In today's economy, service providers need to be proactive and efficient in order to come out on top, and one way to ensure this is through IT automation.
This was the point made by IT automation company Netsurit, at the executive forum it co-hosted with Kaseya in Midrand this week.
While a Gartner report found worldwide IT services revenue had dropped 53% in 2009, Netsurit says it managed to see growth. CEO Orrin Kloppers led the forum by describing how the company realised this through a combination of IT service management, client care, and increased efficiency, mostly enabled by IT automation.
Kaseya demonstrated its new automation framework, Kaseya 2, aiming to show that IT automation is more than just monitoring systems remotely, and sending out alerts. According to the company's VP for EMEA, Mike Sanders, IT automation should also allow service providers to fix simple problems automatically. He said sending out technicians for every 'tier one' issue could cost the company more than it brought in, once the limits on productivity and the fully burdened cost of call-outs was considered.
According to Sanders, IT automation not only means basic problems can be solved remotely, but also enables the service provider to solve these problems before the client even notices them. The importance of the client was stressed by Kloppers: “Technology is a key enabler, but people are also important. Don't be obsessed with the process, and never forget the client's needs,” he urged.
Kaseya's regional sales manager for SMEs, Jacques van der Merwe, demonstrated the optional service desk module which he said is “how a service desk should look”. He said the service desk could make money, by conducting automated mediation in the background, so the user does not get disturbed, and utilising a 'single pane of glass' approach, whereby everything is visible from one screen.
“You can even get to a stage where users can help themselves, which brings down your support and your labour costs,” said Van der Merwe.
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