ITSM – Service Desk Ticket System Field and Categorization Simplification As anyone who owns a home or has a garage knows, we tend to collect stuff over time that we no longer need (or maybe never really needed) and then keep those items stored in places where they are in the way, or where they just simply look out of place. Maybe those items are now keeping us from seeing or even getting to the useful stuff that we are actually looking for. Well, this might also be the same problem that some of you are experiencing with those seldom or never used fields and selections in your Service Desk or Help Desk online ticketing systems. IT specialists would identify these as categorization selections like “PDA”, “dongle”, and “floppy drive”, or selections of application systems that they probably retired three years ago. These applications may even have fields that that no one uses anymore because they are not sure what those fields were intended for.

In the IT world, challenges always exist, whether we can currently identify the challenge or not, one will always arise. Rest assured, when an IT challenge becomes apparent, there is also usually a solution in existence. Often enough it’s the problem solving techniques that reach the end of the challenge, and delineates the solution.

In a world where the industry standard is always changing and methods for these changes are conjointly working together, one can’t help but feel like they’re always falling behind the curve. Welcome to the world of Information Technology (IT), where changes typically come in 12 to 15 month increments and the last 10 years has been one of the greatest technology booms in the last century. Over the last decade, IT businesses and users have seen innovations of all sorts of technologies such as the iPod, new Operating Systems, and massive changes in IT management. For example, as Microsoft Windows ends support for Windows XP this April, organizations will find themselves migrating and attempting to the stay ahead of IT to continue their business operations. At this point, you may be asking “How can I stay ahead of all these IT changes and learn about what challenges all these different technologies can solve?” In a World Where IT is Always Changing, How Can we Keep Up? The answer arrived with a benchmark idea called information exchange. Information exchange is loosely defined as “a bidirectional information transfer” in related topics such as telecommunications, computer science (IT) and other communication systems. You can find this exchange and sharing of ideas occurs between IT leaders at conferences and events around the world. This avenue of communication allows IT specialists to return to their coworkers and peers with greater knowledge of the leading IT innovations and transformations. Every year, new IT discoveries are released with new models and advancements for the future. IT specialists gather and attend conferences to share their insights and learn about the ever-changing advancements that require their understanding to stay ahead. These idea exchanging events continue to improve and provide vast benefits to attendees, but not just to simply discuss new technological advancements, but to reach the core of IT and how to enable IT in the most effective manner. A focus area that is becoming more prominent to the IT and business industries today is the emergence of IT Service and Asset Management (ITSM/ITAM). A very valuable event that addresses this core component of IT is the BMC Exchange. This event gathers in various locations around the world to encourage and promote information exchange and idea sharing with leading IT organizations and leaders. The next upcoming BMC Exchange is the BMC DC Exchange being held in the greater Washington, D.C. area. Attending the BMC DC Exchange on February 20th at the Ritz Carlton Pentagon City will be a great resource for learning about how ITSM and ITAM are changing the surface of the IT world. Among the many distinguished speakers there, James Staten from Forrester Research will be discussing the transformations of IT in his keynote. Attendees will also connect with IT leaders and share IT ideas to learn how properly enabling IT can provide the best means for effective business growth.

When assessing the IT competency of organizations, many executives tend to believe their IT sectors are meeting their organizational objectives. The majority of executives believe that simply possessing an IT service is the key to reaching those objectives. This misconception could not be further from the truth, as a study found that less than half of the respondents rate their IT management processes as “excellent” or “good.”

Every year, organizations assess their inefficiencies and find outstanding problems from the previous year as well as determine where there is room for improvement in the next year. As 2013 has recently passed, many organizations have reviewed their previous glitches and find that their IT Service Management (ITSM) processes need to be improved.

If you are an IT government contractor – this is for you! Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) are required to be FedRAMP certified by June 2014. Current deployments of cloud-based services in use by Federal agencies must be compliant with FedRAMP guidelines by June 2014. Commercial providers that offered cloud-based services to the Federal government or in the acquisition process prior to June 5, 2012, must have a FedRAMP P-ATO. Government agencies have to move one system to a cloud provider within 12 months of project start, and two more systems within 18 months of launch, by the end of 2015.