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.

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/

You just have to guess how many chips are in our big jar of chips, and the 10 best guesses each day win a shirt.

Monday’s winners were:
Anoush Dadgar
Elise Nadeau
Martin Hebert
Jan Meinster
Fred Kenworthy
Michael Smidt
Star Carnes
Satish
Billy Gilchrist
Harold Baker

To enter, simply swing by the Westbury booth – we’re right next to the Vivit community lounge – and make your guess today!

If you can’t be here this week, this should give you a good idea of the flavor of the show.

Yesterday’s blog from Yvonne Bentley all about HP Service Manager 9.30 was a great read – and if you don’t take my word for it, you can find it here: http://h30501.www3.hp.com/t5/IT-Service-Management-Blog/HP-Service-Manager-9-30-coming-July-2011/ba-p/34999

Of course, for us it was a great read because one of the key new enhanced functionalities announced was:

Easier (and better) reporting: Service Manager’s new partner extension solution for reporting, Westbury’s Service Management Intelligence (SMI) Suite, removes the complexity out of reporting and at the same time provides better operational data.  Even a non-technical user can create meaningful, accurate reports that can be used to objectively analyze IT service delivery performance. IT can distill and demonstrate its value to the business and also identify areas for service improvement.

All of which is very true!

As we speak, David vH – ably assisted by Richard and Jason – is delivering a Vivit training session at HP Discover 2011, entitled A practical approach to reporting from HP Service Manager.

The session is a mixture of presentation – looking at the various options for reporting from Service Manager – followed by a hands-on exercise in which the trainees build their own reports using SMI 2011.

We’ve run this session before – in fact we ran it at the HP Software Universe show in D.C. this time last year. It’s a great way to spend a significant chunk of time with people, getting some in depth, hands-on time with SMI 2011 and explaining exactly how the various reporting options stack up against each other.

Tom

We’ve checked out the booth, which looks great, and we’re putting the final touches to the Vivit training session that we’re running tomorrow afternoon.

This year is the first year HP has combined the software and hardware shows – and you can tell. The exhibition space is almost unimaginably vast, and we really hope everyone who’s interested in learning more about reporting from HP Service Manager is able to find us okay.

We’re expecting some heavy foot traffic on the booth, and as per usual, we’ll be keeping Westblog updated throughout the week with lots of video stuff and our thoughts on how the show is going. We’ll also be fully active in what is expected to be a very noisy social media conversation. Keep your eyes on the official show hashtag #HPDiscover.

Tom

As such we’ll have a booth on the exhibition floor and we are chomping at the bit to get there and take part in what looks to be a fantastic – and utterly massive – event.

Our focus for the week will be to get as many people as possible in front of a screen so we can show them SMI 2011 in the flesh. We’ll also be paying very close attention to some of the track sessions focusing on HP Service Manager 9.2, particularly Jacques Conand’s session on the roadmap for Service Manager.

We’ll also be keeping it fun: if you stop by the booth you’ll have the chance to win an awesome limited edition, Vegas-themed t-shirt by taking part in our business intelligence challenge – I’d reveal more but that would ruin the surprise.

You’ll find us at booth 455 and we’re usually pretty easy to spot because we wear a lot of orange. It’s not a look most people can pull off, but we think we just about manage it. We’d also love to hear from you in advance if you’re going to be at the show – either leave us a comment here or tweet at us (@westbury_it) letting us know that you’re going.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Tom

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:

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.