Being committed to our customers and ensuring that our product is the best in class operational reporting solution for HP Service Manager out there, we make it a priority to be at events to keep pace with evolving needs in the market.

Our line-up so far includes the HP Customer Forum and HP Discover.

HP Software Customer Forum, May 8-10, London, United Kingdom

The HP Customer Forums are very popular professional strategy and practice-sharing events that feature high-quality presentations and round-table discussions.
Join Westbury at this event and learn from our customers how they successfully deployed SMI 2011.

You will:
• Network and share best practices with your peers
• Hear from the HP team about what is coming next
• Walk away with new ideas for getting even more value out of your solution
• Learn about HP strategies, migrations and integrations from HP executives and product managers

You will receive a formal invitation to register shortly, but in the meantime, mark your calendars and save the date!

HP DISCOVER, June 4-7, Las Vegas, NV, United States

HP Discover is the premier event of the year for HP customers and partners, attracting 10,000 individuals for an up-close look at the game-changing innovations in infrastructure that will shape their IT for the next decade.

Once again, Westbury will have a booth in the DISCOVER Zone. Please join us to see our products live in action and to hear about the latest developments in our solution portfolio.

Customer Round table

Westbury will host a round table for our customers. A great opportunity to network and share best practices with your peers.

You will receive a formal invitation to register shortly, but in the meantime, mark your calendars.

VIVIT Advanced Training

A PRACTICAL APPROACH TO OPERATIONAL REPORTING FROM HP SERVICE MANAGER / HP SERVICE CENTER (WESTBURY)
MONDAY, 4 JUNE, 2012 ● 11:30 – 15:30
THE VENETIAN ● THE PALAZZO RESORT IN LAS VEGAS

David van Heusden, Westbury’s Product Manager will provide an SMI 2011 deep dive session. Attend this class and learn about SMI’s reporting capabilities from HP Service Manager and gain practical insight into how you can access data from HP Service Manager with SMI 2011.

See you in Las Vegas!

For Westbury closing the gap between business and IT for IT Service Management is what we do! Like Boris mentioned in his blog, BI vendors like Westbury take care of the back end (ETL, reporting database) of the BI solution and provide the end user (IT process owners) with an easy to use, non-technical user interface (see diagram)

The main challenge for our customers (the IT process owners) in getting the data out of their Service Management tooling is that they are fully dependent on either their internal BI team or some external BI consultants. This dependency is expensive and causes a huge delay  in getting the right reports out to the requesters (the business). Exactly like Boris predicts in his blog, the end users (again, the business) want to create or modify the reports themselves. IT (in our case Westbury) delivers the technical environment and out of the box BI tooling (SMI foundation) that moves the reporting power in to the hands of the end user.

Self Service Reporting for IT Service Management delivered!

Floris

There are two main reasons why I’m very curious about this event. First of all the topic itself. A solid definition of Business Intelligence is useful and helps vendors in their discussions with customers. I remember that it took Westbury several sessions with HP to make sure that our operational reporting solution for HP Service Manager/Center is fully complimentary to BI analytics solution HP has in this area. In the end a good understanding of all the various aspects of BI helped us to determine how the joint value proposition of HP and Westbury provides our customers a unique BI-solution for Service Management.

I’m also curious to see how a Tweetjam works out. I’ve never been in one and any new marketing tool using Social Media is exciting to me. So, if you like the topic or/and just fascinated by Social Media, this is the place to be on May 13th.

Floris

Our main goal with the new site is to make sure that the home page immediately makes clear what SMI Suite does and how it will help our customers. Result of three months of brainstorming and editing is the following intro block that will be prominent on our home page:

Westbury’s SMI suite is the self service reporting solution for HP Service Manager

Do you like it? Is it unambiguous?

The main benefit to extract from this sentence is “self service reporting”. SMI Suite will put the power of reporting in the hands of the power users, the ones really in need of the reports. With SMI suite there is no dependency on internal or external BI specialists, no need for technical, scripting knowledge or endless sessions explaining the reporting requirements to whoever will create them for you. SMI suite will do all the heavy lifting of extracting the data from the HP SM database for you and load it into our own SMI database. The Business Objects layer we created on top of our SMI DB will allow you  – by just dragging and dropping the objects  – to build your reports and distribute them to those who requested them.

Check out our Test Drive to experience the ease of use of SMI suite yourselves: http://westbury-it.com/solutions/service-management-intelligence-suite/smi-suite-test-drive

The new web site will be up before the HP Universe in Washington DC this June. This means that we will have several more brainstorm and editing sessions over the content and the layout of the web site. Although it will probably never be perfect, the main objective is to be absolutely clear about what we are doing and how it will help our customers. Once the web site has been launched I will definitely check with you all if we have accomplished this goal.

Floris

My excitement about blogs like these is obvious, because like 2nd gen BI apps, Westbury’s goal is to auto-generate as many steps as possible out of the ETL components necessary for our SMI suite.

Here’s the link:

Next gen of metadata driven BI apps

Take a look!

Floris

HP Service Management at the HP Universe 2010 in Washington DC:

If you’re planning on attending the HP Universe event, there are several activities and sessions taking place that might be of interest to you

1) Vivit training sessions

There are two special Vivit training sessions taking place:

- The first is called ” A practical approach to operational reporting from HP Service Manager and HP Service Center” (https://www.hpsoftwareuniverse2010.com/event/trainingandcert.html#4) and takes place Monday afternoon from 1pm to 5pm.

- The second is called “HP Service Manager advanced tailoring concepts and best practices” (https://www.hpsoftwareuniverse2010.com/event/trainingandcert.html#5) and takes place Tuesday morning 8am – 12pm.

2) HP Roundtable session on Service Management (https://www.hpsoftwareuniverse2010.com/event/roundtables.html#6)

3) Track Sessions – HP Service Manager falls under the umbrellas of both “HP Lifecycle Management” (https://www.hpsoftwareuniverse2010.com/event/tracks.html#2) and “Pragmatic IT Service Management” (https://www.hpsoftwareuniverse2010.com/event/tracks.html#15)

Aside from HP Universe there are several other Vivit events coming up with a focus on Service Manager:

1) The Chicago chapter is hosting an ITSM User Group (https://www.vivit-worldwide.org/chapters.cfm?id=122&action=event&chapterid=4&chaptereventid=538), taking place at the DoubleTree, Downers Grove, IL, on 10th March from 10am – 3pm

2) The Colorado chapter’s winter meeting (https://www.vivit-worldwide.org/chapters.cfm?id=122&action=event&chapterid=117&chaptereventid=536) includes sessions on HP’s ITSM roadmap for 2010 and reducing the cost and improving service levels of your help desk. The meeting takes place on March 5th, from 9am to 3pm at Denver Water on 12th Avenue in Denver.

3) The Greater Toronto chapter’s 8th Vivit GTA meeting on 9th March (8:30am to 12pm at HP Canada in Mississauga) will include a presentation by Robert Lee of Achievo on migrating to SM7, and a session on responding more quickly to incidents, by HP’s John Moore.

In other news:

1) Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for the IT Service Desk report (https://h10078.www1.hp.com/cda/hpms/display/main/hpms_content.jsp?zn=bto&cp=1-11-85^12473_4000_100__) pits Service Manager against its competitors

2) HP has released a new video focusing on ITSM: http://h30423.www3.hp.com/index.jsp?fr_story=6d59bb1b1c901defc095321a2717b0b9a87189d6&rf=bm

Other resources:

The HP Service Management SIG pages on the Vivit site (http://www.vivit-worldwide.org/chapters.cfm?id=122&action=content&contentid=1094&chapterid=186) includes a list of forums (or fora for those of you who had the benefit of a classical education) where you can discuss, ask and answer anything about HP Service Manager.

See you at HP Universe 2010!

Floris

Westbury will perform a hands-on training for all HP ServiceCenter or HP Service Manager people working on reporting, regardless of the BI tool you are using.

Please register for the event and training at:

https://www.hpsoftwareuniverse2010.com/event/index.html

A practical approach to operational reporting from HP Service Manager and HP Service Center
(Monday afternoon) 1pm – 5pm

Attend this class and hear from Richard Verburg and David Van Heusden about the HP Service Manager reporting options. You’ll also gain practical insight into how you can access data from HP Service Manager. Specific topics will include:

• The importance of ITSM reporting from HP Service Manager, and the need for an iterative approach
• Steps involved in the reporting process, from requirements gathering to the distribution of completed reports
• HP Service Manager reporting options, from dashboards to generic reporting technologies to point solutions
• Data storage and access
• HP Service Manager data challenges such as array fields (e.g. clocks, journals), CLOBS and BLOBS
• Hands-on exercises for defining, building, and running reports
• Tips on how and where to zoom into reports for added value

Floris

Obviously, the reckless pattern of costs savings has lead to huge gaps in IT processes. Especially the maintenance of IT applications has been hit hard during the recession. In the last 9-12 months almost all companies have reduced the contracts with consultants dramatically, IT services have been outsourced and support and maintenance contracts not renewed. On top of that, internal IT resources have been cut back or reorganizations have taken people away from maintenance projects. But also new, innovative IT projects have been postponed. I’m pretty sure everyone can think of one project this year that was already approved but never executed or was killed during implementation.

However, since our gurus allows us to see some light at the end of the tunnel (which could easily be a train coming towards you from the other site of the tunnel!), what should be the recommendations for IT executives?

Allow me to come with some suggestions:

1. Fill out the gaps of your IT processes by implementing new processes, new application to support the processes and by hiring resources in critical spots
2. Gain competitive advantage by updating your website with new features such as: news feeds, newsletters, event calendars, case studies, photo galleries, customer support features, product catalogs, blogs, social networking capabilities, and SEO improvements.
3. Invest in the future by hiring young, talented people and by training the employees that kept your business running for the last 12 months.

Just some suggestions. Let me know your ideas.

Floris

Let me give you an example.

One of our customers has developed a complete data warehouse solution specifically for HP Service Management. With this solution they solved all the nasty database / data model issues of Service Manager and even made the data warehouse relational. However, they are still interested in Westbury’s SMI suite.

Why?

Because maintaining this ever changing data warehouse environment is extremely expensive for them. Individual experts like database engineers (to modify the database), BI developers (to modify the Universes or Cubes) and ETL specialists to modify and develop the ETL layer are all required for making Service Manager fields/objects available for reporting.

With Westbury SMI foundation, reports are created from data stored in the dedicated SMI Database, whose structure is fixed. This enables Westbury to offer a standardized reporting environment, regardless of the (changing) structure of the back-end HP ServiceCenter software / HP Service Manager software database. SMI Foundation has been created in such a way that administrators can maintain the solution through a GUI, hence there is no need for any programming.

Again, I apologize for being so salesy in this blog, but it is so important for me to make sure that people understand the uniqueness of our solution. If Service Center and Service Manager customer really grasp our architecture, they will see that there is no solution like it available in the market.

Floris

For example, the report identified the four top hidden costs of Business Intelligence as:

1. Year-after-year budget increases: The typical best-in-class company sees a drop in year-after-year BI budgetary costs. Average and laggard companies, however, can witness increases in BI expenses that range from 2 percent to 9 percent.
2. Cost per user: Best-in-class companies lower per-user costs by 4.3 percent whereas average performers and laggards often see increases ranging from 1 percent to 7 percent.
3. Time to complete projects: Best-in-class achievers complete BI projects, on average, within 14 days. Average performers take nearly three times as long (approximately 39 days) to complete a project, and the typical laggard company takes more than 12 times as long (177 days).
4. Modifications to BI software: Altering a BI program takes less than a day for best-in-class companies; three days for average performers; and up to eight days for laggard organizations.

Or as author David Hatch put it:

“The overall cost of ownership is not about the costs of purchasing the software,” Hatch says. “The real cost factors are the hidden or the soft ones that have to do with indirect and ongoing factors.” Hatch contends that a justifiable fear of such factors hinders adoption. “People are finding [that] the resources the company needs to acquire to properly implement, deploy, support, and maintain a BI solution are far greater than the solution providers lead [users] to believe or that [users] assume on their own.”

Interesting, because that is what Westbury has seen over the last years in dealing with BI projects for HP Service Management. But a report of the Aberdeen Group isn’t complete without some recommendations. On what areas should companies focus in order to improve the success rate of their BI projects?

Aberdeen suggests that investments in the following areas will maximize results from a BI initiative:

• Data integration and cleansing: “Companies are finding it difficult to bring data together from multiple, disparate sources,” Hatch says. Investing in tools for data management can be of help in this regard. Best-in-class companies are twice as likely as their counterparts are to institute data integration and cleansing capabilities.

Westbury recommends: make sure the back end of your BI environment can be used by non-technical people

• End-user requirements: “You really have to stop and think about why…so many companies have deployed tools that so many aren’t able to use,” Hatch says. Companies must understand that end-users — especially nontechnical, non-data-guru types — may need different approaches. Hatch advises companies to focus on end-user needs before deploying a solution.

Westbury recommends: make sure you talk the same language as your end-users

• Training: Top performers are 37 percent more likely to invest in extensive user training on BI solutions and 40 percent are more likely to have formed formal user committees to encourage adoption. Additionally, best-in-class companies are twice as likely as laggards and average performers are to sign up for vendor-provided services.

Westbury recommends: the more accessible your BI solution is for the end-users, the better your processes should be around training

• Operational BI: Successful users of BI use the technology on an everyday basis rather than merely getting a summarized spreadsheet version of performance and high-level trends. Hatch says that operational BI seems to be gaining traction as companies look to make comparisons over shorter time spans rather than just examine large-scale trends.

Westbury recommends: integrate your BI solution with the supported applications, so it is readily accessible for your end-users

Great to see our own own experiences in working with the HP Service Management software backed up with a solid research like this one from The Aberdeen Group.

Floris