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Copyright © 2011, NEXThink®

Desktop Monitoring & Control

Delivering the Finest Quality of Service to End-Users

Positioning White Paper

September 2011

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September 2011 Copyright © 2011, NEXThink®

Desktop Monitoring & Control – Delivering the Finest Quality of Services to End-Users

Table of Contents

Executive Summary.............................................................................................................................3

Users, the focus of all IT interest .........................................................................................................4

Data center revolution: cloud computing, virtualization and mobility............................................................. 4

Evolving user behavior .................................................................................................................................. 6

End-user satisfaction: a key measure of IT performance ................................................................................ 6

The IT Department needs to keep control and decrease TCO: proactive desktop monitoring ........................... 7

Discovering and managing the “invisible part of the iceberg” ..............................................................7

NEXThink is changing the rules of the game .................................................................................................. 7

Continuous end-user desktop service improvement ....................................................................................... 8

Added benefit for all stakeholders ......................................................................................................8

Visualizing a real-time, comprehensive and contextual picture of end-user assets .......................................... 8

Service quality monitoring and proactive incident detection .......................................................................... 9

End-user infrastructure compliance with best security practices and corporate policy .................................... 9

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure monitoring ..................................................................................................... 9

End-user license usage metering at your fingertips ...................................................................................... 10

Windows 7 migration assessment ............................................................................................................... 10

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure migration assessment .................................................................................. 10

Why choose NEXThink? .................................................................................................................... 11

Patented and self-learning technology, skillfully conceived architecture....................................................... 11

NEXThink Library, the community knowledge and industry benchmark data base ........................................ 12

Industry track record and market traction ................................................................................................... 12

Indisputable and rapid ROI .......................................................................................................................... 13

Get started with Endpoint Assessment Baseline, then deploy ........................................................... 13

A value-added integration with existing tools.................................................................................... 14

Supporting IT automation initiatives based on ITIL v3 processes ....................................................... 14

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Executive Summary

Faced with a radical technological revolution in their Data Center (mobility, virtualization, cloud computing, and more),together with increasingly more demanding user needs and greater economic constraints, IT managers must constantly adapt the services they provide to their customers – the end users – by ensuring perfect quality while retaining full control of the infrastructure and minimizing costs.

The level of user satisfaction has become a key indicator for IT and Data Center performance and quality measurement, with a particular focus on desktop management. Desktops have far too often been neglected in favor of the Data Center’s servers and network, yet they are vital in terms of how a service’s value chain is perceived and can represent up to 40% of the IT budget.

To try to fully understand desktop performance and operation, many organizations today are using extremely basic methods, which provide rudimentary metrics too limited to meet today’s requirements for productivity and proactivity.

NEXThink takes a leap forward and even changes the rules of the game!

NEXThink is a self-learning, real-time visualization and monitoring platform for physical and virtual desktops, giving a clear-cut, perceptible improvement in end-user service quality. Thanks to its advanced analysis capacity, the cause of outages can be diagnosed quickly and easily, giving direct correlation with known solutions and simplified problem resolution. NEXThink provides an accurate and continuous measurement of desktop compliance with security, configuration and usage standards, and identifies potential risks. By using NEXThink, IT managers can fully control their desktop projects for migration planning and roll-out, virtualization and security, while ensuring total compliance with their company’s security policy and corporate standards.

With a deployment time of only a few hours, NEXThink gives the IT manager optimum ROI from greater overall performance, better user satisfaction and productivity, and substantial cost savings.

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Users, the focus of all IT interest

For a long time now, IT departments have been concentrating on improving network infrastructure management and on streamlining their servers. Desktops have often tended to be an afterthought – in numerous cases problems are dealt with only after complaints have been received from users. But now cloud computing deployment, client virtualization, increased mobility and user maturity are changing the IT landscape and putting the spotlight on the desktop as the focus of all IT interest.

Data center revolution: cloud computing, virtualization and mobility

Cloud Computing

For today’s corporations, cloud computing is no longer the question. The benefits are numerous, whether in terms of cost, service provided or productivity gains.

In a study published in March 2010, the IDC consultant group estimated that the global cloud market was worth 17 billion dollars in 2009 and would generate more than 45 billion in 2013, giving a 26% average yearly increase. The USA should maintain its predominance in 2013, with 55% market share, while Western Europe would have around 28% and the Asia-Pacific/Japan area would strongly adopt the cloud economy.

The major benefits companies are looking for are, above all, cost control (77.9%), especially with respect to operating costs, i.e., staff costs and investments (67%). Companies are also looking for ease of deployment and use (77.7%) and standardization (68.5%). Finally, more than one company out of two wants to be sure of investing in the way of the future (54%). Security, availability and performance are at the top of company challenges and issues, a sign of IT organizations’ concern about losing control and/or power.

As enterprises move to the cloud, the only way to understand the end-user’s experience is to monitor it from the end-user’s stand point, by tracking and reporting data from the end-user’s device. This is leading IT departments to view IT services from a privileged vantage point: the end-user’s desktop.

Desktop virtualization

Virtualization technologies were originally designed for server consolidation but now they are used to optimize and simplify IT infrastructures. Virtualization proved its ability to reduce hardware and software budgets while increasing application utilization security and won its way into all aspects of IT infrastructure, the desktop in particular.

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Physical desktop management and administration is a delicate task, most especially when spread over a wide area. Nevertheless, data security and protection remain undoubtedly the biggest issue. Implementing back-up strategies for physical PCs is a complex matter in itself, even more so when they are mobile. When important data are taken outside the company, they have to be protected at all cost, to avoid access in case of hardware loss or theft. To take up these challenges, IT managers are getting involved in desktop virtualization.

By hosting desktops in the Data Center, the entire IT administration is centralized. Maintenance and support costs are reduced and deployment management simplified. With desktops grouped together in the Data Center, all data, including those which might possibly be stored locally on PCs, stay in the Data Center and can easily be backed up. Users are no longer dependent on their physical desktop and can connect up to “their” desktop from anywhere, anytime, making them more mobile, more flexible.

The ROI for purchasing a desktop virtualization solution is becoming more and more obvious: savings in terms of storage, centralization, security, mobility, flexibility and productivity. Even if it remains less common than on servers, according to Gartner Group, desktop virtualization is gaining ground in corporations. The virtual desktop should have strong growth – Gartner estimates the global virtual desktop market at 66 million units in 2014, or 15% of company PCs, compared with 500,000 in 2009.

The success of a VDI program (along with its significant savings) relies on its rigorous preparation before deployment and its monitoring once the solution has been installed, a virtual desktop having to perform as well or better than a physical desktop.

Mobility (smartphones, tablets, etc.)

According to Forrester Research, access to mobile technologies within companies is in full expansion, giving employees unprecedented autonomy. This trend should increase even more over the next five years.

Smartphone users are extremely eager to get hold of any kind of mobile application that allows them to communicate with and get easy access to their company’s information and applications. While most of them are still relatively hesitant about installing new applications, that situation will change radically over the next three years as their personal productivity tools skills improve and they master ways of sharing information with their colleagues.

As tablets tend to cannibalize Netbooks sales, full-size laptops still constitute the largest share of the PC market.

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As numerous types of new devices are entering the enterprise and the use of mobile devices becomes more pervasive, desktop operations managers are watching their computing environment change. This means that IT organizations need desktop monitoring solutions that not only help them manage and secure today's more standardized PC environment but will also be able to support the desktop of tomorrow — one that is more virtual and heterogeneous than ever before.

Evolving user behavior

User behavior has changed. Technology has become an integral part of their daily life, such that they are more uncompromising about the quality of their work tools. IT staff are noticing an increase in users complaining about slow response time and desktop instability.

Users are more mature and no longer hesitate about downloading applications by themselves to satisfy their own needs, without worrying about their company’s security policies. The main reasons given are their wish to use the same tools at work as at home (35%) and the fact that the company has not provided a solution to their problem (35%) or a less satisfactory one (21%). As an example, for a company of 5,000 employees, there are about 40 new applications a day, or about 15,000 a year! But how can we tell who downloaded what, and what bandwidth was used?

End-user satisfaction: a key measure of IT performance

Successful companies have one thing in common – an excellent IT system. If the IT Department feels “threatened” as much by technological revolutions (mobility, the collaborative web, cloud computing, etc.) as by new attitudes of high-tech friendly users, it must restart from scratch and readapt. It can no longer be a mere cost center but must be run as a real business, providing reliable, effective and quality services to its customers – the end users – and be accountable for its actions to its shareholder, General Management. In this way, user satisfaction has become a key performance and quality indicator for IT use and IT management.

Better user desktop visibility gives faster diagnostics, enables proactive corrective measurement, thus helping to maximize time, productivity and user satisfaction, and to achieve substantial savings.

According to Gartner and Forrester Research, while companies spend more than 30% of their IT budget on desktop procurement and management, users may lose more than 30 minutes a day waiting for their desktop to start up or restart. Furthermore, in 74% of cases, the IT Department only discovers availability or performance problems when users call the helpdesk. For instance, according to the same consultants, an organization with 5,000 workstations can achieve annual savings of 532 dollars per workstation, giving a total or 2.66 million dollars.

“The increasing interest in end-user experience monitoring is not surprising. It is almost tautological to say that a user's opinion of an IT-enabled service will be a function of his or her experience of that service. Without some way to measure the quality of that experience, IT operations management groups will be in the dark regarding the most fundamental dimension of the relationship with its business customer.” Will Cappelli, Research Vice President, Gartner, Inc.

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The IT Department needs to keep control and decrease TCO: proactive desktop monitoring

Today more than ever, the IT organization is considered to be a source of productivity and competitiveness for companies. In an environment that is changing all the time, to meet the growing needs of users who are more and more expert and autonomous, while at the same time holding onto control and reducing costs, according to a survey made by Forrester Research the IT Department should rethink the infrastructure and operations in three ways: transform desktops to improve user satisfaction (38%), move to a cloud economics model to make their Data Center cost effective (35%) and industrialize their operations (27%) to move from a reactive, manual mode to a proactive, automated one (performance monitoring, automation and ITIL adoption).

Proactive desktop management has become a top priority for IT management.

Discovering and managing the “invisible part of the iceberg”

NEXThink is changing the rules of the game

To understand how their user desktops are operating, most organizations generally use primitive methods such as stopwatch tests or scripted robots, which provide very basic measurements. Given that every desktop is different, these tests are, at best, simple approximations of the actual user experience. A problem, even a major one, which can be corrected by a minor configuration change is often not easy to identify given the complexity of the Windows operating system.

NEXThink is a self-learning platform, which gives you the most advanced real-time visibility and monitoring control over your user desktops, both physical and virtual, enabling optimum management of the operational environment in a secure, cost-effective manner. Its powerful analysis capacity simplifies incident resolution by pinpointing problem sources and correlating them to known solutions. A follow-up of performance indicators (such as start-up time for application hangs and application response times) for each user provides the IT Department with objective data to help improve desktop service quality.

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NEXThink provides precise, continuous measurements of physical and virtual desktop compliance with service quality commitments (SLAs) delivered by the infrastructure (network, servers and applications), measured from the desktops, and with security, configuration and usage standards. In this way, support teams can anticipate any degradation in service quality and identify its origin within the various infrastructure components. This means that those in charge of desktop and security management can at last totally control the planning and deployment of desktop migration, virtualization and security projects in full compliance with the company’s corporate standards and security policies.

Continuous end-user desktop service improvement

By using NEXThink, all the various IT Department teams can continuously improve desktop services, not only with increased reactivity but also with enlightened proactivity.

Service desk and other support services can have the benefit of real time visibility and a full traceability of desktop activity, to increase their efficiency, shorten the time to identify and resolve problems and thus reduce any resulting impact on the business. Being able to better understand indicators such as start-up time, operating system crashes and application response times discovered during the operations phase will help guide decision making during strategy and design stages. The ability to establish a link between service desk incident tickets and the real reason for an outage will improve and facilitate trend analysis. It will also make sure that a ticket is created for every outage (whether or not a user calls the service desk) and that the date and time are duly noted on the incident ticket (the service desk does not always know the exact time that an incident appeared for the first time).

Added benefit for all stakeholders

One of the challenges facing IT Departments in efficiently managing their users’ infrastructure is the fact that it is constantly changing, which means they often have to act reactively, without warning. What if they could easily have pertinent information enabling them to anticipate and fix problems even before they occur?

Visualizing a real-time, comprehensive and contextual picture of end-user assets

To manage the user infrastructure proactively, the IT Department must firstly do an inventory to comprehensively visualize the infrastructure and measure its usage levels.

NEXThink automates the entire data collection process on static and mobile IT assets (desktops, laptops, printers and mobile devices) and gives a complete, real-time view of the user infrastructure in a few clicks.

Some of the information provided: Hardware configurations: device type and model, resources available (CPU, RAM, disks, etc.), network

access (Ethernet, Wi-Fi, 3G), printers (models, connectivity) Software configurations: operating system (version, architecture, license key), security (anti-virus version,

firewall, antispyware installed), number and versions of applications and packages installed Locations: device name, domain and location Activity: periods of activity, time and duration of device boot

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Physical resources, network, server, printers and applications (local or remote) used.

Service quality monitoring and proactive incident detection

The quality of service actually perceived by users is a key indication of their satisfaction. Over and above a good real-time knowledge of the infrastructure, measuring and, of course, improving it requires, the capacity to diagnose and fix performance-related incidents and their user impact really fast. Using real-time and recorded information, backed up by patented navigation and visualization techniques, NEXThink enables truly rapid incident identification and resolution. Thanks to investigation features available with a just a few clicks and reusable query models, the help desk has a permanent, contextual and overall view of the IT system from the user viewpoint and can easily diagnose and fix outages, with the resulting increase in user satisfaction. Preventive measures can be taken even before users are impacted, thanks to customized indicators that can be followed-up on a decision-support dashboard, trend analysis tools and alert broadcast mechanisms. Furthermore, the integration of NEXThink with server and network management tools gives the deployed services end-to-end visibility and enables measurement of the real impact on users of a service interruption within the infrastructure.

Some of the information provided: Performance problem detection (workstations, networks, applications, configuration change, benchmark) Capacity analysis (hardware resources, network capacity, benchmark) User start-up analysis (boot, login, benchmark) Network services performance (availability, performance, capacity, benchmark) Application performance (availability, response time, benchmark).

End-user infrastructure compliance with best security practices and corporate policy

The mere existence of a security strategy does not ensure that it is effective and deployed operationally. Have critical patches been installed? Do users’ passwords respect company rules? Is the antivirus software installed active, with the right version? What about the applications?

The risks posed by unlicensed or unauthorized software on users’ computers have never before been so high. According to IDC, 27% of corporate software could be unlicensed and therefore illegal and 25% of downloads risk of containing malware or spyware.

NEXThink can test whether the user infrastructure is compliant with the corporate security strategy and can counter the use of illegal software by checking that only authorized or licensed software is present.

Some of the information provided: Security software: installation, version, update, anti-virus activity Security configuration: password compliance, blank screen during periods of inactivity, Windows security

parameter setting, presence of uncertified peripherals Updates: critical patch deployment (OS and applications) Applications: types, versions (and distribution) and execution of installed applications Malware: presence and activity of malicious binary Abnormal network behavior: connection to ports suspected of being dangerous, bypass of official proxy,

accessing internal systems via Telnet, numerous unsuccessful attempts to connect to an application, large data transfers.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure monitoring

Most companies wanting to migrate to a VDI environment focus on questions like the number of virtual tasks that can be hosted on a single server, the type of storage to use or the hypervisor. While all these issues are legitimate, there is a tendency to forget about following up the solution once it has been implemented, an extremely critical point for the success of a workstation virtualization initiative. Service quality as seen by the users must be as good, if not better, than via the use of the “classical” desktops replaced. If user perception is below expectations, in whatever capacity, in their frustration they could ask for their old desktops back and thus slow down the adoption of the virtual environment. After evaluating and preparing a VDI migration program, NEXThink helps manage all user infrastructure physical and virtual workstations during and after deployment and provides the Help Desk with all information necessary for effectively supporting users and ensuring optimum service quality.

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Some of the information provided: VDI protocol tuning and impact on: average and peak bandwidth by application, protocol, user and group,

WAN, LAN and Wireless headroom for VDI; VDI session counts and usage patterns by time of day; network and storage latency, storage read/write rates, virtual desktop and host CPU and memory usage, end-user client to virtual desktop activity, etc.

VDI alerting and diagnostics: WAN pipes clogged by USB allocations, real VDI user bandwidth far exceeding assessment tool bandwidth forecasts , mis-configured DHCP server affecting user logins, connection brokers not properly load balanced, improper VDI protocol configuration, end user experience killed by network latency, etc.

End-user license usage metering at your fingertips

While it’s important to make sure that software licenses are compliant with the corporate security policy, it’s just as essential to ensure there’s a match between their installation and use. Without tools to measure their effective utilization, up to 25% of a company’s IT budget can be wasted on unnecessary license renewals. NEXThink makes substantial savings by providing real-time information on software license installation and usage, and easily locating and recovering unused licenses

Some of the information provided: Version used, by application Average usage and utilization in peak period of floating licenses Unused licenses Underutilized licenses Software usage without official license Warning given when license usage reaches 90%.

Windows 7 migration assessment

The success of a Windows 7 migration project lies in the implementation of three key steps: 1. A meticulous analysis of the state of the infrastructure, to optimize the migration strategy 2. A detailed follow-up of the project deployment, to identify and fix any problems during migration 3. An analysis of the results, to ensure operational success after migration.

By providing real-time, dynamic visibility of the user infrastructure and advanced analysis capability, NEXThink helps companies reduce Windows 7 migration project length, cost and complexity, at every step of the process.

Some of the information provided: Before migration: installed hardware and application inventory, unused software, network connection

matrix, and monitoring of the presence of updates required for infrastructure compliance with Windows 7. During migration: migration status by site and organization in real time, identification of performance

problems on migrated devices (slowdown in boot time, response time deterioration, network connection problems) and immediate detection of “pirate” software installation after migration, to maintain a standard operating environment.

After migration: expectations versus results check (identification of non-migrated devices), check that all users are working in the same environment, user support (performance and usage problem detection and resolution).

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure migration assessment

Most companies consider that VDI is a means of considerably reducing the desktop TCO. However, these real and potentially significant savings could quickly disappear without a strategy based on a detailed evaluation and meticulous preparation of the migration program before its deployment. Several important aspects must be taken into account in order to do this. Are users good candidates for virtualization? The general answer to this question is “I don’t know”! It is therefore necessary in the first place to build the exact profile of the workstations susceptible to migrate to a virtual environment based on the knowledge and understanding of user behavior (applications used, resource consumption, etc.). Moreover, information on the use of the current installed base will help correctly choose and evaluate the sizing of the target consolidation platform (CPU, memory, etc.) to support the migrated workload. Finally, the behavior and performance of every application must be evaluated in the virtual environment so as to calculate likely the impact on user productivity and satisfaction.

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NEXThink monitors system and application usage and measures the conditions for a successful VDI migration by evaluating potential user impact. By using NEXThink, the IT Department is able to set up, plan and deploy an “enlightened” user workstation virtualization strategy giving maximum ROI.

Some of the information provided:

Inventory of installed hardware and applications base, identification of unused software, matrix of network connection

Identification of user behavior (applications used, local and network consumption, etc.) by site and organization

Evaluation of the virtual environment infrastructure, comparison of performance versus the current physical environment and of the impact on the user community

During migration: migration status by site and organization in real time, identification of performance problems on migrated workstations).

Why choose NEXThink?

Patented and self-learning technology, skillfully conceived architecture

NEXThink Engine is an analytical, high-performance, non-intrusive, self-learning solution capable of processing millions of desktop actions in a few seconds. NEXThink Engine uses a memory database that is continuously backed up on hard disk. Millions of events collected by NEXThink Collector agents are aggregated by NEXThink Engine and saved in RAM memory to give fast access to data via NEXThink Finder, the user-friendly data query and visualization interface. NEXThink Engine configuration is done via a web-based administration console. IP configuration (internal interface and networks) is a minimum requirement for executing NEXThink Engine. NEXThink Engine software is compatible with standard hardware – no further software or operating system is necessary.

NEXThink Collector is a thin pilot that is deployed silently, without a restart. It is non-intrusive and has negligible impact; its patented collection technology groups together application and network metrics from desktops in real time, giving an overall view of applications used, servers available, bandwidth consumed and service level provided. Communications between NEXThink Collector and NEXThink Engine are encrypted with the help of a Blowfish block cipher encryption algorithm.

NEXThink Finder visualizes and gives fine-grained analysis of data recorded in the NEXThink Engine. In a matter of seconds, a simple query gives the number of versions in use for a specific application and on which workstations, the amount of bandwidth used, the servers that it accesses, the network response times, which users had connection problems and much more. The cornerstone of NEXThink Finder, natural language queries are used to recover all information stored in NEXThink Engine. The availability of investigation models that can be parameterized is particularly useful for inexperienced users or those who often use the same investigation. A contextual forward zoom is used for detailed analysis of investigation results while keeping the original context. NEXThink Finder is a Windows application executed under Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5. It is highly graphical and requires a minimum screen resolution of 1 024 x 768 pixels. Communications between NEXThink Finder and NEXThink Engine are encrypted using SSL protocol.

NEXThink Portal is NEXThink’s reporting tool and collaboration platform, which provides a comprehensive set of out-of-the-box performance indicator dashboards, as well as templates for creating your own in a few minutes. Easily defined custom metrics can be published and shared as drag-and-drop widgets in no time at all. NEXThink Portal’s user interface uses the latest web technologies (e.g., AJAX). NEXThink Portal can connect to several NEXThink Engines, grouping together their data to calculate the required metrics and keep an almost infinite record of all metric information.

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PDF reports can be generated with a single click from any module or dashboard. They can be automatically sent to a predefined address list, at a given frequency (e.g., every day, once a week, etc.).

NEXThink Library, the community knowledge and industry benchmark data base

NEXThink Library, an online subscription service, gives subscribers the opportunity to benefit from NEXThink community’s knowledge and best practices, with access to theme-based files, a vast collection of ready-to-use performance indicators, and a consolidated, regularly updated malware database.

The digital footprint of any application found on a desktop can be submitted to the NEXThink Library reference database to identify potential threats. Measuring user experience isn’t always sufficient to be sure that you’re competitive. With NEXThink Library you can compare yourself with the best industry benchmarks at worldwide level.

Industry track record and market traction

NEXThink has more than 80 customers, in a varied number of business sectors, such as finance, retail, luxury goods, media, automobile, telecommunications, health care and government, representing more than 750,000 licenses installed in 10 countries.

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Indisputable and rapid ROI

NEXThink can be deployed in only a few hours and give IT Departments an optimal ROI through much better performance and more substantial savings:

Fast diagnostics and incident resolution Identification of potential capacity and performance problems before users are affected

Increase in Service Desk effectiveness Enhancement of user productivity and satisfaction Optimal use of software licenses

Estimation and validation of migration projects (Windows 7, Virtualization, etc.) before, during and after deployment

Get started with NEXThink Baseline Service, then deploy

Much more than a simple prototype or POC (Proof of Concept), “NEXThink Baseline Service” is a service offer for measuring NEXThink’s value add and ROI with a focus on real data and not on hypotheses. For a minimum investment, records 1 to 2 months of an infrastructure’s activity on up to 6,000 workstations, using 72 standard metrics and from 20 to 40 customized metrics. A certified consultant then does a detailed result analysis and provides a comprehensive 360° report, so that a true profitability and ROI study can be drawn up and NEXThink deployment can be prepared under the best conditions and at the least cost.

"NEXThink has helped us improve our quality of

service without needing extra staff."

Vincent Graf, Network Manager, CHUV

“NEXThink is a simple tool to use and deploy, yet it provides complete visibility into end user activities as well as the workstation and its software and hardware inventory. According to Securitas France, it used less than 20% of a full-time equivalent to support the NEXThink solution. This was the type of ROI Securitas France was looking for.” Jean-Pierre Garbani, Vice President, Forrester Research, Inc.

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A value-added integration with existing tools

By integrating NEXThink with current IT tools (Service Desk, desktop configuration lifecycle management, system and event management), the various services of the IT department dispose of true added value to carry out their mission faster, more effectively and more easily.

Using merely the basic data linked to an incident, the support team does not always have sufficient information to enable level 1 support to identify the real problem or allocate the incident ticket to the appropriate resources to solve the problem. By transmitting, to the event management tool, data giving the precise impact associated with an event on an IT service (the application in question, the service(s) impacted, the level of seriousness depending on the business impact, the criticality of a single event on multiple services), NEXThink helps the support team focus on those incidents that most affect company business. Events must be consolidated, filtered and correlated before they can be transmitted to the service desk – this is to reduce the risk of having several tickets open for the same incident (for instance, a server error and – the real incident – a network problem, leading to two separate tickets). Without integrating Service Desk tools with NEXThink, the ability to manage outages would very much stay linked to the end user, who would have to describe the symptoms to the IT Department. Even when communications between IT teams work well, the capacity for incident follow-up and management is seriously compromised. A process of manual event management, where events are reported manually (by e-mail or telephone) and an incident ticket is open and updated by the service desk, requires a high degree of cross-organizational cooperation to ensure that every incident is managed effectively. A manual process will lead to longer resolution times as a result of communication and/or human errors.

An automated process requires less manual interventions, reducing outage resolution time and thus the impact on company business. When a problem is detected, an incident ticket is automatically opened. Since the service desk has been informed immediately of the incident, it can provide end users with service interruption details. Proactive communication mechanisms (e.g., alert mechanisms) or reactive ones (a user-reported incident), as well as incident prioritization (with grouping by category), can provide detailed information on the impact of an incident and improve the overall ability to communicate updates and corrections. When a correction has been finalized, the incident ticket is closed and end users are informed. Integration and automation ensure faster communications eliminate gaps due to manual interventions and reduce failure times and, as a result, overall repair time.

Supporting IT automation initiatives based on ITIL v3 processes

IT systems are strategic to companies and the slightest failure can threaten their very existence. To a large extent, whether or not a company achieves its business goals can depend on its IT organization. As a result, the IT Department must constantly be in line with these goals. To be able to follow-up and correct an IT event or incident quickly is vital for the alignment of IT management with corporate business requirements – adopting best IT practices is a key business success factor.

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ITIL has become a worldwide reference for IT management and most IT managers take inspiration from the ITIL approach when defining their production and operational processes. Some even go as far as implementing a formal ITIL policy by structuring their IT services industrialization around ITIL best practices. With ITIL v3 comes the issue of reconciling the company’s business activities with R&D and IT production.

NEXThink fully fits into the approach taken by companies that support the automation of IT initiatives based on ITIL v3 processes – Service Design, Service Operation and Continual Service Improvement.

Service Strategy Deals with services management lifecycle and its alignment with strategy.

Service Design Presents services design principles and the creation and maintenance processes necessary for IT services management.

Service Transition Covers change management and IT services migration processes.

Service Operation Covers the delivery and control processes necessary for IT services stability.

Continual Service Improvement

Presents the principles and processes necessary for continually improving services.

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