Newport Beach, CA – July 7, 2011 - LiveTime Software, a leading provider of On-Premise and SaaS based Service Management (ITSM) solutions, today announced the release of LiveTime 6.5 based on HTML5. With more than 100 new features and 200 customer requests, LiveTime 6.5 defines the next generation of Cloud based ITSM solutions based around HTML 5. LiveTime 6.5 also includes a new report builder, localization in 11 languages and multi-tenancy for managed service providers (MSP’s).

LiveTime 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’s new report builder enables any organization to develop customized reports without requiring a third party solution. Reports can be designed and inserted into any report menu and shared with colleagues based on user role. Reports, including charts, can be edited as needed.

In addition, LiveTime 6.5 includes localization in 11 languages, including a spellchecker and new rich text editor. It also includes an editor to modify outbound message templates and key terms throughout the application and across each locale.

LiveTime 6.5 includes multi-tenancy across all partner roles so that MSP’s can use a single instance of LiveTime to provide support across multiple organizations as if each had their own service management solution. This includes full rollup to the master organization when using leveraged technicians.

New features include:

• HTML 5 based user interface
• Report Builder
• Localization in 11 languages
• Partner Multi-tenancy
• Rich Text editor
• International Spell Checker
• Custom CSS editor
• OpenID authentication
• Style Sheet editor
• CI snapshot auto association
• CI Type response templates
• .NET friendly web services
• Outbound Web Services

Available On Demand (SaaS) or On Premise (software, hardware or virtual appliance), LiveTime is based on open standards and supports any operating system, any browser, and any database. LiveTime is used by many global 2000 companies such as Lockheed Martin, Verizon, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Deloitte, and Disney.

A Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is software built using loosely coupled software services to support the requirements of business processes and software users. Network resources in a SOA environment are made available as independent services that can be accessed irrespective of the underlying platform implementation.

More importantly, SOA architecture enables the creation of applications that are built by combining loosely coupled and interoperable services. These services inter-operate based on a formal definition (or contract, e.g., WSDL) that is independent of the underlying platform and programming language, and the interface definition hides the implementation of the language- specific service. SOA-based systems can therefore be independent of development technologies and platforms (such as Java, .NET etc), and can be made to interact between platforms.

SOA can support integration and consolidation of activities within complex enterprise systems, but does not specify or provide a methodology or framework for documenting capabilities or services.

LiveTime’s Web Services Interface enables third party applications to interact directly with the LiveTime application in a secure and controlled fashion. The interface is based on the SOAP standard for Web Services. For more information about SOAP Web Services, please see W3C.

SOAP Messages are essentially well formed XML blocks sent using http.

All examples herein are given in Java using the Apache Axis web services library. You can also do your own parsing using XML but that is out of scope for this document. Names throughout this document are exclusive of any suffixes that will be added to names by Web Services Frameworks. The framework will append the word ‘Request’ to any message sent to the LiveTime Web Services Interface. Similarly, the word ‘Response’ will be appended to any message name returned to the Customer.

SOAP Compliance

The easiest way to use Web Services is through an API that will wrap the XML parsing and calling for you. Most major Web Services from Google, Amazon and eBay operate this way. Several APIs exist for SOAP but the most prevalent is Axis from the Apache Group. If you are not familiar with the Axis API, please see the Axis User’s Guide. The Axis API Reference is also a useful guide if you are interested.

Versions of Axis are available for both Java and C++. Web Services in the LiveTime application conform to the SOAP specification, so there is no reason why you could not use the XML directly from the server and parse it directly. This will require the description document that explains the object types returned and provides other useful information. Use of the Web Services API via direct XML parsing is outside the scope of this document.

While Axis is not required – the examples use Axis as it is one of the most common web services API’s in use. Successful customer implementations have also been achieved using the XFire and CXF API’s, .NET and Perl.

There is no doubt that Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) have taken the Web by storm. The meteoric rise in popularity of RIA has been accompanied by the introduction of the term “Web 2.0”, which conveys a whole new way of delivering Web based applications to enterprise users. Facilitated by technologies such as Ajax, RIAs deliver the power and flexibility of desktop applications but with the convenience and cost savings of running software in a standard browser.

As the rich user interface enabled by Ajax is changing the way we interact with the Web, the need to preserve existing investments in mission critical Web applications, like the Service Desk, has become essential. To ensure that such applications continue to integrate with current and emerging technologies, software vendors must evolve to embrace SOA architectures and rich interactive user interfaces, without the need for special browser plug-ins.

This paper provides an overview of SOA architectures and Ajax-based RIAs, and explores how LiveTime has successfully blended these emerging technologies into LiveTime.

Web 2.0 Driving Service Oriented Architectures in ITSM - 453.24 KB pdf

Enterprises currently faced with the challenge of integrating and extending their investments in sophisticated business applications such as ERP, CRM and Service Desk, are increasingly turning to Web services. As a result, many businesses looking to better leverage their IT assets and provide their organizations with the agility needed to stay competitive in today’s economy are now Web service enabling their IT infrastructure. The ultimate goal of these efforts is to increase enterprise efficiency, improve customer satisfaction and increase profitability.

This paper provides an overview of Web services technology and its ability to fulfill enterprise-wide Service Desk integration requirements.

Web Services and IT Service Management - 201.53 KB pdf

Committed to innovation, quality and customer satisfaction the 140 staff, based in Toronto, Montreal and in off-shore centers in India and Romania, work to offer a diverse range of Managed Internet Services, Service Colocation, Web Hosting, VoIP and Long Distance Services, plus Business Process and IT Outsourcing solutions. The broad portfolio of services combined with the customer-centric focus mandate that Pathway continually improve its service offering by monitoring service agreements and streamlining internal and external service delivery processes.

Using email with no ability to track service level agreements and inconsistent workflows to provide support, Pathways wanted to invest in a service management tool to enhance their organization. Mr Jason Oriente, Operations Manager at Pathway Communications said, “The advanced functionality of LiveTime Service Manager was a stand-out option with its customizable interface, reports capability, high return on investment and low ongoing costs.”

Mr Oriente reported that the installation of LiveTime was very easy and they now use Web Services to integrate each customer’s CRM system with the Service Desk for customer information and request updates. Support operations were further improved through monitoring tool integration which open and update incidents in the Help Desk automatically.

“The system is used for internal and external support services by the Help Desk, Provisioning and Accounts, receiving over 700 calls a week,” noted the Operations Manager, after Pathways successfully implemented Incident, Problem and Change Management.

“With LiveTime’s fully configurable Workflows, SLAs and OLAs, Pathway’s support processes have been streamlined,” explained Mr Oriente, “We are now continually meeting and surpassing our service level requirements.”

“The Mean Time and SLA reports have also allowed us to monitor and improve our performance,” said the Operations Manager of Pathway Communications. As the winners of the 2008 Consumers’ Choice Award for Business Excellence as an outstanding Internet Service Provider, and for Customer Satisfaction in Toronto, Ontario, Pathway has taken customer service to a new level with LiveTime.

The keys to Altis Semiconductor’s success are the objectives of excellence, innovation and strategic partnerships. With a workforce of over 1,200 employees spread over 15 Organizational Units, the need to provide a high availability IT infrastructure and best in class service is essential to achieving continued success.

To meet this requirement, Altis Semiconductor needed real time consolidated CMDB views of their IT infrastructure and Configuration Items (CIs). This provided the foundation for other fully integrated service management processes, including Incident, Problem, Change and Knowledge Management.

A crucial element in this project was the ability to leverage existing infrastructure, including Novell NDS/eDirectory, LANDesk, OCS Inventory and Nagios via a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Working with these specifications Altis Semiconductor selected LiveTime Service Manager based on its out-of-the-box third party integration functionality, extensive Web Services API, internationalization and reporting capabilities.

“Using web service injectors from LANDesk, OCS Inventory and numerous local databases into LiveTime’s embedded CMDB, Altis’ IT environment was successfully mapped within LiveTime,” reported the Information Systems Operations Manager, Pascal Martinez. “Over 9000 CIs are now maintained automatically within LiveTime’s Federated Configuration Management System (CMS).”

Impressed with the service and support offered during the LiveTime implementation Mr Martinez said, “The first phase project to integrate LiveTime was really a great success”. “LiveTime has enabled Altis to adopt ITIL 3 best practices across the organization, giving our more than 90 technicians full process visibility as well build and leverage existing knowledge.”

Mr Martinez also informed LiveTime, “Working with Incident Management and creating over one hundred requests per day, we now have the ability to build a dynamic knowledge base and apply 16 different SLAs to a single workflow to ensure individual customer expectations are met.”

LiveTime Service Manager supports industry standards such as ISO/IEC 20000 and best practices such as ITIL to help you develop a sustainable and continuous service management capability. LiveTime Service Manager enables you to demonstrate compliance in most of the mandatory ISO/IEC 20000 Service Management process areas including service level management and reporting, incident, problem, configuration and change management. LiveTime also includes support for budgeting and accounting, and release management.

Best Practice

The ISO/IEC 20000 IT Service Management standard builds on the world-wide success of ITIL and the BS 15000 standard. Unlike the ITIL framework where organizations are free to ‘adopt’ and ‘adapt’ the implementation of the guidelines, the ISO standard contains a set of strict ‘controls’ that must be implemented and audited by an external ISO/IEC 20000 Registered Certification Body before being certified. The benefits of certification include improved quality of service and increased business and customer confidence.

Foundations for the Future

ISO/IEC 20000 forms a foundation on which enterprises can build a common vocabulary and integrated processes. Integrated processes are particularly important in a multi-sourced environment, where different vocabularies and processes can result in misunderstandings, poor hand-overs and service-quality issues.

According to Gartner, “the new ISO/IEC 20000 standard is set to become a cornerstone for improving the management of external service providers.”

Real Business Processes

ISO/IEC 20000 concerns itself with the processes (including the policies, documentation, roles and responsibilities) associated with service delivery and support. There are 21 individual processes contained within eight different process groups. LiveTime Service Manager assists with at least eight out of the thirteen Service Management processes, including:

• Service Delivery Processes – service level management, service reporting, budgeting and accounting
• Resolution Processes – Incident and Problem Management
• Release Processes – Release Management
• Control Processes – Change and Configuration Management

Through automated IT controls and extensible workflows, LiveTime Service Manager will help align an organization’s IT services with the needs of the business and its customers. ISO/IEC 20000 improvement efforts implemented via LiveTime Service Manager can be done with the peace of mind that they have been done with ITIL and ISO 20000 as a frame of reference and baseline.