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February 17, 2006

AR System 7.0 Released by July 2006?

KIRKLAND, WA -- At the latest incarnation of the local Northwest Remedy User's Group (RUG) held at the BMC Software offices today in Kirkland, WA, BMC announced that it expects to release ITSM 7.0 in the second quarter of this year. A number of ITSM 7.0 applications exhibit features only available in AR System 7.0 (code named "thor").

The Change and Configuration Management application includes the new data visualization fields I mentioned back in July 2005 for an Outlook-style planning calendar, and the SLA application used the new "tree" style table field for a Windows Explorer-like method of navigation.

The remaining agenda was a presentation of existing BMC products, along the lines of what you might expect: a review of the BMC Identity Management solution, an overview of Change and Configuration Management (the Marimba piece), a demonstration of the Service Impact & Event Manager (SIEM), and a presentation of the old KMXperts knowledgebase solution, now known as "Knowledge Management" (since being purchased by BMC Remedy in August of 2005).

ITSM 7.0

We can look forward to a merging of the "best of" Viadyne's ViaITIL (purchased by BMC in 1994) and BMC Remedy's ITSM suite. And there are tighter integrations between ITSM and the other BMC Software Business Service Management (BSM) applications as they continue to refine their Discover -> Reconcile -> Refine -> Publish model of service management with the configuration management database (CMDB) acting as the "single truth", at the core. The entire ITSM suite benefits from more use of flashboards and better use of graphics and improved usability.

Help Desk

Some changes to the user interface are apparent as the ViaITIL functionality is incorporated. Incident tracking includes cost tracking and it's own, dedicated workflow (previously incidents and problems used shared workflow). Also, it is multi-ternary in nature; supporting multiple business units.

Asset Management

The asset side of things gets a more robust license compliance tracking functionality, auto-linking of contracts, and greater time/cost tracking information.

Change & Configuration Management

Most of the engineering effort went into the Change and Configuration Management module and it shows, with the most new and interesting features of the entire suite.

In addition to the Outlook-style planning calendar mentioned above, tasks are now treated as their own sub-system and are more tightly integrated with discovery services so they push software updates directly (without having to pop over to Marimba).

The service catalog portion of Change and Configuration Management is still being developed and probably won't make the release date. Expect it within 90 days though.

Service Level Agreements (SLA)

The SLA console has an enhanced look and feel and uses the new table field "tree" mode as mentioned above for navigation. Using tree navigation you can view all of the SLA's for all organizations and easily drill-down to view the details.

Upgrading From ITSM 6.0

Upgrades will be handled in the standard AR System manner: changed workflow will be overwritten, and new workflow will be ignored (remember, don't change, add new!). An upgrade disk will be available within 30 days of the release date.

Thoughts...

Call me old school, but I found it interesting (and somewhat odd) that not a single mention of AR System 7.0 was made during the entire meeting. BMC obviously has a strategic vision and makes absolutely sure that we hear about their "routes to value" for IT service management at every opportunity.

I kinda miss the old days when these events were 100% AR System and you were proud to show off and discuss the applications you built.

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Posted by caropepe at 02:09 PM | Comments (0)

February 15, 2006

An Adaptive Path Kind of Day

SEATTLE -- The day started out like any other. No, really, it did.

The first thing that happened was I fired up the iPod on my way to the bus stop. I subscribe to a number of podcasts that get downloaded every night so each morning is kinda a surprise - I don't know what I'll be listening to on any given today.

Today it was Janice Fraser giving a talk at Stanford’s Entrepreneurial Thought Leadership program for undergraduates (listen). Janice is CEO of Adaptive Path, a web design consulting company based in San Francisco.

No big deal, I know.

But here's where things start getting weird. Once I got to work I saw that one of the companies Janice mentioned in her talk, Measure Map, was bought by Google.

"That's interesting", I thought. "Let's check out the Adaptive Path website and see what they say."

Once there I noticed that Lane Becker and Indi Young were giving a talk in Seattle of all places:

Beyond Usability in Seattle. Indi Young and Lane Becker will be in Seattle for two full days of Beyond Usability: Designing the Complete User Experience this February 15 & 16, 2006.

Darn! Since today is the 15th it dosen't look like I'll be able to make it. Then I read a little further down...

We’re coming to Seattle! If you are in the area, please join us for cocktails & networking on Wednesday, Feb. 15 from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m. at the Hotel Monaco Sazerac Bar, 1101 Fourth Avenue (at the corner of Spring St.), Seattle, WA.

Now we're talking! This happens to be about a block from my office and almost on the path to my bus stop. Needless to say I re-arranged my day to stop by.

I met some good people including Rob from Whitepages.com, Tom from Children's Hospital of Seattle, Lisa from Ameriprise, Mary from The Fireman's Fund, and Mohamed from the BC Tourism Board.

Most participants seemed to be getting good information out of the session. I did hear some concerns about, A) having enough time to implement all of the steps outlined by Adaptive Path while designing the user experience (internal sites, mostly) and, B) setting aside business functionality while focusing on the UI (especially for web-facing applications).

So, what is that? Four different ways that Adaptive Path touched my life today? As I sit here and write this, I realize that I now know way more about these folks than I did when I woke up. And that's probably okay with Janice.

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