InformationWeek/HDI Service Desk survey interesting findings

Topics I found interesting at first glance after reading the  State of the IT Service Desk report  by John Custy, InformationWeek/HDI (June 2011):

• Mobile devices support on the rise, security issues and work/personal frontier
• Lack of information security management processes in place (even though awareness and investment in specific tools)
• Low investment on standards and frameworks for quality management (ISO/IEC 20000 got 12% utilization out of 1214 professionals surveyed))
• Unclear costs and benefits of Service Desk – IT does not know how much it costs

Also, latest technology trends drive changes and incident volume (desktop virtualization, server virtualization and cloud computing at the top).

40% of respondents stated Service request management (request fulfilment using ITIL terminology) being implementing or followed – meaning that requests are treated under incident management. Event management is in place for 1 out of every 4 organizations surveyed. Opportunities for improvement here in these two areas.

Microsoft Service Desk (now Microsoft System Center Service Manager…)

After attending the Service Desk’s “preview” last Microsoft TechDays at Lisbon I do have some notes on this promising product.

They got it right regarding usability and already existing Microsoft technology. The strong points I see:

Integration
SMS – Inventory, CMDB related activities support
MOM – Automatic Incident creation, knowledge base
SharePoint – Knowledge base
InfoPath – Customized forms (really flexible this part)
Outlook – Approval and notification tool
Powershell – Scripting
Workflow Foundation .NET – Workflow

For the first two an umbrella called System Center gathers tools for Service Management. Service Desk closes neatly the basic Service Support underlying technology.