A new software as a service solution from HP, Service Anywhere, aims to help organizations more quickly resolve IT incidents, while ensuring availability of critical IT systems. HP Service Anywhere provides service desk capabilities, including handling of inbound requests and IT service configuration as well as incident, problem and change management.
The solution also features social collaboration for sharing and recording advice and communications, which can help improve first-call resolution (FCR) rates, shorten handling times and reduce escalations by immediately alerting and engaging the right people to resolve issues.
The social aspect of the solution is significant, Chuck Darst, manager of ITSM product marketing for HP, tells 5 Minute Briefing. “People have been doing collaboration for a long time, but we have taken that to the next level.” The new capability helps increase staff productivity through unique “in-context” social collaboration directly embedded within the tool, attaching conversation threads to relevant help desk objects in the system for rapid problem resolution. This provides a resolution history for IT staff.
Service Anywhere also is designed to help speed deployment and extend processes based on Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) best practices, such as incident management, problem management and change management. The solution is based on a web-based, codeless process-designer technology, HP says. In addition, the tool creates process workflows.
Another important aspect of the solution is that it is codeless configuration, says Manoj Raisinghani, director of product marketing for cloud, automation and service management at HP. In the past, on-premise tools have been more like development platforms where people have had to do heavy customization and any upgrade became a major task. “What we are doing with respect to our SaaS offering is that we are separating the platform from the user process side,” he notes. The end result of the codeless configuration is that upgrades can be done quickly without impacting process, design, or the users, or the behavior of the users, he says.
The SaaS solution also ensures availability of IT processes through greater visibility into services, applications and hardware across the IT environment via integration with HP Universal Configuration Management Database (UCMDB) software. HP UCMDB manages services, applications and hardware relationships across the IT environment. The database is populated and maintained with HP Universal Discovery software, which automates discovery and dependency mapping of relevant IT elements.
The new SaaS solution and HP Service Manager, an on-premise solution, “will talk to each other so effectively any investment that customers have made in the on-premise solution can be leveraged while they are making their investment in the faster-to-get-started Service Anywhere,” says Raisinghani.
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