Harold Pakulat, IST–Service Desk
The Service Desk is pleased to announce that the next major phase of the IST Enterprise Ticketing project has begun, with implementation activities having started in late January 2008. Following protracted negotiations during fall 2007 with BMC for Remedy licensing, and Column Technologies for consulting services, contracts have been signed and we are actively scheduling implementation tasks.
Our expectation is that a significant proportion of the Service Desk ticketing activities will be converted to the new system by mid-2008. As part of this initial conversion, we plan to make the new system available to several non-IST campus units that have expressed an interest in being early adopters of Remedy as their internal ticketing solution. Based on experience during this initial implementation phase, IST will determine a policy for more widespread campus use of the ticketing system; and specifically, what potential charges may be involved.
The Remedy software contract entitles IST to use the Incident and Problem Management modules of the BMC Remedy suite, and initially, only the Incident Management module will be deployed. A CMDB (Configuration Management Database) will also be part of the base installation. In subsequent upgrades, IST may potentially introduce additional modules including asset management, change management, configuration management, and an integrated knowledge base.
In addition to the licensing agreement with BMC, a separate contract was signed with Column Technologies for consulting services on the Remedy project. Column will provide a base installation of Remedy in a Development, QA, and Production environment, provide Remedy implementation workshops, and assist with the implementation of several key production queues. Additionally, knowledge transfer of Remedy installation and administration expertise is one of the key anticipated outcomes of the consulting engagement.
Accessing the IST Ticketing project on bSpaceThe IST Ticketing project on bSpace is open to anyone with a CalNet ID. However, you must actively join the project. The easiest way to do this is:
Additional bSpace resources are available under the Help option on the menu bar and at the bSpace FAQ. |
The ticketing project began in March 2007, with a requirements analysis team, consisting of campus and IST members, interviewing more than 50 stakeholders representing broad areas within campus departments, IST, and two other major universities. This phase of the project identified a specific set of technical requirements that would serve as the basis for product comparisons. The complete Software Requirements Specification and other project materials are available on the bSpace site "IST Ticketing" (see sidebar for access instructions).
Following the requirements analysis, in June 2007, a gap analysis team determined to what extent the "major" ticketing systems already in use in IST (FootPrints, Remedy, and Request Tracker) could meet the documented requirements. The gap analysis was based on the ability of a current version of each tracking tool to meet a requirement, rather than the specific version or implementation features currently installed at UC Berkeley. Based on this criterion, Remedy v7 was the only candidate system that met all of the requirements, and it was selected as the ticketing solution with which we would move forward.
During fall 2007, an analysis was done of all production queues in the three legacy IST ticketing systems. Each production queue was analyzed with respect to monthly volume, integration with other systems, standard reports, ownership, and possible migration order. Basic statistics on the relative usage rates of all three legacy systems were generated and an approximate migration schedule was developed. Detailed field-level analysis was also completed for the queues to be part of the initial implementation.
For more information on this and other Service Desk matters, contact Harold Pakulat,
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