Aligning IT and business perspectives requires the ability to create links between configuration information in the CMDB and the business service as experienced by the user. Service Dependency Mapping (SDM) products automate the process of creating and maintaining these links.

Generally, CMDBs populated by discovery tools alone simply aren't usable. They fail because they contain massive amounts of irrelevant information. You avoid this pitfall by correctly populating your CMDB in four simple steps.

Because business success is tightly fused with technology, IT costs are rising, and this trend is expected to continue. As a result, businesses are demanding that IT be more than a static resource. IT is expected to deliver business results with a measurable contribution to the organization's bottom line.

ITIL provides a framework of customizable best practice initiatives that help organizations consistently deliver high-quality IT services. Effective ITIL implementation adds value to the IT infrastructure and improves business and service delivery.

Composite applications can provide multiple benefits, such as business agility, better utilization of business software assets through code reuse, development efficiencies, and cost optimization. Once companies are skilled at deploying them, many find that they roll out new applications and integrations faster, while maximizing the value of "tried and true" software components.

Application management requires visibility from multiple vantage points within the IT enterprise, combined with a centralized information store that pulls the technology pieces of the application puzzle into a coherent whole.

To meet the challenges of intense competition and increasing customer demands, companies must tightly align their IT service management with business issues and priorities. This paper outlines the maturity steps involved in the progression towards proactive Business Service Management (BSM) and explains how ASG's metaCMDB helps secure its seamless adoption.

Application Portfolio Optimization (APO) provides executives with tools and information to assess the quality and condition of application assets as well as a means for understanding the impact of proposed application changes.

Improved business productivity often requires more efficient IT and more efficient IT cannot be achieved without a better understanding of the way business services are run and delivered. Configuration Management Databases (CMDBs) have emerged as a central component for Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and business service management (BSM).

As IT evolves towards a more business-aligned position, it must seek out new ways of working that support more effective operations, service creation, and service delivery. These include technologies, processes, and a culture that supports higher levels of accountability, as well as more dynamic responsiveness to business needs.

End-user expectations and high levels of performance against Service Level Agreements (SLAs) must be achieved or organizations risk the loss of business. This paper details key capabilities needed for successful end-user monitoring and provides critical considerations for delivering a successful end-user experience.

Targeted at IT executives responsible for both the financial and ultimate project oversight of an enterprise CMDB initiative, this white paper sets expectations for ROI calculations for CMDB initiatives, provides basic ROI best practices, and gives readers sufficient insight to move forward with their CMDB project.

Virtualization is now mainstream. Enterprises continue to heavily invest in virtualization projects and while short term hardware and cost saving benefits are being achieved, few enterprises achieve anywhere close to the full potential of virtualization as they struggle with new problems like assuring performance and availability, preventing VM sprawl, and maximizing resource utilization

Business Service Management (BSM) is of growing importance in the IT world. By managing IT systems according to the business services they support - like order entry, online sales, shipping, or customer service - IT is able to deliver on real business goals like providing competitive advantage, improving customer satisfaction, driving revenue growth, and increasing shareholder value.

Configuration Management is at the heart of the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL®) and forms the foundation for Business Service Management (BSM). In fact, it is safe to say that neither the ITIL IT Service Management (ITSM) processes nor the BSM functions that leverage ITSM can be efficiently carried out without accurate configuration and dependency information.

Effective workload automation that provides complete management level visibility into real-time events impacting the delivery of IT services is needed by the data center more than ever before. The traditional job scheduling approach, with an uncoordinated set of tools that often requires reactive manual intervention to minimize service disruptions, is failing more than ever due to todays complex world of IT with its multiple platforms, applications and virtualized resources.

Virtualization continues to grow at 20 percent or more per year, but it is not expected to overtake existing physical architectures at least through 2010. This white paper examines the unique challenges of virtualization and offers tips for its successful management alongside IT's physical deployments.

A recent survey of CIOs found that over 75% want to develop an overall information strategy in the next three years, yet over 85% are not close to implementing an enterprise-wide content management strategy. Meanwhile, data runs rampant, slows systems, and impacts performance. Hard-copy documents multiply, become damaged, or simply disappear.

There are success stories of businesses that have implemented Business Service Management (BSM) with well-documented, bottom-line results. What do these organizations know that their discouraged counterparts don't?

Configuration Management is at the heart of the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and forms the foundation for Business Service Management (BSM). In fact, it is safe to say that neither the ITIL IT Service Management (ITSM) processes nor the BSM functions that leverage ITSM can be efficiently carried out without accurate configuration and dependency information.

"Adopting the Best Practices for Ongoing Data Management"

Your data center struggles with competing requirements from your lines of business and the finance, security and IT departments. While some executives want to lower cost and increase efficiency, others want business growth and responsiveness. But today, most data center teams are just trying to keep up with application service levels, complex workflows, and sprawling infrastructure and support costs.

Remote support technology, including remote control, desktop sharing, and web collaboration, is one of the most popular platforms used across TSIA service disciplines. Today’s remote support solutions offer much more than just remote control for PCs, their functional footprint is expanding to include support for more devices and richer analytics for trend analysis and supervisor dashboards. Remote support solutions are typically well regarded by users, consistently delivering one of the highest average satisfaction scores in TSIA’s annual Global Technology Survey. Service executives should acquaint themselves with the new features and capabilities being introduced by leading remote support platforms and find ways to leverage the capabilities beyond technical support. Field services, education services, professional services, and managed services are all increasing adoption of these tools to boost productivity and avoid on-site visits. Download this white paper to learn more.

Adapting to changing market dynamics is not easy for any enterprise-class organization. To stay competitive, companies not only must adapt different go to market and customer service strategies but also embrace internal business process and workflow changes, which in many cases can be more difficult. Enter Intelligent Business Process Management Suites (iBPMS). According to Gartner, iBPMS compress the observation-to-action-to-outcome cycle, and help business transformation leaders, business process directors and solution architects establish a fluid capability to handle big change. Gartner evaluated 15 iBPMS vendors including Pegasystems. Download this Gartner Magic Quadrant analysis and gain a better understanding evolving iBPMS market and the solutions offered by each iBPMS vendor.

IT leaders working on customer service projects must display an incredible amount of diligence. An organization’s CRM system has become its lifeline to customers, but as customer needs evolve so has the requirements of CRM. According to Gartner, today’s CRM solution must include a laundry list of capabilities outside its traditional core functionality including: native mobile support of the vendor's customer service and support business applications; real-time analytics; industry-specific functionality and workflow; context mining of voice and text; scalable cloud-based systems; social media engagement; suggested next agent action; multimodal capabilities, such as chat within mobile self-service; and even co-browsing. Gartner surveyed the CRM field and evaluated each vendor including Pegasystems. Download this Gartner Magic Quadrant analysis and gain a better understanding each vendors’ CRM Customer Engagement Center solutions.