Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

June 2021

Enhanced Microsoft Teams Integration with Ivanti Service Desk

Providing flexible solutions to your users creates a more co-operative and engaging environment where people can choose how, and where they interact with your services. That’s why over the past year we’ve been working on adding more choices when it comes to engaging with Ivanti Service Desk, and our latest Microsoft Teams App opens up an entire new channel for communication.

You Have to EARN the Gorilla Suit

There’s an old joke that goes something like this: back in the days of vaudeville, comedy acts were all the rage. This young guy wants to get into the business, but he’s not sure his act is good enough. He knows all the great comedians of the time would put on a gorilla suit, and the audience ate it up. So the first time he goes up in front of an audience, he throws on the suit and prepares to walk out on stage.

SOS! Why 2021 has to be the Summer of Security

Sunblock: Check. Life vest: Check. Zero trust security: Wait, what? Summer gives us all a little breathing room and a chance to relax. This summer, perhaps more than any other in our lifetimes, we’re all looking forward to loosening up. As we get a hint of normalcy, or at least what “normal” is going to look like now that we’re in the Everywhere Workplace, many people are letting their guards down. We want folks to relax. We really do.

Improve Operational Efficiency (5 Tips & Tricks)

Do you know how to improve operational efficiency in your organization? As we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, you should aim to hit the ground running with an organization-wide productivity drive. A decline in productivity has been a key concern for many operating remotely during the pandemic. With employees entering back into the workplace, it is time to start examining ways to improve operational efficiency.

Here's What the Future Holds for IT Professionals

If someone predicted how IT roles will change in the coming years, they’d likely envision tech roles maturing around emerging and high-value new technologies, such as AI, data science, and the cloud, as well as an ongoing focus on cybersecurity across industries and business divisions. These topics frequently come up in discussions with tech leaders about the near future of IT roles. But many would be surprised by two major trends.

ITIL Change Management : 7 Best Practices

Change is inevitable but never easy especially in IT. IT professionals can relate to this statement. When it comes to ITSM, solid change management is a sign of maturity. Why is that? Among the ITIL processes, change management is the most difficult to get right, because it requires the right mix of process, people, and technology. There’s a lot of grey areas when it comes to implementing change management.

Monitoring + ITSM + CMDB: Together in Perfect Harmony | Netreo On-Demand Webinars

Considering monitoring systems normally do not include ITSM functionality, it’s paramount that monitoring and ITSM tools work in sync. While both solutions often share an overlapping dataset, the parallel nature for each tool type can lead to conflicts, which in turn impacts the efficiency of IT operations. View this webinar to explore the best ways to make your ITSM/CMDB and monitoring integration seamless and easy, and streamline your operations process so efforts can be applied to resolving technical challenges rather than spending valuable time chasing down data synchronization issues.

Connection Center for ServiceNow Deep Dive

Take a deep dive into our SCOM Connection Center for ServiceNow. Discover how to convert critical SCOM alerts into actionable ServiceNow incidents with real-time, two-way synchronization. Plus, find out how we use out-of-the-box, code-free integration to get SCOM and ServiceNow working as one! You can download a FREE 30-DAY TRIAL on our website.

Alloy Software Wins Globee in the 16th Annual 2021 IT World Awards

BLOOMFIELD, N.J., June 24, 2021 (Newswire.com) – Alloy Software, a leading provider of ITSM and ITAM solutions, announced today that The Globee® Awards had named Alloy Software a winner in the 16th Annual 2021 IT World Awards®, in the IT Service Management category. These prestigious global awards recognize software vendors with advanced, ground-breaking products, solutions, and services in all areas of technology and cybersecurity.

A Look Back at the Year That Was

Remember where your business was a year ago? Remember where you were a year ago? How could anyone forget? As the seriousness of the pandemic became apparent, nearly every business experienced chaos and confusion. What was reliable and routine suddenly became ambiguous and unsure—in literally a day. Offices, factories, retail stores, and restaurants were shut down, and employees were sent home.

HR Service Delivery: What Modernizing Can Do For Your Organization

When it comes to running a Human Resources (HR) department successfully, it’s a balancing act of maximizing budget and productivity. HR is a core part of the enterprise, but it is often up against flat or shrinking budgets. A lot of time gets invested into searching for ways to eliminate full-time employee hours spent on tedious manual tasks and re-shift its staff’s focus to driving more strategic initiatives.

3 ways to manage digital risk in any organization

Digital transformation is vital to business today. However, it can increase digital risks, which can take many forms. To help ensure your organization is protected against business disruptions, noncompliance, and errors, you need a robust digital risk management program. Our three-part Managing Digital Risk and Beyond webinar series is designed to help you prepare for, manage, and address digital risks in your organization: Develop a risk management program.

PagerDuty Summit21 Keynote: DigitalOps Now: Go Digital First with Modern Digital Ops Management

To succeed in a world of digital first customer experiences, operations must also be digital first. Join PagerDuty CEO Jennifer Tejada & CPO Sean Scott as they share the latest PagerDuty innovations and our vision for the future of work. Don't miss exclusive fireside chats with Fox Corporation executives Paul Cheesbrough, CTO & President of Digital and Jeff Dow, EVP for Media and Broadcast, as well as Kim Hammonds, Investor and Board Member at Zoom, Box, Tenable and UiPath and The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.

How service provider Infosys delivers speed, efficiency

To drive agility, innovation, and excellence, businesses must continuously re-examine their processes. However, embracing new technologies and implementing fresh applications can be a complex and expensive operation. It can also distract attention from day-to-day business. That’s why more and more global companies turn to a managed service provider like Infosys, so we can take the strain.

SCOM Connection Center your single source of truth for all your enterprise tools

Most companies have SCOM. But you can never realize the true value of SCOM unless you integrate it with your other tools! Here at Cookdown, we’re passionate about making SCOM integrations, which is why we are so excited to announce the launch of our SCOM Connection Center. Now you can connect SCOM to anything with an API, allowing you to send notifications in real-time to any location or device.

The Increasing Popularity of Ransomware Amongst Cybercriminals

Cybercriminals are becoming increasingly savvy and ransomware attacks have soared over the last decade. A recent PwC UK Cyber Threat Intelligence report revealed a spike in cybersecurity incidents which have significantly affected many organisations that are already dealing with challenges caused by the pandemic.

4 ways ServiceNow, Google offer seamless multicloud workflows

Siddhartha Agarwal, managing director, SaaS partnerships and co-innovation, Google Cloud at Google, co-authored this blog. When organizations embrace cloud as a core component of their IT operations, they have options: a wholesale migration to the public cloud, incremental or large-scale hybrid deployments, private clouds, or even running services across multiple clouds. More than 90% of enterprises have a multicloud strategy.

IT Operations Management (ITOM) and Automation: What IT Pros Need to Know

IT pros lose precious time every day battling menial IT operations management (ITOM) tasks. ITOM covers the things needed to support the network infrastructure delivering IT services. This includes hardware like switches, servers, and firewalls in the data center or enterprise network and the tools needed to make sure everything runs optimally. According to the SolarWinds 2020 Cloud Confessions survey, 78% of tech pros report spending less than 10% of their time proactively optimizing their environments.

Return to the workplace: 4 steps to ensure business resilience

We’re beginning to see light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel, and companies are rolling out their plans to return to the workplace. For those of us in business resilience (aka business continuity, incident management, or crisis management), it’s game on. However, the game has changed. Business resilience has traditionally been operationally focused—on site security, utilities, fire safety, natural disasters, and the like. In a post-COVID world, resilience is personal.

Enterprise Workflow (5 Ways To Improve)

Enterprise workflow automation solutions can support your team’s efforts to streamline processes and deliver an improved customer experience. If you’re currently trying to fix a disconnected customer experience, you should focus on finding ways to automate your enterprise workflow. We believe this is the key to enhancing the customer experience. In this guide, we are going to be considering 5 potential ways to improve enterprise workflow.

How To Create New Inquiry Templates | StartingPoint

In this video, we show you how to create inquiry templates to have an easy way for your Team Members to send inquiries to your customers within StartingPoint for your team members. StartingPoint is a workflow management platform for service-focused companies and teams. Our platform helps companies retain customers, save money by using less software, save time by centralizing information and data, and improve operational efficiency through simple workflow to make sure nothing falls through the cracks for your customers and your team members.

How To Create New Response Templates | StartingPoint

In this video, we show you how to create response templates to have an easy way to answer customer questions and inquiries quickly within StartingPoint for your team members. StartingPoint is a workflow management platform for service-focused companies and teams. Our platform helps companies retain customers, save money by using less software, save time by centralizing information and data, and improve operational efficiency through simple workflow to make sure nothing falls through the cracks for your customers and your team members.

How to Update the Notification E-mail Templates | StartingPoint

In this video, we show you how to update your notification templates to have an easy way to notify your customers or team members within StartingPoint. StartingPoint is a workflow management platform for service-focused companies and teams. Our platform helps companies retain customers, save money by using less software, save time by centralizing information and data, and improve operational efficiency through simple workflow to make sure nothing falls through the cracks for your customers and your team members.

How to Create a New Task List or Checklist Template for Team Members | StartingPoint

In this video, we show you how to create checklist templates for team members to remember their day to day tasks within StartingPoint for your team members. StartingPoint is a workflow management platform for service-focused companies and teams. Our platform helps companies retain customers, save money by using less software, save time by centralizing information and data, and improve operational efficiency through simple workflow to make sure nothing falls through the cracks for your customers and your team members.

How to Create a New On-boarding or Checklist Template for Customers | StartingPoint

In this video, we show you how to create an on-boarding or checklist template to have an easy way to complete tasks within StartingPoint for your customers. StartingPoint is a workflow management platform for service-focused companies and teams. Our platform helps companies retain customers, save money by using less software, save time by centralizing information and data, and improve operational efficiency through simple workflow to make sure nothing falls through the cracks for your customers and your team members.

How To Create New Project Templates | StartingPoint

In this video, we show you how to create project templates to have an easy way to initiate projects within StartingPoint for your team members. StartingPoint is a workflow management platform for service-focused companies and teams. Our platform helps companies retain customers, save money by using less software, save time by centralizing information and data, and improve operational efficiency through simple workflow to make sure nothing falls through the cracks for your customers and your team members.

Introducing the Nexthink Service Graph Connector

Configuration Management Databases (CMDBs) are key elements of any IT infrastructure. In large or growing organizations, however, successfully managing a CMDB is no easy feat. After all, IT Operations teams are responsible for managing tens of thousands of data points in dynamic environments. Lack of visibility, shallow troubleshooting, and the overall maintenance of a “healthy” CMDB can quickly lead to frustrations and result in expensive professional services support.

What role does ITIL Project Management play in ITSM?

Organizations with established ITSM strategy already know how ITSM can transform the IT department from a cost-center to a value-generating driver to offer real business value. As teams modify their service operations to meet increasing needs, IT departments are under more pressure than ever to swiftly execute changes without putting their service levels at risk. This is where organizations can leverage project management best practices along with ITSM best practices to introduce new services.

Are You in It to Win It? Optimize Your Warehouse Operations with Future-Proof Technology

Take a moment if you will. Imagine your typical day at the warehouse. Warehouse workers are buzzing about. Forklifts are driving back and forth down the aisles. Your workers are staying productive, scanning and picking boxes, one after the other. They’ve got their rugged devices and scanners, helping them buzz away, busy as can be.

ABC's of UEM - Part 2

In my introduction to this blog series, I talked about why Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) is more relevant than ever before. In this second part of the ABC’s of UEM series I will talk about the next set of letters and how they tie into Ivanti. While reading this blog put your own experiences into perspective with how you and your company were forced to work during COVID-19.

Ivanti and BT Work Together to Secure and Service Mobile Assets Through Hyper-Automation

The world is constantly changing all around us, and the number of endpoints that organizations are using has increased significantly. Dan O’Boyle, Global Director from Ivanti, believes that there has been a sharp increase in more critical workplace devices needing to be connected and communicating while generating more data. To secure and service these changing mobile assets an evolution is needed.

No One Likes Passwords and They are the Leading Cause of Data Breaches

Did you hear about the latest data breach caused by a stolen password? Technically, it was a user account security token used by the malicious cyber threat actors to gain initial access into the company’s chat workspace. Once on the IT chat channel, the threat actors impersonated an employee and then used a simple social engineering tactic to trick an IT support member into providing them with a long-lived login access token onto the corporate network.

Service quality and the rising need for enterprise SRE

In its DevOps 2021 survey of global IT professionals, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) found that 95% of organizations with highly successful DevOps initiatives were predominantly decentralized and purposefully becoming more so as fast as possible (see Figure 1). This decentralization of development and DevOps teams is making site reliability engineering (SRE) both critical and difficult to achieve.

3 Keys to Running a Proactive IT Service

There’s an interesting synergy between hybrid work and proactivity. If you have a large remote or hybrid workforce, difficulties will tend to take longer to troubleshoot – and will of course also cause even more disruption for the user. Let’s take a simple, everyday example of a failing laptop battery. In this scenario, every time a remote user wants to leave their desk, they can’t – the laptop cuts off as soon as they unplug it.

3 ways to improve your enterprise IT security

You’ve undoubtedly heard the saying, “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.” The same idea applies to your IT systems. They’re only as secure as their weakest vulnerability. No organization wants to fall victim to a cyberattack. These three ServiceNow webinars will help prepare you to boost your enterprise IT security and, ultimately, safeguard your business.

Going Beyond RMM for the Next Level of IT Service Management

The IT services industry has continued to grow in the backdrop of high demand for innovative solutions across all industries. Global spending will surpass $1.1 trillion in 2021, which reflects a 9% increase from 2020. Managed services account for much of this spending with managed service providers (MSP) at the heart of the impressive growth.

Service Management: Firefighting and Fire Prevention

In the face of major disruptive change, the organizations that succeed are those that do more than just react to new circumstances. They evolve. When it comes to addressing the unprecedented challenges that have emerged in 2020 and 2021, the most successful IT teams have risen and will continue to rise to the occasion by recognizing the need for a proactive approach to the waves of disruption.

Wall Street Journal Predicts Dire Cybersecurity Days Ahead, Endorses Zero Trust

Let’s be honest for a second. This is a corporate blog. Yes, we aim to provide our readers with actionable, educational information. And, yes, we strive for complete transparency. But, at the end of the day, we understand if you’re skeptical of some of what’s written here. We’re a business, not a news publication, and it’s impossible for us to be completely unbiased all the time.

Dashboard Server: Working with the ServiceNow tile

SquaredUp, Technical Evangelist This should be a quick one. As some of the existing SquaredUp customers might recognize, this tile is basically an enhanced version of the more generic WebAPI tile – with the enhancement being easy authentication. In comparison to the <>, configuring an integration to SNOW is much easier and more GUI based.

Splunk Connector for Ivanti Device Control - Now Available!

Ivanti Device Control is all about securing your endpoints while also providing a detailed overview to quickly identify weak links in your environment. The latter has now become much simpler and quicker to perform! Our new Splunk connector enables you to connect directly to your Ivanti Device Control environment, feeding in all reported events and showing you the most important data in a single dashboard.

7 Important Steps to Improve Operational Efficiency

When it comes to improving your business operations, there is no one-size-fits-all strategy. You have to look at the different processes involved in your business--from sales and marketing to product creation and delivery. Here, we’ve listed the strategies you can do at a minimum to improve your organization’s overall operational efficiency.

A cybersecurity journey: An airline's push to be digital-first

The airline industry faces years of uncertainty as the world recovers from the impact of COVID-19. Airlines will focus on operational efficiency and the means to adapt quickly to changing circumstances and new opportunities. Passengers may be required to carry a vaccine passport, most likely a digital solution, which could bring a host of data security complexity. For these reasons and more, Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) aspires to be a digital-first airline.

8 Best Practices for Windows Patch Management

Given the numerous cyber-threats that organizations face these days, security has become one of the most serious issues on everyone’s mind. When it comes to protecting business-critical environments from malware, various security measures can make a significant difference. Patching is one such important component of ensuring the security of your infrastructure and data.

Embeddable Request Widget in Jira Service Management

A Jira Service Management Widget is like a mini-portal that can be embedded on any web page that you control. Customers can send you requests from anywhere; no login required. With flexible customization, you can tailor a widget’s appearance and available fields, and check a preview before you add it to a webpage.

How to Integrate SolarWinds Service Desk with Dameware Remote Everywhere

SolarWinds Service Desk and Dameware Remote Everywhere are our powerful, affordable, and scalable ITSM solutions designed to integrate to help IT pros streamline support from incident to resolution. By combining the power of Service Desk and Dameware Remote Everywhere, IT teams can streamline support, helping improve Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR), minimize employee downtime, and maximize the value IT delivers to the organization.

Quick Demo: A Day in the Life of a Remote Knowledge Worker

Do you make it a habit of connecting to the free Wi-Fi network at the coffee shop, restaurant, hotel, airport or even in-flight on the airplane to save on your cellular data minutes? Watch this short 2-minute video to see what happens if you connect to a wireless network with a malicious cyber threat actor performing Man-in-The-Middle (MiTM) attacks to unsuspecting victims.

Featured Post

How IT Investment Will Be Revolutionized in 2021

Have you ever seen or heard a word repeated so often it begins to lose its meaning? This phenomenon is called "semantic satiation," and it's something I'm sure we've all experienced over the past 12 months. While special mention must go to "the new normal" and "social distancing," I'd like to throw a hat in the ring for a word that once most commonly appeared before "capacitator" in one of Doc Brown's rants in Back to the Future: "flux."

Forrester Research: The Future of Technology Operations

Recently, we had the opportunity to hear from Charlie Betz of Forrester Research about the future of technology operations. He covered the shift from project-based work to product team orientation, the integration between DevOps and IT services and the ways in which the entire enterprise is getting value from investments in artificial intelligence. Check out some of the interesting questions and answers from the discussion and be sure to catch the full conversation in the video below.

ITSM and ITAM: Great Together, Like Peanut Butter and Chocolate or Gin and Tonic Pt. 2 of 2

As mentioned in Part 1 of this blog series, IT Service Management (ITSM) and IT Asset Management (ITAM) make a great combo to support IT’s overall plan to maximize operational efficiencies and improve service delivery experiences, while also optimizing compliance and cost. This post discusses the remaining three use-case examples: 3) Tackle Problem Assets with Proactive Management; 4) Effective Change Management; and 5) Complete Lifecycle Visibility.

No pants, no problem: Employees Report More Work Yet More Satisfaction in the Everywhere Workplace

“We want to work remotely.” That’s the major takeaway from Ivanti’s just-released survey on the Everywhere Workplace. Nearly 2,000 consumers across the U.S. and U.K. responded. While most of them were abruptly shifted into remote work due to circumstances outside their control – and those circumstances were scary and confusing – there has been a silver lining. They’re happier at home.

Meeting Recordings app: Overcome Zoom fatigue and FOMO

The pandemic made Zoom ubiquitous. Everyone from preschoolers to CEOs use it to meet with others. Much of what we used to do by walking down the aisle, boarding a plane, or entering a classroom can now be handled on a Zoom call. Remote work has given rise to another trend: the fear of missing out (FOMO). At many companies, employees move from one Zoom meeting to another, forcing them to choose between Zoom fatigue and FOMO.

The Need For Workflow Automation In Your Business

Bill Gates was quoted saying, “The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency.” Workflow automation is one of the finest methods deployed to succeed in business. It is considered the ultimate alternative to traditional inefficient and time-consuming business processes. The objective of a business is to reduce operational costs while ROI increases.

CX Statistics Your Business Needs to Know in 2021

With so many brands and competitors out there, customers have an extremely high expectation for your customer service and care. Having a great customer experience (CX) team helps with client satisfaction, retention, and referral. All three of these are at the bottom of the marketing funnel and are key to growing your business. To truly understand your customers’ expectations, you must diligently study your CX and pain points.

A DBA's Habit for Success: CMMI (Part Three)

Welcome back! As we enter the halfway point of this five-part series, we’ll discuss Level 3 of the capability maturity model (CMM) and the role it plays in helping DBAs grow their organization and increase the functionality of their business. By now you should be familiar with the definition of CMM and the Information Maturity Model (IMMM). If you need a refresher, part one and two of this series cover the basics of the models and the overall benefits of following a maturity model.

ITSM and ITAM: Great Together, Like Peanut Butter and Chocolate or Gin and Tonic Pt. 1 of 2

Actor 1: “Hey, you got peanut butter on my chocolate.” Actor 2: “Well you got chocolate in my peanut butter.” This 1970’s ad campaign of “Two Great Tastes that Taste Great Together” put Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups on the map. Know what else makes a great combo? IT Service Management (ITSM) and IT Asset Management (ITAM).

Long Weekend and you Locked Yourself Out of Your Computer

The latest Verizon DBIR report is out and we all should realize, normal is not the new workplace. Picture this: You’re logging into the work account after a long weekend of gratitude, remembrance and maybe even getting to hug someone safely. Okay, we’re exaggerating a little but variations of this scene are playing out all over the country this week. You’re frustrated and you haven’t even gotten started on the work that piled up over the weekend.

Project Portfolio Management: Creating project management excellence

Project managers are the link between programmers and designers and between sales and customers. As such, project managers have to understand the importance of efficient, automated business processes and be comfortable dealing with people. At Germany-based global IT services and consulting company T-Systems, we take project management seriously. That's why we have a dedicated project management committee and 1,700 full-time project managers.