NewsNovember 8, 2000
Painless Helpware Upgrades
VMWare Service Manager, a web-centric helpdesk application, is being released later this month in New Zealand by distributor Delta Software.
Launched in the United States late October and immediately generating 600 sales leads there, VMware Service ManagerActive is already drawing strong interest In New Zealand, Delta managing director David Gandar says.
An indication of this is Unisys NZ's interest in VMware Service ManagerActive, he says.
"We are launching an ASP (application server provider) service and last week we started the accreditation programme with Unisys so it can market this as an ASP component of Unisys's FirePower."
The VMware Service Manager suite product manager for Delta, Jo Hansen, says Delta has implemented VMware Service ManagerActive internally and is soon to start migrating VMware Service ManagerActive to customers currently using predecessors VMware Service ManagerHelp and VMware Service ManagerWeb.
"All customers licensed for VMware Service Manager Help and VMware Service Manager Web (a web- enabled version of VMware Service Manager Help) will be migrated at no cost," Ms Hansen says.
"Quite a few have not implemented any web middleware yet and of course they will have to purchase VMware Service ManagerActive as they would normally."
Delta has operated as a client-server software consultancy since 1994 and has some 40 customers, mostly medium to large corporates, including Auckland Health Care, Health Waikato, Clear's IT service, Ministry of Economic Development and the Dairy Board.
Mr Gandar believes competitors will take at least a year to come to the market with a web-centric application of equivalent flexibility because VMware Service ManagerActive's installation, implementation and management is performed entirely through a web browser. The significance is that the cost of upgrades will be almost zero, and user training can be carried out with the immediacy and accessibility that is available through online seminars and tutorials.
"The message that comes with VMware Service ManagerActive is that organisations can expect to implement fully functional processes using the Internet - and web-centric will become as mandatory as Windows has become," Mr Gandar says.
"This is probably the most major revision of software in the last five years," he says.
Unlike VMware Service ManagerWeb, a Windows application that's been web-enabled, VMware Service ManagerActive is built from the ground up on an Internet Architecture as a full browser application.
While it offers the full functionality of VMware Service Manager's helpdesk and change management application, it does not require complex installation or configuration of client machines.
All (ActiveX) controls required by VMware Service ManagerActive are downloaded once only, when a user first logs on to the system, and they are automatically updated with new releases or upgrades.
"Once VMware Service ManagerActive is configured on the server at a single site, all the resources of the support database are immediately available to any new site without additional configuration," Mr Gandar says.
With VMware Service ManagerActive, "follow-the-sun" support environments can implement one central database, and so benefit from pooling resources to provide 24-hour support. Within a single system, each individual support centre can retain its own management and processes, as well as administer, configure and report on the system.
Its application benefits include system setup and administration, escalation, partitioning and time zoning, search and reporting accessed and managed from any site in the support operation.
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