By Dick Stark

RightStar and BMC held a seminar last week at the Newseum in Washington, DC to discuss trends in ITSM and the new version of Remedy 8 to be released next quarter. The speaker was Doug Mueller, Remdy co-founder and current BMC corporate architect.  Doug is well known in the Remedy community and was a big draw.  What follows is a short synopsis:

Doug began by stating that IT needs to change the way it does things.  It is all about IT capabilities delivered the right way 100% of the time. Like turning on a light switch, IT services must always be available. Doug pointed out that IT departments must focus on things that make the business or organization run better, not necessarily by “standardizing on ITIL, COBIT, or Billy Bob, or Mary Sue.” Doug, however, stressed the importance of good processes but reiterated the bigger picture—making sure that business needs are met first.

Doug Meuller and Dick Stark

The anchors of service management are CMDB, Service Request Management (SRM), and Decision Support. Get them right and everything else falls into place. Doug was especially excited about SRM as there has been a shift in how people want to interact with a service desk. Rather than calling or emailing a support desk, uses look for a “one size fits all” support portal. And it should be a simple portal , e.g., www.mycompany.help that provides a “single pane of glass” for all service requests in the company—IT, HR, and Facilities. Combined with a knowledge base, users can fix their own issues and escalate to support only when they have exhausted all other means.

Doug spent the rest of the morning discussing the new release of Remedy v8, currently in beta. Features include:

• Totally revamped SRM with links, submitted requests, and popular knowledge all on the same page.
• New data management tool to simplify on-boarding and data synchronization.
• Enhanced best picture view with fewer fields on the screen.
• Chat and other social media support.
• Hub and Spoke model which allows those organizations with several disparate Remedy (or other ITSM systems) to have a central Hub to collect and assign tickets.
• Significant improvements in asset management resulting in a 40% CMDB performance improvement.

It was a very productive morning and I look forward to seeing Doug again at the WWRUG in San Jose in October.