While service desks have become as intrinsic to 21st century business as, say, facsimiles were to the late 20th century, there are still dozens of companies taking strain under the yoke of outdated service desk tools.
"We`re still seeing legacy service desk solutions woefully lacking in functionality and flexibility - just two barriers to competitiveness... and the cost of customisation is more likely than not financially viable," says Lynda Odendaal, CEO of IT service management specialist NSS.
"The facts are that solutions vendors are not always up to speed with changing requirements - and the cost of new implementations are also seen as prohibitively expensive," she adds.
Power and flexibility are critical, she says - aspects of solutions which need to fit glove-like to the enterprise but without involving costly development projects.
"The door must be open to easy implementation, use, maintenance and upgrade based on what the customer needs, not what the vendor says they need," Odendaal argues.
Into the mix comes Axios - a global IT service management software firm, represented in South Africa by NSS - which has, once again, been placed in the Challenger Quadrant of the influential Gartner Magic Quadrant for IT services desk 2007.
Gartner`s 2007 IT services desk Magic Quadrant focuses on enterprise-class vendors that met the research group`s testing criteria - and which proved (via qualified customer references) an ability to address the needs of customers seeking to provide functionality for incident, problem, knowledge, self-service and service-level agreement (SLA) management.
Within what Gartner refers to as a "highly saturated" service desk tool market, which has grown at about 14% annually for the past two years, Axios systems - while being a relative minnow compared to such iconic names as BMC Software - is seen as being (in boxing parlance) pound-for-pound an overall champion, offering unparalleled innovation.
Gartner elevated Axios based on a strenuous set of evaluation criteria, including:
* Ability to execute - .The service desk vendor`s performance must be competitive and positively affect revenue, retention and reputation. Emphasis is placed on functionality and ease of use with problem management, reporting, workflow, knowledge management, service-level management and self-service.
* Completeness of vision - the quality and effectiveness of the processes, systems and procedures
"Gartner picked up on Axios` real strengths - an annual development cycle which is attentive to customer requests for enhancements and fixes, having an IT services desk tool which is easy to implement and configure and which has a really strong best-practice consulting services ethos," Odendaal notes.
"Axios` signature product, Assyst, is regarded in many counties as the de facto standard help desk and ITSM solution for organisations to identify and track problems with their IT infrastructures, and improve management of assets. "
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