IBM SmartCloud Control Desk Solution Overview

IBM® SmartCloud™ Control Desk is an industry leading IT Service Management Solution, capable to provide a single solution to your multivendor, multi platform IT environments. With todays dynamic and changing IT environment, where virtualization and cloud have provided additional complexities to IT, and with the increasing access of non IT users to the organization’s systems, IT needs to provide the means for adequate IT management, while providing value.

All these objectives can be achieved while leveraging IBM SmartCloud Control Desk, a single platform that is easy to install maintain and build upon. The solution is the result of the integration of asset management, configuration management and service desk IBM solutions to provide a single integral approach towards IT Service Management to fit todays challenges and dynamics.

Figure 1 gives an overview of the end to end value proposition that IBM SmartCloud Control Desk offers.


Figure 1. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk - end to end value proposition for today's IT demands


Did you know?

Over the past 10 years, innovation and automation have disrupted the way organizations see their businesses, manufacture their products, set business goals and consolidate information, because of the rapid expansion and benefits of IT. A new business front has opened, with an asset’s ability to get interconnected and send information back to corporate data centers to gather and consolidate information, an era where technology has become a priority, with CIOs and CEOs placing additional emphasis in IT services in order to drive lines of businesses with sound and solid IT.

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is built from the ground up, to provide a unique platform, able to provide a platform for IT assets and non IT assets to work and the only platform in the market able to manage physical and digital infrastructure across your organization within a single solution. You will be able to maintain, administer and manage your IT and non IT assets while leveraging out of the box ITIL processes.

Business value

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk will be able to provide a base platform for your IT day to day service management duties. By starting with the out of the box ITIL processes, you will be able to start without major configurations. IBM provides packages designed for those who require a standard approach within their organizations, and that are not quite ready for an ITIL implementation. These packages have been designed based on real life deployments and implementations.

Once the processes are in place, you will be able to configure KPIs or key performance indicators, which will measure your organizations performance, providing valuable information for improvement iniatives.

A major feature within IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is the ability to provide the end user with a service portal, or Self Service Center, from which he or she will be able to request services, access the knowledge base and manage their assets. A major focal point towards the success of IT service management tools, is the successful deployment of a platform, that can encourage the end user to avoid telephone or email contact. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk provides an intuitive overall user interfase, that can be accessed with the majority of web browsers, and through mobile devices.


Solution overview

An organization needs to rely on solid and proven IT processes and solutions that can provide quick and tangible results. A well known and proven IT best practice called the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) has been widely used as a private and public sector IT management framework. ITIL provides solid foundations towards an effective IT Service Management.

Since no organization can halt or pause their business operations to implement either IT processes or IT solutions, the complexity increases, generating stress in their IT service operations department. Add into the mix the increasing complexity of server virtualization and cloud computing, the inclusion of non-IT assets, and processes and tools needed to manage them, and the challenge increases even more.

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk can provide an optimized and automated end-to-end IT service management solution, while including ITIL V3 processes, helping to accelerate your service management implementation. Based on a common platform, IBM SmartCloud Control Desk can provide a single user interface and user portal (which includes self-help) to reduce first level support of service requests and requests for change, to shift their attention towards service outages or incidents.

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk also provides mechanisms for workflow development, which can be included within every IT processes, such as request approvals, service catalog requests, or change management workflow assignments. Let us take a look at the different service management disciplines that IBM SmartCloud Control Desk addresses:

• Service request management gives you an efficient service desk for handling service requests and managing incidents.
• Change, configuration and release management provides advanced impact analysis and automated change procedures designed to reduce risk and support integrity of services.
• IT asset lifecycle management provides inventory management and software license compliance capabilities. Helps to manage assets throughout their lifecycle, optimizing usage of digital and physical assets and minimizing compliance risks.
• Service catalog helps users solve their own problems. Provides an intuitive self-help portal and a complete catalog of services.
• Support for service providers supply service support and service delivery capabilities for multiple customers in a single deployed instance. This can help increase profitability and improve customer satisfaction.

Solution architecture

With IBM SmartCloud Control Desk you will be able to deploy the solution in multiple ways, such as SaaS, VM option or the traditional on premise deployment, that can contain the optional package for outsourcing companies. This solution provides the flexibility and architecture to move from one deployment type to another, without losing information or configurations within your system. Further more, if your organization requires to provide IT services with IBM SmartCloud Control Desk, then the Service Provider module with definitely suit your needs. To learn more about IBM SmartCloud Control Desk please check out the IBM Redbooks® publication IT Service Management Best Practices Using IBM SmartCloud Control Desk, SG24-8095.

As IT service management solutions are becoming part of the core of IT, high availability and contingency architectures have been designed in IBM SmartCloud Control Desk features. For additional information please check out the IBM Redbooks publication High Availability and Disaster Recovery Configurations for IBM SmartCloud Control Desk and IBM Maximo® Products, SG24-8109.


Usage scenarios

By deploying and leveraging the service catalogue, IBM SmartCloud Control Desk can reduce the number of incoming calls and emails to your service desk. The Service catalogue can provide an effective and time reducing feature, in which the requests from the end users can go through specific workflows, for a faster an streamlined execution, that involves specific teams and roles within your organization.

Furthermore, the integrated chat capabilities within IBM SmartCloud Control Desk, provide an additional mean of communication within your organization. By facilitating the usage of a chat platform, your call takers and IT staff can communicate in a more effective way, by coordinating and working with the end user online, without leaving their post or station.

Finally, by discovering assets and configuration items, the organization will be able to provide a more effective change management culture, in which the reduction of derived incidents from inadequate change planning and execution will start to reduce. By leveraging electronic discovery, IBM SmartCloud Control Desk can provide detail information of your IT environment, important input for change management decisions, such as how systems interconnect within each other, how they rely on one another, and what impact kind of impact would a change mean to a service or application.


Integration

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is an integrated approach towards the industry needs of an IT Service Backbone, where IT operations can be managed through a central and consolidated front, that can share information between stakeholders, while managing the whole IT operation from a single platform. It is the only suite capable of providing service asset and configuration management for IT and non IT Assets in a single solution. It also provide a service provider module, enabling outsourcing organizations around the world to deliver IT Service Management from a single instance, exploiting best practice processes.

Within the IBM solution portfolio, you will be able to integrate with:

• Event Management: By leveraging solutions such as IBM Tivoli® Monitoring, IBM Tivoli Business Service Manager, IBM Netcool® Omnibus, IBM Netcool Impact and IBM Tivoli Network Manager, you will be able to manage events within IBM SmartCloud Control Desk. By consolidating information in a single platform, and by crosschecking and bringing information from the CMDB, incident and change management will increase their effectiveness, while increasing uptime to your core business applications.
• Endpoint management: By bringing information from your endpoints, you will be able to quickly discover software and assets. You will be in the position to perform license management by exploiting the information provided by Tivoli Endpoint Management, to provide and adequate measurement on the amount of licenses being installed and used by your end users. When the gap is quantified, you will be able to determine which software requires additional licenses, or which require to be retired from your endpoints.

Supported platforms

While leveraging IBM service management solutions, IBM SmartCloud Control Desk integrates with endpoint management, monitoring, provisioning and asset and configuration discovery solutions, and IBM Rational® Tools, to provide a seamless end-to-end service management solution.

To learn more about the system requirements for SmartCloud Control Desk version 7.5.1 visit the following website:

http://ibm.co/17hDee5


Ordering information

This product is only available through IBM Passport Advantage® . It is not available as shrinkwrap. These products may only be sold directly by IBM or by authorized IBM Business Partners for Software Value Plus. For more information about IBM Software Value Plus, visit http://www.ibm.com/partnerworld/page/svp_authorized_portfolio.

To locate IBM Business Partners for Software Value Plus in your geography for a specific Software Value Plus portfolio, visit http://www.ibm.com/partnerworld/wps/bplocator/.

Search using the following information:

• Product group: IBM SmartCloud
• Product Identifier Description: 5725-E24 IBM SmartCloud Control Desk
• Product category: IBM SmartCloud Control Desk
  

As shown in Table 1, customers with active maintenance or subscription for the products listed are entitled to receive the corresponding media pack.

Table 1. Media packs

Program name (Media pack description)	PID number (Part number)	Charge unit description
IBM SmartCloud Control Desk Entry Edition	BJ119ML	V7.5.1 MP ML Media Pack
IBM SmartCloud Control Desk V7.5.1 MP ML	BJ11AML	Media Pack
IBM SmartCloud Control Desk Service Provider	BJ11BML	Edition V7.5.1 MP ML Media Pack
IBM SmartCloud Control Desk Internal Service	BJ11CML	Provider Edition V7.5.1 MP ML Media Pack
IBM SmartCloud Control Desk Entry Edition	BJ11DML	V7.5.1 VMImage SUSE Linux ML Media Pack
IBM SmartCloud Control Desk V7.5.1 VMImage	BJ11EML	SUSE Linux ML Media Pack
IBM SmartCloud Control Desk Everyplace® V7.5.1	BJ11FML	MP ML Media Pack

Related information

For more information, see the following documents:

• IT Service Management Best Practices Using IBM SmartCloud Control Desk, SG24-8095
  http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg248095.html
• High Availability and Disaster Recovery Configurations for IBM SmartCloud Control Desk and IBM Maximo Products, SG24-8109
  http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg248109.html
• IBM SmartCloud Control Desk product page
  http://www.ibm.com/software/products/us/en/smartcloudcontroldesk/
• IBM Offering Information page (announcement letters and sales manuals):
  http://www.ibm.com/common/ssi/index.wss?request_locale=en

On this page, enter IBM SmartCloud Control Desk, select the information type, and then click Search. On the next page, narrow your search results by geography and language.