Ivanti Blog: Ivanti News

Your New Hub for Success Is Here: Explore Innovators Hub Today

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 05:00:03 Z

Today marks an important milestone in our journey to make your Ivanti support experience effortless, intuitive and all in one place: Ivanti Innovators Hub is now live! This isn’t just a refresh; it’s a major step forward — delivering a smarter, unified destination where support, resources and community meet your needs, your way.

One destination, everything you need

With this launch, the Ivanti Success Portal and the Ivanti Community are now consolidated into the new Ivanti Innovators Hub. No more switching between sites. Now, all your resources, case management tools and knowledge content are unified within one streamlined experience at hub.ivanti.com. You’ll have full access to the user and account management, resource libraries and case submission capabilities you’ve relied on. User registration and login will remain at success.ivanti.com.

Smarter support with the Innovators Hub chatbot

We’re pleased to bring you a streamlined chatbot experience within the Innovators Hub. When you need help, the chatbot will first prompt you to select a product and describe your question or issue. It then searches our forums, knowledge articles and technical documentation to generate a relevant answer — helping you find a solution instantly, right within the chat.

If the suggested answer solves your problem, you can simply move on — no need to create a support case. If not, the chatbot gives you the option to ask another question or continue to case creation. If you proceed, the chatbot automatically carries over the details you’ve provided (like product and query) into the case form, so you only need to fill in the remaining required fields before submitting.

This workflow helps ensure every user gets fast, self-service support when possible, while still making it simple to escalate unresolved issues to our team. The chatbot is prompt-based and guides you step-by-step, so you can resolve issues quickly and spend less time searching for answers.

A modern home and a fresh start

With this launch, you’ll also notice we’ve refreshed our web address: visit hub.ivanti.com (instead of forums.ivanti.com). This reflects the new, unified vision for Ivanti support, community and knowledge —clearly signalling that a new, modern experience awaits you.

What’s next

Looking ahead to March, we’re preparing to further enhance your Innovators Hub experience. Expect new features focused on personalization, engagement, and intuitive tools — all designed with your feedback in mind to make every support interaction effortless and simple.

Thank you for your partnership and advocacy as we launch this new chapter. The goal of the Ivanti Innovators Hub is simple: to give you one trusted home for support, learning and community — because your success is our mission. I encourage you to explore the new Hub today and share your feedback as we continue to build together.

Introducing Your New Hub for Success

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 17:00:01 Z

At Ivanti, we know that your success relies not just on having the right products, but on having simple, seamless support and a connected community all in one place. We’ve listened to your feedback about navigating separate platforms for our support portal and community experience. That’s why, today, I’m excited to announce Ivanti Innovators Hub — your new hub for success.

Innovators Hub will replace the current Ivanti Community and Support portal, combining them into a single destination designed around you. No more jumping between sites. With this new launch, everything you need — from product forums and knowledge articles, to support cases, exclusive events and connecting with peers — will be together in one dynamic platform tailored to your needs.

With Innovators Hub, you’ll experience a streamlined interface, personalised resources, and an easily accessible chatbot to help guide your queries. I’m especially excited to share that in Phase 1, our new chatbot doesn’t just answer questions — it also makes creating a support case faster and easier. If you can’t find a helpful answer through chat, the chatbot will offer to help you create a case. It automatically carries over your product and initial query details into the case form, so all you need to do is fill in a few final fields and submit. Alongside direct connections to peers and Ivanti experts, this makes Innovators Hub a space designed to help you connect, collaborate, and resolve issues with less friction — anytime, anywhere.

In January we’ll “open the doors” with the launch of Phase 1, bringing together your most important support and community tools in one place. In March, even more features and engagement opportunities will follow in Phase 2, continuing our journey to empower your success.

We’ll be sharing more information, resources and guidance as we reach each launch milestone. Stay tuned and thank you for partnering with us and inspiring this transformation. Innovators Hub is your new home for support, knowledge and community — purpose-built so you can achieve more, your way.

Delivering on Our Commitment to Empower Customers with Future-Proof Solutions

Wed, 07 May 2025 13:00:03 Z

As I reflect on the tremendous progress our company has made since I joined three years ago, I want to take a moment to thank our customers for their continued trust and say how honoured and grateful I am to lead this incredible team.

Ivanti’s commitment to providing our customers with seamless, innovative, and secure solutions is unwavering. Our goal is to exceed industry standards, and we understood from the start that meaningful advancements do not happen overnight. I would like to share some of our recent updates with you today.

Financial Flexibility Enables Continued Progress and Innovation

Last week, Ivanti announced a pivotal transaction that provides us with an additional $350 million in capital and extends our current debt obligations until 2029. As we sat down with our investors to outline our journey toward a SaaS-focused model, their responses underscored their collective confidence in our progress and the long-term prospects for our business. Our newly optimised capital structure affords Ivanti financial flexibility as we continue our transformation and accelerate innovation to meet the evolving needs of our customers.

Industry-Defining Product Security Aligned with Secure by Design Principles

Over the past year, we have shared the many ways we have doubled down on our Secure by Design commitments, taking steps to secure our products, and backing these actions with substantial investments and increases in our security team resources. It was critical for us that our pledge be more than just lip service; we were committing to actively and consistently taking steps to incorporate Secure by Design principles into every stage of our product development and decision-making processes.

Our transition to a SaaS model marks another crucial step in delivering future-proof solutions to our customers. Cloud solutions are inherently more secure, and we have made meaningful efforts to remove any roadblocks–whether financial, contractual, or functionality-driven–to support customer migration to the most up-to-date offerings via a disciplined installed base management programme. Over the last 2.5 years, we have successfully migrated thousands of customers from on-prem to Ivanti Neurons solutions, with most new customers adopting our advanced, cloud-based offerings.

As part of our goal to ease the burden of security management for customers, we’ve made significant investments to automatically, and proactively counter current and future threats in our Ivanti Neurons cloud-based platform. As one example, we are rolling out important enhancements in our Neurons for Secure Access (nSA), which enable any Connect Secure edge appliance connected to nSA to be automatically patched by Ivanti in the event of a vulnerability. This technology aligns with our Secure by Design pledge and represents an important path forward for the industry in proactive security management.

Additionally, in April we announced Ring Deployment, an important innovation in Ivanti Neurons for Patch Management. An increasing number of N-Day compromises result from delays in patching, as IT teams manage a seemingly relentless stream of releases. Ring Deployment allows devices to be strategically organised based on specific needs or risk levels, enabling a controlled and prioritised patch rollout with minimal disruption to production systems. This reduces IT team strain, streamlines patch management, and fortifies customers’ environments.

Strength in Transparency and Proactive Vulnerability Management

Finally, I want to take a moment to touch on a topic that seems to get a lot of attention in the media.

At Ivanti, we view transparency as fundamental to customer trust and security. Our philosophy is simple: discovering and communicating vulnerabilities, and sharing that information with defenders, is not an indication of weakness; rather it is evidence of rigorous scrutiny and a proactive vulnerability management programme. By aggressively seeking to identify and address vulnerabilities, our aim is to get ahead of threat actors and ensure our customers can take the steps needed to protect themselves.

At Ivanti, we will always advocate for transparency in CVE disclosures, both for our own products, and across the industry. It is our belief that vulnerabilities that go unnoticed and unaddressed may keep companies out of the headlines, but it also means their customers do not have the insights needed to fully understand and protect against risks. To this end, we also engage deeply with the security community, maintain long-term partnerships with leading security experts, and actively collaborate with government agencies. We work with our partners to share intelligence with defenders that goes above and beyond standard disclosure practices. This helps prevent threat actors from replicating new attack patterns or threat vectors against others in the market, and we firmly believe this is a practice that everyone in the security and software industries should adhere to.

Looking Ahead

Ivanti is proud to be our customers’ trusted partner in IT management and security.

As we look forward, our comprehensive security strategy will continue to be anchored in customer-centricity, enabling our customers to thrive and focus on what they do best.

To all our customers — thank you for trusting us to be your partner in this journey. Together, we will continue to navigate the complexities of today’s threat landscape and build a secure and innovative future.

Warm regards,

Dennis Kozak
CEO, Ivanti

An Update on Ivanti's Ongoing Commitment to Enhanced Product Security

Tue, 11 Feb 2025 13:00:01 Z

In April 2024 the Ivanti CEO issued an open letter on our commitment to product security. We are very proud of the progress we have made, but as we all know, Security is a journey of continuous improvement. Ivanti is committed to this journey and to protecting our customers as the threat landscape continues to evolve.

Similar to other companies that develop network security and edge products, our edge products have been targeted and exploited by sophisticated threat actor attacks. While these products are not the ultimate target, they are increasingly the route that well-resourced nation state groups are focusing their effort on to attempt espionage campaigns against extremely high-value organisations.

Our response to any incident is to learn from it, invest in improving our products, and ultimately make it harder for our products to be abused by sophisticated adversaries.

A final, important point: we all continue to reap value from important security industry partnerships. By collaborating closely with government and security industry partners we are stronger and more secure together. We thank our collaborators and look forward to redoubling our efforts in the future.

Bolstering Product Security and Embracing Secure by Design Frameworks

Specialised Security Resources: the Ivanti Security team is comprised of highly skilled security specialists who support Ivanti’s overall security, and a dedicated Product Security Team focused on the security of our solutions. The size of this team has increased more than 8X over the past few years, along with meaningful elevation in threat expertise.
Leading Third-Party Partnerships and Tooling: we have expanded engagements with leading security and threat intelligence experts and utilise industry leading static and dynamic code analysis tooling during the development process to validate the security of our solutions and ensure Ivanti developers adhere to secure coding practices.
Secure by Design Alignment: our development process includes robust security protocols throughout the product lifecycle, including rigorous threat modelling, vulnerability assessment, and security measures specifically to improve our solutions’ resilience against current and emerging threats – additional details can be found on our website.
Product Security Optimization: we have invested significant resources in our Ivanti Neurons cloud platform to alleviate the burden of security for our customers, including automated security updates, MFA enabled out of the box, and unified role-based access control (RBAC) system.
Network Security Group Enhancements: we have evolved the Network Security Group, which is responsible for developing Ivanti Connect Secure, in both focus, size and product leadership. As of October, this group is led by Michael Riemer – an industry veteran and cybersecurity expert with deep knowledge on this product line. Under Michael’s leadership we have increased internal engineering resources and engaged additional specialised contracted resources, which are in high demand across the network security industry.
Prioritising Product Security Enhancements for Ivanti Connect Secure (ICS): we have prioritised product security enhancements for ICS. This includes our new 25.x version that upgrades to Oracle Linux OS to be completed in 2H 2025. We have also made other significant security enhancements in our Network Security products such as Secure Boot with TPM key management, Non-Root Privilege Access Control, a modernised web service, and WAF component.
Enhancements to the Integrity Checker Tool (ICT): the ICT has been an effective tool at identifying threat actor efforts since its introduction in 2021 and is a prime example of Ivanti’s commitment to proactive security for our solutions. This tool has aided in our forensic efforts and in the case of the vulnerability disclosed on January 8, alerted our customer to threat actor activity on the same day it occurred. This allowed us to respond swiftly and develop a fix for the issue.

Elevating our Vulnerability Management Programme

Vulnerability Identification: we have enhanced internal scanning, manual exploitation and testing capabilities, increased collaboration and information sharing with the security ecosystem, and further enhanced our responsible disclosure process, including becoming a CVE Numbering Authority. While this creates a natural and intended increase in vulnerability disclosure (and consequently, media coverage), it is not indicative of increased risk; on the contrary, it demonstrates our commitment to transparency and going above and beyond industry standards.

Providing Enhanced Support for Secure Product Deployments in the Field

Platform Upgrades: we are working with customers to accelerate customer migration from End-of-Life solutions, including eliminating barriers—be they contractual, technical, or financial—that slow adoption of our most advanced and secure solutions. Together with our customers, we are making significant strides towards achieving full migration to our latest solutions.
On-Prem Security Support: for customers that require on-prem solutions, we have systematically improved our product documentation and are providing best practices to equip them with the tools and knowledge necessary to navigate and mitigate security challenges within their unique operational environments.

Sharing Information with our Customers and Community

Information Sharing and Transparency: we have actively participated in events and created multiple forums for dialogue with our customers, which has deepened our understanding of evolving needs, and enabled us to share crucial insights and lessons learned. We have formalised a strategic programme to collect feedback from customers throughout the customer's lifecycle, enabling a continuous loop of feedback to ensure ongoing alignment with customer needs.

US Federal Government's Role in Filling the Cybersecurity Talent Gap

Wed, 05 Feb 2025 14:30:01 Z

Currently, there are 500,000 vacant cybersecurity positions in the United States – affecting businesses and government agencies alike. And with the frequency, sophistication and intensity of cyberattacks increasing, including those directed at federal agencies and critical infrastructure, the need for government and industry to work together to train, retain and develop workers with the required technical expertise and skills has never been greater. According to Congressional sources, cyber attacks on critical infrastructure rose by 30 percent globally in 2023, creating a growing gap in the cyber workforce that leaves organisations vulnerable to cybersecurity threats due to staffing shortages.

As the new Congress and administration are beginning to govern in Washington DC, it is imperative that cybersecurity and the development of a capable cyber workforce to combat highly resourced nation state threat actors be prioritised as a bipartisan issue. The US government has the opportunity to play a pivotal role in formulating policies and programmes that offer necessary technical training to cultivate a domestic cybersecurity workforce. Additionally, these efforts will assist businesses in defending against the increasing frequency of cyberattacks.

At Ivanti, we support the policy proposals put forward in the Cyber PIVOTT Act, introduced by House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green. This legislation aims to enhance the accessibility of cyber training and education by establishing a new full-scholarship programme for two-year degrees, including those offered at community colleges and technical schools, in exchange for required government service. Ivanti endorses this legislation and looks forward to supporting its enactment and the role that it will play in strengthening the US cybersecurity industry as a whole. We recognise the need for legislation to address cybersecurity and workforce needs, as well as to create incentives for young professionals to pursue careers in cybersecurity. This initiative takes direct aim at the persistent industry shortage of a skilled cybersecurity workforce.

Chairman Green’s Cyber PIVOTT Act is an important step in meeting this critical need for the cybersecurity industry. Congress should demonstrate its commitment to the cybersecurity of the nation by enacting this legislation immediately.

Qualys Integrates Ivanti Patch Management Into Qualys VMDR Platform

Thu, 30 Jul 2020 12:07:27 Z

Our latest announcement comes in the form of another exciting partnership, this time with Qualys! A leading provider of disruptive cloud-based IT, security, and compliance solutions, Qualys has integrated Ivanti Patch Management technology into their Qualys VMDR (Vulnerability Management Detection Response) platform.

Qualys President and Chief Product Officer, Sumedh Thakarsaid, said the following:

"The seamless integration of Ivanti and Qualys technologies in VMDR takes endpoint security to the next level. By extending Ivanti’s leading patch management technology from Windows to Mac, Qualys VMDR now orchestrates the entire process of discovery, prioritization and patching of critical vulnerabilities in real time across hybrid IT environments including macOS devices. Furthermore, it allows us to bridge IT and SecOps workflows to more efficiently secure and manage today’s explosion of remote workers."

The Ivanti and Qualys partnership provides for tight integration of Ivanti Patch Management into Qualys VMDR to automate and simplify the patch remediation process. As a result, customers will be able to quickly detect vulnerabilities, from endpoint to datacenter, and automatically deploy expertly pre-tested Mac patches across dozens of third-party applications. Current Microsoft patch coverage includes both security and non-security content for all supported products, operating systems, and applications, including Microsoft Office. The Ivanti patch catalog is one of the industry’s most comprehensive catalogs currently securing over 180 million endpoints globally.

The next phase of the integration will allow Qualys customers to patch MacOS systems, as well as over 70 third-party Mac applications, directly through Qualys VMDR.

Nayaki Nayyar, EVP and Chief Product Officer, Ivanti, had this to say about the expanded partnership:

“Ivanti’s expanded partnership with Qualys further underscores our mission to help deliver end-to-end security solutions. Our recently announced Ivanti Neurons platform powers security teams with advanced automation capabilities to discover, prioritize, remediate vulnerabilities and self-heal endpoints and edge devices.”

As mentioned in a recent press release, Ivanti Neurons transforms the way IT gets work done. Powered with hyper-automation capabilities, it delivers:

Learn more in the interview below:

Intel vPro® Platform-Based Devices with Intel® Endpoint Management Assistant Now Integrates with Ivanti Neurons Platform in Strategic Partnership

Thu, 23 Jul 2020 12:21:43 Z

We at Ivanti are thrilled to announce our new strategic partnership with Intel. Offering Device-as-a-Service with self-healing capabilities for the next generation workforce, Intel® Endpoint Management Assistant (Intel® EMA) now integrates with the Ivanti Neurons hyper-automation platform. This partnership enables IT organizations to self-heal and self-secure with Intel vPro® platform-based devices—both inside and outside of the corporate firewall.

Stephanie Hallford, Intel Vice President of the Client Computing Group and general manager of Business Client Platforms, had this to say about the partnership:

“By partnering with Ivanti, Intel continues to expand our industry-leading technologies that support our joint customers to manage a remote workforce and edge devices. Using the Intel vPro^® platform will provide in band and out of band endpoint management via the cloud. The Ivanti DaaS solution, along with the built for business Intel vPro platform is perfect for driving customer value for the next generation workforce. Together we are providing unparalleled technologies, performance and enhanced security for DaaS.”

As mentioned in a recent press release, Ivanti Neurons transforms the way IT gets work done. Powered with hyper-automation capabilities, it delivers:

Ivanti Neurons empowers organizations to self-heal, self-secure and self-service from the cloud to the edge with efficiency, accuracy, speed and out-of-the-box automation content for unprecedented IT productivity.

With the integration of Intel vPro platforms with Intel Endpoint Management Assistant, Ivanti Neurons provides enhanced remote management for on-premise and cloud-based endpoints. Ivanti Neurons can take remote actions on Intel vPro platform-based devices such as powering-on a device, restarting a device, setting wakeup times, and controlling a system even during OS failure, and repairing devices at scale.

Nayaki Nayyar, EVP and Chief Product Officer, Ivanti, said the following:

“Together, Ivanti and Intel are delivering unparalleled endpoint management for devices using the Intel vPro® platform for on-premises and cloud-based endpoints remote management—integrated with hyper-automation bots on Ivanti Neurons platform. As remote becomes the next normal, auto-healing, securing and servicing the endpoints and edge devices becomes a key priority for organizations. With Ivanti Neurons, organizations supporting Intel vPro platform-powered devices can gain a 360-degree view of users, devices, and applications and auto-remediate performance, security, configuration issues.”

Intel technologies may require enabled hardware, software or service activation.

No product or component can be absolutely secure.

Your costs and results may vary.

Intel, the Intel logo and other Intel marks are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries. Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

Introducing the Ivanti Neurons Platform to Self‑Heal, Self‑Secure, and Self‑Service

Tue, 21 Jul 2020 11:42:34 Z

Today is the day! We've just published this press release announcing our brand new Ivanti Neurons platform!

What it is: Ivanti Neurons is a new hyper-automation platform that empowers organizations to proactively, predictably and autonomously self-heal and self-secure devices, and self-service end users. Ivanti Neurons augments IT teams with automation bots that detect and resolve issues and security vulnerabilities while improving the accuracy, speed and costs of services IT delivers. Early adopters of the solution have reduced unplanned outages up to 63%, reduced time to deploy security updates by 88%, and resolved up to 80% of endpoint issues before users reported them.*

With this release, we are delivering on our vision to address the rapid growth and complexity of devices, data, multi-generational remote workforce, and increasing cyber-security threats with hyper-automation. By helping organizations mature from basic automation to a confluence of hyper-automation powered by deep learning capabilities, we are delivering a self-healing autonomous edge with contextual, anticipatory and personalized experiences for remote workers.

“As remote becomes the next normal, Ivanti Neurons enables organizations to heal and secure devices and deliver a seamless ‘work from anywhere’ employee experience. Always on and always working, Ivanti Neurons enables IT’s desire to ‘shift-left’ with automation bots that autonomously discover, secure and service endpoints at the edge.”

— Nayaki Nayyar, Ivanti's Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer

The new Ivanti Neurons hyper-automation platform offers multiple capabilities for enterprises:

Ivanti Neurons for Edge Intelligence
- Gives IT the ability to query all edge devices using natural language (NLP) and get real-time intelligence across the enterprise in seconds. It provides quick operational awareness, real-time inventory, and security configurations across the edge leveraging sensor-based architecture.
Ivanti Neurons for Healing
- Offers an army of automation bots to proactively detect, diagnose, and auto-remediate configuration drift issues, performance issues, compliance issues, and security issues for endpoints. Automation of routine tasks paves the way to creating a truly self-healing environment, reducing time, costs, and improving employee experience.
Ivanti Neurons for Discovery
- Delivers accurate and actionable asset information in minutes. This provides visibility in real-time using active and passive scanning and third-party connectors. These provide normalized hardware and software inventory data, software usage information and actionable insights to efficiently feed configuration management and asset management databases.
Ivanti Neurons Workspace
- Provides a 360-degree view of devices, users, applications, and services, with real-time data. This allows first-line analysts to resolve issues previously escalated to specialists. User and device views cut complexity, long wait times and high escalation costs, resulting in faster end user resolution and greater productivity.

For more information, visit the Ivanti Neurons page on our website.

Find us on social to stay on top of the conversation: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

*Customer results are specific to their total environment and experience, of which Ivanti is a part. Individual results may vary based on each customer’s unique environment.

Service Management in This Time of Widescale Remote Work

Tue, 17 Mar 2020 22:21:49 Z

With the current focus on social distancing and other health precautions, service management leaders are probably already thinking about short-term implications of these rapidly incoming changes. The large-scale increased use of remote work is one implication. In the UK, this is currently a recommendation but could soon be a mandatory requirement for all employees who are able to, and many IT organisations may not be ready.

Read Ian Aitchison's top recommendations for service management leaders, to keep employees productive and motivated during these uncertain times.

Ivanti Events and COVID-19 Coronavirus FAQs

Tue, 17 Mar 2020 16:48:02 Z

With the UK moving into the “delay” phase of the Coronavirus pandemic, the safety and well-being of our employees, customers and partners continues to be a top priority for Ivanti worldwide. We are actively monitoring the COVID-19 Coronavirus situation closely and will react appropriately to the changing landscape moving forward. At this time, Ivanti is following the World Health Organization’s and NHS recommendations.

We have taken the decision to cancel Ivanti Interchange Las Vegas and are postponing the Interchange Unplugged events in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Q: What is the current situation with COVID-19 Coronavirus?

A: The situation with the current outbreak is being updated on a daily basis. We recommend visiting the World Health Organization’s update page for the most up-to-date information.

Q: Where can I find out more about the facts and spread of COVID-19 Coronavirus?

A: We recommend visiting the World Health Organization’s update page for regular updates, news, travel advice, and information on how to protect yourself.

Q: Are any Ivanti events cancelled due to Covid-19 Coronavirus?

A: There have been a few Ivanti events that have been postponed, including Unplugged London and Manchester. We plan to run these events in September 2020 and registration will open soon. Interchange Las Vegas has been cancelled. You can find more information on this cancellation here. If there are further changes to our events, we’ll be sure to update this post and contact event registrants. In addition, we are seeing some of the third party events and tradeshows we usually attend, being cancelled or postponed.

Q: What is Ivanti doing to prevent the spread of this and other flu viruses?

A: Ivanti is following the guidelines recommended by the World Health Organization, NHS and the UK and Irish governments. We are monitoring these guidelines in terms of keeping employees safe and, in addition, we are actively working with all venues hosting Ivanti events to ensure extra measures are being taken to clean and disinfect common surfaces and offer hand sanitising stations in high-traffic areas.

The travel and hospitality industries are keenly aware of the health and safety concerns and are making every effort to do their part in providing clean, hygienic meeting environments, wherever possible.

Q: What can I do to avoid contracting the virus?

A: The World Health Organization recommends basic hygiene practices such as regular hand washing and covering mouth and nose when coughing and sneezing. The UK government provide further advice:

Thoroughly cooking meat and eggs
Avoiding close contact with anyone showing symptoms of respiratory illness such as coughing and sneezing
Throw tissues into closed bin immediately after use or sneeze/cough into your elbow
If you have fever, cough, and difficulty breathing, seek medical care early. Anyone with these symptoms should self-isolate.
When hands are not visibility dirty, frequently wash using soap and water, or if this is not available, regularly use hand sanitiser.

Ivanti Customer Helps Save Lives at Nottingham University Hospitals

Mon, 04 Nov 2019 17:49:49 Z

Our customers' success is a top priority here at Ivanti. We strive to make sure everyone gets the best we can offer, from both a product and a customer service standpoint.

The following story hits close to home since it is relayed by one of our team members, Jo-Anne Snowden, Sr. Director for Customer Experience in EMEA.

Learn how Ivanti products personally impacted her and her family in the video and accompanying transcript below.

I'm Jo-Anne Snowden. I'm Senior Director for Customer Experience in EMEA. I recently had a perspective-changing experience that relates to the jobs that we do.

I got a phone call very early one Friday morning and it was my mom on the phone telling me that my dad had had three heart attacks and was in emergency surgery in our local hospital.

That local hospital is one of our customers.

My dad had arrived at the hospital at 4 a.m. Between 4 a.m. and 7:30 a.m., they had managed to triage him, diagnose him, move him to a different hospital, perform emergency surgery, stabilize him, and then get him into a ward.

When I walked into the ward, what I saw in front of me was a lot to take in. Obviously my dad was really ill. I had never seen a team perform with such operational excellence in less than ideal conditions with admirable humility. Starting with the cardiothoracic surgeon (who has got an immense amount of letters after his name), who said, "Just call me Mo."

I spent most of the next three days in the hospital and it really dawned on me that this customer's success is not just an OKR for us. They truly are saving people's lives. I was watching the team use various pieces of IT equipment around the hospital, and realizing just how incredibly crucial it is that we make our customers successful.

Nottingham University Hospitals are an Ivanti Service Desk customer, and they're now migrating to Ivanti Service Management.

And I have no doubt that that team are going to do everything that they can to make that customer successful so that lots more people can tell a story where their dad walked out and is going to live a much longer life than they would have if they didn't go in.

Without Automation, Your Digital Transformation Will Fail

Wed, 26 Jun 2019 02:10:05 Z

As we at Ivanti engage with more and more customers—explaining and educating them about our Unified IT story and journey—there is a common theme that appears.

This theme is around automation.

Automation is the fabric of digital transformation, or Unified IT. Without automation, your transformation will fail. This much has become apparent to me over the last 12 months since Ivanti acquired RES for their automation technology.

What Is Digital Transformation?

Digital transformation is a process that involves using technology to create or modify existing business processes, culture and customer experiences within a business to meet the demands of an industry.

Digital transformation today for customers is about delivering a service with an exceptional user-driven digital experience, including being self-service driven, available 24/7, and instantly gratifying. When you tick these boxes, then typically users and customers will be drawn to your service.

Great examples today are the Ubers, AirBnbs, and Purplebricks, where they have taken technology to a new level of integration into their business, and where the model is based around the technology.

For businesses it really about delivering an efficient, AUTOMATED service, which delivers an experience the same (if not better) to their customers. It’s also about being able to track analytics within that service to give customers indicators of success, failure, as well as the ability to forecast.

Today you will see banks and governments also start embracing and driving digital transformation of some form. From doing your car tax online to managing your bank accounts and cards online, every business isn’t in the race unless they have an app to support selling and providing services to consumers.

Why Automation Is Important

Within the middle of this embrace digital technologies is the need for automation. It provides, as I said earlier, the “fabric” of transformation. It allows all those business systems which have amassed over a period of time to begin to communicate with each other and have workflows and processes drive their interaction with each other. Without the fabric of automation, making these systems talk to each other in different languages and API’s is painful.

One of the benefits of automation within a digital transformation scenario allows all the different API’s and languages to come together, pass parameters via different systems, and seamlessly provide an outcome. Overcoming operational bottlenecks with automation is key to moving into a phase of digital transformation within your business.

Digital transformation is now upon us in various guises, from full implementation of driving a business and its interaction with customers like Uber, to the initial steps of adding the ability to onboard and offboard employees in and out of your business.

Ivanti is not the only vendor to recognise this. Citrix only recently acquired an automation company as well, Sapho. VMWare also offers automation as part of their product offerings. Watch this space as other major vendors begin to realise that for them to be more relevant to customers, automation becomes critical.

Ivanti recognised this with its acquisition of RES over 12 months ago. Now, automation is the key component of our Unified IT journey. It not only allows us to provide tools that can support IT and business end to end, but it also allows our products to integrate with our competitors to ensure that we are part of your journey towards effective digital transformation.

Make digital age transformation your next step and request a quote from Ivanti today.

Join Us at Infosecurity Europe for a Free 60-Day Ivanti Security Controls License

Wed, 29 May 2019 20:08:55 Z

Microsoft announced a vulnerability in legacy operating systems that has high potential of being exploited. The vulnerability is in the Remote Desktop Services (formerly known as Terminal Services) and could be exploited remotely with no authentication required. This affects Windows 7, Server 2008, and 2008 R2.

The vulnerability is severe enough that Microsoft took a pretty unusual step in releasing updates for Windows XP and Server 2003 in addition to currently supported versions of Windows that are affected.

We want to give you the opportunity to come and meet the Ivanti team at this year’s Infosecurity Europe show 4 – 6th June, Olympia, London. Our experts on STAND C80 will be ready and able to help you with a 60-day license for our Ivanti Security Controls, which includes our patch management solution, privilege management and whitelisting in one place.
With this license you will be able to quickly update up to 50 systems including Windows XP and Server 2003.

Avoid the queues and book a dedicated product demonstration and discover Ivanti suite of security products and solutions:

Patch Management
Application Control
Privilege and Identity Management
Device Control

Unfamiliar with Infosecurity Europe?

Europe’s Leading Event for Information and Cyber Security

Bringing business, tech and cyber communities together to discuss and discover how best to protect companies and individuals.
Join in to find ‘everyone and everything you need to know about information and cyber security’.

Infosecurity Europe – Helpful Hints and Tips

Wed, 29 May 2019 19:50:32 Z

Attending a huge trade show like Infosecurity takes planning and effort, almost regimental to a certain degree. So here at Ivanti we have decided to make your visit a pleasurable and enjoyable experience. Follow our hints and tips to gain the most out of your visit to Infosecurity Europe.

Plan your travel – Infosecurity Europe is being held at Olympia, London, so make sure you plan your travel accordingly.
Eat a big breakfast – It’s always a good idea, whether you are attending a trade show or not, but more so if you are. You need to keep that stamina high; it’s going to be a long couple of days!
Choose your footwear wisely – This one really doesn’t need any explanation.
Set a goal and strategy – Before you attend any event, know why you’re doing it. You probably had to answer this question before you decided to register, yes? What problems are you hoping to solve for your business? Take advantage of the floor plan, figure out who you would like to visit beforehand. Infosecurity Europe is a huge show.
Stay hydrated – Attending large trade shows is a thirsty game! Lots of talking and lots of fantastic conversations, so drink lots of fluids.
Balance your time – If there is a particular speaker that you really want to hear, make sure that you schedule them in. Next would be the vendors. Take note of their stand numbers and don’t forget, if you don’t manage visit them all in one day there is always another two days!
Set up meetings – Most vendors will be able to schedule you in for a 1-1 demo, so look out for these, and see ours below.
Giveaways – Surely this is the best bit of the trade show. All those free giveaways, oh and let’s not forget the competitions you can enter. You just never know! Come and visit us for some complimentary strawberries and cream.
Take notes – With so much going on, taking notes seems so obvious, but it is sometimes near impossible. If you find yourself in that position, make sure you pick up some collateral, since this is a great way to jog your memory when you recap everything you have seen.
Enjoy yourself! – Personally, I think this is the most important one to remember. You are going to have a very long few days of days, so make the most of it and just enjoy it.

Hopefully reading these tips and hints will make your visit a good one! Ivanti will be on stand number C80.

Oh, final point: Don’t forget that we are also giving you a FREE 60-day Ivanti Security Controls license on the back of the recent announced Microsoft vulnerability in legacy operating systems that has high after a demo at the booth.

See you soon!

The Ivanti Team

Survey Results: IT Professionals Have Too Many Data Sources to Count

Tue, 30 Apr 2019 13:26:56 Z

Results capture the challenges faced by IT professionals when it comes to siloes, data and implementation.

When dealing with siloes in IT and departments, three key priorities suffer the most. According to a new survey from Ivanti, these three priorities include automation (46%), user productivity and troubleshooting (42%), and customer experience (41%).

After surveying more than 400 IT professionals, we found that IT teams need more insight into what is going on in their departments, as well as better resources to act on the data they have.

This blog details the survey’s key findings.

It’s all about priority

The survey found that application deployment takes IT organizations the most time to perform, followed by backup and data protection.

While the priorities of automation, user productivity and troubleshooting, and improving customer experience suffer the most due to siloes in IT, there is one priority that is doing alright. The survey found that onboarding/offboarding suffers the least (20%) due to siloes. So IT and HR departments, there’s always room to improve, but thanks for leading the pack and working together!

When looking for real-time insight, security is still king. About 70% of IT professionals said they wanted to know most about security status over other priorities. Respondents were least interested in real-time insights around warranty data.

What to do with data?

Everything is about data these days, but the problem arises with what to do with that data.

An alarming 15% of IT professionals said they have too many data sources to count!
- While 37% of professionals said they have about 11-25 different sources for data.

While IT professionals clearly have a lot of data to reference, the problem is the extra work that is put into the data before it’s actually actionable.

About 1/4 of IT professionals said they have to work with their data for DAYS before it’s actionable. (Might as well go on that in-law vacation while you’re at it; it’ll probably be just as painful. ;))
Only 10% of respondents said the data they received is actionable within minutes.

Finally, professionals have received their data but then again, the question arises: “Do IT professionals have the resources to act on their data?”

About 1/3 of respondents said they had the resources to act on their data, but 52% said they only sometimes have the resources.

Overall, this study shows that IT professionals are still in need of a more unified approach when working with their departments. Security is still a major priority with IT organizations and professionals are in need of better ways to work with their data.

Ivanti's Student Placement in Daresbury Wins Award

Mon, 08 Apr 2019 20:26:01 Z

For the last nine months, one of our student placements, Joshua Fowell, has been working with us in team Jaguar.

Joshua has directly worked on multiple projects from RHEL gatherer for Linux patching right through to Patch Intelligence for Ivanti Cloud.

I have had the privilege of being Joshua’s mentor throughout his time here at Ivanti, and I have genuinely enjoyed every day I have spent working with him.

Last night, Joshua and I attended the Student Placement Awards held at Edge Hill University where Joshua was shortlisted for the award of Sandwich Placement Award for which he was the winner.

Joshua is a very technically capable individual and proves this on a daily basis, but more importantly, I’d like to highlight that he is a fantastic person.

I’m a firm believer that anyone given the right attitude and surroundings can achieve great things; Joshua continues to prove this.

So congratulations to Joshua and thank you for the experience! I have no-doubt that a bright future in software development is on the horizon for you.

Brexit – Where Does IT Sit?

Fri, 18 Jan 2019 17:41:54 Z

Over the past year or so, the debacle which is Brexit is looming. March 2019, in theory, is when D-Day arrives and all hell will break loose according to people who want to remain, or even according to those who want to leave the EU.

Amongst all this panicked noise and commotion, businesses are preparing for the unexpected. Will there be a deal? Won’t there be a deal? Will the UK actually leave? Right now we all have more chance of picking the right lottery numbers.

The question remains though, if or when we enter the new world of post-Brexit and the UK has exited the EU:

What do IT departments across the UK and the EU need to now have in place?

Undoubtedly there will be new regulations and laws about workers and their movements to and from the EU, about your data moving to and from the EU, and even security based on this as well.

This in some ways leaves IT in limbo. Today we have GDPR in place—or a specific UK version of it—but will that be enough? Will it have to be modified once again?

Outside of GDPR, business' HR departments will now have to deal with potentially a whole new raft of employment law changes. As a result, they will need to potentially modify existing tooling and workflows, or adopt new tools and workflows to help ease and automate people joining, moving within, or leaving the company.

Companies' virtual borders will also come into question:

How do we now control and track employee movement, ensuring they have the correct security profile assigned?

We are already seeing companies like Jaguar Land Rover who have bitten the bullet and implemented a post-Brexit type plan even before the event itself has happened! That in and of itself should signal to most people how much of an impact this will have on companies and their operations which extend outside of the UK.

Either way, IT will be in the eye of the storm when Cyclone Brexit finally lands. IT departments will need to be ready with the right tools to respond to change in business regulations and operations to make sure that they conform.

I'm sure there will be a grace period between if or when Brexit happens, and when new laws of engagement become enforced, a grace period would be the most sensible thing as it would allow businesses time to adjust or restructure if they have to.

This is the time IT needs to start doing their homework on what they have and does what they have give them the flexibility to be agile.

Vendors need to be offering tooling around service management, automation, and security (both endpoint and data) to at least be in the running to help those customers.

Those vendors, like Ivanti, that offer these types of tools in an integrated way, leveraging the power of automation and user context to help IT be agile to the business and the user needs post-brexit will undoubtedly be in the pole position when customers are looking to support life after Cyclone Brexit.

Virtual Event Recap: IT in Higher Education

Mon, 26 Nov 2018 18:19:42 Z

In early October, Ivanti hosted its first ever virtual event: The IT Leadership Summit. There were a total of 30 presenters, including Forrester analysts, product marketing managers, director-level IT professionals, and executives.

Below is the video and transcript from the session IT in Higher Education, featuring:

Ian Aitchison: Senior Director, Product Management, Ivanti
Carla Thornley: Service Desk Manager, University of Oxford
Steve Hoensch: Head of Frontline Services, University of Cambridge
Sally Bogg: Head of End User Services, Leeds Beckett University

Ian Aitchison: Hi. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening. Welcome along to this next session in the IT Leadership Summit. This is the higher education IT panel debate. I'm joined for this panel discussion by three fascinating experts, leaders in IT in the higher education space. We can see their names listed on there. We'll do introductions actually as we go into the following slide. And we're gonna be spending the next 30 to 40 minutes talking our way through some of the big challenges and successes and understanding top tips on the future around, what our panel member see around IT in higher education.

So this should be fun, it should be interesting. I'll say again my thanks to Carla, Steve and Sally who've joined us today. Let's meet the panel. We thought the way we'd do this, little introduction from the four of us, so you know who you're listening to, and possible seeing on the recording, before we get into digging into a few particular topics and discussions.

So to get things started off, and panel members be prepared, I need something interesting about you as well as your name and what you do and what your organization does. So I'll give you an example, so my name's Ian Aitchison and I'm the lead on this panel debate, the coordinator. I'm the Senior Director of Product Management here at Ivanti. And when I'm not at work, I wrestle with my two children and small puppy and I like sailing boats and I play the ukulele very badly. So that's a little bit about me. First on the panel then is Sally. Could you give us a little intro, Sally?

Sally Bogg: So hello everyone, my name's Sally Bogg. I'm Head of End user Services at Leeds Beckett University where I have responsibility for the first and second-line support teams including the IT service desk. I also look after the IT training unit and have overall ownership of IT service management at Leeds Beckett University. I've worked in higher education IT for just over 12 years now in various IT service management roles, and my job at Leeds Beckett is really about developing high-quality, sector-leading support services and I'm really passionate about creating sort of highly respected and award winning teams. I really like to focus on the people element of leadership. I don't know if it's an unusual or interesting fact about me, but things I like doing in my spare time, I'm really passionate about supporting the advancement and empowerment of women, particularly women in technology. And I spend a lot of my free time going around and giving talks and presentations, setting up various networks and contributing to different women in technology initiatives. I am also a mom of three almost grown-up children, which gives me a lot more free time these days. So I think that's enough from me.

Ian Aitchison: That's excellent, thank you Sally. Great introduction. Thanks for making time to join us today. Sitting to your right, or to your left depending on where you're sitting, is Carla. Hello, Carla.

Carla Thornley: Hi there. So yeah, my name is Carla Thornley, I currently lead the service desk and Advanced Service Management teams here within IT services at the University of Oxford. I've only actually been working back in higher education for just under a year, well just over a year actually now. Before that I did spend quite a portion of my career with higher education, but I've also worked in the corporate sector in various roles. And I came from the SDI, so I was head of certification training at the SDI. So I did have the pleasure of experiencing the international element of service desk and how similar they are, actually, no matter where in the world they are and helping people especially in that role. So I'm excited to be here to see what we can do with what we've got, and make sure that these services here are actually world-class and sector-leading, just as they should be for an organization of this standing. Interesting things about me. Well it's a bit unusual maybe, I don't actually like chocolate, believe it or not. My mother remains unconvinced, at the age of 47 she still occasionally gives me, I don't know, just some cake or whatever and says, "I'm sure you'll like this one," but no, I really don't like chocolate. I don't have much spare time, I've got four children, although they are now much older, much like Sally, you do get a bit of extra time when they're older, but you don't stop worrying about them. And I've also got a horse, so yes, my free time, any minute that I can, I like to spend outside in our broad countryside.

Ian Aitchison: Excellent. Thank you, Carla. And that's a complete shocker, doesn't like chocolate. Wow.

Ian Aitchison: I suppose it's possible there is one out there, and we have one on our panel today, so that's fantastic. Very good, thanks for joining, Carla. And sitting to your left, or right, is Steve. Hello, Steve. Good morning.

Steve Hoensch: Hello. Hello everyone. So my name's Steve Hoensch, so I'm Head of Frontline Services at the University of Cambridge. So Head of Frontline Services is any service that hits the customer on an IT service. So it's basically the same as Sally, front, first and second-line support. So I manage a division of around 60 people, and from there we've even got things like the University has agreement, first, second-line support at the service desk, desktop support. And part of my job in my new role is to try and unify the IT department that has formed from two separate divisions that have merged together to form what we call the University Information Services. And that's the idea of delivering core IT out to the University so researchers can get on with the more exciting part of their day, and they don't have to worry about re-inventing the wheel every time. So things that I enjoy outside the work, I'm really passionate about snowboarding, it's something that I love to do and sort of get to travel the world a little bit, but since having a child, who's now four, that's sort of stopped a little bit and I'm looking forward to next year when he's old enough that I can actually take him skiing for the first time.

Ian Aitchison: Excellent. That's great. Thank you, Steve. And obviously the question we're all dying to know as well is do you like chocolate?

Steve Hoensch: Yes, yeah. I have no problem with chocolate, yeah.

Ian Aitchison: Good, good. Excellent. And we'll just check in, Sally, are you okay with chocolate?

Sally Bogg: Yeah. It's not my favorite, but I don't mind it.

Ian Aitchison: Good, okay. All right, well this discussion isn't actually talking about our favorite food products, much as I'd love to. But with all three of you, you're all doing, I'd say, a similar function managing the delivery of valuable IT service to a higher education customer/user departmental base. And Higher education is unique in many ways, it has some unique challenges around the expectations, around the culture, around the profile of those that you deliver IT service and support to. So I know we're gonna pull out some very interesting points around that as we work our way through. The way we thought we'd structure this is let's take one question at a time. And we'll start by asking you a little bit, I guess, around your journey so far, building and delivering the service structure and organization that you have done. I'm really interested in looking back, what you have found to be tough, what have you found to be a real challenge that maybe you have overcome, or maybe you're still wrestling with it? But what is something that you've found has been really something difficult to overcome? And we'll change the order as we go around, we'll check in with everybody as we go through this. So I'm gonna start actually this time around with Steve, who was the last to speak. Steve, could you, just kind of from your perspective looking back, what's been hard, what's been tough?

Steve Hoensch: So, like I said in the introduction, we formed this new department of two completely separate, different organizations with a completely separate culture, and that's been a real challenge to bring those two divisions together, and get them working together. The amount of technical depth that that created for the central IT department to deal with has been huge, and it's something that we're still dealing with at the moment. So the way we're getting around that is to empower people with bringing them together on new projects, and that means they're working together on something new. We're developing new services, for instance we're developing the next generation desktop, we're looking at new exciting ways of delivering that across the University. And because people are now working together, we're actually seeing a culture start to form and start to develop. So I'd say the biggest challenge for us has just been the merger.

It's the right way for the University to go, because we've had, if you take the University, there are 31 separate, unique colleges that work together, and there's got to be over another 200 departments. And all of those individuals may have had their own IT representative or their own computer officer working in there. You know, they should be developing their own service, and it adds a complexity and adds extra expense to the University. So the University's decision to create this new central IT department is the right way forward, but it's a big challenge for us to change the culture of the University and accept that there should be a central IT department delivering core IT is something we're working on in the moment. But when we get there, I think it will be a big improvement for students and staff and researchers working here and getting access to world-class leading services.

Ian Aitchison: And it sounds a little bit like that culture is not just within the IT organization, but it's across the whole University, if you've got departments building their own IT:

Steve Hoensch: I'm sorry, yeah. If you take the university of Cambridge, I mean it's an 809-year-old institution.

Ian Aitchison: Yeah.

Steve Hoensch: And obviously there are things that have happened over the years, you know.

Ian Aitchison: Yes.

Steve Hoensch: It's a challenge, but everybody is starting to see it. We're seeing sort HE start to be more run as a business, and we're starting to see more corporate decisions be made, and I think that's starting to make people look and see what's happening out in the rest of the world and see what large organizations, like banks and other divisions, are doing of these sizes, that we should be copying. We're not re-inventing the wheel here, we're just using things that people have done in industry for many years, but the University seems to be a little bit far behind on those sort of adoptions. And the University just moves a lot slower than other organizations at the moment. But it is improving and it is the way forward.

Ian Aitchison: Yeah, that's great. So it sounds like culture, University culture, higher education culture, is a big challenge for you. Let's find out at Leeds Beckett University what sort of challenges are being faced there. Sally, what have you been challenged with?

Sally Bogg: So looking at, so I joined the University and the department just after a merging of two departments in 2015, where media services and IT were brought together. So again, it was looking at cultural change. And we were trying to focus on becoming more service-focused, really, rather than technology and deliverers of technology, and that's been really difficult. Trying to get IT staff to focus on cultural change is really hard, they often just want to be very focused on the actual technology. And then our other one is around supporting and developing staff, really. Attracting and retaining high-quality IT staff in any sector's becoming really challenging, but it's particularly difficult for us in higher education, where maybe the wages are not as competitive as they could be. Now there are lots of other benefits of working at university, but they don't necessarily appeal to what your new graduates and your up-and-coming sort of people. And we also struggle to provide job opportunities and career development, in terms of progression, particularly for our service desk staff. Our university turnover, within IT, turnover is really low, and therefore there's limited progression routes for many of the staff that come in at entry-level. So what we're having to do is actually focus on providing career development opportunities and work on the premise that some of them, in fact most of them, will need to leave the organization in order to get career progression.

Also the lack of staff turnover, it does result in stagnation and resistance to change, and that can make implementing service management, and any cultural change program actually, really challenging. Trying to get people to focus on the adoption, the engagement rather than systems and tools is not easy with IT staff. But we are working really hard on that and I think I've got a couple of successes around that that I could maybe talk about a little bit later. But yeah, the two biggest ones are attracting and retaining high-quality staff, certainly on service desk and within first and second line, now we're looking for staff that have got fantastic business awareness, really good customer service and communication skills and technical ability. And actually those three things together are in high demand within the IT sector, and so actually recruiting and retaining those staff. And recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce as well is really difficult. Certainly within the HE sector in IT gender equality's a bit of an issue, but diversity in general as well.

Ian Aitchison: Yeah. So people is a big subject, all the way through your description there.

Sally Bogg: Absolutely.

Ian Aitchison: It's about the people...

Sally Bogg: I'm all about the people.

Ian Aitchison: Yeah, getting them to focus on the right work, be service-focused rather than just excited by technology.

Sally Bogg: Yeah, that's been my mantra the past 18 months is the right people doing the right job at the right time, and that's not always as straight-forward as it sounds.

Ian Aitchison: No, no, absolutely. I mean ultimately the jobs we all do are about people, right? So success is encouraging people to work in the right way, as you described.

Sally Bogg: Yeah.

Ian Aitchison: And that's an interesting point, in higher education particularly, about, I guess, you get people that may be with you for many, many, many years and you get other people who maybe won't stay with you for long because they can see a different sector that might reward them in different ways.

Sally Bogg: Yeah, definitely.

Ian Aitchison: And I guess there's been challenges there.

Sally Bogg: Yeah.

Ian Aitchison: Yeah, yeah, okay. Well that's great.

Sally Bogg: We did an Itil cast a few months ago, and we did a quick round the room, in terms of experience and it added up to well over 250 years.

Ian Aitchison: Wow.

Sally Bogg: Because we had sort of 20 years, 15 years, 12 years.

Ian Aitchison: Yeah.

Sally Bogg: Yeah.

Ian Aitchison: That's amazing, just three people in the room. No I'm kidding. No, that shows exactly the sort of thing special to the higher education space. Okay, thank you, Sally. That's great. So we had a bit of unification of culture, we had the challenge of getting the right people to do the right thing at the right time, Carla, what's been the big challenge in the University of Oxford?

Carla Thornley: Yeah, it's interesting listening to both Steve and Sally. So I think Oxford is a slightly different place, but certainly I do acknowledge what both are saying, and it is probably...we're a little bit further along the line, maybe. So yes, we had cultural issues, I think, when the team was formed, but that was well before my time. The thing that struck me when I joined was actually what Steve also faces, which is the complexity of service delivery that you're actually required to get your head around here at the University of Oxford. So similar to Cambridge, we've got a college system steeped in such fantastic history and experts in every field that you could ever wish to imagine. And all of that is a challenge for IT. It's a challenge to deliver what people want in the way that they want it, which is what the university very much does want us to do. And it's a challenge to understand what people are trying to achieve, and make sure that we are providing value. So I think the first thing, what struck me the most was just how very complex this place is, and how something that might seem quite straight-forward in a corporate environment is far from straight-forward here, just in terms of the number of people you need to involve, and the complexity of what you're trying to deliver.

Ian Aitchison: Yeah, yeah. Complexity, I totally get that point. When you've got many people, many systems, many ways of working, I can see how that's really gonna be a challenge. And there's an interesting connection there, maybe, with as we reference people and focusing on doing the right things. If your teams are doing repetitive work that is going across multiple systems and technologies, working in, as I say, a very inefficient way, they're gonna become demotivated and they're frustrated in the work they do.

Carla Thornley: I think that's a fair point. I think at the moment that isn't the biggest issue that's challenging service first and second-line support. It is understanding what they need to know in order to provide good, high-quality support services.

Ian Aitchison: Okay.

Carla Thornley: So big challenges around knowledge while making sure that we have access to the right tools, persuading people to allow us to shift left, so that we can actually do more at the point of contact, and making good relationships with our customers. So that's really been my focus in the past year is empower your first and second-line support staff to actually just take ownership of things and see things through to completion, because ultimately they are the customer's voice.

Ian Aitchison: Yeah, excellent. Okay, thank you. So merging and unifying, focusing on doing the right thing at the right time with the people and empowering and addressing complexity of knowledge needed to cover such a huge range of topics and subjects. That's a load of challenges. Great, thank you.

Carla Thornley: It is. And, I mean, just pretty much what Sally was saying. I mean, it certainly is a challenge to recruit here at the University. We are too near to London to actually be a particularly attractive place to work, other than the fact that we are the University of Oxford. So yeah, our talent pool is sometimes limited. But that said, we've had some great opportunities this year to actually allow our first-line staff to move on into more interesting roles in other teams. That will reap dividends later on, because they had been making good links for us, but they keep that service culture. And we've got a whole lot of new people who I'm very excited about who have got some real talent. So I'm looking forward to developing that talent and seeing where we go with it.

Ian Aitchison: Ah, now it sounds like you may be introducing one of the top tips that we might give to others on this call a little later, around how to energize and keep your staff focused. But that's two questions away, so let's hold that one back. But that's excellent. Okay, thank you. So challenges, we now understand it's challenging, right? I mean, there's no IT service management role that isn't challenging, but you've got some unique ones yourselves, both to your unique universities, but also to that sector generally. So I'd like to now turn that into the next question which is what have you been really successful at? What can you look back on and say, "I nailed it, I really made a big change here. We've done something great?" It may be connected to that challenge, it may be something else that you've introduced, initiated, made a big difference that you can point at and say, "That was a success." Let's change the order around a little bit. Let's start with Sally. Sally, could you give us some thoughts on what you would say have been some of the big successes you can see looking back?

Sally Bogg: Yeah, I think we've got a few things I can talk about. But what I really try to do in my role is focus on people and getting the most out of our valuable staff resource. So a great service needs great people, and to be able to do that you've got to empower them, you've got to support them, and you've got to make them feel valued. And that's what we've tried really hard to do. We've also really been focusing on developing our IT service management capabilities and kind of using that to move us from a technology, deliverer of technology to a deliverer of service, and then this has also started to pay off. It's been quite long and quite slow, but in May this year, we implemented Advanced Service Manager. And we took quite a bit of time doing that, because we really wanted to focus on the adoption and engagement to make sure the new tool became fully embedded. I'm very aware that quite often in our sector, people just go buy and buy a new shiny ITSM tool and get six months down the line, they're really frustrated that it hasn't had the impact. And actually it's because it won't, it's just a tool. You've got to really focus on the process and the cultural aspect, and that's what we've really done. We've sort of change champions within the departments help with that adoption and engagement, and that really paid off. It meant the new system and the new processes were really well received, and it meant that during the whole implementation go live period we didn't actually have any detrimental impacts on our customers, no dropping service levels, and we actually have, within a couple of weeks, people saying it was making a difference and it was benefiting them. So I think that was quite, to have that within two or three weeks of getting the new tool in felt like a significant achievement to me.

And then the other thing we've been doing is, as part of our focus on service delivery, was re-inventing and re-investing in the service desk. When I arrived in 2015, it was a new service that had just been put together, and there was a perception in the University that the service desk offering was quite poor, and it had been because it had be really underfunded and under-resourced. So we've really focused on that kind of first-level excellent customer service and service desk. We've used a service desk certification frame-work as our program for that CSI, and it's kind of hot-off-the-press following a lot of hard work and a very intensive audit process. We're delighted that last week, we were provisionally awarded our two star, so it's not official yet, but I'm really proud of the team and the effort they've put into turning the service around, it's not insignificant, the kind of impact that that's had. And we're already getting that positive feedback, and praise and recognition from our customers. And that service is now becoming kind of a trusted partner, it's the service that people want to use, that they want to go to. And that feels like a massive, massive hurdle because changing perception is really difficult. And I'm really delighted that that's what we've been able to achieve.

Ian Aitchison: That's great. Well, congratulations on achieving that certification.

Sally Bogg: Thank you.

Ian Aitchison: That's fabulous. I know there's a lot of hard work involved in that, it's not an insignificant exercise. So that is a great success. You also referenced there, of course, using technology to improve the level of service and the advantages of investing time and thought and effort into using tools in a way that really pays off. So that's great. Good stuff. Well, well done, Sally.

Sally Bogg: Thank you.

Ian Aitchison: I know Carla, with your background in the SDI, of course Carla you'd be familiar with the whole service desk certification side of things.

Carla Thornley: Yes.

Ian Aitchison: What would you look back at?

Carla Thornley: I wasn't Sally's auditor, so just to be very clear…

Sally Bogg: She has been my auditor.

Carla Thornley: I did train your auditor, that is true to say.

Sally Bogg: Yeah.

Ian Aitchison: Okay, so Carla, what's been some big successes in University of Oxford?

Carla Thornley: Well, I think in the last year, again similar to Sally, you're always, with service technology, your people are always your key asset, and I'm proud of what we've done to empower the team and make them feel good about the job they do. So that's an ongoing challenge in any organization, to actually just take the people that are closest to the customers and make them realize how important they are. So giving them voices is very important to me, and I think we've started down that journey. And allowing them to make connections, real personal connections, with our customers. So the value of that can't be underestimated I don't think, those conversations that they have are gold to an IT department, because they are really at the front end of knowing why people use technology, what they are using it for and what their challenges are. So I'm proud that we've started down that journey. And using metrics, I think. Using our data in a little bit of a better way. So I don't think we've really focused too much on using data to inform your strategic vision. And I think we absolutely must know how to do that. We've got rich sources of data in IT, we collect an awful lot, but what we don't do is analyze it and make sure that we're actually delivering things in a sensible way, necessarily, all the time.

So from a service desk perspective, I keep telling me staff that everything they do is recorded and very visible, and it's a mark of quality that they do everything right the first time, and they do make every effort to make sure that the quality of that incident management process is good from the very first connection with a customer. And now we're started to look at, you know, the big thing here is predictable service delivery, and matching our resource to what we know is going to happen. So we're gonna make use of our Advanced Service Management data to do that, and start to shift things left, as I mentioned before. So I'm proud that we've started down that journey. The bigger one I think is our support channels. So much like most organizations, the primary communication channels that people seem to love dearly and which we can't pry it out of their dying hands, is email. From the service desk perspective that is a real killer, because it's the slowest communication channel that you can think of.

Ian Aitchison: Yeah.

Carla Thornley: So I've been making every effort to focus people's attention not away from email, but to make sure that if it's something is urgent, you contact us by phone or by some other mechanism, hopefully chat one day too. And then actually that is the quickest and most pleasurable experience from a customer's perspective and gets the best service. So we have focused most of our attention on delivering fantastic telephone service. Our abandon rate has gone down from 40% in a very stark month last year, right down to less than 5%. And that's with a backdrop of where we've actually seen over 44% increase in the number of telephone calls to our service desk. So the team is very much now focused on being responsive and actually jumping on things quickly to make the connection with people, but then also to look at the efficiency of what we're doing. So I'm proud of that, and I'm proud of the team because they're working in a different way, and they're working very hard. The other thing we've done is integrate in our support solution into our service manager, Advanced Service Manager, which has been fantastic, and I think we will reap the dividends of that for quite some time in terms of providing remote support at people's desktop without actually physically being there. So I'm glad we've got that one over with as well. So it's a good position for us to be in.

Ian Aitchison: Well, that's great.

Carla Thornley: Yeah.

Ian Aitchison: Yeah, that's really good. It's interesting you started with personal connections, you came back to the importance of that and the difficulty I think everybody faces with email as a support channel. It's needed and in many cases it's impossible to turn it off, but it's one of the most inefficient ways of providing support. And an interesting point you made around metrics. And let me ask you a questions here. When you're guiding your teams on the value of personal connection and spending time with real people and understanding that connection, if you put metrics in that are very volume-based, that can sometimes build barriers. Have you found that to being a challenge, managing performance metrics that are data-driven versus the softer side of personal connections?

Carla Thornley: I think it is, yeah, definitely challenging. So in our previous roles it's been quite obvious that people either do one thing or the other, so some people focus very much on customer experience and the softer side. So if somebody has a fantastic experience and it takes two years, then fair enough. And other organizations are very much volumetric, volume-driven, so it is about introducing metrics about how long a call should take, or what the abandon rate is, and it's very kind of dry, numerical-based statistics which don't actually just engage with people. So I think we've tried hard here to find ways to make the numbers mean something. So, for example, when we're very, very busy, so one key metric is how long things are taking to be picked up by a person? So we automate our email coming in and obviously then it sits there until somebody does something with it. So I think that key metric of how old is the oldest thing that we need to next do? That's real to people, people understand that. But you're right, I think you've got to make every effort to make the numbers not just numbers when it comes to actually empowering people and motivating them, because it can be very off-putting to just have a number attached to you as a person.

Ian Aitchison: Yeah, and you know we could talk for hours about that whole topic of what are the right things to measure to drive the right behavior, but we don't have time to do that, frustratingly. Let's find out from Steve his view of great successes in University of Cambridge. What do you say, Steve?

Steve Hoensch: Yeah, so I'd just say that, hearing what Beckett and Oxford are going through, it sounds exactly the same as what's happening in Cambridge. You know, there's so many similarities between the two that we've just heard. One of the great successes that we've started to invest in is automation. So allowing the customer to self-serve. So that's saving us a huge amounts of time, the number of tickets hitting the actual service desk. Changing requests into, sorry, incidents into service requests means that people can self-service, they can get access to the services quicker, and they don't even have to speak to an analyst for the simple tasks that are just repeatable over and over again. And that's something where we're really investing in now. And by doing that that takes away the pressure off the service desk so that they can concentrate on better training, more time to spend with the more complicated issues, and things like user creation or simple things with email along... I need to add myself to a distribution list, or something that can be done really quickly, the user can self-service. And because of the time we're getting back on that, we're now training staff. They're all, have just completed their foundation courses and we're looking at how we can invest in people in the future and get new people in.

So some of the challenges Sally was saying earlier about recruitment, we've now started to invest in getting younger people into the organization and giving apprenticeship schemes. That's because we've got the same challenges with Amazon. We've got Microsoft, we've got, even Apple have just set up in Cambridge, and we've got large pharmaceutical companies like AstraZeneca. So they pay a lot more, so us being able to invest in our staff, train them up, and if it's something they want to do and change jobs in the future, that's good for us as well because we can bring in new, fresh ideas into the organization. So it's working well for us.

Ian Aitchison: Oh, that's great. And again, that comes back to that point of you need fresh ideas coming in, you need fresh energy, as well as working with those that you have, to inspire them and insure that they're getting rewarded in the work they do.

Steve Hoensch: Yeah.

Ian Aitchison: I'm glad you mentioned automation there, Steve. I think that's...Obviously I speak as a software vendor, but in all our conversations with our customers in all verticals, people are increasingly seeing that automation is the key to freeing people up from drudgery and letting them focus on the quality stuff. So it's good to hear that one being reflected back also in this space. Great. Okay, so looking at time, we're getting a little tight on time, so let's jump quickly into the next one. Obviously lots of viewers and listeners attending this, thank you for coming along, I hope it's great. What tips would you give them? Imagine they were stepping into your role in a leadership IT position in higher education. What tips would you give them, maybe most important three things, or one thing more than anything else, or be really clever, do this? Let's start with Carla this time around. Some top tips, Carla?

Carla Thornley: Top tips for somebody coming into a role like this one?

Ian Aitchison: Yes.

Carla Thornley: Yeah, I would say find out who does what. That's a really obvious thing, isn't it? But certainly this department is vast, and there are pockets of IT that do such special things. It takes a while to do that, so don't assume that things work in the way that you may have found out in another organization. In my experience, every IT department in the world, in every organization, is slightly different. It has a different nuance, it has a different culture, I guess. People do different things, basically. So make sure that you know who's doing what so that you can, not reinvent the wheel. So there's probably an awful lot of stuff going on that you weren't probably aware of, make sure that you make an effort to find out where the responsibilities lie and where people's pinch points are so that you can actually tap into that and provide good value. And find out about your people. So as I've said before, I'm really excited about the talent within my team. I started here by looking at people's job descriptions and what people were actually doing and tried to match that to what the customers needed, what we needed to deliver. And I think that was the right place to start. So I started with my analysts and rewrote their job descriptions and made sure that that was embedded fully. And then we looked at the seniors and we changed the focus of their roles so that they're much more about empowering and helping out their analyst colleagues. So really just make sure that you know what the challenges of the organization are, and make sure that the people understand what they're there to deliver. So that would be my top tip. Don't be afraid to revisit...

Carla Thornley: ...especially in higher education, because we've got somebody who's been sat there for 20 years, the chances are they will have pockets of knowledge that no one else is aware of, and they've been doing so for quite some time, just because it needed to be done. And if you don't known what that is, and you haven't managed to eke it out of someone, then you can find that you've got some single points of failure and more. And also it creates a more even playing field so that everybody knows what they're there to do and what the priorities for the team are.

Ian Aitchison: That's great. So take time to understand the people, understand the talent that they've got and the expertise that they've got and make sure that they're in the right place, doing something rewarding and beneficial for them.

Carla Thornley: Yeah.

Ian Aitchison: Excellent, that's a really strong, good message. Thank you, Carla, great advice. Let's ask Steve, what tips would you give?

Steve Hoensch: So I would say, so I've worked for the University of Cambridge for the last 17 years, and I've seen a lot of change happen. What I would say is we get a lot of corporate people start within higher education and they don't understand the culture, but they also don't understand the maturity of the department. So we see a lot of people coming in here, sort of high demands to make changes, they expect those changes to happen instantly. But the University doesn't work in that way. So coming across with ideas to improve performance or add a new tool in, but they have to understand that the higher education, we've got a lot of talented and clever people within the organization, and you've got to understand their needs and bring them along for the journey as well. An example of that was implementing the new ITMS tool that we have. It was a decision to implement that tool without bringing people along for the journey and that causes some problems because people didn't understand Itil at the time. They didn't understand the difference between and incident and a request. So what I would say is make sure that when you're going to adopt something within higher education that you've brought everyone along for the journey. If it is Itil, you need to train them all, at least get them to foundations, and then they'll understand and they'll get on board with that decision and that direction, and then you'll have much more success trying to deliver something.

Ian Aitchison: Yeah, that's great. That makes sense, Steve. Yeah. So culture, recognize there is potentially a unique approach as you work in higher education. And again, the same message, work with the people, right?

Steve Hoensch: Yeah.

Ian Aitchison: Work with the people that do the work, that it is so important that they understand why and what and they're involved in the how.

Steve Hoensch: Yes.

Ian Aitchison: So a very strong message there, excellent. Thank you, Steve. And finally on this one, let's turn to Sally and see what Sally's top tips are.

Sally Bogg: I strive to be quite people-focused, but I think in terms of the role of a leader in IT, I think my biggest learning point was about authenticity and being real. So I came into IT in the minority as a woman in IT; and spent a lot of time thinking I needed to be just like everybody else that was around me, but quite frankly there's enough men in suits in IT, and I've actually learned to be my authentic real self. And that's where my leadership and my management comes from, and I've found that a really eye-opening, positive experience. But it was quite slow to the pasture with that one. And then really it is focusing on the people, you know? IT service management, frontline support, it really needs that magical mix of technical understanding, business and market awareness, and communication and customer service skills. And actually if we want to attract more diversity in tech, certainly within the HE sector we need a different approach to recruitment. We need to be thinking about how we can actually provide exciting opportunities for talented people rather than just recruiting against a very standard sort of job description. I think if you look at the higher education sector and our user base, it's probably one of the most diverse sectors to work in. Most universities have a fantastic international community, and we are delivering services to people of all background, ethnicities, ages, and actually IT needs to reflect that. We need to focus on diversity and having a more diverse workforce. That's just gonna increase creativity and innovation, encourage personal growth, and enable us to actually develop the talent, too, and I think that's really important. It just gets overlooked, that focus on people, which is a shame. So that would be my thing is in terms of leadership, be your authentic self and always put people first.

Ian Aitchison: Yeah, great. Thank you, Sally. And again, kind of reinforcing, again, that point about people, but also bringing the leadership, personal style, authenticity. I love that phrase you use, "...exciting opportunities for talented people." And that's similar to a phrase you used earlier about "the right people doing the right job and at the right time." I think bringing those together is a message I've certainly got as we've gone through this session. Technology's important, technology saves time and does things quicker, but the people are far and away just as much in higher education as anywhere else, maybe even more in higher education, the people are so important and giving people fulfilling roles and exciting careers and getting to try new things and get rewarded in what they do is an essential part, I guess, in building an inspired team that delivers service. That's awesome. You know what? We have loads more questions and we don't have any more time, unfortunately. So we'll skip the other ones. That was really interesting. Thank you. I hope that those listening to this got some good value, I think that it's really interesting the commonality and some of the differences. I wish we had more time to dig into more of these topics, actually. So that was great fun. I'll say thank you very much to our panel. Thank you to Steve Hoensch. Thank you, Steve.

Steve Hoensch: Cheers.

Ian Aitchison: Thank you to Sally Bogg. Thank you, Sally.

Sally Bogg: No problem, thank you.

Ian Aitchison: And than you very much to Carla Thornley. Thank you, Carla.

Carla Thornley: Thank you.

Ian Aitchison: Okay, thanks for listening, everybody. Thanks for attending.

Customers of Ivanti Make Top World University Rankings

Thu, 27 Sep 2018 23:02:07 Z

What do the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge have in common? Well, there are the obvious similarities. Tuition is about the same, university population is quite large for both (150,000 students at Oxford and around 124,000 at Cambridge), and they’re both based in the UK.

The similarities that catch our attention, however, are these two: They both rank in the top two of World University Rankings 2019 for the second year in a row, and they both use Ivanti. Did you catch that?

They both use Ivanti!

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Which begs the question: Do they rank highest among universities because they use Ivanti, or do they use Ivanti because they rank highest among universities? We’ll let you decide. But first let’s get a few more details.

What are the Times Higher Education World University Rankings?

According to the website, they are the only global university ranking system that uses 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators to evaluate universities on everything from research to teaching. The results are trusted by students, academics, university leaders, and governments alike.

How many universities were ranked in the 2019 study?

More than 1,250 universities were ranked in the latest study.

What are the top 10 universities?

2019 rank	2018 rank	University	Country
1	1	University of Oxford	United Kingdom
2	2	University of Cambridge	United Kingdom
3	=3	Stanford University	United States
4	5	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	United States
5	=3	California Institute of Technology	United States
6	6	Harvard University	United States
7	7	Princeton University	United States
8	12	Yale University	United States
9	8	Imperial College London	United Kingdom
10	9	University of Chicago	United States

Now, back to Ivanti. What exactly do we offer each university?

Ivanti has helped the University of Oxford deliver the functionality that they need to be able to cope with their complex environment. They have also been working with some of the product development team to provide user feedback on new functionality, and the partnership has been mutually beneficial.

Here is the official video:

Ivanti + University of Oxford

The University of Cambridge is currently using Ivanti ITSM and Cloud. Because of Ivanti, they've been able to unify multiple different service desk tools.

Here is the official video:

Ivanti + University of Cambridge

We're thrilled to have such renowned customers around the world. Thank you for choosing Ivanti!

Learn more about our customers