Businesses should be able set up virtual IT environments as easily as creating an email account or buying off-the-shelf services.  This is the vision of ITSM software specialist ServiceNow, which has launched a VMware lifecycle automation tool which is said to reduce the provisioning process from ‘weeks to minutes’.

Chris Pope, senior product manager, told ServiceDesk360 that integrating VMWare automation to its ITSM platform allows ServiceNow customers to spec, price and add virtualisation options to their service catalogue.  “The catalogue will be able to list the service requirements – how much memory is needed, the cost etc  – and the system will trigger processes such as approvals and CIs.  Your Windows team is already buried in requests, so if you can standardise your VMWare and put it into the catalogue, business users can deploy it in an hour without even talking to IT.”

The commoditisation of IT services such as VMWare and email is helping the service desk role evolve according to Pope.  “People still like speaking to humans, but whereas password resets and troubleshooting once took 50 per cent of the service desk’s time, we are seeing a shift towards providing more valuable services.  By moving the second line detail to the first line, service desk staff are becoming more like support engineers their sharing knowledge of how technology can help the business.”