KTSL News

Easy Upgrades – Service Desk in the Cloud

Why should you move your help desk to the Cloud?

Join IDC, salesforce.com and BMC Software to learn what is driving the move to the cloud and how you can boost your help desks productivity and improve customer satisfaction while driving down support costs. In this on-demand webcast, you'll also learn why IDC believes that cloud computing is one of the most transformative developments in the last 20 years.

Featured speakers include:

• Stephen Hendrick, Group VP from IDC
• Chad Haftorson, Principal Product Manager, BMC Software
• Andrew Leigh, Director, Force.com Product Marketing, salesforce.com

Watch the recorded webinar. (Registration required)

P.S. If you're even remotely considering a new service desk solution in the next year - moving up from a "starter" application or something homegrown - sign up for our free 30-day trial of BMC Remedyforce Service Desk and see how fast and easy it is.

Best regards,

Keith Pound
KTSL Limited

Upgrade to BMC Control-M

Many CA-AutoSys customers are struggling to upgrade their existing AutoSys implementation to R11.x due to the complexity of the new architecture and the expense of bringing people in to perform the upgrade.

This video shows an alternative upgrade path to BMC Control-M that’s much easier, quicker, and cheaper than taking the AutoSys upgrade route.

See the video here.

Keith Pound
KTSL Limited 

Automate your help desk now—no more excuses

What's stopping you from having a full-featured, world-class service desk solution for your company?

The cost? Complexity? Lengthy training? Months of installation and configuration?

Starting now, there are no more excuses.

Read more about making your IT help desk faster and more efficient with the white paper Benefits of an ITIL Help Desk in the Cloud: A New ITIL Solution for Small-to-Medium Businesses.

You'll learn how a cloud-based help desk can:

• Reduce the cost of administration and management
• Improve quality of your service
• Eliminate manual work for your IT staff
• Speed the adoption of best practices

Download the white paper.

Best regards,

Keith Pound
KTSL Limited

Service Catalogue & CMDB. Do you have a plan?

You don’t need me to tell you that businesses want to deliver services quicker and make it easier for customers to consume them. Automation is playing its part, but the increased complexity of today’s business applications mean that IT departments are under pressure to deliver.

Many senior IT managers today have a goal to run IT like a business. The Service Catalogue is a critical first step for IT organisations to become more business and customer focused, and service driven.

According to Forrester Research, “Service Catalogues are the cornerstone of service delivery and automation, and the starting point for any company interested in saving money and improving relationships with the business."

KTSL would like to invite you to attend an event for senior IT professionals, which is taking place in London on Thursday 20^th October at the Eight Club, EC3 from 12 noon to 2pm, concluding with lunch.

By attending this event you will: 

• Understand what you need to consider when designing a Service Catalogue
• See why CMDB Initiatives don’t have to be overly complex, resource intensive and incredibly slow to deliver
• Learn how other organisations have benefited from implementing a Service Catalogue
• Appreciate how you could reduce costs and increase agility through automation
• Enjoy lunch at the Eight Club, EC3

 If you would like to attend, please email me or call Tracey on 01249 717857 to register.

Regards

Keith Pound
KTSL Limited 

See how BMC Software Use Their Service Catalogue

Top 5 Reasons to Include Network Monitoring in your BMC BSM Plans

"Top 5 Reasons to Include Network Monitoring in your BMC BSM Plans" 

A Webinar scheduled for Wednesday, September 21^st at 2:00PM 

• Are data silos impacting your ability to discover, react and resolve IT Service Performance issues?
• Are you spending too much time with tasks that should be automated?
• Would Business Service dashboards/reports on capacity, SLA, and availability be helpful?
• Do you need to bridge the gap between network performance and application performance?

Please plan to join us to discuss the top 5 reasons why network monitoring will add immediate value to your BMC BSM strategy.  Complex IT environments today need a cohesive BSM strategy so that performance issues are visible and proactively managed at every level simultaneously.  IT organisations can receive a far-reaching ability to manage both network and application activities when all types of data are fed into a central CMDB. 

Don’t miss the opportunity to find out how your IT environment can benefit from adding network data into your BMC solutions. KTSL and Entuity will explore these advantages and clearly show you the value of a strong integration. Register here today.

Keith Pound
KTSL Limited

Application Performance Management in the Cloud

There’s a lot to like about the cloud. Transfer responsibility to a big, white hard drive in the sky, put your data where you want it, and forget about upkeep. But there are risks, too. Loss of control, security concerns, and the biggie: what if your cloud service goes down?

The potential for application failures increases from 40% to 60% when moving to a cloud, and is expected to increase even further – to 80% - in hybrid cloud environments.

With Application Performance Management from BMC Software, users can ensure they are receiving supportive and proactive service levels for applications running in the cloud. Find out how in this BMC Software webinar.

“Application Performance Management in the Cloud” will cover:

• How to make sure that you get the service you pay for
• Identifying additional opportunities to benefit from cloud deployments
• Different approaches for anticipating and mitigating issues
• Ensuring your cloud deployment meets application demands
• Delivering consistent, satisfactory performance

Event Date: Thursday, September 8, 2011, 5:00 p.m.

Title: Application Performance Management in the Cloud

Speakers:
Ali Hedayati, BMC AVP - Research and Development
David Williams, BMC Vice President - CTO Office

Register here

Regards

Keith Pound
KTSL Limited 

iCore Breakfast Briefing - IT Service Management for Cloud Services

I am pleased to invite all KTSL customers to the latest in the successful series of breakfast briefings organised by iCore Limited (www.icore-ltd.com)

This briefing will take the form of a “Master Class” for IT Service Management for Cloud Services, looking at the IT Service Management considerations from both the Provider and the Customer perspective.

This will provide an opportunity for attendees to hear about the experience of organisations that are implementing or considering a ‘Cloud Service’ offering and also to consider the responsibilities that change in the Customer when they move some or all of their services to the Cloud.

The briefing will also include an open discussion with the attendees to explore who is considering moving services to the Cloud and why.

Agenda:
08:15 – Arrival for Coffee and Danish
08:30 – Introduction – Richard Pemberton, Principal Consultant, iCore Ltd
08:40 – Show of hands and quick discussion on current thinking for the Cloud
08:50 – IT Service Management for the Cloud – the Customer’s Perspective – Steve Ingall, iCore Head of Consultancy
Steve will outline the research done by iCore with our Customer base to gauge the readiness and ability to change their IT Service Management capabilities to enable them to maintain effective accountability and governance over Cloud Services
Followed by a Q&A session
09:20 – IT Service Management for the Cloud – the Provider’s Perspective – Speaker to be confirmed
This session will look at the issues and considerations that a Cloud Service Provider has had to factor in to their Cloud Service offering, focusing on the additional responsibilities that they have taken on to enable the service to be robust and reliable.
Followed by a Q&A session
09:50 – Closing comments and new show of hands – Richard Pemberton, Principal Consultant, iCore Ltd
10:00 – Networking Session with Coffee and Breakfast Sandwiches
10:30 – Close  

Related reading: iCore Considerations Paper: "IT Service Management for the Cloud” click here

Date: Thursday September 15th, 2011

Venue: 60 Lombard Street, London, EC3V 9EA

Attendance will be by invitation only and you can receive an invitation by contacting iCore at info@icore-ltd.com or by telephoning iCore on 020 7464 8883. Please mention KTSL when you request your invitation.

I hope you will be able to join us.

Regards

Keith Pound
KTSL Limited 

Annual BMC CONTROL-M Briefing - 22nd September 2011

I am pleased to announce that KTSL partner, BMC Software, are holding an event dedicated to exploring BMC CONTROL-M — with deep-dive sessions on the key features that will deliver rapid value for your business.

At this complimentary event, you'll get to hear directly from the experts at BMC on the latest solutions for workload automation. The topics will include:

• What's new in data center automation 
• Introducing the new BMC CONTROL-M solution for Cloud
• Empowering business users with BMC CONTROL-M Self Service
• A closer look at BMC CONTROL-M for Business Applications 

Don't miss this chance to find out what's coming next in BMC CONTROL-M, and learn about the best practices that can help improve your operations.

Agenda:
08:30 Registration and Coffee
09:15 Introduction and welcome 
09:30 BMC CONTROL-M Workload Automation and Current IT Trends 
10:15 CONTROL-M for Business Users (CONTROL-M Self Service)
10:45 Break 
11:15 CONTROL-M for Business Applications
12:00 Introducing CONTROL-M for Cloud
12:30 Lunch 
13:30 CONTROL-M Demo – The Power of Automation in Action
14:15 Break 
14:30 CONTROL-M Roadmap – A sneak view into the future 
15:15 Wrap-up and Closure

Venue: BMC Software, Assurance House, Vicarage Road, Egham, TW20 9JY

Date: 22nd September 2011

Register here

I look forward to seeing you at the event.

Regards

Keith Pound
KTSL 

Five Ways to Maintain Security with Remote Support Technology

Nathan McNeill, a Bomgar founder, recently contributed an article to eWeek Knowledge Centre where he discusses how an organisation without a strategic vision for remote support security will inevitably fall prey to hackers.

McNeill identifies five ways organisations can maintain security while benefiting from the cost savings and improved productivity associated with remote support technology.

More than 5,000 customers have selected Bomgar for their secure remote support solution. Bomgar helps customers in security-sensitive industries maintain compliance by:

• Creating a centralised, automated audit trail of all remote support interaction
• Integrating with internal directories to allow administrators to control permissions
• Enabling you to maintain full control of data by not routing it through third-party servers

We are holding an on-line presentation on Thursday 18th August at 12:30, where you will be able to see Bomgar in action. Please call Tracey on 0845 034 8000 or drop her an email: tracey.blunsdon@ktsl.com if you would like to attend.

Best regards

Keith Pound
KTSL Limited