Ivanti Blog: Service Management

ITAM vs. ITSM vs. ITOM: What's the difference?

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 17:42:40 Z

IT asset management (ITAM) and IT service management (ITSM) are critical for any organization that requires IT capabilities to support business objectives. Both technologies provide IT operational support to an organization, but the nature and objectives of these technologies are quite different.

Further, these processes are different than ITOM, or IT operations management, which encompasses managing the operations of an IT infrastructure and involves the monitoring, troubleshooting and maintenance of IT systems, applications and services.

Here, we will explore the differences and similarities between ITAM and ITSM.

ITAM – IT asset management

An “IT asset” refers to both hardware and software that an organization uses to support its business objectives. When organizations have accurate IT asset inventory reports, they’re able to make informed IT purchase decisions. However, IT assets are often updated, moved and refreshed, making it difficult to maintain up-to-date asset information.

When IT asset reports are inaccurate, they expose the organization to unnecessary IT purchases, software audits and security breaches. ITAM provides recommendations and best practices for managing IT assets that support the organization’s objectives. So a short definition would be:

IT asset management involves accounting for, deploying, maintaining, upgrading and disposing of an organization's IT assets as needed. In essence, it's ensuring that all these assets, whether tangible or intangible, are being properly tracked and utilized within the organization.

IT asset management (ITAM) best practices suggest that an IT asset be linked to its associated contractual and financial information so that organizations can track the overall costs associated with their IT assets.

Furthermore, ITAM provides guidance to IT asset managers on creating standards, processes, policies and measurements to increase control. This ensures compliance with business objectives and reduces risk, along with containing or reducing costs.

When ITAM practices are implemented, IT assets will be tracked from purchase to disposal; often called IT asset lifecycle management. For example, an ITAM hardware disposal process will ensure that when old laptops are disposed of during a refresh, the associated software licenses are properly harvested so they can be redeployed.

According to Gartner, IT asset management (ITAM) provides an accurate account of technology asset lifecycle costs and risks to maximize the business value of technology strategy, architecture, funding, contractual and sourcing decisions.

Other aspects of ITAM

To ensure efficient IT asset lifecycle management, ITAM business practices include processes for IT asset requests, approvals, procurement, disposal and redeployment. These processes ensure that IT assets are documented when purchased and properly tracked as they’re deployed and redeployed.

In looking at ITAM vs. ITSM, it’s important to remember that most IT service management (ITSM) solutions provide capabilities that support IT requests and approvals. So it’s important that ITAM solutions selected by an organization integrate with the organization’s ITSM solution.

It's also important to note that most comprehensive ITAM solutions offered by software vendors provide processes that span multiple departments of an organization. This means that most IT asset management solutions are selected and owned by business executives, not IT managers.

ITSM – IT service management

Organizations that require IT assets to support business objectives also require IT services to ensure assets are properly working in the role for which they were purchased. IT service management (ITSM) is not just about software tools; it’s also about processes, people and technology. ITSM software is a component of the overall ITSM solution, one we can define as:

IT service management is a strategic approach for designing, delivering, managing and improving the way you use information technology (IT) within an organization. The goal of IT service management is to ensure that the right processes, people and technology are in place so that the organization can meet its business goals.

ITSM software solutions come with several components such as a database, business objects (users, groups, roles, etc.) and a process engine. Most ITSM solutions offered by vendors today follow industry best practices.

ITOM – IT operations management

ITOM differs from ITAM or ITSM in that it covers a wide range of activities, from managing the physical hardware to managing the software and applications that run on it. It also involves ensuring the security and availability of IT systems. The ultimate goals of ITOM are to optimize the performance and efficiency of IT systems and to ensure they meet the needs of the organization. ITOM also ensures that IT systems comply with industry standards and best practices.

Industry best practices

Another aspect of the ITAM vs. ITSM backstory is that as IT solutions became more widely adopted, a need grew for industry standards. These standards were necessary to define common terminology and establish best practices.

ITAM subscribes to the best practices of the International Association of Information Technology Asset Management (IAITAM), adding a layer of professional insight across its capabilities.

Originally, ITSM was aligned only with the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL). However, it has since expanded to include other standards such as ISO2000, VeriSM and IT4IT.

In terms of compliance processes, ISO 20000 is more stringent and authoritative than ITIL. ITIL, on the other hand, is a set of recommended best practices that organizations can choose to implement to varying degrees, according to their needs and preferences.

VeriSM is a service management approach for the digital age that helps service providers create a flexible operating model to meet desired business outcomes.

The IT4IT Reference Architecture standard consists of the IT Value Chain and a three-layer reference architecture. The IT Value Chain comprises the four IT value streams, which play a vital role in helping IT control the service model as it advances through its lifecycle.

All these standards have overlaps across all aspects of best practices while looking at them from slightly different angles.

To help IT service employees stay up to date and educated, each of these industry best practices offers certification and training. These certifications emphasize practical skills and procedures rather than specific products.

These software solutions are typically designed to meet most, if not all, of these industry recommendations.

Organizations like Pink Elephant exist to evaluate ITSM software solutions and certify them against industry standards. If you plan to implement best practices, choosing certified ITSM tools is advisable.

CMDB or ITAM?

Another point to understand in looking at ITAM vs. ITSM? Comprehensive ITSM solutions offer configuration management capabilities along with a configuration management database (CMDB) to support and manage IT assets that provide services to the organization.

Both ITAM and ITSM provide guidance for managing IT assets, which can be confusing until you explore the objectives of each practice.

ITAM objectives focus on managing an IT asset’s overall cost, including ownership, associated contracts with asset lifecycle, warranty and refresh information. ITAM focuses on IT assets from an organization’s financial perspective.
An ITSM’s configuration management objectives look at IT assets from an operational and support perspective. Asset availability and stability impact an organization’s day-to-day operations, so assets need to be documented along with their configuration and service offerings.

Can you use a CMDB for ITAM?

To answer this question, let’s take a look at how airlines manage their flights. Airlines manage their flights using a database with flight numbers that describe a service. A separate asset database maintains inventory information listing the physical aircraft, along with relevant maintenance information.

When a problem is found with an aircraft, the airline will sometimes swap the aircraft for another. Because they maintain services and equipment in different databases, the airline can switch out the aircraft without having to change the flight number.

Much as it wouldn’t be practical for this airline to manage its flight services in the same database they use to manage its aircraft inventory, it’s not practical to use a CMDB for both ITAM and Configuration Management.

Most IT assets are refreshed every 3–4 years, while IT configurations with supporting assets are maintained and updated, not replaced. Therefore, you should use a CMDB to maintain and manage the lifecycle of a service while pulling the supporting assets from an IT asset management database.

Summary: ITAM vs. ITSM is really ITAM + ITSM

ITAM and ITSM are both critical for any organization that uses IT assets to support business objectives. In considering ITAM vs. ITSM, it’s really not a matter of choosing between the two but combining as a perfect pairing. Both have an essential role and work more powerfully as a team.

When looking to build, expand or change your IT asset management solution or your IT service management solution, you need to be sure to explore integration capabilities for both solutions.

With the right tools in place, you can automate and improve IT processes that support IT assets. These improvements increase efficiency and control while reducing the inevitable costs and mistakes that occur from manual tasks being performed by an operator or analyst.

Get IT Right by Focusing on Service Strategy

Thu, 24 Aug 2023 16:06:25 Z

Too often, we in IT get so busy performing the day-to-day work and fighting the many fires that come at us each day that we neglect to take a moment and focus on ways we can be strategic about how we do our jobs.

When building or expanding IT Service Management offerings, it’s important to understand how taking time to focus on service strategy can greatly improve the efficiency of service delivery.

First, let’s begin by defining a few terms.

What is ITSM (IT Service Management)?

IT Service Management is a strategic approach for designing, delivering, managing and improving the way information technology (IT) is used within an organization. The goal of IT Service Management is to ensure that the right processes, people and technology are in place, so that the organization can meet its business goals.

What is IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)?

IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) refers to a group of documents created in the 1980s that provide a framework and best practices for building an IT Service Management (ITSM) solution. By following the recommended ITIL processes, organizations supporting an IT infrastructure can increase efficiency, while reducing service management costs.

What is a service strategy process?

ITIL defines five major areas to service strategy that can accelerate organizational success:

Strategy management for IT services: assessment and measurement of IT strategy
Service portfolio management: defining and documenting IT services.
Financial management for IT services: determining IT service costs and budgeting.
Demand management: forecasting future demand for IT services and budgeting resources.
Business relationship management: managing the feedback and improvement of the IT services.

To properly manage your environment, you need to first design a plan, then determine the type of services you are delivering, validate all costs and budgets, forecast demand, learn how to gather feedback and perform continuous service improvements.

How to design a service portfolio strategy

Design the plan

Constructing a service portfolio can be one of the most challenging tasks for an IT organization. It is essential to resist the temptation of continuing outdated practices and strive for success.[EC4]

Try surveying your end user community to understand their challenges and ever-changing needs. You can narrow down the survey results to capabilities you have within your IT organization and put in place services to support these needs. Caution should be taken to ensure that you follow best practice guidelines for enabling services the drive consistency and end-user process improvements.

Determine the type of service(s) you are delivering

Deciding on the type of service you’re offering today and wish to deliver in the future is a critical piece that will help you understand and minimize how many actual services you are delivering.

Consolidate where you can maximize resource usage, improve application management, and simplify the end user’s process for selecting assistance with the desired services. Too many services will complicate the end user’s interactions with the IT support organization.

Ensure that you evaluate your current services regularly to determine if they are necessary and consider potential services you may want to add in the future. Additionally, take the time to properly set up your nomenclature to reduce the need for future changes.

Validate all costs and budgets

Evaluating the cost of services needs to include not only personnel, software, hardware, services, but also soft costs, such as the cost and/or reduction in time for the people consuming those services.

Understanding soft costs can make a significant difference in expressing the value of services you’re delivering.

Forecast resource demand

The ever-changing world of IT and the consumers of the services makes resource demand forecasting very challenging. However, by understanding what services you are delivering and the historical need for them, you can extrapolate what your demand could be.

Resource consumption adaptability and tasks automation can minimize the negative impact of any forecast changes.

Perform continuous service improvement

The only way to improve your capabilities within an organization is with continual service improvement (CSI). Put relevant analysis and reporting in place to better understand the services you are delivering, the SLAs behind them and how they preform from the perspective of end user satisfaction.

Metrics such as mean time to repair (MTTR), cost per ticket, reopen rate of incidents, call avoidance via self-service, and AI bots and volume by department or location are critically important to help establish improvement initiatives.

With accurate metrics, isolate and focus on areas that require improvement. Lastly, assign a cost to each improvement initiative and prioritize strategically based on cost versus value.

It’s been often stated that “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” Although some ITIL recommendations might not be practical for every organization, they are a great place to start when building an IT Service Management solution.

The ITIL service strategy processes focus on planning for an outcome and evaluating your performance against customer expectations. ITIL encourages periodic evaluation and amendments of processes to respond to the ever-changing environment, with the aim of being more effective in delivering service value to your organization.

How to Use Generative AI for Knowledge Management

Tue, 27 Jun 2023 14:30:00 Z

In the blog “How Generative AI Can Benefit Knowledge Management”, we looked at the benefits of AI to knowledge management to enhance the quality, automating the creation of content and enabling more engaging content. In enabling generative AI to become part of the knowledge management framework introduces concerns about accuracy, data bias, privacy and security.

Now, it’s time to look at how we can make it work well together...

How to use generative AI with knowledge management

Despite concerns of using generative AI in daily operations, this technology has the potential to be a powerful tool to optimise knowledge management. By carefully considering the potential drawbacks and taking steps to mitigate them, organisations can use generative AI to improve their knowledge management practices.

Here are the five things to consider when using generative AI for knowledge management:

Making sure to identify the type of data that will be used to train the generative AI model. Identification of the data type will help to ensure that the data used is accurate and reliable. Are you going to be using existing knowledge articles, incident data, problem data or combinations of all?
Having identified the data type, generative AI is only as good as the data it's trained on. The old saying ‘garbage in, garbage out’ still applies. Ensure that the data you've identified above is accurate, complete and up-to-date.
Monitoring the output of the generative AI model for signs of bias, misinformation, completeness and accuracy. This can help to ensure that the information generated by the model is reliable.
Developing policies and procedures to manage the risks associated with using generative AI for knowledge management. This is an important step in ensuring the success of your project. These policies and procedures should address issues such as data security, privacy and ethical considerations. They should be designed to ensure that using generative AI for knowledge management is conducted in a responsible and ethical way.
Putting an approval process in place before any knowledge information is shared publicly to ensure that the generated outputs are reviewed and authorised.

By taking these steps, organisations can use generative AI to improve their knowledge management practices while minimising the risks.

Combine generative AI and knowledge management with caution

The effectiveness and impact of generative AI on knowledge management will depend on how it's used and implemented. It's important to carefully evaluate the benefits and risks before deciding whether to incorporate it.

Here are some potential pros and cons:

Pros

1. Automatic generation of relevant content

Generative AI can be used to automatically create knowledge articles from existing data sources, such as product documentation, customer support tickets and employee training materials.

With 32% of IT professionals reporting an increase in helpdesk tickets since the move to remote working, there’s a significant opportunity for enhancement of the knowledge base that can enable quicker and more effective issue resolution, freeing up IT professionals to focus on more strategic tasks, such as developing new knowledge management initiatives and improving the quality of existing knowledge articles.

2. Improved search accuracy

Generative AI can help improve search accuracy by personalising the delivery of knowledge to employees, based on their individual needs and preferences. With an average employee spending 3.6 hours a day searching for information, any time savings in the way knowledge is delivered to them is a win.

Enabling easier and quicker access to information will ultimately enhance your employees’ digital experience.

3. Enhanced automation

Generative AI can assist in automating routine task – even if it's not directly related to the creation of knowledge management articles.

With 85% of IT professionals rating automation and AI investments as profitable ventures, identifying new ways of streamlining their processes can free up time for IT professionals to focus on more complex issues.

Cons

1. Risk of misinformation

Generative AI can potentially produce incorrect or misleading information, which can lead to serious consequences in the IT field. For example, the introduction of malware, or the incorrectly recommending turning off functionality which is used to secure the IT environment from malicious actors.

2. Dependence on AI-generated content

If companies become too reliant on AI-generated content, they may not prioritise the human-generated one or critical thinking skills, leading to a potential loss of expertise. Despite all the discussion around generative AI, human oversight is still required to validate accuracy and approve the generated information.

3. Ethical concerns

There are ethical concerns surrounding the use of generative AI, like potential bias in the data used to train the model, which can perpetuate existing inequalities.

There’s no doubt that generative AI can be a valuable tool for IT knowledge management and while a new exciting technology, there's still much to be learned about the benefits and pitfalls that it may bring.

Each organisation needs to review the potential impact individually and choose an appropriate AI solution that meets their own need for privacy, accuracy and security.

Tips for implementing generative AI for knowledge management

Start small and scale up

It's better to start with a small pilot project and then scale up using generative AI as you gain experience.

Get buy-in from stakeholders

It's important to get buy-in from stakeholders before deploying generative AI in production. This will help ensure that the model is used effectively and that its outputs are trusted.

Monitor the model's performance

It's important to monitor the model's performance after it's been deployed in production. This will help identify any potential problems with the model and improve the model's accuracy.

Continuously improve the model

Generative AI models are constantly being improved. It's important to continuously enhance the model by retraining it on new data and addressing any potential problems that may occur.

Learn more about this topic – watch our webinar on Generative AI for InfoSec & Hackers: What Security Teams Need to Know.

How IT Device Discovery Can Identify Your Network's Assets and Vulnerabilities

Thu, 22 Jun 2023 20:09:10 Z

The security of your organisation’s network is paramount to its success. With the ever-changing landscape of cyber threats, it's important to take the necessary steps to ensure that your network is secure and compliant with industry regulations.

Ensuring compliance requires you to know what’s on your network. But how can that be done when only 48% of leaders and security professionals say they run their asset discovery program at least once per week? One of the most effective tools for identifying assets and vulnerabilities on a network is IT asset discovery.

What is IT discovery and why is it important for IT security?

IT discovery is the process of identifying and cataloging the various hardware, software and other components that make up an IT infrastructure. This is an essential process to ensure the smooth functioning of IT networks as it allows IT administrators to identify potential issues and plan for future growth.

Once this identification and cataloging of IT inventory is completed, you can maintain a comprehensive inventory of all your assets. Keeping track of all the components making up your network in one place means IT administrators can quickly identify any problems and take the necessary steps to fix them.

And since, on average, up to 30% of an organisation’s IT assets are ghost assets, missing or unaccounted for, it is even more important to have accurate, up to date information about your device landscape.

To quickly detect changes in the network and respond to potential threats, it’s worth automating the discovery process — ultimately, it'll ensure a secure and compliant network.

How does IT discovery work?

IT discovery typically uses manual scanning or automated scanning tools. Manual scans involve manually entering IP addresses into a scanner, while automated scans are done with specifically designed software programs. These programs will search through an organisation's environment, looking for:

Hardware components such as computers, servers, routers and switches.
Software components such as operating systems and applications.
Network connections such as LANs (Local Area Networks) or WANs (Wide Area Networks).

Additionally, as not every asset will be on the network, the ability to discover devices from other sources via connectors is just as critical in providing a comprehensive picture of your entire IT estate.

Benefits of IT discovery for IT security

Accurate device information is an essential component of any organisation’s IT network. Without it, organisations are unable to identify and track assets on their networks or ensure compliance with relevant regulations and standards.

By automating the process of discovering devices connected to your network, you can capitalise on the following benefits:

Provide real-time alerts regarding any changes in the device inventory. This kind of visibility can help your organisation quickly detect potential threats and respond accordingly. With accurate device information, identifying unknown assets and reducing attack surface by removing outdated or unauthorised hardware.
Ensure that a network is compliant with relevant security regulations and standards such as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard), HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) and CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act).
Accurately monitor the performance of IT infrastructure and ensure that it always remains secure. With real-time visibility into all the devices connected to the network, your IT team can easily identify problems, even before they become critical issues, and respond quickly when issues arise. This helps reduce downtime for employees, which in turn leads to improved productivity and employee experience across the organisation.

Respond Quickly to Potential Threats

When responding to potential threats, it’s important for organisations to act quickly to minimise the impact of the attack. With extended visibility into your entire network, you can quickly locate any malicious actors or vulnerabilities that could lead to an attack.

This also allows for more accurate and timely monitoring of changes in your network's architecture, which are critical in identifying potential weaknesses before exploitation can occur.

Additionally, keeping track of who has access to what parts of your network makes monitoring user activities and maintaining up-to-date user profiles a breeze. With threat actors getting better at disguise, ensuring that only authorised personnel have access to the information they need helps reduce the risk of any unauthorised access or misuse.

And if a threat occurs, it’s much easier to determine where it originated from and take appropriate action against it.

Finally, providing valuable insights into how your organisation is responding to potential threats can help improve your security strategy. By measuring response time and tracking incidents over time, you can evaluate which strategies are working best and which ones to amend.

Hungry for more? Watch our webinar recording and explore 5 Best Practices From Real‑World RBVM Programs.

How Generative AI Can Benefit Your Knowledge Management

Tue, 20 Jun 2023 15:24:02 Z

There has been growing interest in the capabilities of generative AI since the release of tools like ChatGPT, Google Bard, Amazon Large Language Models and Microsoft Bing. With the hype comes concerns about privacy, PII, security and, even more importantly, accuracy. And rightly so.

Organizations are treading cautiously with their acceptance of generative AI tools, despite seeing them as a game changer. Many businesses are trying to find the sweet spot that enables them to capitalize on the benefits now, while identifying more strategic uses for generative AI for the future; all without compromising on security.

One area where immediate gains can be obtained within an organization is their knowledge management. This initiative has been challenging for many organizations, yet it’s one that can drive employee productivity and deliver significant benefits to support teams, who'd typically maintain knowledge manually.

How generative AI and knowledge management intersect

Generative AI refers to a type of artificial intelligence that can create new content, such as images, text or even music, based on existing data. It uses machine learning algorithms to analyze and learn from large datasets. From there, it generates new content based on that analysis.

Knowledge management, on the other hand, is the process of capturing, organizing and sharing knowledge within an organization. It involves collecting information from various sources, storing it in a centralized database and making it easily accessible to employees when they need it.

Many organizations manually maintain their knowledge management, opening the door for out of date or poorly written content. By automating many of the tasks involved in knowledge management, generative AI can help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your knowledge management processes.

Some of the specific ways in which generative AI can optimize knowledge management include:

1. Automating the creation of knowledge articles

Generative AI can automatically create knowledge articles from existing data sources, such as product documentation, customer support tickets and employee training materials. This automation can free up IT professionals to focus on more strategic tasks, such as developing new knowledge management initiatives and improving the quality of existing knowledge articles.

2. Improving the quality of knowledge

Generative AI can improve the quality of knowledge by identifying and correcting errors, archiving old information, as well as by adding context and additional information to knowledge articles. This can help ensure that employees have access to accurate and up-to-date information.

3. Generate new ideas and insights

Generative AI can generate new ideas and insights by combining existing knowledge in new ways. For example, HR, facilities and IT all have articles that talk about onboarding and offboarding employees with an organization.

Generative AI may look at these and produce a merged knowledge article that discusses the end-to-end process of onboarding and offboarding across all three areas. This can save an employee from having to search across three different areas.

4. Solve problems more quickly

Generative AI can quickly solve problems by identifying patterns and trends in data. This can help organizations make better decisions and improve their overall performance.

For example, generative AI may look across IT incidents over a defined period of time and identify a common method of resolution for a group of common issues. Based on its findings, it can generate a knowledge article for service desk agents to resolve issues quicker, and for employees to resolve them themselves via self-service.

5. Create more engaging content

Generative AI can create more engaging content by personalizing it for each user, helping organizations improve their customer experience. Knowledge articles, particularly within HR knowledge, are personalized based on region or language. Being able to generate content unique to their persona will greatly enhance the use and experience to the employee.

What are the drawbacks to generative AI?

Generative AI solutions paired with knowledge management have the potential to revolutionize many industries and fields. However, it isn't without its drawbacks, including:

1. Security and privacy

Generative AI systems used for knowledge management may contain sensitive or confidential information. So, it's crucial to ensure that they are secure and protected against cyberthreats. Additionally, there may be concerns around privacy, particularly if the AI is generating content that includes personal or identifying information.

For example, generative AI can create realistic-looking malware and phishing attacks. These attacks can be used to steal personal information, financial data or other sensitive information.

2. Quality and accuracy

While generative AI models can produce impressive outputs, their quality and accuracy can vary widely depending on the input data and the complexity of the task. The old saying of "garbage in, garbage out" still applies. It can also be difficult to ensure that the AI has access to accurate and up-to-date information, which can affect the quality of what it generates.
For example, training data for ChatGPT is collected from the internet and updated regularly. However, the current version of ChatGPT is trained on data that was collected up to September 2021. This means that ChatGPT may not be able to answer questions about current events or topics that have been in the news since September 2021.

3. Data bias

Generative AI models can inadvertently reflect the biases and prejudices present in the data they're trained on, leading to biased or inaccurate results. This data bias is especially concerning in knowledge management applications, where accuracy is critical.
For example, if a model is trained on a dataset of text that's predominantly from the United States, the model may be less likely to generate text relevant to people from other countries.

Generative AI provides an organization with opportunities to enhance knowledge management through improved quality, engaging content and automation. But there are cautions along the way. Learn what you need to have in place to successfully use generative AI with knowledge management in your organisation.

How to Start a Knowledge Base: Simple Yet Surefire Approach

Tue, 13 Jun 2023 18:36:14 Z

Early in my career, I made the jump from defense contractor to customer support agent for an up-and-coming IT Service Management solution provider. Being new to the team and industry, I felt completely out of place. After the initial product training, I was pointed to a lab computer and told to start diagnosing a set of customer issues. I felt completely lost.

Over time, with significant amounts of studying and leaning on my peers, I figured things out and eventually became one of the go-to analysts. The challenge with this method was that this vast empirical knowledge was locked in each analyst’s brain. When we lost an employee, we also lost their extensive expertise. Eventually, a knowledge base initiative was started.

Why investing time and effort in a knowledge base setup is a good idea

While there are some obvious reasons to have a knowledge base, like:

Speeding up the resolution time of customer issues.
Maintaining employee productivity and satisfaction at work.
Increasing analyst time-to-effectiveness.
Delivering consistent solutions.

There are a few not-so-obvious reasons to maintain it, such as:

Eliminating tribal knowledge

This is knowledge that's held privately by individuals with the intention of increasing their value, yet makes the organisation vulnerable.

Improving the perception of your organisation and products

Providing responsive, accurate resolutions can eventually lead to product satisfaction and customer retention.

Reducing IT support costs

If the knowledge base is tailored properly and made available to self-service users, whether through a web portal or a virtual assistant (chat bot), then issues may be resolved, without even requiring a call to the service deck.

This is sometimes called Level 0 support. Also, with analysts closing issues faster, their productivity increases, often eliminating the need for added headcount.

Where to start with setting up a knowledge base

Most modern service management solutions include an integrated, yet unpopulated, knowledge base repository that's ready to receive your valued input.

Even though there are many great knowledge base vendors out there, they may not be able to integrate with your service management environment. Also, while not a knowledge base solution, SharePoint offers a knowledge template that can get you started.

In addition to standalone knowledge base solutions, you may wish to consider populating your knowledge databases with packaged knowledge. These knowledge packs, offered by various companies, focus on topics like Windows, Office 365, Adobe, macOS and others. These concentrated, ready-to-use knowledge packs are highly valuable, assisting young IT support organisations with helping customers and quickly resolving issues.

While many organisations can utilise pre-packaged knowledge, most organisations also support unique solutions that require specialised knowledge. For an established organisation, that's been providing support for quite some time, they'll already have valuable information in the form of past support tickets that can be quickly put into a knowledge base.

If the organisation is new or a new solution has recently been released, engineering teams will be heavily relied on for initial support knowledge.

Nearly all modern IT Service Management solutions will have the functionality to initiate new knowledge articles directly from resolved and closed incidents. For example, Ivanti Neurons for Service Management has an action link ‘button’ that seamlessly moves key incident data into a new knowledge base template.

It also includes workflows to vet, test and refine articles before publishing. The challenge is that ticket resolution data is often not written in a repeatable step-by-step, easy-to-understand format.

Motivating busy support teams to convert and document past incidents into decent articles and to store undocumented data in a searchable repository is the challenge.

How to motivate your teams

The organisation mentioned at the beginning of this blog had a wonderfully effective method of extracting information from analysts’ brains. It used the carrot and stick approach.

First, the stick. As part of everyone’s yearly goals, each support analyst was required to produce a set number of original knowledge articles per month. The target was typically 5–10 per month, which wasn't unreasonable based on our call volume. Not achieving the target number impacted one’s annual review. To ensure superior quality articles were being submitted, articles were first reviewed for duplication.

Next, articles were reviewed for accuracy by distributing them to other team members for technical review. Lastly, they received a final review before being made available to the targeted audience, whether it be analysts only or both analysts and customers.

Next, the carrot. Articles were tracked for usage and analysts were rewarded by the number of times an article was used to successfully resolve an issue. A decent IT service management solution with an integrated knowledge base should support this level of reporting.

Based on monthly usage, analysts whose articles were used the most during the month to resolve incidents received a substantial prize at the end of the year – some gifts were worth several thousand dollars.

Throughout the year, campaigns were created to motivate and remind the teams of the requirements and the rewards. The result was the creation of a sizeable, growing and highly valuable repository of product-specific articles in a brief period.

However you go about motivating your teams to create knowledge content, it'll take a concerted effort and constant reinforcement. The rewards for your efforts will be worth it.

If you’d like to experience all the benefits a modern service management provider can offer, watch the full demo.

Automating IT Operations with ITAM

Thu, 23 Mar 2023 12:00:01 Z

IT professionals, because of the massive shift to Everywhere Work, have been tasked with blazing the trail for a fast-tracked automation and AI process at their organisation – as well as a move to the cloud.

With constantly expanding IT environments, automation has moved from a luxury to a priority for IT professionals. But for your automation processes to be successful you need to consider investing in IT asset management (ITAM). Why? Because one of the key areas for automation is unifying your existing asset information.

According to EMA research, 18% of respondents plan to manage all asset types on one platform.

15% of IT professionals say that incomplete, siloed, conflicting or inadequate asset information is standing in the way of automation. If you want to introduce AI and automation that will increase efficiency and productivity, investing in an effective asset management solution is a step that can’t be skipped.

How ITAM is a cornerstone for automation

Your AI implementation is only as good as your data. AI and automation won't work well when your data is hard to find and spread out. A lot of EMA respondents are already on the right track; with 43% reporting that AI is aiding their automation.

In addition to increased automation, 55% of EMA research respondents reported that they already use one platform to unify asset visibility, workflow and automation. The consolidation of asset information allows for holistic and comprehensive understanding of processes - including dependencies between assets and software and streamlining processes.

ITAM also provides necessary details when automating or applying AI, especially when you connect it with endpoint management and discovery solutions – helping to provide real-time insights into health, security and performance of all devices.

Being able to have this level of data can help remediate any device issues and security threats before they can cause harm to the IT environment or impact user productivity. With 80% of IT professionals planning to change their current systems either by adding on or doing a complete rip-and-replace, ITAM will be an integral part of the transition to automation and AI for organisations.

How ITAM improves IT operations

An investment in automating your asset management is almost certain to bring value to your operations. IT professionals need to be ready and able to operate at scale and address any issues, while juggling delivering business value and implementing strategic initiatives like speeding up resolution times, reducing costs and improving service quality.

Being able to automate repetitive tasks and leverage AI for proactive identification and remediation of performance and security risks generates operational benefits. Reducing manual tasks will not only take pressure off your team, but you also improve operations by eliminating the possibility of human error, leading to improved accuracy and efficiency.

Eliminating these manual tasks opens new doors for IT professionals to take on innovative and strategic projects for the organisation, such as cloud deployments to accelerate ROI. Even though cloud is the number-one challenge to delivering high-quality IT service, it should be noted that ITAM maturity is highly correlated with having cloud waste below 5%.

With asset management growing in importance for security and employee experience initiatives, having automation will help IT professionals become a strategic partner and enjoy heightened levels of influence.

An overwhelming 85% of respondents rated automation and AI investments as profitable ventures, with an additional 10% as a breakeven proposition. When you’re looking to implement effective AI and automation initiatives in your organisation, having an effective ITAM solution can’t be skipped.

To explore all EMA’s research findings, download the eBook.

Leveraging IT Asset Information to Deliver Outstanding Employee Experience

Thu, 09 Mar 2023 15:38:29 Z

With the rise in Everywhere Work, IT professionals have become burdened with managing their growing IT infrastructure. In fact, some organisations have reported their digital transformation being accelerated by three to five years as they look to build their IT environments.

The volume of assets used for work has grown significantly – averaging 2.6 devices per person. This new wave of assets has opened the door for more issues to occur – reflected by 45% of employees experiencing more tech issues since the start of the pandemic.

Work-from-anywhere means assets are everywhere, bringing asset management challenges from all points of the globe. Now that employee productivity hinges on their experience with devices and systems they use, senior leaders recognise ITAM's critical role in enabling their service teams to better serve employees. Glossing over employee experience is a risk organisations simply can't afford to make.

To avoid high turnover rates, work-related stress and employee burnout, organisations need to rethink their strategy. When 89% of IT professionals say they manage a combination of IT and non-IT assets, ITAM and its various capabilities can help you gain control over your IT investments while redefining employee experiences.

How ITAM elevates the employee experience

A great employee experience helps employees be more productive and efficient. With the average worker using 2.6 devices to complete tasks, their productivity depends on the experiences they have with their tools.

IT asset management has proven to be a Swiss army knife for delivering a great employee experience by:

1. Automating tasks

Quicker ticket resolution enables self-service opportunities, critical in improving efficiency of your service desk. When you eliminate repetitive tasks from your teams' agenda, they can finally get on with this platform consolidation project or that critical system update that has fallen off their priority list. But designing automated workflows is impossible without a full overview of all assets that should be part of the process.

2. Providing a comprehensive understanding of assets

When IT professionals understand what assets they have and when to use them best, they improve asset utilisation and prevent waste. When IT can support all assets, they are able to quickly view each user's assigned devices and identify those that are causing issues.

3. Providing proactive support

When your asset data is connected with your service management platform, you're able to provide more proactive support to your users. The continuous monitoring of assets allows you to resolve issues before the end user even notices – eliminating the need to raise a ticket request!

4. Speeding up the ticket resolution process

Combining asset information with your service management platform means your service desk has all insights into the potential core of the issues and their remediation at their fingertips, including usage, performance details, status updates on warranties and licences. When you're able to get to the centre of issues, you'll create an environment that helps enrich employee experience.

This ability to continuously monitor your assets allows you to provide proactive support, giving your team to identify and remediate problems before they impact users. Instead of filling out ticket requests, employees can spend that time developing or implementing strategic projects for the organisation.

With recent research showing it can take as much as 20 minutes for workers to refocus back on their jobs after an issue has been resolved, you could reclaim hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of lost productivity across your teams.

A great IT asset management tool gives you both increased visibility and context. With a data-driven, proactive support system, your IT team can deter threats before a ticket even hits their inbox.

How ITAM for employee experience improves IT operations and cross-functional workflows

Nearly 15% of organisations say incomplete, siloed, conflicting or inadequate asset information disrupts cross-functional workflows. A shared ITAM system that powers workflows across the organisation, not just within IT teams, allows for improved service delivery across the organisation. Whether employees deal with IT assets or line of business technology, great service is consistently and efficiently delivered.

Connecting everything in the cloud with a single platform significantly enhances your efforts to transition and consolidate onto a single configuration management database (CMDB) or “single source of truth” which can support many additional organisational requirements, such as security. Moreover, integrating assets with your data from patch and discovery makes your IT operations more scalable and efficient.

This heightened efficiency allows for an empowered IT team. When you grant them access to holistic data in context for each device, they will be able to proactively address issues. And, by recognising and automating repetitive tasks, you can lift the workload for overwhelmed IT professionals, helping to deliver a great employee experience to IT teams as well as the users.

Delivering a great employee experience is more than just employee appreciation days and putting arcade games in the break room. It's about giving your employees tools that help them do their jobs to the best of their ability and allow them to focus on the most impactful projects for the business and their own professional growth.

Access EMA's full research eBook on modern ITAM in the modern workplace.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Service Management - Knowing How to Shoot, Before You Pull the Trigger

Thu, 21 Oct 2021 11:18:31 Z

Earlier this year we enjoyed an offsite day in the country, and one of the activities was laser pigeon shooting. Now don't worry, no pigeons were harmed on the day, we were simply using clay targets, modified toy guns with lasers and a couple of dusty, old speakers to provide shooting and explosion sound effects.

We knew we had a sharpshooter in the group, but on this particular day, he could not get his aim right and hit nothing. Now how does this relate to service management and artificial intelligence strategies?

Well, it’s all about the approach and getting the foundations right. Our friend, the sharpshooter had misinterpreted some of the instructions, so everything was out of sync, therefore his aim was off and although technically the best shot, came home with a duck.

Similarly, if we start looking at artificial intelligence and machine learning strategies to improve our existing service management solution, we need to get the underlying data correct, understand where the currents problems lie, and only then, apply the new technology to bring our solution to the next level.

All roads lead to Artificial Intelligence…

The phrase “artificial intelligence” is appearing in most conversations today whenever technology is being talked about. Whether it's AI driven drones which are scouring the countryside looking for fires, or it’s being used in big data for predictive modelling by banks and healthcare research, AI is seen as a lever to get a step up on your operations, get quicker results and remove labour intensive activities. Vendors also see the value, and the perception, of integrating as much "artificial intelligence" into their product portfolios to get the edge on their competition.

So what can it deliver?

What does it mean for service delivery teams and how can they leverage advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning to help the teams (or indeed hinder them)? Expectations can be high, so the inability to bring quick wins could be seen as a failure by the teams or the technology they are using.

Where it can help, significantly, is where service delivery teams look at artificial intelligence and machine learning with a practical approach and look at the problem to be fixed, before applying a solution to it.

A common misconception is the implementation of artificial intelligence and machine learning can deliver quick wins with the ability to resolve incidents automatically or detect problems quicker. These can be quick wins; however the underlying operational data needs to be in a good state before we layer over new technologies.

Poor Data + AI = Getting to the wrong answer faster

Readying for artificial intelligence and machine learning implementation

So how do we ready our service management implementation to leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning?

Let's go back to where we talked about defining the problem first before we implement a solution.

A big focus (and indeed sticking point) historically in service management is about the accuracy of metrics and their usefulness. One common theme I have seen over the years is ticket categorisation. The approach has been tweaked over the years – more detailed categories, then less details, making them mandatory, then realising people pick any value if it’s mandatory. Ultimately it comes down to the decision of an individual or a set of rules that were correct at a point in time. When a ticket is categorised correctly, the subsequent processes are then on the right tracks to run smoothly:

assigned to the right group,
applies the correct SLA,
present the right knowledge and
triggers the relevant automations,

This all helps to ensure the ticket is resolved in the shortest possible timeframe.

So how can you get it right?

As in our user story above, by taking away the decision-making process and leaving the machine learning models to parse through the description text and apply a machine learnt categorisation to a ticket, it provides a huge opportunity for service desks to modernise their approach, speed up ticket processing and leverage other areas of the solution correctly – because the first categorisation of the ticket is correct.

Now hold up a minute I hear you ask….what if the machine is wrong, or not quite right? We’ll have tasks, emails and integrations triggering automatically with no checks in place. Good question!

The Machine Learning models not only have a prediction algorithm, but will also work out their confidence levels, so we can only apply the subsequent automations if the model is say, 90% confident. So, there will always be the need to train and tune the models.

Loop back to our original problem statement and we now see accurate and actionable reports, that have meaning and relevance and can be used in decisions.

Is AI worth it?

Simply attempting to layer artificial intelligence and machine learning into your service management processes may not achieve much when compared to other technologies which are turbo boosted by the sight of it.

We should think carefully about what problems we first need to solve and ensure there is a good baseline of data quality. Then you can gradually introduce initiatives, such as machine learning categorisation to drive good data quality practices. Once these foundations are in place, the real fun can begin where we start to leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning to auto remediate incidents, auto detect and resolve problems or use predictive analytics when changes are expected.

Remember, we brought the best shot we had to laser pigeon shooting and because he didn’t have the basics right, he hit nothing. If you would like to see how you can leverage AI and ML and start with the right foundations to self-heal incidents and proactively detect problems then please get in touch to book a demo of Ivanti Neurons.

A Question of When vs If: The Need for Your Security Incident Management Plan

Wed, 08 Sep 2021 22:11:07 Z

Should all incidents be treated the same? Seems like a simple question, but the answer can have big implications.

Think about an employee who contacts the service desk, complaining they can’t log onto their email. If the issue is due to a ‘stale’ password, dropped connection or configuration issue after an update for the email server, then the impact on the organization can be quantified to the lost productivity for the impacted employee or employees. But if the outage is due to some malicious activity and the email outage is the first indicator of a larger security breach potentially affecting more mission critical applications, data or infrastructure, then the impact to the organization can be very far reaching.

The Service Desk as IT’s Front Line for Security Incident Responses

For most service management teams, incident management is focused on resolving incidents quickly and getting employees back up and running again. That practice works for most incidents, but as with the above security breech example, security-related incidents should be handled differently because of the higher potential risks and impacts. Even with dedicated security teams, the service desk will be IT’s face to the organization’s employees and the front line when a security incident occurs, so it needs to be an integral part of a coordinated response. Throw in the fact that service teams often act as the hub for communication and coordination during major incidents and the case becomes even stronger.

Since the worst time to plan for how to deal with a major security incident is in the middle of one, service teams need to proactively plan and prepare for how to handle security incidents. Otherwise, as one IT director said, “You’re trying to build the airplane while on final approach.” Given the increasing frequency and threat of security-related attacks, for most organizations it’s a question of “when” the next major security incident will occur, versus the question of “if.”

Your Security Incident Management Plan

One suggestion for service teams developing their Security Incident Management (SIM) plan is to do so in coordination with not just other IT teams, but ideally also with other departments that may potentially need to be involved. Why? Because a major security incident may have business impacts well beyond the scope of the immediate IT issues, such as legal responsibilities, privacy risks, and governance questions. That’s not to say everyone should be involved with each security incident, but a response plan should be comprehensive in dealing with and mitigating risks from a wide range of potential impacts.

When you start developing your SIM plan with your extended team, define the roles and responsibilities for involved team members. Think about leveraging models like RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) to help map out these roles and responsibilities based on type and scope of security incidents. Find and agree on the touch points for each team, not just for the Security team. Don’t wait until a breach occurs to determine who needs to approve specific actions; make it part of your SIM plan, along with response times and alternative approvers so requests don’t “hang” during critical moments and are instead automatically routed for timely approvals.

Also think about what data and information you need to capture during an incident. This can help in the moment when trying to figure out the incident scope and response, but also afterwards when things settle down and you’d like to evaluate and improve your response.

Similar to pilots preparing for a flight, one tactic IT teams use are checklists for what needs to be done, including for operational tasks like isolation, shutdown, recovery, and testing for different types of services, applications, devices, assets, and CIs. They also leverage automation tools as much as possible to remove as many manual steps, checks, notices, and approvals as they can, reducing the risk of things “falling through the cracks” when in the middle of a security response, as well as ensure additional levels of governance.

Once you complete your SIM plan, train and regularly practice the plan with your staff. Train them to quickly identify and confirm possible security incidents. Use practice runs to check the thoroughness and effectiveness of your procedures, including mitigation and recovery, looking for areas to improve.

SIMilar Position as Your Disaster Recovery Plan

One IT directory thinks of their SIM plan similar to their Disaster Recovery (DR) plan—"it’s good to have it ready but you hope you don’t need to use it.” But should you encounter a major security incident and need to activate your SIM plan, be sure to invest time soon after the incident to determine how you would improve your response. Plan to review the incident before memories fade, and gather the data and information collected during the incident.

During a review with the response team, investigate and determine the background for the incident. Answer the “news reporter’s” questions of “Who, What, When, Where, How and Why” for the incident. Keep in mind some of the answers and information may be needed for future legal proceedings.

Also evaluate your organization’s overall response. Analyze and grade how quickly threat identification, mitigation, and recovery happened. Gauge the effectiveness of current defenses and training, look for areas to improve, and apply lessons learned to be better prepared for the next threat.

For major incidents, prepare a report for the executive team along the lines of an “After Action” report used in the military. Summarize some of the key findings from your review, including an analysis of the speed and effectiveness of the response. Don’t forget to include possible financial and legal implications your extended team can provide.

Sample Questions to Begin Your Post-Incident Review

Here are some sample questions you may want to consider asking in your review. There are more questions you may have, but these are meant to help you get started as you work to improve your response to security incidents:

What type of incident was it?
How was the incident first detected?
Was the severity initially gauged correctly?
How well did the response plan work? Any steps not followed? What steps helped? What steps didn’t help?
Was response leadership clear? Was it effective and timely? Does anything need to change?
Any data or insights that could have helped?
How well did the security infrastructure work? Are there improvement opportunities in vulnerability management?
Was communication among teams effective and timely? What worked well? What didn’t work well?
Any other teams who should have been included? At what stage?
What could be improved to handle the next incident? For all types of possible security threats?

Forewarned is Forearmed

Security breaches and incidents, or at least attempted ones, are bound to occur given today’s changing threat landscape. But being forewarned is forearmed. IT service teams—along with the rest of IT and the larger organization—can be better protected and prepared, with well-documented plans for a coordinated team that’s ready to respond to and mitigate the risks from future security incidents.

Improving the Employee Experience with Proactive Service Management

Mon, 02 Aug 2021 20:36:19 Z

Recently I was thinking about the topic “How do you improve the employee experience”. Many organisations drive this from an IT perspective with concepts like a Self-Service Portal, or Teams Channels, chatbots, even Social IT boards. And these are all great ideas, but are they truly addressing employee experience?

Let me elaborate on this concept. I have a friend who uses Ivanti Neurons for ITSM, they have a fantastic Self-Service Portal which allows them to create issues, search the knowledge base, and make service requests such as ordering a new computer. And the 2 or 3 times he has used the Self-Service Portal and interacted with IT he has been happy.

Poor Employee Experience

But when I asked him what he thought of IT, he said they were never proactive, and he was always having issues with his computer. What? Why? Two weeks earlier, he caught the train into the city, the trip is about 1.5 hours and he had time to work, so out came his laptop and started working, 30 minutes later the laptop battery ran out of juice and he could not continue working. 3 days later when he powered up his laptop, he received the message “Your battery can no longer provide sufficient power to your system and needs to be replaced”. Six Months earlier he had issues with Blue Screen crashes and his motherboard. After the battery issue, he went to the self-service portal, created an issue with IT, who then told him the laptop needed to be replaced and to raise a service request for a replacement laptop.

Now IT were very quick in identifying what needed to be done and responding to my friend. Within the context of the issue, they did a good job. But my friend was still unhappy with IT. His first comment to me was why couldn’t they be proactive and know about these issues before he did.

I put a question back to him. If the service management from IT was proactive and could see these issues before you did, and even order you a replacement part, or order a new computer without you having to do that, how would you rate them? His comment was a simple 10 out 10. Excellent.

Shift Left

Many organisations talk about the concept of “Shift Left”. What this is trying to do, is focus on service excellence and end user empowerment. By just empowering the end user, this only moves the process a very small amount to the left. The largest shift left is proactive identification and resolution of the issues.

Automation and Self-Healing

Let’s put this into action using Ivanti Neurons for Healing and see what the process can look like.

An automation process executes against a laptop and based on this process identifies battery health as poor, terrible, or no longer useable.
The results of this then sends a message to the laptop owner via Microsoft teams notifying them of this issue and what would they like to do. In this case we ask the owner
1. Notify IT of the Issue
2. Request a New laptop
3. Ignore the issue for now
As a result of this Teams interaction, the automation process will either
1. Create a service request for a new laptop
2. Notify IT of the issue
3. Ignore the issue for a while longer
Now of course you could skip the Microsoft Teams interaction but having that notification capability keeps the user engaged and aware of what is happening, and proactively involved.

Putting this all together what does this automation process look like?

The concept of this move shift left, is to enable the user to work without distraction and interruption. How many times do we as users google how to fix something on our work laptop? And why because we feel we can get this resolved immediately ourselves, rather than logon to the self-service portal, log an issue, wait for an IT person to reply, arrange a common time for the IT person to remote into your computer, try the same things you have and then tell you what you already know.

Think about the different issues you have had recently, or maybe colleagues have had. Let’s list a few;

Battery Health. Already spoken about that, but the reality is users don’t know about their battery health until they need the battery, and sometimes that is during an important presentation.
Print Spooler. A topical and recent issue, where the Windows 10 Print Spooler recently had a vulnerability. Many IT organisations turned off the print spooler, and users found this out when they went to print. Imagine not being able to print that report you were about to give to the CIO.
Blue Screen crashes: How often do you immediately log an issue with IT when you get a blue screen crash. Typically, it would take 3 to 5 times before you say enough is enough. But if this happens automatically behind the scenes the automation creates an IT Issue, and they are aware the first time.
Application Crashes. Again, how quickly do you really get around to telling IT that the Application crashes. Often this one goes undetected until you are discussing this over the watercooler.

Now I have only listed four scenarios, and I am sure that you can list so many more. There are so many niggling untold stories that often never get to IT. Imagine knowing about these issues before the employee raised it, and even better resolving it proactively. Ivanti Neurons for Healing comes with many predefined checks, like the above and many more, or you can build your own.

A 360-degree view

Automation and Self-Healing are two very key aspects of driving a better employee experience and another area to consider is having a 360-degree view of the employee. All Service Management platforms have data about an employee they can tell you their name, email, phone, manager, location, building, the incidents and requests they are requested, and even the assets they own. Whilst this data is useful, it is static or historical data. How much better would it be if we can get a real time view about the user, the devices, and what is happening at that time. Incidents logged, performance of the laptop, and other information.

Ivanti Neurons Workspace enables you a view of the users device and detailed information like performance, recent Incidents logs, software, patches etc. This information gives an IT Analyst in-depth and powerful real-time information which they can use to quickly identify and remediate.

The New Employee Experience

Finally, what if we could understand the real employee experience? In nearly all service management platforms this is achieved via sending surveys in response to Issues or Requests. These are great as point in time views, but do not give a true holistic view of a user’s experience. As we discussed earlier with my friend, he was not happy with IT due to the issues he was having with his computer. If we could bring together all that information into one place and using analytics give a score across areas of an employee, then we can have an employee index that gives is the ultimate view of the employee.

At Ivanti we are putting the employee first, and through improving employee experience, we can empower everyone in the everywhere workplace. Learn more about the Ivanti Neurons solution and how it will help you.

IT Asset Management 101

Thu, 15 Jul 2021 12:00:00 Z

If your business is growing, it won't be long until you need to develop an IT asset management protocol that allows you to manage your hardware and software assets throughout their lifecycle, helping to reduce business interruptions, plan budgeting effectively, mitigate risks, and gain high-level insight into how IT is driving success for your organization.

If you're ready to build the business case for IT asset management at your organization, we're offering a big short-cut with this in-depth primer into its benefits. We'll explain what IT asset management is, what kinds of assets it can be used with, how it differs for hardware and software, and how it can help organizations maximize return on their investments in both IT equipment and software licenses, whether on premises or in the cloud.

We will also talk about the risks that IT audits represent and look at the disposition process for assets at the end of their lifecycle. By the end, you'll have an overview of everything needed for success with IT asset management.

What Is IT Asset Management?

IT asset management is a system of business practices that seeks to maximize the value of IT devices and systems by combining financial, contractual, and inventory data to track the status of IT assets across their lifecycle. IT assets can typically be characterized as either hardware (the physical computing equipment that the organization owns), software (program assets that the organization either owns or licenses) or cloud services.

Here's how IT asset management applies to each category:

Hardware - Organizations with robust IT infrastructure can own a lot of computer hardware: desktop computers, laptops, keyboards and other peripheral components, printers, copiers, and more. To ensure that the hardware is well-maintained, organizations must keep track of what assets they own, where those assets are deployed within the organization, how they are used, how frequently they are used, their repair status, lifecycle information, and when they need to be replaced or disposed of.

Software - Software assets are typically licensed by the organization based on the number of users that will install the software. IT asset management processes for software allow organizations to monitor their compliance status with the end user licensing agreements that allow them to use licensed software applications. Your organization can monitor the status of your software licensing agreements, plan appropriately for future licensing payments, and monitor how many licenses are in use to ensure you're getting the most value for each software license that you pay for.

Software as a Service (SaaS) - Software hosted on the cloud and licensed via a subscription model raises a unique set of considerations when it comes to managing consumption, users, compliance, and spend. As SaaS continues to grow to represent a larger share of an organization’s software assets, processes and tools designed to address these considerations become increasingly important.

The role of IT asset management is to help organizations extract the maximum value from their IT investments. In that sense, IT asset management is really a set of business practices that enable businesses to make better decisions about how they manage their IT resources. The practice of IT asset management may involve the collection and management of IT asset data, but the real value is created when that information supports decisions about how best to maximize existing IT assets, when and whether to invest in new IT assets, and how to dispose of aged IT assets in a way that maximizes returns.

What Are the Features and Benefits of IT Asset Management Software?

At its core, IT asset management is a discipline based on the collection and analysis of data. In the past, organizations might have kept paper records that detailed their inventory of hardware and software assets, costs for each asset, and other data, but the proliferation of IT within organizations has made it virtually impossible to track IT assets in detail using a paper system.

Organizations that lead the way in IT use IT asset management software to keep up-to-date records of their IT assets that can be used to facilitate important decisions about how IT equipment is managed. Below, we've listed some of the key ITAM capabilities and what benefits your organization can expect from each one:

Comprehensive Hardware and Software Asset Tracking

A comprehensive data tracking system must lie at the heart of every effective IT asset management system. The ability to track assets and their attributes across several dimensions is a critical value driver for organizations that want to leverage IT asset management to improve their decision-making when it comes to IT.

The inventory tracking functionality of IT asset management software goes beyond a simple list of what assets you have at your disposal—it includes specific details and specifications for hardware and software that enable real transparency into your IT capabilities. Organizations use IT asset management software to track their computing assets, along with details like the product number, SKU, and date of purchase, as well as technical specifications like CPU type, processor speed, memory, available disk space, IP address, and numerous other parameters.

License Compliance Management Functionality

Software license compliance is a major issue for organizations that license third-party software. If you license software for multiple users at your organization from a third-party supplier, you may be subject to external audits to ensure that you are compliant with the terms of your service-level agreements. The world's biggest software providers pull in billions of dollars annually by investigating subscribers who are suspected of abusing their services. Whether you're aware of the situation or not, your organization could be hit hard by:

"True-ups" - Outstanding fees that must be paid if the organization is found to be using licenses in excess of what is allowed in their service-level agreement
Additional financial penalties for violating the terms of the service-level agreement
A bill for the cost of the software audit that discovered the non-compliance issues
Retroactive licensing fees if there is a long history of improper deployment of software that violates the service-level agreement

The bottom line is that organizations need to remain in compliance with license agreements to avoid an expensive software audit that results in big fines. IT asset management software allows organizations to automatically detect what software has been installed on each computer that is connected to the company's network. Automated software detection can be cross-referenced with service-level agreements to ensure compliance and avoid hefty penalties associated with an unsuccessful software audit.

Software Usage Data and Analysis

When an organization purchases 10 software licenses but installs the software 15 times, it could be subject to penalties for violating its service-level agreement with the software provider—but what if the organization purchases 15 licenses and only installs the software 10 times?

Organizations are using IT asset management software to assess software installation and analyze software usage data, helping to eliminate excess costs associated with unused software licenses. Software applications can be used to track the number of machines on which a certain application has been installed, as well as the actual usage statistics for the application. After all, a license paid for is still wasted if the application is never touched by the user—and that's an opportunity for the organization to cut costs.

Purchasing and Contract Management

Many organizations track IT purchases through a procurement system while managing IT inventory through a separate system; in many cases, the link between the two systems is missing. This means that the folks responsible for managing IT assets may not have full visibility of the service-level agreements and contracts that govern software licenses and may not be able to properly plan for future purchases or see when software contracts need to be renewed.

IT asset management software needs to provide the big picture view of how the organization is addressing its needs for hardware and software by integrating procurement, contracts and IT management into one dashboard. In this way, organizations can accurately assess their current software and project their future needs in the same interface, allowing for effective strategic planning and budget allocation.

On the hardware side, transparency into purchasing allows IT asset managers to budget correctly for turnover of IT inventory, plan for new purchases in accordance with inventory that is approaching the end of its lifecycle and analyze financial data alongside IT inventory usage data to determine the best route for IT asset disposition.

What Is IT Asset Disposition?

IT asset disposition (ITAD) is a business built around the safe and ecologically responsible disposal of obsolete, outdated or unwanted IT products.

When a piece of hardware reaches the end of its normal lifecycle, IT inventory managers need to make informed decisions about what will happen to the equipment. Is it worth the cost to refurbish the equipment? How much could the life of the equipment be extended by an investment in refurbishing, and is it worth the cost? Should the asset be resold? If so, how should it be priced and what resources will the organization allocate towards coordinating a sale? Should the asset be recycled? What are the applicable rules and regulations (and rebates!) associated with that, and what are the risks of improperly recycling the asset? The organization may even choose to dispose of the asset altogether through a third-party ITAD firm.

Getting Started with IT Asset Management

Ivanti provides industry-leading solutions for organizations that wish to enable better strategic decision-making by increasing visibility and transparency of their IT infrastructure.

Get started today by requesting a product demo and see what Ivanti can do for your organization.

Service Management: Firefighting and Fire Prevention

Thu, 10 Jun 2021 18:28:39 Z

In the face of major disruptive change, the organizations that succeed are those that do more than just react to new circumstances. They evolve. When it comes to addressing the unprecedented challenges that have emerged in 2020 and 2021, the most successful IT teams have risen and will continue to rise to the occasion by recognizing the need for a proactive approach to the waves of disruption.

As any seasoned firefighter will tell you, there are basically two ways to take on a fire. One is to direct your best knowledge, skills, and tools at a fire that is underway and bring it under control. The other is to take steps ahead of time to prevent the fire from ever starting. The past year and a half have given IT teams the opportunity to evolve their approaches both to preventing and combating the “fires” brought about by the pandemic and our response to it.

To understand how, let’s start by taking a look at some of the major causes of these fires.

Digital Transformation

Although digital transformation has been an ongoing priority for businesses for years, the shift to remote working models exposed gaps in many organizations’ DT initiatives. It quickly became clear that there was a lot of digital transformation that still needed to happen, and at an incredibly accelerated pace. This was especially true for business functions that were historically performed in-person or in a co-located manner.

Endpoint Complexity

Digital transformation and the shift to the everywhere workplace have created an explosion in the number and complexity of IT endpoints within the organization. IT teams have faced a huge influx of personal devices and network connections as well as Internet of Things and self-service devices to replace one-to-one human interaction. The management and security considerations accompanying this growth produce a sharp uptick in complexity for environments that were already, in most instances, very complex.

Shift to Product Teams

At the same time that IT is trying to balance keeping the lights on with these other concerns, the business demand for IT projects is rising – particularly projects to develop and deploy applications. Industry analysts agree that this shift is driving a move from project orientation coordinated by IT to a more self-sufficient product team approach. In the emerging model, autonomous product teams own the entire application lifecycle, including the support for those applications after they are in production use. And while IT may not be part of every product team, they are considered accountable to the business for the quality of the employee experience of technology – so IT typically maintains a governance role even when not directly involved with the product team.

Business Value Orientation

Finally, while all of this is occurring, IT is being asked to justify the value of capital and OpEx investments to demonstrate ongoing alignment with the strategic business objectives.

In the face of all of these challenges, IT has gone above and beyond to keep the business moving. There have been long nights, lost weekends and high levels of stress as teams do more than they could ever have anticipated to keep pace with the changing technology environment. At the beginning of 2020, there were dire predictions about decreases in IT budgets, but since IT became the hero of 2020, we have in fact seen those investments increase slightly. Several analysts actually had to revise their estimates. However, that influx of funding (where it has occurred) did little to relieve the stress brought about by the fire starters listed above.

In the face of those disrupters, the reality is that business-as-usual IT practices are not sustainable. IT organizations must take a leading role in governing and guiding the business as they continue to accelerate digital transformation, as they increase complexity and as they make the move to a product team orientation. Otherwise, they can expect to face growing operational and strategic problems such as a rise in Shadow IT – with the IT team bypassed and its budget diverted – and a lack of IT relevance in line of business service management.

Service Management Maturity

IT needs to mature service management processes so they can serve as the example and governance model for the rest of the business.

If you look at some of the maturity models on the market from analyst firms, one thing becomes immediately clear – maturity of ITSM processes is well documented, but not well-adopted. There have been attempts to achieve greater levels of maturity through implementation of ITIL best practices and automation, but unfortunately – despite the best intentions for deployment of self-service capabilities, service catalogs, CMDBs, workflows and more sophisticated processes like problem, release or configuration management – organizations have generally been unable to sustain ongoing management of these processes. Resources have been diverted and ITIL maturity projects have been relegated to the back burner – only to go stale and then have to be re-started again and again. On a 10-point scale, the average maturity of an IT organization's service management processes is about a 5.

While these projects have stopped and started, and the fires of disruptive have been kindled, the path to maturity has changed in a big way.

Service Management and Fire Prevention

Today’s IT teams must look outwards, not inwards, to enable the business to mature. IT has a key role to play in enabling every line of business and product team to adopt service management best practices – helping them to avoid the pitfalls that led IT to adopt ITIL principles in the first place. Enabling IT teams to scale to support this cross-functional governance role requires the introduction of new efficiencies. That's where modern approaches like artificial intelligence and machine learning come in – using technology to self-heal, self-secure and self-service the enterprise with hyper-automation.

The measure of IT effectiveness must encompass more than the value that technology contributes to the business attainment of KPIs. The measure of value must also factor in the employee experience of working with technology. Employee experiences is now recognized as differentiator when it comes to attracting and retaining the best talent at a time when remote working models have made the business world an employee’s market. IT is accountable for both.

The shift to a fire-prevention approach to service management focusing on the employee experience, implementing both pre- and post-ticket automation, and extending service management to the business.

Employee Experience

Employees are looking for quick solutions wherever they happen to be in the world. They need automated, interactive solutions that enable them to self-serve. The best employee experience involves solutions that enable employees to self- heal, or better yet, that proactively eliminate the problem before the employee even observes that there is an issue. A quantitative measure of employee experience, such as the Ivanti Employee Experience, can demonstrate how effective automation is in driving better Employee experiences.

Pre-Ticket Automation

A new class of intelligent service management solutions enable a ticketless experience by self-identifying, triaging, and self-healing issues before they arise. Leveraging hyper-automation, these solutions make support teams more efficient and more effective, enabling them to focus resources on those issues that require human interaction.

Post-Ticket Automation

These solutions also put new capabilities into the hands of the resources that are on the front lines fighting the fires. Embedded knowledge and automation enable support staff to leverage proven solutions to automatically resolve common issues. Machine learning enables them to triage issues in real time to reduce the mean time to resolution for issues that require individual attention.

Extending Service Management

A growing number of product teams, as well as groups such as HR, Finance, Legal, Procurement, Facilities, and others are discovering that service management has become a critical factor for ensuring their operational success. By enabling service management as a set of consistent, automated, and easily adopted services within the organization, IT can help these groups avoid the same pitfalls that IT fell into in the days before ITIL. This enables IT teams to establish governance over product team delivery and to ensure the best possible employee experience.

To learn how Ivanti solutions enable this next generation of service management solutions, check out our upcoming webinar “From Firefighting to Fire Prevention -- Service Management for the Realities of 2021.” You can subscribe to our webinar series here.

A Guide for Starting Out - My Epiphany to Modernise Knowledge and Service Delivery with Automation & Bots

Tue, 08 Jun 2021 12:50:50 Z

Whether you are part of the Service Desk, or the broader IT Department, there is an expectation that you can fix all problems, quickly and without using those words that end users dread - “have you rebooted yet?”

Ever reliable reboots and remote control have been a staple in the way IT can help to diagnose and resolve an end user’s (or your families right!) technology problem, but have you looked beyond the remote control session at the latest and greatest alternatives?

Buzz words like self-healing, bots and machine learning are everywhere, but how does that help you, how can you put these new alternatives into practice to improve the service you provide to your end users? I am going to share a few ideas on how you can practically start to gain value out of these alternatives, my goal in this blog is we find a way to get more time back in your day and your end users have a better experience in each interaction with IT.

Service Management in the Past

Now, I might be really behind the times here because this only occurred to me recently, but there are a lot of use cases where we can now replace or augment knowledge articles, work instructions or incident templates with self-healing and AI bots. When I was working on a Service Desk over 15 years ago, we had templates to help us log incidents and work instructions for how to fix common problems. There were dozens per customer and sometimes we could remote control the end user’s device to fix the issue, sometimes we would have to talk the end user through remediation steps otherwise we had to escalate it to second level.

Today instead, I am looking at ways we can automate these work instructions, knowledge articles and incident templates by using bots for self-healing available in the Ivanti Neurons platform. It does not have to be a scary thought, to come up with and define complex workflow, the goal is to start small, and keep it simple. Here are three ways you could identify common tasks to automate:

Review Knowledge Article Usage: Review reporting to understand what knowledge articles get viewed the most (from both a Self Service & Support perspective) and which knowledge articles have a high number of related incidents.
Review Incident Management Trends: Review the incidents logged for the past 12 months to identify the top three issues that end users have raised. To take it one step further, find the top three issues that required the use of remote control or had to be escalated to second level.
Review Work Instructions: Review work instructions or other, leverage your own experiences and identify the top 3-5 remediation steps that you do at least once a day for an end user.

Service Delivery Now with Automation and Bots!

I touched earlier on the concept of replacing or augmenting knowledge articles, work instructions or incident templates with self-healing and AI bots. This is where I had my epiphany. When I was planning a recent customer meeting, looking for new ways Ivanti Neurons can deliver value, it hit me that there must be hundreds of small, simple tasks that the Service Desk still do today, that might still consume 5-10 minutes each, we can automate these with Ivanti Neurons, the few I came up with:

Mapping Network Drives
Start / Restart the Print spooler
Flush DNS / Release or Renew IP Config

Face it, network drives drop, printers fail, and network issues persist, but looking at the above three things, if you receive one each of those today, that consumes 15-20 mins conservatively through either talking the end user through the steps, or remote control… or you suggest that ever useful fix of all fixes, the reboot!

But with Ivanti Neurons for Workspace, you can click the ‘Map **Corporate** Drive’, ‘restart print spooler’ or ‘flush DNS’ button and have those issues sorted within 1-2 minutes, there are multiple points of value here:

The end user does not have to reboot or find their way to My Computer… Map Network drive… and can get back on with their day fast!
The Service Desk does not have to jump through sometimes multiple terminal servers or confirm the end user’s device name to start a remote-control session, meaning they get onto the next call faster.
The Security team is happy as we are reducing the risk of Service Desk and even end users requiring elevated administrative rights.

Create the Service Desk of the Future!

Now that you have five to ten topics to focus on, it is time to get to work in Ivanti Neurons. There are dozens of actions available “out of the box” (like actions for my three tasks above), and where we do not currently have an action (we add more all the time!) you can get creative and embrace your inner nerd like I do and come up with a simple or complex PowerShell or Bash script to achieve the result, you really are only limited by your imagination.

In the past I would have to write a work instruction or create ‘knowledge’ to share with the Service Desk team on how to fix a common issue, the future is creating an Ivanti Neuron’s bot to automate the fix.

I have focused on the Service Desk in this blog, but second and third level teams you can get in on the action too - if there are incidents escalated that you think the Service Desk can fix, invest some time to create an Ivanti Neurons bot and you will save yourself from a mundane incident next week!

I hope you have enjoyed my epiphany and more importantly you have had your own epiphany on what you could automate with an Ivanti Neurons bot in your organisation. This is just the first step towards fully automating and introducing self-healing for these common issues and further ‘shifting left’ your Service Delivery function.

So a little challenge for you reader, come up with the top 5 knowledge articles, incident trends or work instructions where you work, then contact Ivanti so we can work with you to automate them.

Or if you’re ready to see a demo of Ivanti Neurons in action then book a demo today.

Right-size Your Service Management Solution with this Checklist

Tue, 18 May 2021 10:29:50 Z

Like most of you, I have been working from home for the last 12 months and now with vaccines being rolled out I hope we are at the end of this long tunnel. During this period, I noticed that my weight has been steadily creeping up, so, to get fit I decided to start cycling again and get myself a new road bike.

1. Do Your Research Before Shopping

As with any significant purchase I make, I did my research, put my checklist together and scanned the market. At the store, I pulled out my checklist and narrowed down the selection to two bikes - both are trusted brands with quality carbon frames and parts. The price difference was huge, where the top-of-the-line bike costs three times more than the other! The store owner was an honest and genuine person and recommended I go with the bike that fit my criteria. It came down to the following considerations:

Budget - after doing my research, I knew what my limit was. The expensive bike came with pricey parts and accessories that I did not need
On-going maintenance and cost - due to the high-tech parts, most adjustments and servicing requires a trained specialist
My skill level - let's be honest here, I am not going to compete in the Tour de France, so I don’t really a bike specially designed for pro athletes

When I am not cycling, I am a Solutions Consultant at Ivanti and have been in the enterprise service management industry for over 25 years helping customers with their service management practices and solutions. When a customer comes to Ivanti for a solution, I feel that customers should have the same approach I did and select the software (and vendor) that is right for them based on the above criteria.

2. Work to Your Budget

After doing your market research and getting the approvals to purchase a new software, you will have a budget to work with. There are hundreds of Service Management software vendors in the market and a good place to help you get to your shortlist is the Gartner Magic Quadrant for IT Service Management Tools.

Like the bike I was admiring, service management systems will have lots of bells and whistles that you do not need but are included in the total cost. Ivanti allows you to decide which Service Management bundle is best suited for the different types of users:

Help Desk - for Service Desk Analysts to manage Incident and Requests
Service Desk - includes Service Transition modules like Change and Configuration Management
Service Management - complete package with all ITIL processes
Asset Management – to manage the complete lifecycle of your company assets

In addition to picking the right bundle for your users, Ivanti gives you the option to decide on concurrent vs named licenses. It only makes sense to get fixed named licenses for users that will be using the system all day, while casual users can utilise a pool of concurrent licenses.

3. Consider On-going Maintenance and Costs

Even if budget wasn’t an issue, you do have to consider the on-going cost to maintain the system. We know that business needs can change very quickly and IT has to work with the business to meet their new requirements. This could be some changes to the Incident Management workflow, integration or even expanding the solution to meet your Enterprise Service Management (ESM) needs eg. Human Resources and Facilities. Are you able to configure the system in-house to adapt to these changes or does it require a specialist from the vendor or partner? How much will this cost your organisation each year? Do you have to pay for additional ESM modules or add-ons?

Having the ability to configure and maintain the system in-house is critical to the success or failure of the implementation. Not only will this help to manage the cost but it will foster a sense of ownership of the system. It is better to invest in your staff development by training them and allowing the team to enhance the platform. As your team gains more confidence with the system, more modules, features and functionality will be utilised, giving you a valuable return on your investment.

Finally, you are able to keep all the knowledge within the organisation, without having to rely on costly services engagement every time a modification is needed. Organisations like Custom Fleet, Australian fleet company which manages and leases over 100,000 vehicles across Australia and New Zealand, have been through this journey moving from a platform that was costing them too much every year and was severely under-utilised. They could not justify the business case for continuing on that platform and so transitioned to Ivanti Service Manager.

4. Match to Maturity Level

We have seen many organisations spend six to seven figure amounts purchasing and attempting to implement a whole of business ESM solution with the end result delivering only Incident, Service Request and Change Management. It is important to select a solution that is the right fit for your organisation based on organisational maturity level. Ivanti Service Manager is ranked the highest in the Gartner Critical Capabilities report for Intermediate-Maturity Infrastructure and Operations, where the majority of organisations sit. Ivanti Service Manager can deliver the best time-to-value with the right licenses and faster deployment.

Reach out for Assistance

Ivanti Service Manager is a trusted ITIL v4 based service management platform that is available in the cloud and on-premise we have helped many organisations find the right-size Enterprise Service Management solution, so please reach out to find out more.

And for those of you wondering which bike I ended up bringing home with me, it was the right-size bike and not the over-priced, high maintenance bike that was never suited for me.

With the dawn of 2021, does Information Technology change again?

Tue, 09 Feb 2021 14:19:47 Z

With the chiming of the clock and a quiet NYE celebration, 2020 was in the rear-view mirror and 2021 was the open road ahead, all possibility. We have multiple vaccines to the pandemic and a true way forward for life to return to normal (well some time).

By this point most customers I speak to have the view that we are not going back to how we worked pre-2020. The world has changed, business had to pivot quickly and adapt to continue doing business. For many, a new way of working had some unexpected results:

The need for large expensive offices may not be essential, we can do more with less
Many users can be productive remotely that were previously thought unsuitable for remote work
Managing devices during a pandemic, natural disaster or unexpected event can be a challenge

As we enter 2021 and move beyond the break/fix solutions of 2020, businesses are looking for the next steps of how to make these changes strategic and drive successful outcomes. Common questions I hear are how organisations can:

Ensure a great user experience regardless of location, network or device type
Manage a sprawling everywhere workplace
Reduce the cost to deliver a remote IT model

Ensure a great user experience

Whether a user be in an office, at home or stuck in hotel quarantine they expect to be able to use services securely, predictably and to be supported as if they were in their workplace. It’s the job of the organisation and ultimately IT to try and make that a reality.

For many in EUC, devices are invisible until on the corporate network or VPN. This means once remote, being able to provide the same level of service is challenging. This causes great frustration on both sides.

Being able to provide real-time visibility & support capabilities to any device on any network, on prem, in the cloud or at the edge delivers a massive step up in ability to deliver a great secure user experience. Using IoT technology with a cloud first model, Ivanti can deliver this unique approach of always on connectivity & support.

Manage the everywhere workplace

The services we deliver to users are sprawled everywhere: on prem, in cloud and XaaS. The way we provide connectivity to these services is also disparate. Users could be on ADSL, NBN or 5G, on or off a VPN. Their device could be corporate owned, BYOD, or totally untrusted.

We have now entered the era of the Everywhere Workplace, and how we manage that will dictate how successful IT can be. Success comes in contrasting measures. Successful at securing and protecting the business, delivering a great user experience & service, and managing a financially responsible organisation.

Reduce cost to deliver IT

One thing the pandemic did was squeeze budgets, and in some cases eradicate them. The question is always ‘how do we do more with less?’ One way to accomplish this is by picking a few essential partners to strategically work with rather than having lots of point solutions.

Here at Ivanti we are in the unique position to deliver 3 cornerstones of IT:

Ability to fully manage, secure & service any device on prem, in the cloud or at the edge
A security platform built on security principles from the ACSC to provide confidence & compliance
A Gartner MQ leading Service & Asset Management platform for all sizes and maturity level

This means customers can work with fewer partners, with better pricing, less complexity, and integrated solutions for increased value.

How can Ivanti help you in 2021?

Through the modern device management approaches taken by Ivanti and the breadth of capability, we support our customers in managing the Everywhere Workplace.

Ivanti helps drive several business outcomes. If any of these are of interest let us know:

Adhering to security frameworks for compliance, such as the ACSC Essential 8
Reducing your risk and exposure by managing & securing not just laptops, desktops & servers but phones, tablets and IoT devices
Providing modern support and service to users regardless of location, device or network
Reducing the cost of IT by shifting left and beyond to resolve more support issues through automation & integration
Providing cost savings through asset visibility and life cycle tracking

For more information on how Ivanti can help you drive the Everywhere Workplace check out www.ivanti.com.au

3 Time Savers You Will Uncover With Ivanti Neurons for Spend Intelligence

Wed, 18 Nov 2020 16:01:23 Z

Software Asset Management (SAM) is a very complex discipline, but I am sure I do not need to tell you that right?

Most customers I talk to about SAM are familiar with ITIL and the challenges that it brings when implementing processes & procedures into their organisation, I often use ITIL as a comparison to ITAM but the way I see it, ITAM is a whole other level of pain above what most organisations experienced with ITIL processes, which I think is why it doesn’t get a lot of focus or dedicated resources.

Time’s the Enemy

Anecdotally I often find that those responsible for SAM in their organisation also have 2-3 other hats and that SAM (and more broadly ITAM) takes a back seat or is put in the too hard basket and even at a basic level they struggle to get visibility into what software is installed across the organisation.

At the same time, a lot of customers are coming to us for help with SAM due to a security control (such as ACSC Essential 8) or security standard they’ve been directed to comply with, this control can often be as simple as being able to demonstrate they can show an inventory of what software they have in their environment.

Whether you do wear the SAM ‘hat’ or are responsible for security in your organisation, I’m sure that spending time working with other teams to extract software reports, and then manipulating them in in excel for a meaningful output is not the best use of your time!

How to Win Time Back

Let me introduce Ivanti Neurons for Spend Intelligence, one of the newest capabilities in the Ivanti Neurons platform that has been designed to provide instant insights into your software landscape, and insights into your software spend. For me though the key with Spend Intelligence is the easy and intuitive interface for those of you with limited time to quickly get the information you need without having to deal with other teams and spend hours in excel.

I have put together three use cases of how you can leverage Spend Intelligence to quickly and easily get visibility into your environment to provide answers to help you address security risks, unauthorised software or to save money.

1. Identify End of Life Software

End of life software is a security concern, if you have end of life software, is it being patched? If not, it becomes an unnecessary risk, so the software needs to be either upgraded or uninstalled. Ivanti’s content team do a fantastic job of keeping the Software Library up to date so using the ‘End of Life’ chart in Software Insights we can quickly get a list of software installed in your environment to target for upgrade or removal, including the name of the end user who is using the device. The ‘Upcoming End of Life’ chart also provide a resource for you to get ahead of future issues before they become end of life.

2. Unauthorised Software Use

At its core, Software Insights allows you to view, filter and categorise the software in your environment. Meaning you can quickly see the top software categories, software vendors and then drill further into each individual software title and see exactly what device it is installed on and who is using it. Lastly, you can then classify software titles as prohibited or allowed to make it even easier to filter these out in the future. Additionally, using this data security teams can be provided software titles that should be denied or controlled through policy.

3. Understand Where You Can Reclaim Licenses to Reduce Cost

Leaving the best till last, my third use case will allow you to save money. Based on the data being collected on each device we gather usage information on the software that is installed across your environment. We then use that data to provide the ‘Reclamation Opportunities’ view, here you can see the ‘days since last used’ for each software title on a device, along with a determination on the chance of reclamation, for example a software title that hasn’t been used in the last 90 days might be classified as a high chance for reclamation. Once you have decided to go ahead with reclamation you can then create a ticket in the Service Management platform for the support team to action. By removing the software from the device, you are reducing you license count which can allow you to reduce the entitlements you own, thus saving money!

What’s the Value?

By spending a few hours weekly or fortnightly to review these 3 Software Insights dashboards, you will:

Reduce your security exposure
Keep on top of unauthorised software that has appeared in your environment
Save some money.

Plus, you have a source to go to when you need to answer or provide evidence you have a handle on the software in your environment and lastly this is a great first step in establishing and maturing your Software Asset Management practice, positioning you to adopt a full SAM solution in the future such as Ivanti License Optimizer to manage Enterprise License position and Audit defence.

If you are responsible for the SAM ‘Hat’ or security and interested learning in how Ivanti Neurons Spend Intelligence can help, without taking up all your time, check out our website for more information here and feel free to reach out to us if you would like more details or a trial.

Just Released: 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for ITSM Tools Recognizes Ivanti a Leader

Mon, 12 Oct 2020 20:13:40 Z

We’re in the early autumn season here in the northern hemisphere, with the weather getting cooler and the nights longer. That growing chill in the evenings encourages staying inside and reading by a fire for enjoyment and enlightenment. But even if you’re an early planner who already has their fall reading list mapped out, there’s one key report you should move to the top: the new 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for IT Service Management Tools, just published and ready for you to view.

If the Gartner Magic Quadrant report is new to you, here’s a quick overview. Gartner analyzes the top vendors in the ITSM market every year and evaluates each vendor on its ability to execute and the completeness of its vision. It’s important to note the Magic Quadrant is not a direct evaluation of individual tools but is a helpful resource and starting point to help IT organizations identify possible solutions.

Get started today by reading the Magic Quadrant for ITSM report for Gartner’s analysis of the top vendors in the IT service management marketplace, including Gartner’s:

Overview and vision of the ITSM landscape
Strengths and weaknesses of each vendor
Guidance when seeking an ITSM solution

Check out the visual summary of the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for ITSM 2020:

Ivanti on the Gartner Magic Quadrant

We at Ivanti are excited to be named a new leader in this year’s report! Our team is proud of the progress we’ve achieved in this year’s Magic Quadrant report, continuing our multi-year run of improving our Magic Quadrant position. But we’re most proud of the benefits we’ve helped our customers realize as they use Ivanti solutions to automate and improve their service delivery, business outcomes, and user experiences. Our modular design and cloud-optimized system have made it easier for teams to select and deploy the functionality they need now and in the future.

Over the past year since the last Magic Quadrant report, we’ve released several notable enhancements to make life easier for IT service management teams by speeding resolutions and helping them discover, optimize, and secure IT assets. These enhancements include our always-on, automation-powered Ivanti Neurons for Healing bots; automated diagnostic and specialist-level remediation workflows; Virtual Support Agents; automated phone interactions; and integrations to thousands of cloud-based applications. And we’ll continue building on our vision for modern ITSM that delivers better user experiences and business outcomes.

Nayaki Nayyar, Ivanti Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer, recently commented:

“In our view, to be named a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for ITSM Tools is a significant milestone in Ivanti’s history and a true testament to the execution of our product vision and strategy. Ivanti is transforming IT service management with the Ivanti Neurons platform that enables organizations to autonomously discover, heal, secure, and service from cloud to edge with automation bots, as organizations try to address the explosive growth of devices, data, and remote workers.”

We see the Gartner Magic Quadrant report as a trusted resource to help IT leaders select tools to meet their specific needs. We invite you to access the full report and see what Gartner has to say about the ITSM market and its top vendors.

Ivanti Service Manager: Marketplace Packages to Help with Your Enterprise Service Management Journey

Tue, 01 Sep 2020 01:31:43 Z

Ivanti Service Manager in a Restaurant

After a long day of Saturday activities with the kids, I did not look forward to cooking, so decided to stop by one of the many restaurants in my neighbourhood. The restaurant also happened to be one of many Ivanti Service Manager (ISM) customers

As we sat waiting for our meals, I decided that this is an opportune time for my children to understand how the restaurant uses ISM to support their business. Firstly, I pointed out some of the equipment around the store; desktops, monitors, cash terminals, tablets and even the kitchen equipment. I explained that these are all stored as assets in the system as a way of keeping track of them and when something goes wrong there is a mechanism to report them.

As it happens, while paying, the staff member was having an issue processing the transaction and after several unsuccessful attempts, she used another terminal to complete the payment. Excitedly I told my children that this is when ISM kicks in. The employee will now contact their service desk for assistance. The service desk analyst would then try to resolve the issue (which I am 100% sure includes a restart), but if it isn't resolved, they would have a field technician come out to either repair or replace the faulty asset. It doesn’t matter if it's an IT equipment, kitchen appliance or even a broken chair. All issues or requests are logged in ISM and channeled to the appropriate team to resolve or fulfill. I am not sure the kids had the same enthusiasm as me with the real life scenario but they do now understand a bit more about what I do.

Truly Enterprise Service Management

Ivanti customers have been using the ISM platform to support both IT and non-IT service desks long before it was referred to as Enterprise Service Management.

It always intrigues me how creative our customers can be with the platform. I have seen it used to support:

human resource cases and requests
facilities related requests
consumers, for product issues
the general public, to report road work related issues and enquiries
students, to manage requests and enquiries
medical equipment, for servicing and maintenance

By far, the most common are the first two, human resource and facilities. While many customers have implemented this with the assistance of Ivanti consultants or partners, many have taken advantage of the flexibility and ease of configurability of the platform, adding these capabilities themselves. One particular customer, Ashton Mossop of Queensland University of Technology, even documented the complete Human Resource configuration and shared it with other Ivanti customers. The University of Southern Queensland recently shared how ISM is deployed for procurement, legal services, campus security and many other shared services.

New Human Resource and Facilities Packages from Ivanti

For those of you that have human resource and facilities management on your radar, there is some great news. Ivanti's product management and development teams have been working with customers that have gone through the journey to create a human resource and facilities management package that can be utilised by other ISM customers.

The human resource (HR) package includes the following functionality:

HR specific roles and dashboards
HR case management with complete isolation from IT Incidents
New HR request offerings with pre-defined workflows
Employee timesheet management
Service level management of HR cases
HR knowledge
HR reports
HR announcements

The facilities management package provides the following capabilities:

Facilities specific roles and dashboards
New facilities management related request offerings
Work order management for custodial, operational, maintenance job
Service level tracking of work orders
Facilities buildings, floors, cubicles
Preventative maintenance schedules can be added and linked to work orders
Facilities calendar to display upcoming scheduled maintenance events
Facilities assets for managing the non-device assets, such as office furniture, building equipment, even elevators or escalators
Facilities knowledge base
Facilities management reports
Facilities announcements

Available on the Marketplace

If you are an Ivanti Service Manager customer, both these packages are now available for download from the Ivanti Marketplace. The response of the customers I have showcased these modules to has been unanimously positive. Those packages are all freely available to all Service Manager customers to apply, modify and use, without any additional module license cost.

Let Us Know

If you are looking to consolidate your service management practices in your organisation, please reach out to us. It doesn't just have to be human resource or facilities management. We have seen ISM used in so many ways, we can help to connect you with customers that have gone down the same path.