pretty much designed around. Initially the Windows interface is overwhelming, not so much from a design perspective, but from a “wealth” of options and information perspective. There is a lot in here and for sure training will be critical in getting the most from the system.

Licence Management Technical Report

The tool evaluations have been conducted using Windows 2000, Windows 2003 or Windows XP for the management console element. The vendor preferred OS for the database and backend server was also selected for the review. Functional testing has been conducted across the Microsoft Windows family of operating systems and where Linux is supported OpenSUSE has been used for testing. The testing takes place on a dedicated hardware environment and where VMWARE or Microsoft Terminal functionality is supported this is tested if time permits.

A Guide to Service Catalogues

A Service Catalogue (SC) is a list of live and approved business services provided to customers. It contains policies, guidelines and responsibilities as well as prices, service level arrangements and delivery conditions

(Repoduced with permission from SDI)

Implementing a CMS - First Steps

A Configuration Management System (CMS) is crucial for the successful management of IT services, infrastructure and assets. Without it, important service decisions can and will be flawed. The foundation of any CMS is the accuracy and availability of the source data and maintaining this accuracy and availability can be a difficult and challenging task. Multiple data sources and an ever changing environment contribute greatly to this challenge.

(Repoduced with permission from ITSMF)

Internal Audits

Unnecessary Evil or Friend of Continual Improvement

Mention audits to most people and you are likely to see one of two reactions; either they suddenly remember that they are late for a meeting or if they don’t physically run off you are likely to see them become nervous and anxious. For most people audits involve policing, checking up on people, going behind their backs and are generally seen as a sinister activity.

This is the typical stereotype that is associated with audits and if this myth is allowed to perpetuate in your organisation I guarantee you won’t be getting real value from your audits.

(Repoduced with permission from ITSMF)

Service Introduction – Making it Efficient

Many organisations have implemented a Service Introduction1 process within their Service Management framework. The aim is to facilitate the transfer of a service from the development environment to live operation ensuring the Service Organisation’s requirements are addressed before implementation. Typically these requirements are based on ensuring the solution being delivered can be effectively managed, supported and operated by the Service organisation.

(Repoduced with permission from ITSMF)

FastPass Password Manager Sarbanes-Oxley compliance

A well-run, self-service and automated password management process will help IT Managers and Governance Risk Managers face some of the difficult challenges of Sarbanes Oxley Section 404 compliance. Requirements that in many area are similar to those from other governance institutions like HIPAA, ISO and European Union.*

FastPass Password Manager v3.3

All organizations want to streamline their business and reduce operational costs. Self-service solutions to IT problems provide an opportunity to cut costs and improve efficiency. These solutions need to give short-term return on investment, and work in the long term as the business grows.

FastPass Password MSP

Managed Service Providers (MSPs) are facing charges; the MSPs need to provide these improved services, but reduce their costs to increase profits and maintain competitive charging levels.

Agile BI

Complementing Traditional BI to Address the Shrinking Decision-Window

November 2011

David White (Aberdeen Group)