Analyst firm reports greater sophistication in IT service management market.

IT service management is no longer the exclusive preserve of large enterprises. According to a recent Gartner study, the overall service desk market grew by 13% in 2005.

Much of the growth in the small and midsize business (SMB) service desk market is attributed to businesses looking beyond incident management and the reactive opening and closing of tickets, to a more integrated IT service and support delivery strategy that includes a tool's capability to perform problem management, service-level reporting, self-service and knowledge management. As IT service management becomes more widely adopted by midsize organizations, iET Solutions asserts its position as a market leader serving this growing market sector.

According to iET Solutions whose ITIL-based ITSM suite is aimed at organizations with up to 10,000 employees, an important factor behind the pace of growth in the middle of the market is the changing expectations of user organizations.

The new Gartner report, 'IT Service Desk Vendors Target Small and Midsize Business', indicates that the IT service desk market is undergoing significant product and vendor activity. Gartner's Research Director, David M. Coyle, states in the report, "Gartner has identified changes in the service desk market and the vendors that are financially viable, have competitive products and have a strong customer focus on the small and midsize business (SMB) market. The needs of an SMB differ from an enterprise in terms of price, ease of implementation and maintenance, scalability, integration with other IT service management tools and integration with third-party systems and customization."

According to Michael Scheib, president and CEO of iET Solutions, "Organizations are developing more integrated IT service and delivery strategies and they require their service management solutions to fully support these needs rather than just providing basic functionality. It is no longer enough for an application to provide little more than incident management with the reactive opening and closing of tickets. Our iET ITSM 4.0, launched in July 2006, takes a more proactive approach to planning for IT infrastructure changes, configuration management, and problem resolution." The Gartner report evaluates eight vendors that have had ITSM and service desk products for more than five years. Vendors in the report are identified as having reliable products, a significant number of customers and numerous inquiries from Gartner clients, iET Solutions' iET ITSM 4.0 is sold to medium business and small enterprises ranging in size from 2,500 to 10,000 employees; it is competitively priced and provides functionality across many IT service management modules. The front-office functions of iET Solutions' ITSM suite deliver fast and efficient service desk performance while its comprehensive release, change, and configuration management capabilities give users the tools they need for optimized back-office operations. The iET CMDB solution delivers full configuration, discovery, and relationship information in a federated manner. The performance measurement analysis capability assess how a specific business process or function is performing against key performance indicators (KPIs) and provides notification alerts before service level agreements are violated. The iET ITSM service level management module provides a powerful set of tools to track and comply with Service Level Agreements (SLA) between the IT organization and its customers.

www.iet-solutions.de