Archive for the ‘SMI 2011’ Category

Anatomy of a Report: The Incident Backlog Report

June 24th, 2011

Welcome to the first Anatomy of a Report post.

The idea is that, every few weeks, I’ll post a new video showing you how you would go about creating one of our startup reports from scratch. Some of our startup reports contain some pretty impressive techniques, so while building this report won’t be that helpful – as SMI 2011 users already have it as a prebuilt startup report – some of the techniques used are very transferable, and you can apply them to other custom reports you might want to build.

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[Press Release] Westbury and Evergreen announce partnership agreement

June 22nd, 2011

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Westbury and Evergreen announce partnership agreement
Evergreen to add Westbury’s SMI 2011 to software offering

Cambridge, MA, June 22nd, 2011 – Westbury and Evergreen today announced a partnership agreement that will allow Evergreen to resell SMI 2011, the reporting solution for HP Service Management Center.

Evergreen, an IT consulting and technology solutions provider based in Sterling, VA, will add SMI 2011 to its portfolio of IT Service Management products, offering it to new and existing customers with HP Service Manager and HP Asset Manager implementations.

SMI 2011 is the HP-approved reporting solution for HP Service Manager, described by HP Product Management Director Jacques Conand as “a key off the shelf solution for HP Service Manager customers, providing ad-hoc, operational reporting that is powerful, user friendly and flexible.” SMI 2011 puts the power of reporting in the hands of the people who need it most – IT managers, process owners and end users.

Floris Verschoor, CEO of Westbury, says:
“The partnership with Evergreen is an important step in extending our network of partners. It allows us to bring SMI 2011 to a wider audience and add the expertise of the Evergreen professional services organization to our offering. They understand the unique value proposition of SMI 2011 and are well placed to be a key factor in its ongoing success as the reporting solution for Service Manager.”

According to Don Casson, Evergreen’s CEO, “Evergreen’s focus is delivering measurable business value for our clients. Significant opportunities exist for reducing, eliminating, or automating the work of IT while also improving service quality. Westbury’s SMI 2011 solution easily brings to light actionable management information –with deep analysis and in depth trending over time. With it, we can help our clients to drive cost out and service quality up.”

About Westbury
Established in 1998, Westbury is the worldwide leader in reporting solutions for HP ITSM platforms. Westbury pioneered the principle of Service Management Intelligence, which puts the power of self-service reporting in the hands of those who need it most: process owners, IT managers and decision-makers. Service Management Intelligence allows IT departments to make informed decisions, and prove the value of IT to the business. Westbury is an HP Software Platinum Business Partner, and has offices in the Netherlands and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

About Evergreen Systems
Evergreen Systems is well-known for combining “common sense” ITIL practices and leading ITSM technology to create ITSM solutions with measurable business outcomes.  Evergreen helps complex IT organizations transform the way they run IT. We rationalize, simplify and integrate IT work at the enterprise level, underpin it with accurate decision-making data and then automate it. For more information about Evergreen, visit http://www.evergreensys.com/

Contact:               Tom Dowler
tom.dowler@westburyusa.com
+1 (617) 259-8900

http://westbury-it.com

Stephanie Velte

stephanie.velte@evergreensys.com

+1 (571) 262-0974

http://www.evergreensys.com/

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What’s new in SMI 2011: support for all HP Service Manager processes, and more…

May 12th, 2011

With the release of SMI 2011 any information stored in the HP Service Manager application can theoretically be made available for reporting.

In practice this means that although it is possible to extract all the data from HP Service Manager, the best practice will be to extract only the data required for reporting. After all,  from all the data stored in the HP Service Manager database only roughly 20 – 40% at most is real information that will help you during your day-to-day activities and allow you take maturity of your ITSM platform to the next level.

Let me throw you some numbers at you, based on HP’s Best Practices for HP Service Manager 9.x reporting, and the out-of-the-box HP Service Manager model:

ITSM Process # Fields in
HPSM 9.2
# Fields in
SMI 2011
Percentage Available
Incident Management 249 46 18%
Interaction Management 118 33 28%
Change Management 216 33 15%
Problem Management 66 37 56%
Configuration Management 144 36 25%
Known Error Management 63 25 40%


Apart from the obvious support for the main ITSM processes (Incident Management, Interaction Management, Change Management, Request Management, Service Level Management, Problem Management, Configuration Management, Known Error Management, Knowledge Management) you will be able to report on all the supporting data like Operator, Contact, Location, Department, Assignment Group, Tasks, Clocks, Activities and many more as well, either in combination with the main ITSM processes or standalone.

Next to reporting on the available data from the HP Service Manager database, SMI 2011 also offers the possibility to enrich the data with additional computed data, for example duration calculations like first touch duration and Boolean calculations like the first line resolved indicator. In theory, any computation can be made, but again as a best practice you only want to perform calculations that facilitate easier reporting and do not want to perform for example your SLA or SLO calculations on this level, that should be done in the HP Service Manager application because you would want access to that data in the application as well.

Calculations, derived date objects like Year, Month Name, Week Nr, etc and pre-defined conditions for dates are all objects made available for easier and more standardized reporting. They enrich the service management semantic reporting layer (also known as a universe) and facilitate the self service reporting capabilities of SMI 2011. Users without in-depth technical knowledge or knowledge of the HP Service Manager data model are capable of building and tailoring the reports to meet their specific needs.


Finally, one of the best features of SMI 2011 is it’s easy way of making additional data available for reporting, whether they are existing fields from HP Service Manager that we haven’t included in the out of the box set, or custom fields added to the application. You can easily add them to the data selection and make them available in the reporting front end, and if you wish add calculations, derived date objects and pre-defined conditions!


David vH

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Introducing SMI 2011 – the next generation reporting solution for HP Service Manager

May 5th, 2011

It is with great pleasure that today we announce to the world the latest version of our reporting solution for HP Service Manager, SMI 2011.

Everyone at Westbury has been working extremely hard for months to bring this new product to market, and we’re all extremely proud about how it has turned out. Rather than updating and tweaking the last version of SMI Suite, we rebuilt the architecture of the solution from scratch, and the result is a massive improvement in the way the solution is installed, configured, administered and used.

What’s new in SMI 2011?

SMI 2011 is full of new features and functionality, which combine to make it the most robust yet adaptable, easy-to-use yet powerful solution we’ve ever released.

Some highlights include:
◦ Support for all HP Service Manager processes
◦ More startup reports
◦ New universe structure
◦ A low maintenance, UI-led back end
◦ Reduced load/sync times
◦ Meta data
◦ Future support for HP Asset Manager, HP uCMDB, HP PPM

In the next couple of weeks we’ll be filling in the details on what all of these new features mean – keep your eye on Westblog for posts explaining each point in depth.

We’ll also be releasing a host of new video tutorials for those using SMI 2011, as well as a new series on the blog called ‘Anatomy of a Report’ where I’ll show you how to build some of the bundled startup reports from scratch.

In the meantime, our website, westbury-it.com, now has a wealth of information about SMI 2011. To arrange a personal demo of the solution, fill out the form here, or email us at info@westbury-it.com with your name and contact details.

Anyone attending the HP Discover show in Las Vegas next month will be able to visit our booth on the exhibition floor and get a hands-on look at the solution – we look forward to seeing you there.

Tom

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