Author Archive

We are the Champions (of reporting)

June 1st, 2010

The 2010 FIFA World Cup will be the 19th FIFA World Cup, the premier international football tournament. It is scheduled to take place between 11 June and 11 July 2010 in South Africa. The 2010 FIFA World Cup will be the culmination of a qualification process that began in August 2007 and involved 204 of the 208 FIFA national teams. As such, it matches the 2008 Summer Olympics as the ports event with the most competing nations. The thirty-two countries that are qualified are ‘fighting’ for the tournament to decide which country can be crowned as World Champion for the next 4 years.

To achieve the goal to be the World Champion the team of trainers/coaches, players and all kind of staff members (doctors, chefs, dieticians, etc) need to find the right chemistry. This chemistry and right communication in all kind of ways are extremely important to achieve the goal of being the next World Champions. As a natural born Dutch guy I hope the Dutch team, aka the Oranje (Orange), will perform great, but I completely accept that England are going to win – because Wayne Rooney is the best player in the world.

Next to the football Orange team there is another Orange team, the Westbury Orange team. We have our managers as our coaches. We have our R&Defense as the engine of the team. We have Sales and Marketing as our midfield who are exploring the outside world. Our consultants are the attackers who are finishing off the work by implementing our powerful SMI reporting solution at the customers side, or, in other words, scoring the goals. And last but absolutely not least, we have our Support department as our staff to facilitate and to support the internal Westbury Orange team players and of course all our customers.

The Westbury Orange team has been putting their strength together to create chemistry and this Orange team full of chemistry was able to bring you a powerful reporting solution like SMI Suite. I dare to call it the World Champion of reporting solutions on HP Service Center / Service Manager. I hope you’ll agree with that.

On behalf of the Westbury Orange team I wish you a great World Cup next month and I hope the best for your favorite country – although I hope the Orange will reach the final and lose to England. If not the other Orange team is already a World Champion.

Martin

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Westbury Supported Platforms Lists and Support Policy

May 28th, 2010

Support is an important part of the software industry. Also Westbury has a department that supports several HP and Westbury products. If you want to know which products are currently supported or will be out of support in the near future, visit the Westbury site at: http://westbury-it.com/support-a-services/support

You will find the supported platforms lists and the support policy of the Westbury products. In the near future we will have a supported platform list for all third party software (For example HP Service Desk, HP Service Manager, HP Service Centre, Business Objects etc.) available. We hope you will benefit from this Westbury service!

Martin

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SMI Suite: the Dentist of ServiceCenter / Sevice Manager

May 26th, 2010

Six or seven weeks ago I had a terrible toothache. I knew I was pain and I knew it was something with my teeth, but I didn’t know exactly where it was coming from. Because I hoped it was a temporary thing I relieved my pain with painkillers. But the pain didn’t go away and I had to take further steps. Luckily we have a dentist who is an expert on teeth and who  specializes in searching for the cause of the pain. One time it’s harder to find the cause of the pain than the other, but finally the dentist will find the cause. Therefore I will visit the dentist today. A bit late after so many weeks you would say? Sometimes it takes a while to proceed the right way.

This is the same way it works for SMI Suite. A lot of organizations are suffering within their IT organization hoping it will be an temporary problem and will be solved by time. And for all that they know they are suffering, they do not know exactly where the pain is coming from. After a while they realize that  a solution is not going to fall out of the sky. To find the cause of the pain they need to report on their IT environment and processes. Luckily for them, SMI Suite can help with finding the cause of the pain so the suffering organization will be relieved.
Martin

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The brains behind HP Service Manager

May 4th, 2010

While studying massage I thought of some comparisons with my work at Westbury [bear with him, this is going somewhere interesting - Westblog Ed].

In the world of massage, anatomy is a very important part. Anatomy is the biological science concerned with the structure of the human body, including the human bones, muscles, ligaments and other structures. The most common functions are to hold the body together and to make it possible to move the body. The processes of how every structure of the body works together are very complex. Luckily we have a brain that’s taking care of all the complexity and a nervous system that’s taking care of all kind of communication between all structures. This saves us a lot of energy.

When I look at the HP ServiceCenter / Service Manager (SC/SM) database I see a similarity in the complexity. Maybe not that complex but when you think of reporting on the SC/SM database you need high skilled people (sort of like surgeons) to make reports and even then it’s not always possible to report on the subject you want to report on.

Westbury has created the ‘brain’ of SC/SM. This ‘brain’ is taking care of organizing the data from the SC/SM database into a relational database with a standard structure so you can easily report on it. Furthermore the ‘brain’ is doing all kind off calculations to enhance the ease of reporting. The ‘brain’ also contains a universe layer on top of the structured database. Next to the ‘brain’ Westbury created a nervous system. This nervous system is taking care of informing the right people at the right time by scheduling and publishing the reports.

And like the real brain, Westbury’s ‘brain’ and ‘nervous system’ can save companies that want to report on SC/SM a lot of energy, along with time and money.

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