Looks like Microsoft has announced a new product called System Center code named “Service Desk” planned for 1H 2007.
From Arlindo’s Blog over at technet (http://blogs.technet.com/aralves/archive/2006/04/25/426305.aspx):
Features planned:
- This product will be focused on automating IT across people and processes including solutions for Incident, Problem, Asset, and Change Management with many new scenarios enabled via a powerful self-service portal.
- Critical to the Asset and Change Management functionality will be a CMDB (Configuration Management Database) built leveraging the System Definition Model
- A core set of automated IT processes that map to our ITIL based Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) will be included as part of this solution
- This product will provide deep integration with existing Microsoft technologies including SMS, MOM, Office System and Windows.
- We are delivering not only a product, but also a platform that will be easily extensible by customers and partners with solution packs, just like management packs and MOM.
- This initial offering will be targeted at new and existing MOM and SMS customers who are requesting this kind of functionality. I just saw a demo on this product where the IT team had found a resolution for a reported problem, the next step they did was creating a change request on the Service desk console.
- Using the workflow within this product (based on Workflow foundation), the system sended a request to the Change request manager with a link to the change request ticket. After approval the engineer can directly shedule the patch update onto the SMS system, when this is done the patch gets advertised through the SMS server.
PR: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/apr06/04-25MMS06KeynotePR.mspx
…snip…
Muglia announced the intention to deliver a service desk offering that will provide two key components to form the foundation for System Center: a workflow engine for facilitating industry best processes and practices, and the foundation for the Microsoft implementation of the configuration management database (CMDB). Consistent with Microsoft’s mantra of capturing knowledge in models, the System Center Service Desk solution will include workflow templates, following the ITIL-based best practices and processes, for a number of key customer scenarios. It will also deliver unprecedented integration with System Center Operations Manager and System Center Configuration Manager out of the box. By adding the asset and change management capabilities to the System Center portfolio and tightly integrating with System Center Configuration Manager, Microsoft is significantly extending the number of problem scenarios it can help solve for its customers.
Official Service Desk Blog: http://blogs.technet.com/servicedesk/default.aspx
Initial thoughts – Looks pretty similar to our ITSM & CCMDB messaging and capabilities. Maybe they’ll participate in the CMDB Federation and Integration Standardization group. We’ll have to see how this new product develops.