Newport Beach, CA – May 15, 2012 – The U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC), and the Department of Defense (DoD) have successfully deployed LiveTime’s Service Manager to provide streamlined ITSM services that save time, and reduce costs of Government IT resources.

With a $14B budget and 142,000 employees, the DoC used disparate IT systems to manage all of its business processes, from Request Fulfillment through to Problem, Change and Release Management. The DoC wanted to standardize on a single centralized service management product and identified the need for a scalable cloud-based solution based on ITIL 3 best practices with seamless visibility between processes and integrated across all business units.

A very high level of security was also a minimal requirement for a majority of DoC implementations, so LiveTime’s private cloud solution was selected for DoC’s own data centers. The deployment provides DoC management with a single consolidated view of all processes and business effectiveness with unparalleled ease of use.

The DoD has also significantly reduced its overall IT budget after replacing more than six separate Remedy installations with LiveTime Service Manager in a matter of weeks. Vital to the deployment’s success was the transmission of data from other proprietary Asset Management systems to a centralized CMDB of internal assets and services for managing military support operations around the globe.

The DoD leveraged LiveTime’s extensive web services API to feed the integrated CMDB inside LiveTime Service Manager. The improved transparency allows the DoD to handle a significantly greater volume of requests, incidents and change than ever before, to provide a higher standard of IT Service Management.

LiveTime 7, which is expected to debut in Q2 2012, continues to drive open standards and increase user productivity by offering unrivaled ease of use for an ITIL 3 certified application with seamless integration to over 30 enterprise products.

LiveTime Software is a leading provider of On-Premise and SaaS based Service Management (ITSM) solutions available On Demand (SaaS) or On Premise (software, hardware or virtual appliance). Its forthcoming LiveTime 7 ITSM solution, based entirely on HTML5, is built on open standards and supports any client web browser with native clients available for iOS. LiveTime is used by hundreds global 2000 companies such as Lockheed Martin, Verizon, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Deloitte, and Disney.

About

The US Department of Defense (DoD) is a well recognized entity around the world responsible for the protection of the United States and managing 1.4 million men and women on active duty, 718,000 civilian personnel and the nation’s largest employer. Another 1.1 million serve in the National Guard and Reserve forces.

Challenge

Even with significant budgets the DoD is not immune to cost rationalization where it is warranted and is committed to utilizing the best solutions the market has to offer.

With a significant number of Service Desk solutions throughout the organization, high costs of maintenance and upgrades they sought a more modern approach using LiveTime’s private Cloud ITSM solution.

Running more than 6 separate installations of an existing Remedy solution LiveTime was able to replace all instances with one centralized highly available solution in undisclosed locations.

Solution

LiveTime was able to replace the existing point solutions and go live within a matter of weeks. An important part of the solution was to take feeds from other proprietary Asset Management Systems and maintain a centralized CMDB of internal assets and services for supporting military operations around the globe.

The DoD was able to leverage LiveTime’s extensive web services API to feed the integrated CMDB inside LiveTime Service Manager. The DoD is now able to handle a significantly greater volume of requests, incidents and change than ever before and significantly reduce the overall budget.

As part of LiveTime’s continual service improvement program and commitment to quality, monthly product updates are made available to all current customers. These releases guarantee that LiveTime customers have access to the most reliable and secure production version of its service management tool. The updates are optional for customers using the virtual appliance and automatically applied to all SaaS customers. LiveTime’s service and support team will notify any organizations that are possibly affected by software bugs addressed in the latest release, and provide assistance with the upgrade process.

March 21, 2012

Miscellaneous

• Performance optimization for invoice number allocation
• Streamlined LDAP to Mixed Mode customer account migration process
• Added support for TLS (plaintext) for SMTP authentication
• Fixed drill downs on dashboard when using Postgres

Detailed Release Notes 6.5.6 - 268.63 kB pdf

iCal Outlook and Google Calendar Sync

LiveTime 7 calendaring provides a rich visual cue on all aspects of your Service Management environment from request details, forward schedule of change and planned outages through to scheduled requests, technician leave and public holidays. These feeds are role based, so each user receives information relevant to their designated role within the organization and assigned ITIL process.

These calendar feeds also automatically sync to an iPad or iPhone using Apple’s iCloud service ensuring users are constantly updated regarding schedule changes wherever they may be.

LiveTime 7, which is expected to debut in Q2 2012, continues to drive open standards and increase user productivity by offering unrivaled ease of use for an ITIL 3 certified application with seamless integration to over 30 enterprise products.

Available On Demand (SaaS) or On Premise (software, hardware or virtual appliance), LiveTime is based on open standards and supports any client web browser with native clients available for iOS. LiveTime is used by many global 2000 companies such as Lockheed Martin, Verizon, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Deloitte, and Disney.

LiveTime has some exciting new features and a host of new UI enhancements that we know are going to blow you away. Here are just a few…

Relationship Impact Map LiveTime has introduced a new multi-level relationship map so Technicians can readily see the impact of an outage and related infrastructure directly within the CMDB or the request itself. As the information is dynamically updated by third party monitoring tools Technicians will see a view of the entire business and its related services. ITSM Impact Analysis and Relationship Map Multisource LDAP Multiple LDAP connections allows organizations with different authentication servers in various locations and timezones to synchronize with LiveTime, providing a federated source of Service Desk Customers and Technicians. Line Manager Approvals The introduction of line manager approvals for Service and Change Requests. By associating line managers with Customers, when a Request is logged that requires management approval prior to processing, the Request can be automatically routed to the appropriate manager for approval. For service organizations that propose changes and updates to their customers’ environments, customers will have the ability to approve or reject work proposed by the service provider. Planned Outages Map Users will also notice the capability to create Planned Outages for Multiple Items. Users will be able to easily traverse the relationship map to see all infrastructure that is to be related to the Planned Outage and apply the improved notifications to update Customers accordingly. Knowledge Import The capability to import Knowledge Base Articles using a .CSV file, providing service organizations with the convenience of importing large amounts of information stored in external sources with a single file.

Calendar Synchronization If you use Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, Apple iCal, or another calendar application that supports the iCalendar format, you can subscribe to LiveTime’s calendar and changes to your schedule will automatically be synched to your personal calendar application. Separate Feeds are provided for outages, requests, holidays, vacations and scheduled requests so you have a complete view of your entire operation at your fingertips. iCal Outlook and Google Calendar Sync Workflow Map Another big change relates to the workflow editor which is more interactive and fully animated allowing technicians and customers to see exactly where they are in the entire process and the next steps available. Workflow Map Scheduled Reporting The ability to configure scheduled reports across User Groups. Within the Administrator Portal, out-of-the-box and custom-built reports can be selected and scheduled for automatic emailing to Supervisor, Manager, Technician, Finance and Administrator Users, ensuring User relevant data is sent on a regular basis. The Custom Report Builder also includes functional enhancements. Process Switching For Service Desks with Request Fulfillment and Incident Management, requests that are generated as an Incident can be readily toggled to a Service Request, and vice versa, while maintaining one identification number. This means customer correspondence will be more easily managed and the request’s history available within a single audit trail.

As part of LiveTime’s continual service improvement program and commitment to quality, monthly product updates are made available to all current customers. These releases guarantee that LiveTime customers have access to the most reliable and secure production version of its service management tool. The updates are optional for customers using the virtual appliance and automatically applied to all SaaS customers. LiveTime’s service and support team will notify any organizations that are possibly affected by software bugs addressed in the latest release, and provide assistance with the upgrade process.

January 13, 2012

Miscellaneous

• Various issues with Item CSV imports have been corrected
• The rich text editor is now compatible with the Norwegian BokmÃ¥l locale
• Login page localization issue when using Internet Explorer has been resolved
• SLA Timezones will now correctly updated when editing multiple SLAs consecutively
• Internal SLA Action dates (escalations and notifications) have been further refined
• Various performance enhancements have been made to the customer portal
• AD/LDAP post synchronization report will once again be formatted correctly
• AD/LDAP import of email aliases will now work correctly for new users
• Customer web service has been modified to better cope with org unit assignment
• Resolved event calendar issue when using Oracle and Sybase Enterprise databases

Detailed Release Notes 6.5.5 - 267.83 kB pdf

The ICT team was struggling with email integration and communications with users. Previously, support staff were required to copy and paste information from emails into call logs, posing a significant drain on productivity.

For the cost of support and maintenance of HP OpenView NHS was able to replace the entire system with Novell Service Desk.

As part of LiveTime’s continual service improvement program and commitment to quality, monthly product updates are made available to all current customers. These releases guarantee that LiveTime customers have access to the most reliable and secure production version of its service management tool. The updates are optional for customers using the virtual appliance and automatically applied to all SaaS customers. LiveTime’s service and support team will notify any organizations that are possibly affected by software bugs addressed in the latest release, and provide assistance with the upgrade process.

November 14, 2011

Requests

• Notification for queued requests generated from the customer portal will also send to the team leader
• Quickcall templates set to use a deleted technician will now cause the assignment logic to execute
• Changing the Item from Unknown will recalculate the request due date
• Duplicating an escalated request will now assign to the correct layer
• Viewing the full note content will now show the Author, along with the time & date the note was entered
• Replying to notes will now apply the email options correctly

Email

• Notes with no notification options set will save correctly irrespective of notification settings
• The ‘No Account’ message will now appear to come from the team to which it was sent
• The ‘No Contract’ message will now include the the request summary table

Miscellaneous

• The 3 vacation limit per 6 days will now be applied correctly
• Invoice Unit Count will no longer contain incorrect 0 unit counts
• Service Achievement by Technician report will no longer give an error when executed
• Creating items will work correctly when old SLA’s are assigned
• Creating customers via .NET web services will now work as expected
• Public Knowledge Template content will now apply the message contained in the Content section

Detailed Release Notes 6.5.4 - 266.46 kB pdf

Newport Beach, CA – Nov 2, 2011 – LiveTime Software, a leading provider of On-Premise and SaaS based Service Management (ITSM) solutions, today announced the immediate availability of the LiveTime virtual appliance for public and private clouds. This solution enables any organization to deploy a complete ITSM cloud in minutes. This touch-less solution provides access to all updates for seamless upgrades.

Available immediately for VMware and soon other virtualization architectures, any organization can provide best practice service management according to 11 ITIL v3 processes. The appliance includes support for symmetric multiprocessing for optimal performance across virtualized CPU’s and supports 64bit native architectures that can scale to meet any workload.

LiveTime’s virtual appliance includes built-in debugging, configuration and management utilities. Simple guided menus provide easy access to networking, monitoring and general system utilities. The menu driven environment also supports migration from other systems and SSL out of the box.

Organizations can now leverage LiveTime’s highly scalable ITIL Service Management software with the ease of the cloud. The appliance provides the necessary scalability and security that is difficult to achieve when deployed on existing hardware and operating systems. Since the system has been hardened at the operating system layer, LiveTime provides Just Enough Operating System (JeOS) for its needs. This makes the system easy to update and maintain with a very small footprint.

Based on HTML5 open standards, LiveTime is a cloud based ITSM solution used by many global 2000 companies such as Lockheed Martin, Verizon, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Deloitte, and Disney. LiveTime ITSM solutions support any enterprise and comes pre-integrated to all major asset management, LDAP, AD and SSO providers. LiveTime is available on demand as Software as a Service (SaaS), traditional on premise software, virtual or hardware appliance.

Challenge

Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust needed to increase the scale and scope of its helpdesk, to support a large increase in staff from the acquisition of several new services. The Trust needed to ensure that existing and new users spread across its many departments received well-integrated support.

The ICT team was struggling with email integration and communications with users. Previously, support staff were required to copy and paste information from emails into call logs, posing a significant drain on productivity.

“We wanted a solution that would automatically email users to keep them informed about the status of their support requests, and that could also automatically log calls and generate the relevant actions based on incoming emails,” said Tristan David, Head of ICT for Oxleas.

The Trust had previously been using HP OpenView, but found the solution too complex for its requirements and the software hard to configure and use. Having reached the end of vendor support, Oxleas took the opportunity to review other options that could better fit its requirements.

Solution

Oxleas wanted a solution that was easy to use and configure, and one that would integrate efficiently with its existing infrastructure. The Trust chose Novell Service Desk from LiveTime Software as a fully integrated service management tool to streamline and automate its IT support function.

“Novell Service Desk is very easy to use and to develop, so we felt that it was the best choice for the future,” said Tristan David. “The solution makes it easy to create automated workflows, and this is helping us to make much more effective use of email in our communications with users.”

Another selling point was Novell Service Desk’s modern Web 2.0 interface, which allows users to access the system via any web browser or mobile device without plugins. This makes it easy to create powerful self-service portals for users and allows both technicians and users to check the status on support calls and update them immediately from wherever they are.

Oxleas’ service desk manager was closely involved in the selection of the solution, and was highly impressed with its functionality. “She is very enthusiastic about the capabilities of Novell Service Desk, in particular around the potential it offers for future development and integration with Novell ZENworks,” said Tristan David. “When full integration is enabled in the near future, it will be even easier for the team to build a more responsive and automated support infrastructure.”

Finally, there was an important commercial aspect to the decision. For the same cost as bringing the previous solution back into support and adding the licences it needed, Oxleas was able to deploy a completely new Novell Service Desk environment that offers greater ease of use and more benefits.

“There would have been a significant cost involved in bringing the existing system up to the standard we needed and adding additional licences. In terms of pricing, Novell offered a very attractive solution,” said Tristan David.

Results

For Oxleas, two of the most important new capabilities offered by Novell Service Desk are its easy-to-use workflow engine and web-based self-service portals, which have vastly improved the team’s ability to communicate with users.

“One of our users’ most frequent complaints was that they didn’t know what was going on,” said Tristan David. “With Novell Service Desk, they can see which technician has been assigned to their call and can follow the progress through to resolution. Our experience in other areas tells us that users really like this kind of self-service approach.”

The team at Oxleas was able to seamlessly integrate Novell Service Desk into its existing infrastructure, and will soon be able to fully integrate it with its Novell ZENworks environment. This will deliver major benefits in terms of service automation and improved transparency.

The Novell solution includes built-in call timers, giving supervisors a clearer view of performance and enabling a more structured analysis of the effectiveness of existing processes. There are also plans to develop network monitoring tools that will log support calls automatically via email, so that the network team can respond even before the user is necessarily aware that there’s a fault.

Additionally, Novell Service Desk provides highly effective, user-friendly service management that enables technicians at Oxleas to work faster and more efficiently, and allows them to ultimately focus on core business tasks. As technicians can now check for new support calls while they are off-site, they can potentially resolve emerging issues on the spot, leading to less downtime for users.

“Novell Service Desk makes it faster and easier to provide technical support,” said Tristan David. “In practice, this translates into rapid resolution for our users, improved service and reduced day-to-day support costs, which helps us to improve patient care.”