]po[ is a modular open source project and service management tool with focus on finance and knowledge management. " ]po[ ITSM" is a special configuration of ]po[ designed to address the specific needs of IT departments and IT service providers, according to ITIL V3 best practices.

 

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]project-open[ ITSM Processes

The following diagram provides an overview over the processes supported by ]po[ ITSM. Starting with incidents, change requests and project proposals, ]po[ ITSM provides a continuous process chain covering the planning, priorization, distribution, execution and rollout of changes throughout the IT service organization.

ITSM processes supported by ]project-open[

 

 

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ITSM Challenges

IT departments face various challenges such as cost reduction, regulatory compliance, competitiveness of internal IT compared to outsourced services andapplication and infrastructure modernization. Management's demands to better control IT processes, more demanding end users and shorter innovation cycles lead to higher requirements in terms of flexibility and responsiveness.

IT Service Management ITIL, COBIT, etc.

Organizations approach this challenges by adapting industry best practices. Initiatives usually depend on operational needs, strategic alignment, access to know-how and tools available in the marketplace. If an organization is following the common and popular ITIL standards or deploying other framworks such as COBIT, the objectives usually remain the same: Maximizing the benefits derived from the use of information technology and developing appropriate IT governance and control in a company.

Our value proposition

• Integration
  We provide a one-stop solution for IT management integrating important applications and replacing 10-15 smaller ones. Just like the ERP systems did to manufacturing companies 20 years ago.
• Visibility & Transparency
  We allow business managers and business users to monitor IT projects and IT service operations.
• Financials & Controlling
  We introduce a solid financial perspective across all IT activities, with low overhead for employees.
• Business Intelligence
  We provide managers with indicators, reports and other analysis tools to build an integrated ITSM scorecard.

Benefits of following the open-source way in ITSM

Most companies nowadays have embraced the benefits of using Open-Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS) like lower costs of ownership (TCO), scalability, control and flexibility advantages, no license management costs and lower upgrade/maintenance costs - just to name a few. OSS/FS protects its users from the risks and disadvantages of single source solutions. Most importantly as a user you don't need to rely on the vendor's agenda and instead of having a single point of reference, a network of internal and external IT service providers is at your disposal.

 

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]project-open[ ITSM Benefits

• One Integrated Application:
  ]po[ can replace a large number of stand-alone applications with a single integrated system, reducing the maintenance overhead and the number of providers.
• Regulatory Compliance:
  The ]po[ integration of Change Management with Configuration Management provides a "transparent" change management history of released software as required by auditing organizations in the financial sector.
• Increased Visibility of IT Projects:
  ]po[ allows project stakeholders to check the project status. Permissions determine whether a user can read, modify or administer a project.
• Project Budget & Progress Tracking:
  ]po[ shows up to date information about budget and progress for each project. Information includes timesheet information, external costs such as travel costs and information imported from SAP FI or other accounting applications.
• IT Service Cost & Financial Controlling:
  ]po[ automatically captures all necessary information in order to determine IT costs for service types.
• Performance Reports and Statistics:
  The integrated reporting and data-warehouse engines provide insight into key process indicators.
• Project Portfolio Management:
  PPM allows managing lists of projects and development requests and supports senior management decision-making by providing all fields necessary to priorize requests.
• Release Management:
  ]po[ can manage and track the advance of different items included in a software release, allowing the release manager to take informed decisions.
• Learned Lessons, Wiki, Blog & Knowledge Management:
  A full text search engine indexes all contents in ]po[ , allowing fast access to learned lessons, wiki pages and solutions to previous bugs, what is sometimes resulting in enormous time savings.

 

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]project-open[ ITSM Integration Links

]po[ ITSM offers users a number of integration links in order take advantage of input from other applications commonly found in IT departments and IT service provider organizations.

]po[ ITSM Integration Links

Systems Monitoring and Incident Tracking Integration Links Nagios: Create Tickets from Nagios events, create Configuration Items from Nagios configuration. Big Brother: Simple import of BB4 status currently for display only. OTRS, BugZilla, Mantis, RT: Import of tickets + update of ticket status when fixed in ]po[. Authentication and Identity Management LDAP: Authentication against LDAP servers (OpenLDAP and MS Active Directory) and/or synchronization of user data. Support for ]po[ as master for LDAP information. PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules): Support for various Linux PAM modules Inventory and Configuration Management Integration Links OCS-Inventory: ]po[ can import OCS inventory lists and convert them in a list of configuration items. H-Inventory: Same as OCS-Inventory Project Scheduling GanttProject: Bidirectional (import + export without loss) "round trip" editing of project schedules. openProj: Same as GanttProject. MS-Project: Import of MS-Project schedules via GanttProject. Financial Management Integration Links SAP FI: Import of costs from SAP FI general ledger costs to ]po[ projects based on shared project code ("Innenauftragsnummer"). Microsoft NAV (Navision): Export of ]po[ financial information in UBL suitable to be parsed in NAV connector. Lexware Buchhalter: CSV export of financial documents readable by Lexware Buchhalter. Datev: CSV export of financial documents readable by Datev-based tax consultants. UBL: ]po[ can export financial items in UBL V1.0 (Universal Business Language). UBL is a kind of simplified ebXML. Generic Interfaces ODBC: The generic ODBC interface allows to read, update and create objects. There exists a PL/SQL API for creating new objects. XML-RPC: A generic XML-RPC interface that maps XML-RPC calls to TCL procedure calls. SOAP/WSDL: Generic SOAP/WSDL implementation from University Vienna.

 

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]project-open[ ITSM Modules in Detail

]po[ ITSM Helpdesk

The ]po[ ITSM Helpdesk is the central point of contact between service providers and users/customers on a day-to-day basis. It is intended to meet the communications needs of both customers and IT.

All incidents are registered with the system. Supported by business intelligence capabilities it serves as an extremely beneficial tool for IT Management when used to find, analyze, and eliminate common problems.

Staff members can effectively track and monitor the status of customer problems.

The Help Desk provides to customers a central and convenient point of reference for their IT-related incidents. At any time new incidents can be entered and already registered incidents can be looked up to determine their status.
A powerful and highly configurable workflow engine is used to manage the flow of tickets.

]po[ ITSM Change Management

The objective of Change Management is to ensure that standardized methods and procedures are used for efficient and prompt handling of all changes leading to controlled IT infrastructure, in order to minimize the number and impact of any related incidents upon service.

]po[ ITSM Release Management

Release Management supports the platform-independent and automated distribution of software and hardware, including license controls across the entire IT infrastructure.

]po[ ITSM Configuration Management

Configuration Management is a process within the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL). It deals with tracking individual Configuration Items (CI) in an IT environment which can be as simple as server or as complex as an entire IT Department. ]project-open[ ITSM supports the five main activities in CM: Planning, Identification, Control, Monitoring and Verification.

 

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]project-open[ Implementation & (Organizational) Change Management

A successful implementation of an application like ]po[ in an organization only partly depends on the application itself. Other factors like team psychology and data integration play an important role in a smooth transition, particularly in larger organizations.

To address these issues the ]po[ team offers professional support and consulting services based on the experience of more than 200 rollout projects in the past. During the start of an implementation project, the ]po[ team will visit all involved groups in the IT department and analyze per group:

• Operating procedures, processes and workflows,
• existing tools and
• the data contained in existing tools.

Based on this input, we develop several "reasonable" scenarios on how to integrate existing structures into a single consistent system.

• Thanks to its database API, it is easy to import data from external applications into the ]po[ database in order to make them available to ]po[ users.
• As an alternative, thanks to its modular architecture it is relatively easy to extend ]po[ to cover new processes.

Thanks to its modular architecture and the low overall implementation costs (open-source), ]po[ is suitable for a wide range of IT departments and their corresponding budgets. Please contact us to discuss options and to inquire a cost estimation.