Running applications internally or externally?

OCTOBER 2011

Managed services have become established for companies wanting to be relieved of running their IT service management applications themselves.

User Access Management

Vodafone Germany set up access rights quickly and easily

Software Asset Management

Keeping a close eye on software

ITIL® Edition 2011

Processes refined

Running applications internally or externally?

MATERNA_Monitor_EN_191011_be.indd 1MATERNA_Monitor_EN_191011_be.indd 1 25.10.11 11:0025.10.11 11:00

www.materna.com/[email protected]

Efficient and effectively run IT service management requires well-trained staff in the IT depart-ments. MATERNA provides com-panies and public administra-tions with the ideal conditions.

Your advantages:

Many years of experience in IT service manage-• ment, system management and associated technologies

Training partner for the complete product • range of IT service management solutions for people, processes and technologies

In-house training programmes •

Development of individual, customised training • packages

ITIL• ®-accredited training partner for ITIL® V2/V3

ITIL• ® training with same content and format all over Europe

IT Training by MATERNA

ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark of the Offi ce of Government Commerce in the United Kingdom and

other countries. IT Infrastructure Library® is a Registered Trade Mark of the Offi ce of Government

Commerce in the United Kingdom and other countries.

The Swirl logo™ is a Trade Mark of the Offi ce of Government Commerce.


MATERNA MONITOR 03 02/2011

Dear Reader,

Nowadays, anyone involved in outsourcing as an IT-expert or consultant needs to have broad-based specialist knowledge about a wide range of technologies. This is particularly true for managed services where an IT services provider takes over the complete operation and management of software and hardware. High levels of reliability and availability combined with good performance are just some of the aspects which external service providers must fulfil perfectly for their customers.

Managed services are available in many formats. Among other things, the services offered cover the operation of outsourced applications and servers including software updates and ongoing hardware maintenance as well as 24x7 availability and continu-ous virus and security monitoring. Economic aspects have to be taken into account, too. Companies usually expect outsourcing to achieve cost savings for computer centre operations, more planning reliability and to shift risks to a third party.

In our focus topic starting on page 8, we describe why organisa-tions should consider managed services.

If you have any questions, suggestions or wishes please contact us by email at [email protected].

I hope you enjoy the read.

Your editorial officeChristine Siepe

EDITOR`S DESK

Issued by:

MATERNA GmbH, Dortmund (Germany)

Chief Editor:

Christine Siepe

Authors and staff in this issue:

John Baker, Frank Eggert, Sean Farrington, Jürgen Pünter, Guido Spieckermann

Layout and design:

MATERNA (Cathrin Wiedenhöft), VENNEKEL + PARTNER GmbH

Images:

Continental (page 24); Foto Wünsche (page 3); HP (page 28); Java System Solutions (page 33); MATERNA (pages 28, 31); National Land Survey of Finland (pages 14, 15, 16, 17); Sie-mens Audiologische Technik GmbH (page 25); Shutterstock (pages 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 22, 26, 27, 29, 30, 34, 35); Vodafone (pages 18, 19, 20)

Printer:

Hitzegrad Print Medien & Service GmbH

The MATERNA Monitor magazine is issued twice a year. Please address all questions related to content to the editorial office.

© 2011 MATERNA GmbH

Editorial office:

MATERNA GmbH Information & CommunicationsVosskuhle 37, 44141 Dortmund, GermanyPhone +49 231 5599-160Email: [email protected]: [email protected]

ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark of the Of-fice of Government Commerce in the United Kingdom and other countries. IT Infrastruc-ture Library® is a Registered Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce in the United Kingdom and other countries.

The product names used are the trademarks of each manufacturer.

Imprint


02/2011 04 MATERNA MONITOR

CONTENTS

Managed Services

6 NEWS

• DX-Union Workflow Manager automates processes

• MATERNA and Efecte become partners

• ICT web shop – self-service portal

for all internal services

• Current status of “Managed Services“ –

MATERNA starts survey

• Relaunch of the support portal

8 SPECIAL


Managed services have become established for companies wanting to be relieved of running their IT service management applications themselves. This involves an external supplier providing all the services which are needed to run an application securely and efficiently.

SOLUTIONS

13 DX-Union simplifies migration to Windows® 7

The Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Wuppertal- Solingen-Remscheid modernised their desktop PCs and also introduced Windows® 7.

14 Change to best practices

National Land Survey of Finland implements a new IT service management solution to further improve the quality of their service. The expectation is that better quality can be achieved by using ITIL® processes in the most important areas. MATERNA supports the authority with consulting and implementation services.

18 Setting up access rights quickly and easily

MATERNA has enhanced the existing User Access Manage- ment (UAM) and is also taking over operations and further development of the UAM process.

22 Automated software distribution

The DX-Union Management Suite automates all of the processes involved in administrating desktop PCs for the event specialist BB Promotion.



ITIL® Edition 2011

24 PROJECTS

• Siemens Audiologische Technik GmbH in Erlangen

contracts to relaunch their international online presence

• Continentale health insurance ready for more

ITIL® processes

• Continental looks into deploying CMDB

• Basware Corporation migrate to BMC ITSM Suite 7.6.04

MANAGEMENT

27 Keeping a close eye on software

Applications for software asset management (SAM) help to keep license costs well under control.

30 Processes refined

There was an update to ITIL®. MATERNA Monitor describes the changes.

TECHNOLOGY

32 Bringing BMC products together with SSO Plugin

With the SSO Plugin for BMC’s Remedy Action Request System, customers can put an end to time-consuming password administration while at the same time reducing support costs and boosting profitability.

34 Business discovery – the future of business

intelligence

Businesses face the continuous challenge of dealing with increased quantities of data, holding information securely and

analysing this data quickly and intuitively to make informed business decisions.

For more information

MATERNA Information & Communications Phone +49 231 5599-160 [email protected] www.materna.com



NEWS

MATERNA has extended its DX-Union Management Suite by adding a workflow engine. The new component “DX-Union Workflow Manager” works like graphically-oriented process software and organises the different workflows which are required for provisioning resources. If necessary, IT manag-ers can adapt the preset workflows to their requirements and internal processes. The Workflow Manager can be applied as a component both independently or in connection with other IT solutions such as system management tools or IT service management products.

Service Desk benefits from automation

The DX-Union Service Desk benefits in particular from the new automation functions: the workflow engine can be inte-grated in the Service Desk and then controls the work orders in real time. In this way incoming orders can have pre-defined, fully or partly automated work-steps and individual actions allocated to them, enabling the staff to carry out recurring

procedures more easily. All work-steps are recorded in a logbook and can thus be traced.The workflow engine supports numerous tasks which occur regularly in Service Desk. These include, for example, set-ting up a new PC workplace or a new user, providing a virtual workplace, duplicating a virtual machine, installing software packages and provisioning the Citrix environment.

How the workflow engine works in Service Desk

The Service Desk staff can put together workflows made up of graphic elements and functions using drag & drop. It is not necessary to learn a programming language for this. One workflow can be made up of several sub-workflows and be saved as a module for further use. At workflow nodes, actions can be started automatically, such as sending emails or SMS messages or opening programs or scripts.

Further information: www.materna.com/dx-union

DX-Union Workflow Manager automates processes

MATERNA and Efecte become partners

MATERNA has concluded a distribution agreement with Efecte Corp., a Nordic software vendor specialised in self-service and service management solutions. From licenses to solution delivery and support MATERNA can now offer current and future customers the full range of Efecte software products in Finland, Denmark and Norway. Customers will clearly benefit from the company’s strong knowledge and market positions. “We wanted to strengthen our IT service management product portfolio. We have been looking for a user friendly self-service portal which is focused on end-user experience. We see Efecte’s ICT web shop as a solution which finally brings customer’s busi-

ness and IT together making business,” says Irja Perkins, Managing Director at MATERNA Finland.“Growing into a global software company alongside our partners forms the core of our strategy. For us, MATERNA represents a very strong IT service provider partner in Europe. Its broad-based expertise in IT service manage-ment, integrations and automations will benefit our customer-base, both future and present. Advantages will include IT service management process consulting and localised versions of widely used IT service management solutions,” comments Ari Rikkilä, CEO of Efecte Corp.



MATERNA is keen to improve regular communication with support customers even more and is therefore pleased to announce the relaunch of the MATERNA Support Portal: The portal now has a clearer design and the navigation is much more intuitive. Customers get to all the main functions directly via tabs and do not have to click through several levels of sub-menus. On the overview page the user will now also find information about their contracts such as the support contract ID, when the maintenance ends, as well as contact partners in sales.

Another innovation concerns the way we categorise incidents so we can transfer enquiries directly to the appropriate specialist department. MATERNA recommends referring to the appropriate CI immediately. This will enable the support team to process requests even more quickly and efficiently. MATERNA has also extended the knowledge database: support customers can now search in BMC documentation and download the relevant documents direct. The user can sort search results conveniently according to various criteria.

This year’s market survey by MATERNA is concerned with the topic of “Managed Services”. It investigates the different aspects in four blocks: the IT service management environ-ment, the current status, the advantages and challenges of Managed Services and, finally, areas which will be impacted in future. The term “Managed Services” covers a wide variety of offer-ings for running IT services externally, with the customer and service provider agreeing on the scope, type and duration of the service. Two important aspects are characteristic for these services: on the one hand, the external supplier has more responsibility for the result and more scope when

Today, time is even more valuable than money, especially in our personal lives. We already use online banks and web stores to save time. Can IT departments also offer their services online? End users have been dreaming about easy access to internal services for too long. ICT WebShop from Efecte makes this a reality with one self-service portal for all internal services. With just few easy clicks, you can request a computer, access rights, new software or even start a new

providing the service. On the other hand, the IT organisation can be sure to receive the agreed service and is thus relieved of the operative management for providing that service. The survey is aimed at IT managers, CIOs and data centre managers. The results will be available from winter 2011. Anyone who is interested in taking part in this online survey is very welcome to join in. It runs until the end of November 2011. MATERNA will be entering all the participants in a prize draw for one of five Amazon vouchers of 50 Euros each.

This way to the survey: www.materna.com/survey-managed-service

employee onboarding process. No other product makes it so easy to publish services to end users in exactly the way they expect in a modern world. With an easy-to-use ICT web shop you can achieve high end user satisfaction and internal services get a clear facelift.

Further information: www.efecte.com

Current status of “Managed Services” – MATERNA starts survey

ICT web shop – self-service portal for all internal services

Relaunch of the support portal



SPECIAL



The ITIL® set of best practice guidelines is adhered to in many IT organisations today, so the use of IT service management applica-tions is widespread. A service desk with incident, problem and change management can be found in almost all companies which possess IT-supported business processes. These are either out-of-the-box applications or so-called build-applications which the companies have constantly and individually enhanced over the years. Such build-applications often include numerous individual adaptations and specific extensions. Out-of-the-box applications have also often been complemented with individual interfaces as

the established ITSM systems are set up in modular format so they can be extended easily.

The more individual such applications become, the more com-plex and expensive it is to operate the overall solution. However it is important that the applications can still be upgraded and updated with the manufacturers’ core versions. The more an application deviates from the standard, the more likely it is that a migration project has to be carried out if the application is to continue running after an upgrade. That means the planning

Managed Services


Managed services have become established for companies wanting to be relieved of running their

IT service management applications themselves. This involves an external supplier providing all

the services which are needed to run an application securely and efficiently.



reliability for IT operations decreases, the more a company deviates from the software standard.

The desire to have strong planning reliability, to shift risks to third parties and to reduce costs for IT operations leads to management handing over such applications to external service providers. So the provision of managed services can be seen as a part of outsourcing and basically is concerned with operating business or IT processes by means of software.

Essentially it is possible to differentiate between two funda-mental types of managed services: either the complete system platform including the ITSM application is handed over to a service provider or the application continues to run in the customer’s data centre but management and operations are carried out via remote access.

Comparing current status and requirements

Independent of the type of managed service being considered, it is recommendable to carry out an assessment workshop when approaching the topic of managed services. In such a workshop service providers and the company identify together which business and IT processes belong to the ITSM application and have to be taken care of. The assessment also includes the company’s requirements regarding e.g. reaction and recovery times as well as system availability. Workshops like this ensure transparency about the current situation. It also becomes apparent whether the expectations of the customer can be implemented against the background of their current status.

That is why it is important, together with the IT and user departments, to document precisely what actually happens on the individual IT systems and to determine which processes should be considered as critical. In this way the business processes become transparent and the peopleresponsible can come to a conclusion about the way the

SPECIAL



application can already be run by an external provider. If the current status and the customer’s requirements differ too much then additional development work has to be carried out as an intermediate step: intermediate steps could mean mapping business processes in a different way, complementing applications and installing new components. In practice it has become clear, for example, that customers expect it to be possible to control existing systems remotely without having to make any changes – which is actually seldom the case. In the end the external service provider bears the risk for the service they offer, so they have to be certain that they are able to perform the service with the existing systems.

An IT service management application is not an isolated solution and usually includes numerous interfaces. Via the interfaces relevant data can be mapped in the application or IT processes can be triggered on the basis of the data stored there. For example interfaces to CMDB, asset management or a service automation solution are prevalent at the moment. Then there are also business-critical and not so critical processes running in one and the same application. The customer often expresses the wish to continue operating the business-critical processes themselves and only to outsource the less critical processes. If the IT infrastructure is closely interlinked and distributed it can thus be difficult to hand over selected ITSM systems completely to an external service provider. One possible solution for this scenario is to implement remote operations for the systems remaining at the customer.

But not all functions can be easily separated from the overall complex and be monitored remotely. In such cases the second basic type of managed services comes into play, which is when hardware and the solution running on it are operated by the external service provider. Several service providers can be involved in this as well. In one possible scenario, one man-aged service provider takes over running the application and the management as general contractor and another specialised hosting service provider has the appropriate computer capacity

for the physical systems. Availability and monitoring are then regulated by contracts between the managed service provider and the hosting service provider.

Services catalogue for ITSM applications

The catalogue of services is particularly significant for both types of managed services. The services catalogue is the basis for the subsequent contractual organisation of the managed services and describes the services as standardised as possible including the level of quality in each case, the scope of the services and the costs. The customer then selects the services they need from this catalogue of services.

The scope of a services catalogue for managing and operating an ITSM application can vary considerably. It might define, for example, that the application is operated with a certain number of users. Patch management, release management, change management and the availability should also be included in the contracted services. But it is also possible to refine the services in the catalogue even further if so wished.

But the aim is, as much as possible, to achieve a standardised services catalogue with only a few individual service compo-nents so the risk and costs are not pushed up unnecessarily. Because it is clear that the more individual the offered services are, the larger the team will be at the managed service provider with the project just getting more and more complex. In prac-tice, managed service providers thus strive towards standardis-ing their offerings as far as possible. As companies seldom start their ITSM applications from scratch there will always be a certain proportion of services which are individually oriented for the customer in addition to the standard services.

Negotiate contracts individually

Supplier, service level management and service level agree-ments (SLAs) also play an important role: the customer



SPECIAL

Criteria for the operation of IT service management

solutions as managed service

Identify business and IT processes

Mature supplier and service level

management

Standardisation of IT operations

Define the service catalogue for

management and operation of the ITSM application

Define the granu-larity of individual services in SLAs

Define the ITSM infrastructure’s de-facto-status

Assess reaction and repair times

as well as system availability

Remote operation vs outsourcing

certainly wants to make sure that the services offered by the managed service provider are actually provided. The organisa-tion of the individual services is contained in the SLAs. The managed service provider in turn makes contracts with their sub-suppliers – known as underpinning contracts in ITIL.

SLAs can be defined individually for each process, which can be rather granular, so often SLAs are limited to reaction and recovery times, to the duration of maintenance windows and to the availability. Behind every SLA which is not adhered to there are penalties which are due whenever they are not fulfilled.

Conclusion

The key advantage of managed services is that customers receive a contractually agreed service at a fixed price. The company does not have to concern itself with which services are needed for daily operations any more, or if the existing team is large enough or which sums have to be invested if equipment breaks down and has to be replaced.

Another advantage is the standardisation of the IT operations which goes hand in hand with this. Many customers prefer to part from their highly individualised build solution if they recognise that managed services can perform more efficiently. It is also much easier to carry out migrations and updates on a standard application. In the end, old fashioned applications which are difficult to operate also increase the operational risk. That is why both customers and managed service pro-viders are interested in deploying the latest software which is oriented to the standard.

However, new challenges regularly have to be faced in daily business. So managed services also have to be designed for the customer so that they are flexible enough for business-critical changes to be checked, evaluated and implemented during an ongoing contract.



In the year 2010 the Chamber of Industry and Commerce was planning a large-scaleIT project: all work-station computers were to be renewed and installed with Windows® 7. Shortly after the project launch in summer 2010 its IT special-ists were informed that the supplier of the IT management

tool they had been using so far had gone into administration, leaving the program’s future up in the air. The project team quickly came to a consensus that the planned IT modernisa-tion should include the introduction of a new IT management tool. After all, a software distribution without the assistance of automation would be extremely time-consuming, overstretch-ing not only the timeline but also the budget.The nature of the situation meant that the IT team found itself under immense pressure to meet their deadline, with the hardware already having been purchased and Windows® 7 yet to be installed along with all the applications. In their search for an IT management solution they were quickly convinced by MATERNA’s DX-Union Management Suite. Thanks to the flexibility of the IT specialists at MATERNA, it was possible to implement DX-Union at the Chamber at short notice so that the modernisation project was able to begin by the end of September 2010.The first task was to restructure the existing software packages: the composition put together by the previous IT management solution was too complex, requiring additional manual input for the software distribution. Around 50 software packages

SOLUTIONS

were recompiled with the help of the MATERNA specialists. These packages are required by around 100 client PCs at three sites. DX-Union takes care of the software management and asset tracking, among other things. The Chamber also opted for the patch management, DX Robot, and user and resource management modules.A major advantage of DX-Union is its efficient administration of user-related resources. In other words, DX-Union provides a user with their respective profile which is independent of their workplace and automatically takes care of any changes made. Manfred Scheimann, Head of IT at the Chamber of Commerce in Wuppertal, is pleased with the reduced workload as a result: “If someone changes workplace, either within the department or to another department, as is often the case here, it’s really simple with DX-Union.”

Installation now considerably faster

However, the advantages of DX-Union go further: the IT Manager is particularly delighted with how little training is required. “Thanks to its standardised administration interface, all IT staff are able to use it confidently after a short briefing.” With just four IT staff on the team, extensive IT projects were simply not possible before: to set up a new PC workstation, it would take about two days for the arduous task of install-ing and configuring the operating system, driver, Windows patches, Office and other software packages by hand. Now every member of the IT staff can allocate the appropriate soft-ware packages to the respective clients either immediately or overnight. DX-Union not only takes care of the installation, but also configures the computers and user settings. Whereas until now every task had been carried out manually in a long series of individual steps, DX-Union’s distribution function takes care of everything in a single step at the click of a mouse. A new PC workstation can now be set up automatically in just two to three hours.

Client Management

DX-Union simplifies migrationto Windows® 7

The Chamber of Industry and Commerce of Wuppertal, Solingen and Remscheid modernised its

entire fleet of workstation computers in autumn 2010, introducing Windows® 7 at the same time.

The newly implemented client management solution, DX-Union by MATERNA, ensured that the

installation and software distribution ran smoothly and efficiently.



The National Land Survey of Finland (NLS) produces and provides information and services concerning real estate, topography and the environment for citizens, other customers and the community at large. The National Land Survey is responsible for Finland’s cadastral system and general mapping assignments. It also promotes the shared use of geographic information. The NLS has 2,000 staff, over 80 per cent of whom are employed in the District Survey Offices.NLS’s Computer Centre is responsible for providing the authority with IT production and support services and for the proper functioning of their communication networks nation-wide. They have offices in Jyväskylä, in Hämeenlinna and in Helsinki. The Computer Centre employs 46 people in 17 locations. They provide IT support for approximately 2,000 NLS internal users.

Better service quality has a strong relation to good IT management processes and tools

The decision to build the new IT management on ITIL V3 processes was made in autumn 2009. The project manager Asta Forsström-Ekholm describes the situation as follows: Customer service in Pasila, near Helsinki

SOLUTIONS

IT Service Management

Change to best practices

National Land Survey of Finland implements

a new IT service management solution to

further improve the quality of their service.

The expectation is that better quality can be

achieved by using ITIL® processes in the most

important areas. The plan is to switch their

processes to ITIL version 3 best practices.

MATERNA supports the authority with con-

sulting and implementation services.



“We had had serious complaints about the service from a very important customer. When analysing the case we understood that we had been unable to control changes due to the fact that different groups or persons made system changes without being aware of each other in a very complicated environment. The responsibilities were unclear and we could not identify the person that should have been in charge of the service. Installations failed due to a lack of up-to-date instructions and approvals. Everyone did (and does) their best but it is difficult to control changes without proper systems and common policies.”The project manager goes on: “We knew that the same kind of quality problems had happened before and were likely to happen again. We came to the conclusion that better quality needed better IT processes. We identified the change manage-ment process as the most important key factor that had to be developed to make it possible for the service quality to im-prove. We also needed a well-functioning problem manage-ment process with systematic root-cause-analysis. And we had to have a better understanding of the services, service compo-nents and responsibilities.”The old system also lacked a service level management process, so the requirement for the new system was to improve monitoring of service warranty fulfilment. To round it off, it should be easy to produce the required reports in order to control the processes and services.“After making the decision to implement a new IT service management system, we also made plans (for the long term) to expand the CMDB to include applications, servers, and their inter-relations,” Asta Forsström-Ekholm explains.

From tailor-made processes to out-of-the-box solutions and best practices

The National Land Survey of Finland had had some ITIL-like processes for quite a long time. These processes had been developed during the last ten years and were highly auto-mated. The solution covered a basic incident process and a “home-made” standard change process and also included an asset register and a self-service portal so that employees can order assets, software and user accounts. The current solution is based on Remedy Action Request System from BMC.After the decision to go for new best practice processes it became evident that it was technically too difficult and it would be too expensive to further develop the existing system. Therefore, NLS decided to convert the old processes into standard ones and to build the new ones based on a new ITSM solution which is aligned to ITIL V3 best practices. The goal of the Computer Centre was that new implementa-tions should be based on ”out-of-the-box” solutions to further minimise their own expenditure.

“In order to support services and processes, the con-figuration of an ITSM system requires a common view of the services, classification and processes as well as of the skill groups and roles of the people involved. Clarifying this view and defining responsibilities is time-consuming. We are still working on this. But plain abstract design is no good on its own. We needed to model the processes within the system to understand the logic of the system. Implementing changes and new ways of working as part of an organisation’s processes is very slow. Therefore, it is essential to reserve enough time for this implementation.”

Asta Forsström-EkholmIT manager at the Computer Centre

National Land Survey of Finland

• ITIL best practices• Out-of-the-box solution to minimise their own

expenditure and work loads• The solution contains modules and possibilities that can be implemented later.• Documented processes• Improved quality of service and customer satisfaction

Benefits of the solution



After determining a more precise definition of needs and demands NLS started the search for an ITSM solution that could handle IT operations and management properly, that was easy to use and to configure.

Implementation carried out in close cooperation with MATERNA

As the old system was to be used during the transi-tional period, an interface had to be built between the old and the new systems. This was one of the main reasons for short-listing and eventually selecting BMC’s ITSM Suite 7.6. BMC is also one of the leaders in IT service management.NLS selected MATERNA as the implementation partner be-cause they are experts in IT service management due to their experience gained from several similar customer projects. “They have the know-how for the product implementation, project management, project resource allocation and appor-tionment. In addition, they have technical and process skills within the ITSM system that were utilised during the project workshops,” says Asta Forsström-Ekholm, IT manager at the Computer Centre. Since MATERNA delivered most of the migration work during implementation, NLS also involved them in the project steering group. Both project partners allocated their own

SOLUTIONS

resources. This arrangement allowed problems to be followed up and handled immediately thus avoiding bottlenecks. “Unfortunately, we had to lower our expectations that the out-of-the-box solution was ready for deployment. It took us and MATERNA quite some time to define the new system. For example, automated features in the

old system had to be migrated to the new system,” says Asta Forsström-Ekholm. NLS have also held meetings with BMC due to ITSM system bugs. “These have slowed down our own development. The biggest problems have concerned the purchase management and service request management modules – but there are also problems with reports due to the lack of local Finnish support,” says Asta Forsström-Ekholm.

More convenience, ease for IT support and “wins”

The new solution makes routine tasks easier for support staff when using ready-made templates in the incident management process. Using templates is effective when having to submit frequent incident tickets. It has become new practice to create

Duty officer Leena Simola

Duty officer Simo Uusitalo



ITSM solution: BMC ITSM version 7.6.03Application server: Windows 2003 Server, Apache TomCat 6, AR System PortmapperWeb server: Windows 2003 Server, Apache TomCat 6, Java JDK 1.6.0_17, Java JRE 6 Database server: Windows 2003 Server, Microsoft MSSQL 2005Desktop Capture server: Windows 2003 Server, IIS, Desktop CaptureWorkstations: Windows® 7

Technology

a template for an on-going situation when more related con-tacts are expected. Also, it is easy to create a problem ticket from the incident process. In general, the ticket transfer between productive units has been streamlined. Separating problems from inci-dents enables NLS to move long-term and unresolved issues to a different process. They can dedicate different groups of experts to resolve problems, which helps to eliminate customer interference as quickly as possible. With the introduction of the new system, process managers are named to monitor process performance and to develop it.There is an email interface to make creating tickets easier so that email messages can be sent much more easily. Tickets and asset information are both easy to handle and can, for example, be filled in during service calls. These things make the work of the Computer Centre easier, faster and more efficient.By using ITIL the Computer Centre can harmonise their terminology and will act according to established processes. Both will also improve future cooperation with external service providers.“We have to understand that organisations that are second generation ITSM solution users get fewer wins than new users. NLS incident and standard change management processes were highly automated in the old ARS Remedy solution. We knew that there would be few “quick wins” in the new solution. Therefore, the overall goal was to change processes and to transform the Computer Centre so as to follow the best practices from ITIL V3 and to adapt existing functionalities to the standards,” says Asta Forsström-Ekholm. Optimised and automated processes will not only improve operational efficiency and productivity but will also relieve staff from time-consuming routine tasks.

Open for further processes

The new system will go into operation during the year 2012. Incident and problem management had already been installed by June 2010 during the first phase. MATERNA implemented incident and problem management and started to populate the CMDB (BMC CMDB 7.6) with selected asset information (workstations). The target of the second phase in 2011/2012 is to build an effective self-service portal (service request man-agement) as well as change and release management processes. The advantage of the new self-service implementation is that support requests can be channelled directly to the right service

group. Change management is currently being implemented to further improve the handling of standard changes in par-ticular. An automated process is to be implemented to produce assembly or installation tasks based on templates when assets, software or user accounts are requested. The Computer Centre expects the new change management processes to increase efficiency and improve service quality. One of the targets of the third phase is to expand the CMDB to cover services, servers and their inter-relationships.Today, NLS is in the transition phase. In future, problems will be identified quickly and incidents will be reduced. Change requests will be recorded, risks identified and implementations of changes will be well under control. Processes and services will have owners who follow and develop operations.The plans for the future are to get these new processes imple-mented in the Computer Centre but in the long run the strategy is that all departments responsible for IT service production, IT development and core business should be included in the ITSM change management process.



SOLUTIONS

In Germany Vodafone has around 38 million mobile phone and fixed line network customers making it one of the largest telecommunications providers here. Their approximately 13,000 staff need access to a wide variety of specialist applications, network resources and other IT services for their work. But only staff with the appropriate rights are allowed to receive access to the resources they wish to use. It must also be

possible to withdraw access rights as soon as somebody changes department or is given other tasks. The User Access Management at Vodafone Deutschland maps all the processes which are required when applying for access rights.Staff make their application for changed access rights via a self service portal. This regulates the administration of user rights so staff can activate the use of different company

User Access Management

Setting up access rights quickly and easily

Every month staff at Vodafone Deutschland make up to 5,000 requests for access rights to

business applications. The new solution for User Access Management (UAM) sets up access rights

particularly quickly and simply. MATERNA has enhanced the existing UAM solution and is also

taking over operations and further development of the UAM process.

Headquarters in Düsseldorf, Germany

Interesting links: www.vodafone.com



applications very efficiently, such as databases, the datawarehouse or customer information systems. The UAM tool handles the workflow as well as the authorisation process this is based on.Vodafone Deutschland started the UAM project three years ago in order to implement user requests for access rights more quickly. The UAM tool was intended to fulfil the users’ requirements for simple and self-explanatory request registra-tion. Above all it should significantly reduce the amount of time between the user making the request and the access rights being set up. Vodafone Deutschland has achieved this goal: today requests are processed in approximately half the time. This also applies to external users. The time between making the request and the account being set up has been halved. With up to 5,000 requests being made per month Vodafone Deut-schland has achieved clear savings here. The staff also benefit from this as they can begin work with the business applica-tions they need much more quickly. The company also wanted a more transparent and better way of establishing which persons have access to which systems. Thanks to the information from the new system it is now transparent and simple to see if access has been blocked if, for example, a member of staff has left the company or is not authorised for access for some other reason. Every person who is working for the company, whether internally or externally, who wants to use a business application has to apply for this via the User Access Management portal. This also sees Vodafone Deutschland fulfilling the requirements for SOX compliance (Sarbanes-Oxley Act).

Flexible partner and continuous process improvements

MATERNA received the contract back in the year 2008 to further develop the existing application for User Access Management. The solution is based on the Remedy Action Request System from BMC. The experts from MATERNA have extended the UAM tool with new functions, begun with the integration of Vodafone’s (formerly Arcor) fixed line network and adapted the system architecture to the latest conditions. New processes such as a demand and release management have also been established. The user departments can now have new applications taken up in the existing User Access Management process via the demand management set up by MATERNA. The MATERNA team also ensures that the UAM runs correctly and takes con-tinuous care of the solution. Any adaptations to authorisations or to roles and rights concepts, for example, can be accom-plished and implemented in the tool. Over the last three years the tasks handed over to MATERNA have grown continuously. For example, more and more new development work has been carried out on the self-service portal. Regular process improvements and optimisations as well as architecture changes to the application are also part of the services provided by MATERNA. The experts have, for

Vodafone Deutschland is the first fully integrated communications company in Germany. The company provides private and business customers with products and services in the field of mobile phones, fixed line networks, data services and broadband internet from one source. Vodafone Deutschland has its headquarters in Düsseldorf and employs 13,000 staff. The company is part of the Vodafone Group, the largest mobile phone corporation in the world. Vodafone Deutschland, with around 38 million mobile phone and fixed line custom-ers, is second only to Deutsche Telekom in the German telecommunications market. The company maintains one of the most high performance and modern mobile phone networks as well as a Germany-wide fibre optic cable network which already covers almost 70 percent of all German households.

“The experts from MATERNA supply solutions for long term improvements to our processes. In this way we assure durable quality together.”

The company

Oliver HarzheimProgram Manager Office Readiness

Vodafone Deutschland



example, determined and documented binding definitions and procedures related to the rights management: for example, how is a name or department change defined and which process steps have to be followed in detail? MATERNA has also played a significant role in driving ahead the integration of the UAM processes in the fixed line network division in the User Access Management of Vodafone Deutschland. This successful and professional cooperation has led to MATERNA replacing the external service provider formerly working in this field. “We decided on MATERNA because the high level of flexibility and quality of this medium-sized com-pany was so convincing,” explains Oliver Harzheim, Program Manager Office Readiness at Vodafone Deutschland. “We did not want to use a service out of a black box, but to contract transparent and comprehensible services from an approachable contact partner.” MATERNA is also working with Vodafone Deutschland on continuously improving their processes.

SOX-reporting increases transparency

Companies which are subject to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) must, among other things, provide evidence of access to the IT transparently. Vodafone Deutschland now fulfils these requirements even more fully and faster with the new

solution’s improved reporting, extended tools and processes. The User Access Management is closely linked with the HR systems and thus accommodates SOX compliance. The lists of staff who have left are thus compared on a quarterly basis with the UAM: The UAM ensures that the de-provisioning requests for access rights, which are important for SOX compliance, are made as well. All the user areas receive a SOX report every quarter. No access rights for external staff are allowed to be valid for more than 180 days. After this time has run out a check is carried out to see if it should continue or be cancelled. This means no rights are left over if there is restructuring or if a colleague has left the department. MATERNA developed the reports that were needed and ensures the de-provisioning orders are made as part of appropriate operating processes.

Keeping access rights up-to-date

In a grown IT environment like at Vodafone Deutschland, a standard system for identity management is not always the best solution. That is why the IT specialists from both companies developed new innovative approaches for User Access Management. Vodafone Deutschland uses a large number of specialist telecommunications applications. The core system from Remedy allows the numerous highly specialised applications to be integrated individually – because pre-fabricated adaptors for the many specialist applications are just not available. It would also be very difficult with standard tools to formulate the interdependencies which the specialist applications are based on for a user account. Not all access requests just end up with the direct superior for approval. For some authorisations more so-called information owners or “data and program managers” are needed who have to give additional authorisation before access is activated. If a member of staff wants to access the Vodafone Deutschland client-base, the system automatically asks if the requester is

SOLUTIONS



authorised in their position for the access rights they have re-quested. The approval obligations within the UAM are stored in the tool and are regularly updated from various sources. Up to 60 systems regularly import their latest authorisation structures for the applications administered with the UAM. The level of automation and/or the provisioning of the authori-sations, which this is based on, depends on each application and the way it is linked to the UAM tool. Some applications are completely provisioned via an appropriate interface. For most of the applications, however, the UAM generates order tickets (tasking) for the relevant user department. The work-flow stored in the Remedy system thus runs through the four steps of registering, authorising, provisioning and feedback.Due to the structure and size of the company, Vodafone Deut-schland works with a variety of directory services, including the well-established Active Directory and LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) directories. The UAM checks all the identities of the users against these systems which increases the complexity of the overall system even more. The various specialist applications also use different sources for authenti-cating the users. For example, Citrix and the office communi-cation environment rely on Active Directory. Database-based applications are partly authenticated using the LDAP directory. Because of the non-uniform structure with regard to the identity of users, any department or name changing is a constant challenge as numerous applications and organisation structures have to be taken into account. MATERNA supports the technical implementation for these processes and helps to coordinate the requirements within the organisation. Only when the requirements are clearly defined, can the relevant implementation follow.

MATERNA for operations and support

With such a complex system, it is not only regular process improvements that have to be dealt with, but above all there are many tasks recurring as part of regular operations. Quality control and monitoring of access requests has to be carried out daily. If, for example, details are not correct or if data-bases and hierarchies are not taken care of accurately, the staff have to handle the requests manually. It can also occur that requests get stuck during approval or provisioning. In all these cases MATERNA views the tasks, adds any missing informa-tion and feeds them back for further processing. This ensures continuous workflows and faulty datasets can be cleansed immediately. Since June 2010 MATERNA has been actively involved in regular operations at Vodafone Deutschland and since November 2010 the IT experts have been responsible for these processes to a large extent. MATERNA is also active in second and third level support, develops solution approaches and coordinates the end-to-end processing of requests.Vodafone Deutschland is continuously optimising the process management of the UAM solution. MATERNA advises the telecommunications company on this and contributes to

the continuous process optimisation. “The experts from MATERNA supply solutions for long term improvements to our processes. In this way we assure durable quality together,” explains Oliver Harzheim from Vodafone Deutschland. The self-service portal has now been in operation since 2005. The experts from MATERNA have paid a significant contribution to enabling access rights for business applications to be made available much faster, so that Vodafone Deutschland has been able to achieve considerable savings. The User Access Management project is integrated in a corpo-rate-wide programme for optimising the IT-supported office communication processes. In the long term, the UAM will be transferred into the worldwide solution based on the Oracle Identity Manager which is currently being set up.

Benefits of the solution

Technology

• Application: Remedy 7.01• Database: Sybase• Operating system: Solaris Sparc• Three stage system with development, testing and production.• The application is integrated with Remedy MidTier as a web application and made available via the company’s intranet.• MATERNA has established a release and change management for the UAM according to ITIL. This uses the HP Quality Center to test the application.

• Fast, uncomplicated and cost-saving establishment of access rights• Transparency regarding access rights to applications and resources• Fulfilment of SOX requirements• Defined and documented authorisation processes• Documentation of access rights to business applications• Extensively automated request and user authorisations• Comprehensive monitoring and error analyses


02/2011 22 MATERNA MONITOR02/2011 2222 MATERNA MONITOR

BB Promotion specialises in event management as well as audio and light engineering. The company produces musicals, also organising regional special events and arranging tours throughout Germany and the rest of Europe. Around 110 staff are employed at its headquarters in Mannheim and a second office in Cologne. It has further experts, including costume

designers and make-up artists, working at theatres or on the road with one of its many productions which take place all over Europe.The event specialist has grown fast so far, almost doubling its workforce since it first began. Many IT-related tasks, including the administration of PC workstations, have been taken care of

Client Management

AutomAted SoftwAre Distribution

The DX-Union Management Suite automates all of the processes involved in administrating

desktop PCs for the event specialist BB Promotion.

SOLUTIONS



manually until now. “We look after about 120 PCs and wanted to automate our IT processes still further using automatic software distribution,” explains Torsten Herber, IT Manager at BB Promotion. “We found that it doesn’t make sense to administrate more than 50 clients manually. Especially when you consider the fact that around 40 per cent of the staff take their notebooks on the road with them. We can’t always wait until all staff happen to be in the office with their notebooks. Now software distribution takes place automatically when staff log on to the internal network. This enables us to ensure that the mobile devices of our field staff always comply with the latest security standards.”

Modular Solution

When BB Promotion opted for the DX-Union Management Suite in 2008 it had found a solution which covers all of the task areas of client management in individual modules. DX-Union installs standard software on PCs and notebooks, and takes care of the patch management of Microsoft updates. BB Promotion orders all its new computers with the operating system pre-installed. The installation of further applications and all asset tracking is done by DX-Union. DX-Union Synchronize compares the information from Active Directory with the DX-Union database.A further advantage of the solution is that it allows a clear overview of individual licences. Although the company purchases the operating systems together with the hardware, there was no automatic overview of the licences for software applications in use on the devices. The DX-Union Service Desk, in particular, has improved efficiency since it was intro-duced in February 2011. The Service Desk module’s query function, for example, provides detailed overviews of all the company’s software licences. “We use this function a lot, which is why we tested the service desk solution for a long time and were even able to make our own requests regarding the design of the desktop interface,” says Herber. The DX-Union Service Desk is a compact application. The users simply forward their queries and jobs to the system by email and are able to follow the running status. The solution offers standard functions such as links between ticket, user and devices, delegation, escalation and a self-service portal. New, existing and processed tickets are also listed clearly.Around 20 software packages are in regular use. These can be divided into two categories: server installations on the one hand and packages provisioned via the self-service portal on the other. As far as new hardware is concerned, the devices are equipped with the basic installations from the server installa-tion pool. All other packages, e.g. Flash Player, Acrobat Reader and Firefox, are available via the self-service portal. This pool of applications regularly contains updates and users can install their own new software as they need it, reducing the routine workload of the administration team. Software packages are

created with the help of the DX-Robot add-on, which assists by automating many of the keyboard entries and mouse clicks involved during the installation of software.

Quick, simple and convenient

The new procedure saves time and reduces the occurrence of errors during software installation and client administration. Furthermore the automatic patch management ensures that workstation PCs are constantly up to date. The service desk allows the simple creation of a wide variety of evaluations, without the necessity to duplicate tasks and with the reassur-ance that no relevant data will be forgotten. All together the transparency of user support has improved considerably, with a more efficient method of identifying jobs to be done by the IT team. Torsten Herber is particularly pleased with the service and the extremely fast reaction times: “All together we feel that we are in good hands with MATERNA’s IT specialists,” he sums up.Herber and his team are implementing the major migration to Windows® 7 step by step: new computers are being supplied directly with the new operating system. All existing work-station computers will continue to work with Windows XP – until the hardware is due for replacement. “For a small IT team a complete changeover would be too time-intensive. We would have to check at one stroke for example which licences to buy more of and whether all applications work with them,” Herber explains the concurrent operation of the two operating systems, which extensive tests have shown to work well.

Advantages of the DX-Union Management Suite

• Simple printer management• Users and their resources accessible at all times• Operating systems, applications and patches can be distributed quickly and easily. • Optimisation of licensing costs and compliance with licensing rights• Plug & play interfaces run securely• Virtual and classic IT under one roof• Asset tracking of the entire IT landscape



PROJECTS

MATERNA has carried out a pilot study into the use of a configuration management solution for the automotive supplier Continental. The Continental configuration manage-ment should serve as the basis for efficient business service monitoring which reveals whether a system is down and which services are impacted by that. Continental are now going to implement the results of the pilot in several steps. Continental already make use of various ITIL® processes, but they are still lacking a connective configuration management to further optimise the performance of the existing services. The IT service management at Continental is based on soft-ware products from HP with the HP Service Manager as the central component. In future this is to be connected up to the configuration management database (CMDB), the uCMDB from HP.In a preliminary study, MATERNA started out by investigating the current status of the tools and processes already being used. Then the experts examined which specialist processes Continental wants to address with the configuration manage-ment. One key role is played by the relations between the infrastructure components and the business services. It must be possible to visualise these interdependencies trans-parently in order to recognise risks in change management more easily. MATERNA is also working on a roles description and model cases. Another key result of this was that MATERNA created a com-prehensive data model and the structure of the configuration items (CIs) for the future CMDB. The data model has already been adapted to the existing systems so that their data can be documented automatically and be available for use in other systems in operations. MATERNA also defined an architecture concept which describes how the uCMDB can be connected up to the system architecture and developed a prototype to demon-strate the functional capability of the planned structure. It was above all the data model which proved to be a challenge for a corporate-wide configuration management because Continental’s IT infrastructure is very complex and the various company divisions have different structures. Over the next few months Continental will be checking the implementation of the new structure in order to integrate the existing IT systems step by step.

Continental looks into deploying CMDB



Siemens Audiologische Technik (SAT) has awarded MATERNA with the contract to relaunch their international web presence. In this project the emphasis is on online-marketing and providing service information for customers. SAT supplies around 20 markets with information about their range of products. The focus of this centrally created website is therefore on market-specific regionalisation of the product

range and on multi-language capabilities. Above and beyond that, SAT would also like to link up with commerce systems and to redesign their intranet in subsequent phases of the project. Within the framework of this project SAT will introduce the content management solution Rapid Web Solutions from MATERNA which is based on the CoreMedia content management system.

Siemens Audiologische Technik GmbH in Erlangen contracts to relaunch their international online presence



PROJECTS

Basware Corporation, the global leader in Purchase to Pay (P2P) solutions and one of the leading e-invoice suppliers, decided to migrate their Remedy-based tailored customer service and support solution to the BMC ITSM Suite. They also wanted to start an out of the box project where BMC ITSM Suite will be implemented by MATERNA. MATERNA

and BMC worked deeply together to fulfill the customer’s requirements. Basware decided for the BMC ITSM Suite and MATERNA because of MATERNA’s deep understand-ing of IT service management processes and the fact that the BMC ITSM Suite will handle Basware’s needs far in to the future. Basware is a growth company and the busi-ness as well as number of customers will increase, so they needed security and stability regarding their cus-tomer service and support. The implementation project started in early September 2011 and was made out of the box where self-service functionality will be used by over 7,000 external customers.

Basware Corporation migrate to BMC ITSM Suite 7.6.04

Continentale health insurance has been deploying BMC tech-nology for their IT service management for many years now. The current solution has been tailored individually to the company’s needs. Continentale is now planning to migrate to a standardised solution and has changed over to the latest “Blue” license model. This keeps their options open for implementing more ITIL processes which can also be ordered as part of the existing license model. These include, for example, functions for self service or the implementation of a configuration management database (CMDB). This step means Continentale’s investment remains plannable for the long term. The IT infrastructure is also prepared for the latest technologies and version upgrades can be carried out easily. The company was founded in 1926 and supplies around 4.9 million people with comprehensive insurance services.

Continentale health insurance ready for more ITIL® processes



Software Asset Management

Keeping a close eye on software

Software solutions make up between 15 and 50 percent of the average IT budget. Applications

for software asset management (SAM) help to keep license costs well under control. MATERNA

Monitor spoke about this to Christian Haacke from MATERNA and Carsten Bernhardt from HP.

MANAGEMENT



TECHNOLOGY

Why should companies invest in software asset

management?

Carsten Bernhardt: Basically, software asset management helps to control the company’s own software portfolio and to control the license costs better, making it easier to plan them and to achieve more transparency. Companies have legal and contractual obligations to be able to verify which licensed software products are in use. Companies which are aligned to international regulations such as the Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX) or Basel II also have to provide evidence that they oper-ate software asset management. Compliance and governance rules combined with the pressure of external audits are, in addition to the cost factor, significant arguments for pushing SAM.

Which positive technological aspects are there?

Carsten Bernhardt: Software asset management makes it possible for companies to work uniformly with standardised software versions and patch statuses. This supports the IT in their task to stop the uncontrolled growth of different versions. That is an important advantage from the point of view of the IT leaders. As such a solution should always be integrated in a service management environment, many IT processes benefit from the data that is collected. The mechanisms in HP’s software asset management, for example, ensure that all the data can also be delivered to the configuration management. This makes it pos-sible, for example, to compare whether the licensed versions also have the appropriate security updates. IT governance and security are therefore yet more important arguments for intro-ducing a corporate-wide SAM. Christian Haacke: From my point of view, the significant tech-nological aspects are the standardisation of the IT landscape,

TECHNOLOGYTECHNOLOGYMANAGEMENT

better support and increased security. We often come across these arguments in our customer projects too. I think that every largish company already has the appropriate scan tools and databases today as well as the technical possibilities which are necessary for a SAM project. HP’s SAM is therefore in a position to use data which already exists so it doesn’t necessar-ily have to be collected again.

What are the challenges in practice?

Christian Haacke: It is really important to prioritise the aims precisely and to determine which software products promise to provide the greatest possible benefit for the company at a justifiable cost. These are generally the large software suites such as those from Microsoft, IBM or Oracle. Companies then have to define the SAM process precisely and get all the relevant areas of the company involved at an early stage, such as the purchasing department, because SAM requires an all-round view. The people have to know the formalities behind the license contracts and have all the documents at hand which are already available as regards the procurement of software. In this context it is often yet another challenge to get all the existing license contracts together in one place. In many organisations the contracts are spread out at different locations or are in the data centre. All license contracts have to be consolidated and be auditable. That means that existing license contracts have to be countable so that the different licence types can be mapped in a Configuration Management Data-base (CMDB). On the basis of this it is then possible to work out whether the company is over or under licensed. And of course the IT also has to ensure that all the necessary data can be viewed on the IT systems and be scanned or collected as needed. So this means that an asset database and

Christian Haacke Carsten Bernhardt

Carsten Bernhardt works in the field of HP Software as a

Business Development Manager at HP in Germany.

Christian Haacke is a consultant in the field of IT management

at MATERNA in Germany.

About the authors



a licence pool have to be created and that appropriate upgrade, downgrade and maybe cross-update automatisms have to be implemented. The allocation of the scanned software installa-tions has to be taken care of intensively right from when it is introduced. Scanning and allocating software installations to licences is however only one, albeit very significant, aspect of a SAM. Other asset and master data have to be taken into account as well.

Can the financial management benefit from SAM too?

Carsten Bernhardt: As already mentioned, SAM does not stand alone but should be closely linked in with the service management. This makes it possible for the service desk to use the data saved in SAM for processing incidents and service requests. The information can then also be used for setting up or extending financial management. Once a company has gone to the trouble of consolidating all the contracts, it is possible to use the data to show who causes which costs and how they can be invoiced. So SAM also supplies much more than just an overview of the installed software and is much more than just an aid to fulfilling compliance.

Which solutions does HP offer for SAM?

Carsten Bernhardt: Our solution is called HP Asset Manager and is a completely modular IT asset management suite. It not only covers the software part but also takes into account all the existing IT assets in a company such as systems, networks and every other possible IT component. The HP Asset Manager maps all the contractual aspects in one module so that license contracts and the information that goes with it can be viewed as consolidated. Of course our solution also comprises mod-ules for contract administration, procurement and financial management. On the technical side the HP Asset Manager is connected to our discovery tool DDMI and therefore also pro-vides mechanisms for automatic discovery, which is automati-cally filled by the CMDB. This simplifies comparisons be-tween existing license contracts and the actual situation of the

software installed. HP Asset Manager automates on the basis of best practices the complete asset management life cycle. Workflows optimise and control the usage of the existing soft-ware licenses, e.g. via freeing of unused licenses as well as alarming in case of over or under licensing. We also offer our solution as a “software as a service” model and provide the platform. Christian Haacke: Companies which already use the HP Asset Manager e.g. for their hardware assets can introduce SAM very quickly because of the tool’s modularity. They are already prepared for it with their information about cost centres, structures, locations, licenses and commercial assets. MATERNA is an implementation partner for HP solutions. We advise our customers on how to structure their processes in the best way to make successful use of a SAM and then introduce the solution together.

1. Software asset management is not just an IT topic. Many areas of a company are impacted by it and have to be involved from the beginning. 2. Enough time must be scheduled for recording, mapping and finding license contracts. This data is often scattered throughout the company.3. Get the workers council involved at an early stage as software scans might need their agreement in certain circumstances. 4. Get the data centre involved in time as firewalls, DMZ and servers can be a particular obstacle to scan procedures. 5. SAM is a project in itself and demands its own qualified, dedicated project team.

If you follow our five tips, you can be successful regard-ing the saving of costs, compliance and information.

Whereas license management is purely concerned with the number and use of the licenses, software asset management goes far beyond that: among other as-pects, it focuses on the procurement, installation and monitoring of the versions being deployed, controlling the maintenance and the end of software use. License management is only one small aspect of software asset management.

Five tips for implementing a SAM project

License management versus software asset management


02/2011 30 MATERNA MONITOR02/2011 30 MATERNA MONITOR

TECHNOLOGYTECHNOLOGYMANAGEMENT

ITIL® Edition 2011

Processes ref ined

The standard for IT service management according to ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) has been

out as version 3 for almost four years now. MATERNA Monitor describes the changes of the

current update.

People who are familiar with the ins and outs of the ITIL set of guidelines know that the changeover from version 2 to ver-sion 3 introduced some significant innovations. For example, the integration of business and IT (business integration) came much more to the fore. This approach goes much further than just business alignment, which is a central theme throughout ITIL V2. Business integration means that the IT department

is directly involved in the implementation of specialist work-flows and works together with the user departments in design-ing and optimising processes. Business integration is firmly anchored in ITIL Edition 2011 and is particularly noticeable because event management, request fulfilment and access management appear for the first time in the guidelines – even if these disciplines are only



present in rudimentary form. The update for ITIL Edition 2011 extends these aspects. All in all, the innovations can be well-described by the term “evolution” as the central contents have been extended and improved. After all, ITIL Edition 2011 comprises 1,400 pages describing how an IT depart-ment sets up and organises its processes in the best way, so it stands to reason that such comprehensive guidelines deserve to be reworked after four years – which is also according to the continual improvement process described in the ITIL book “Continual Service Improvement (CSI)”. The publishers of ITIL have tried to correct any imprecision and inconsistencies and to apply the comprehensive approach to IT service management more strictly – for the most part they achieve this as well. Processes in all five books have been improved and the comprehensive approach is much more prominent now. This intensive update has led to all of the books becoming even more extensive. Request fulfilment, for example, was originally described on just 3.5 pages. After the update this process is described in a much more granular way and comprises many more pages as well. In addition to that the publishers of ITIL now investigate topics such as risk, docu-mentation and the communication between processes much more intensively and have substantiated the term “service” even more. Allocating risks and the appropriate control indicators are much clearer which make connecting to CoBIT much easier, too. The latest demands and trends of the market are mirrored in ITIL Edition 2011. These include the compliance requirements in SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley Act), transparency and tax laws as well as increased security requirements. Cloud computing and inter-organisational processes have triggered this. This is because companies often work with outsourcers and hand over tasks such as the service desk to third parties. But companies still have to document that they have management sovereignty over their processes and prove compliance in the same way as demanded by the ISO 20000 norm. But this update enables ITIL to provide much more help here. However, no new concepts or procedures have been introduced and no existing ones have been deleted. Any new content only serves to achieve completeness, to remove imbalances in detail or to restructure inconsistencies.

Good aids

Numerous IT manufacturers and user companies have worked actively on the update and introduced many good ideas. Experts from MATERNA also evaluated the update as public reviewers and confirm that all the books have been improved considerably. The unanimous opinion: the updated publica-tions are a clearly improved aid to implementing ITIL Edition 2011. The innovations will help IT departments to set up excellent IT service processes in future.

• to correct any errors and inconsistencies in texts and diagrams• to improve the publications with regard to clarity, consistency, precision and completeness• change suggestions from ITIL trainers were taken into account in order to simplify training programmes• to revise the “Service Strategy” book in order to describe the concepts in it more clearly and to simplify presentation. The concept itself remains as before.

Interesting links: www.best-management-practice.comwww.itsmf.com

“Above all, the update for ITIL serves to improve com-pleteness, to remove any imbalances in detail and to restructure inconsistencies.”

Aims of ITIL Edition 2011 additions

Frank Eggert Senior Consultant Service Management, MATERNA



TECHNOLOGY

IT Service Management

Bringing BMC products together with SSO Plugin

Many companies are keen to install the SSO Plugin for BMC’s Remedy Action Request System.

With this standardised approach, customers can finally put an end to time-consuming password

administration while at the same time reducing support costs and boosting profitability. MATERNA

Monitor provides you with the latest product news.

tion overhead, not increase it. One of our clients explained that BMC had told them they have to manage the Dashboards user repository as well as the one in BMC ITSM. And they asked if our product could do that for them.” SSO Plugin doesn’t just create an account in Dashboards, it actively manages the permissions between BMC ITSM and Dashboards. So if a user has had their Dashboards permissions reduced or removed in ITSM, their account in Dashboards is updated to reflect this change. SSO Plugin even copies their ITSM people data (name and email address) into Dashboards too.Ken Keahbone, ITSM Administrator at Sandia National Labs, is very happy with this feature: “We use the JSS SSO Plugin. This product is excellent and does what you want, and there is no login prompt. We are also using the SSO Plugin for BMC’s Dashboards, which is very cool. The support from JSS is excellent. They are always very fast in their response and are experts in authentication. This product is worth investigating.”

Aligning BMC ITSM login names with the corporate network

It is common to require a solution to map SSO user names to BMC ITSM user names, especially when supporting multiple Windows domains, because the same user can exist in more than one domain. SSO Plugin provides a range of solutions to this problem, such as case insensitive user matching and user aliasing (mapping SSO users to AR System users). John Baker explains: “Last year, BMC were struggling to solve this problem for one of their largest US clients. They turned to JSS for advice. We organised an online meeting, installed SSO Plugin and quickly provided a working solution. This is further evidence that JSS is the only company in the BMC market capable of delivering SSO to BMC’s key clients”.Telekomunikacja Polska have also been using SSO Plugin for quite some time. Marek Białobrzewski, AR System Admin-istrator, says: “We had considered several methods to help us

A number of new features have been developed in the SSO Plugin which is also deployed by MATERNA. In this article, representatives of Java System Solutions (JSS) describe why a selection of SSO Plugin customers are satisfied with the product.

User on-boarding

John Baker, Director of the English company Java System Solutions (JSS), explains: “While deploying SSO Plugin to client sites, customers told us it was easy to deploy but asked us how they should on-board thousands of users? And when a user has no SSO enabled account, what better process to invoke than automatically raising an incident in BMC ITSM Suite, with all the information required for the service desk operative to resolve the issue?” JSS have implemented this feature and deployed it to one of BMC’s largest clients. Upon discovering that SSO Plugin has features to resolve the problem of thousands of AR System user records not matching the active directory account names, Doug B., Remedy administrator at a large US aviation agency responded: “That’s perfect! That saves us changing almost 2,000 user names.”

BMC Dashboards: One user repository is better than two

BMC Dashboards complements the IT Service Management suite but is built on a user repository that has no integration with the ITSM user repository, and with no SSO support, this is a huge barrier in the corporate environment. SSO Plugin solves this problem by providing a full ITSM to Dashboards users and a group/role synchronisation tool. Danny Kellett, Director of JSS, explains: “It is unacceptable to have to tell organisations that they must duplicate user repositories. The point of SSO is to reduce user administra-



with the authenticating process and Java System Solutions offered the product and expertise we needed. Not only were our questions answered, but we were given recommendations on how to implement certain solutions. For a large company where the expectations are for rapid and stable implementa-tions, SSO perfectly fits this policy. The fact that the product is still being perfected and is packed with tools for logging, debugging and with other ITSM oriented mechanisms, may be promising for new potential customers. We’ve been using the Single Sign On solution since 1.9.x version and I can say that I am continually amazed at the product itself and the level of support Java System Solutions provides.“

Bringing BMC products together

SSO Plugin has evolved to provide SSO for solutions to com-plement BMC IT service management, such as integrations to Dashboards, Analytics (also known as SAP Business Objects XI), JasperReports Server and HP Service Manager. Danny Kellett comments: “Companies demand a coherent SSO strategy, with no duplication of user repository information. SSO Plugin delivers this functionality and we aspire to deliver more integrations to BMC ITSM / HP Service Manager.”These features, automatically enabling user accounts and pro-viding integration into BMC ITSM with full user synchronisa-tion between BMC ITSM and Dashboards, are quite unique.Too often, organisations are convinced, that it would be better to build a solution, without making the organisation aware of all the build-vs-buy risks such as having expert knowledge of Windows networks and protocols, thorough penetration tested by some of the markets most security conscious organisations, a dedicated 24/7 support team and future upgrades aligned to BMC releases. SSO Plugin is a cost effective, quality, secure solution and has been the BMC market leader since 2006.

MATERNA are one of BMC’s most respected partners and have deployed SSO Plugin to a number of organisations, and in particular, to organisations where security is a priority. Work-ing closely with JSS, MATERNA can offer a comprehensive solution not found anywhere else in the BMC market.

• Users do not need to remember another set of login details.• Single user permissioning repository, removing need to duplicate users and groups.• Users never have to login to the AR System, Dashboards or Analytics.• Lower cost of supporting users• Simplified view of user management which boosts administrative productivity• Streamlined security administration• Security of knowing to use the BMC industry standard SSO implementation

“JSS is the only company in the BMC market capable of delivering SSO to BMC’s key clients.”

Benefits of Single Sign On

John Baker

The SSO Plugin is a complement to IT service management.



They also have to adapt and make the best use of new technologies, such as cloud computing and remote access to data though the growth of smart phones and tablet computers. This has resulted in ‘on-the-go access’ becoming the norm for consumers and businesses alike. More recently, social networking has changed the way we communicate with each other whilst another new develop-ment, business discovery – user driven business intelligence (BI) –, has revolutionised the way businesses manage and analyse their data. Business discovery is providing a whole new level of user-driven analysis that far exceeds the limita-tions of traditional BI platforms. Business discovery also has the benefit of being able to be deployed on premise, in the cloud, or on a laptop or mobile device – for everythng from a single user to large global enterprises.However, while business IT remains focused on a ‘one approach suits all’ strategy, the focus in the home sphere has been on building intuitive applications which can be used by the user in the manner that suits them best. That is what we call the ‘democratisation’ of information. Against this backdrop, the development of business discovery was strongly influenced by the consumer experience of IT. It is by listening to what the business user wants – drawing upon their experiences as consumer-users of IT – that business discovery has been able to deliver a more natural and intuitive experience for the way in which we manage and use our data.Unlike traditional BI, business discovery is not limited in its search functionality; users can ask what they need to ask, and explore information up, down and sideways rather than having to follow a set path. Furthermore, it allows users at every level, from board level to researcher, to tailor searches individu-

ally and make discoveries that would otherwise be unavail-able without first predefining paths and generating a bespoke report. In short, business discovery is a bottom-up approach that fulfils the promise that business intelligence could not 20 years ago.

Business discovery – empowering the non-IT user

The business discovery platform QlikView has been an unprecedented success with customers. More than three- quarters of QlikView customers have selected it primarily for its ease of use for end users, and recent success stories by UK customers highlight the positive impact QlikTech’s business discovery platform has made. Take these comments, for example, from non-technical champions who are using QlikView – they are unusual to say the least, for what ultimately remains a software product.Dr Gareth Goodier, chief executive of one of the UK’s top teaching hospitals – Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust – said in March 2011: “(Business Discovery) is the most advanced and most accessible information service I have ever seen.” In addition, his director of information systems and analysis, Frances Cousins, added: “Throughout my career, the idea of shared data ownership has been something of a ‘Holy Grail’. With business discovery, I have found it.”Furthermore, Paul Evans of Gwent Police, said of business discovery: “It has already proven its value […] The ease of use provided by the consumerised interface allows any authorised user to access information and run reports with minimal need for training.”

Business Discovery

Business discovery –The future of business intelligence

Over the past decade, the internet has turned the world into one global community and the

consumerisation of IT has driven some of the most fundamental changes within it. These have

shaped business strategies across the globe. Businesses face the continuous challenge of dealing

with increased quantities of data, holding information securely and analysing this data quickly and

intuitively to make informed business decisions.

TECHNOLOGY



In a January 2011 report, technology research specialists Gartner recently placed the main BI companies in four quad-rants – leaders, challengers, niche players and visionaries. QlikTech was placed in the ‘Leaders’ quadrant1.The report also recognised this shift in user-driven BI and summed up the situation by saying: “The demand side of the BI platform market in 2010 was defined by an intensified struggle between business users’ need for ease of use and flex-ibility on the one hand, and IT’s need for standards and control on the other. With ‘ease of use’ now surpassing ‘functionality’ for the first time as the dominant BI platform buying criterion in research conducted for this report, vocal, demanding and influential business users are increasingly driving BI purchas-ing decisions, most often choosing easier to use data discovery tools over traditional BI platforms – with or without IT’s consent.” 1

There is a ground swell of change in the world of business intelligence. It may be surprising to many that such a revolution is underway given the low level of awareness beyond the pages of the IT media. However with a new band of non-IT cham-pions now emerging to sing the praises of user-driven BI, it is only a matter of time before what is termed business discovery achieves serious attention in boardrooms across the UK.

About the Author

Sean Farrington is Managing Director of QlikTech, UK and Ireland and Regional Vice President, Northern Europe. He was formerly General Manager and Senior Vice President of SAP Business Objects in the UK.

References

1 Rita L. Sallam, James Richardson, John Hagerty, Bill Hostmann, ‘Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms’, 27 January 2011Gartner RAS Core Research Note G00210036 www.gartner.com/technology/media-products/reprints/oracle/article180/article180.html

New partnership About the Magic Quadrant

MATERNA joined QlikTech as a partner due to the rising demand from customers to deliver business reporting on top of their current platforms such as IBM and BMC/Remedy. These solutions deliver reporting but in a rather demanding and inflexible way. Customers are not only asking for reporting which shows IT service manage-ment metrics but they also want to be able to connect to other systems and deliver business reporting by means of this broader analysis. QlikView also deliver dynamic reporting so customers can select a value and see the result immediately.

The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted 2011 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at, and for, a specific time period. It depicts Gartner’s analysis of how certain vendors measure up against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the “Leaders” quad-rant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.


[email protected]

Would you like to establish a long-term, consistent IT service manage-ment strategy to make the best possible use of your existing IT resources and to increase the economic value of your company?

“Service Excellence”, the best practice model developed by

MATERNA, is based on many years of experience in IT, extensive techni-

cal know-how and on our own numerous studies and customer surveys.

Service Excellence describes the strategy • which brings together the individual projects in IT service management and coordinates them towards a common goal.

The main focus is on the development of the • IT organisation from just reacting to being a proactive IT service provider.

Service Excellence takes into account all • elements which are necessary to ensure high service quality levels: processes, technologies and people.

Please talk to us if you are interested in finding out more about the roadmap for service excellence:

[email protected]

Your Roadmap for Service Excellence


Running applications internally or externally?

Documents

Transcript of Running applications internally or externally?