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California to Bring Charges in H-P Scandal
California Attorney General Bill Lockyer is expected to file criminal charges against former Hewlett-Packard Co. Chairman Patricia Dunn and H-P's former ethics lawyer, Kevin Hunsaker, along with outside investigators involved in the corporate spying scandal, according to an attorney familiar with the situation. Along with Ms. Dunn and Mr. Hunsaker, California authorities are expected to charge Ronald DeLia of Security Outsourcing Solutions Inc., and Joe Depante, whose firm, Action Research Group, assisted H-P in obtaining the personal phone records of more than 20 people, including H-P directors and employees, as well as journalists and other outside parties. It is unclear exactly what charges Mr. Lockyer intends to bring, but one of them will almost certainly involve California Penal Code Section 538.5, which specifically outlaws "executing a scheme or artifice to obtain, from a public utility" customers' "billing records." That appears to be exactly what H-P's investigators did, by making so-called pretexting calls, using false pretenses, to phone companies, in order to obtain the investigative targets' phone records.
Source: WSJ

New Support Staffing Solution Announced
Frank J. Rich & Associates – specialists in recruiting support professionals, announces a groundbreaking recruiting model. The 100% Support Staffing Solution is an innovative strategy that offloads company HR generalists and allows our specialists to search and recruit for the hard to fill technical support positions. For a flat monthly fee, Frank J. Rich & Associates will fill all identified positions and guarantee the results. This program allows companies the benefits of a retained search at contract recruiting prices. Weekly progress reports are provided and all position levels are applicable. More details available at http://www.fjrich.com.

Government Agencies Worldwide Turn to Epicor(R) to Manage National Budgets
Epicor Software Corporation, a provider of enterprise business software solutions for the midmarket, announced that governments around the world are successfully using Epicor Enterprise solutions to manage budgets through providing critical controls over commitments and expenditures, and accurate reporting across consolidated national accounts. Already established as an end-to-end suite of proven industry-specific solutions for midmarket organizations, Epicor Enterprise is equally well-suited for government agencies of similar size. With integrated components for financials, customer relationship management (CRM), supplier relationship management (SRM) and business intelligence, Epicor Enterprise provides a single point of accountability, delivering enterprise class functionality at a midmarket total cost-of-ownership.

RightAnswers Launches Next-Generation Unified Knowledge Suite
RightAnswers, Inc., provider of knowledge-driven Self-Service and Support Analyst solutions, announced the launch of its RightAnswers Unified Knowledge Suite. This new suite combines RightAnswers’ products and services to provide internal help desk organizations with self-service and support analyst software solutions, dynamic content, and value-added client success and knowledge management services to improve the support experience for end-users, accelerate problem resolution, and control support costs.

Double your helpdesk efficiency with a click - NetOp On Demand Remote Control

NetOp, the world’s leading technology for remote control, is now available for supplying helpdesk services across the Internet without pre-installing software or configuring firewalls.

By downloading a small, self-executing program, end users can receive true hands-on-help from your helpdesk staff, no matter how end users’ computers are connected to the Internet and regardless of the hardware they are using. Download a trial of NetOp On Demand Remote Control now and cut support costs and help customers better!

North American IT Managers Poised to Profit from ITIL
Nearly half of North American IT managers are currently assessing whether or not their organization will implementing the ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) framework, 17 percent are one to two years into the adoption of the program, and 9 percent have more than 3 years of work invested in implementing the processes, according to a study reported in IT Service Manager, a publication of the International Business Software Managers Association and ECPweb. They study, conducted earlier this year, is a comprehensive survey of IT managers at U.S. and Canadian firms covering their readiness to undertake an ITIL-focused IT service management program.

The reasons behind ITIL implementations vary. Most responding firms said they want to simply or improve their processes, but beyond that, professionals cited "improve customer satisfaction," "lower costs" and "compliance" as reasons they're moving to ITIL.

Looking toward the future, IT managers predict an annual savings from ITIL to average $1.9 million. Respondents indicated that they expect to save on average 10 percent of their IT budgets from such implementation. More important, survey responses indicate that early-stage adopters expect about a 15 percent return on the ITIL investment.

IT executives appear to be buying into the concept as well. Some of the survey's strongest ratings were seen on management commitment to ITIL.

For North American IT Managers, ITIL is exploding and most certainly here to stay. The U.S. market is huge and adoption of ITIL by a moderate number is U.S.-based companies will significantly advance IT service management practices worldwide.

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69% of Employees Raise Voices for Online Chat to Fix Technology Problems at Work
SupportSoft, Inc., a provider of software and services that automate the resolution of technology problems, announced the results of a survey in which 69% of corporate employees interviewed said that they want to use online chat to resolve technical problems at work. Additionally, of those employees who already have tried Web-based chat to resolve problems related to their PC hardware, software, Internet or e-mail usage either at home or at work, 66% have had a positive experience.

Among those employees who expressed interest in using online chat to resolve technology problems, 71% said that it would be the most convenient way to resolve their problem, while 52% felt it would be the fastest.

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Gartner Says 25 Percent of New Business Software Will Be Delivered As Software As A Service by 2011
Software as a service (SaaS) represented approximately 5 percent of business software revenue in 2005 and, by 2011, 25 percent of new business software will be delivered as SaaS, according to Gartner, Inc. SaaS is hosted software based on a single set of common code and data definitions that are consumed in a one-to-many model by all contracted customers, at any time, on a pay-for-use basis, or as a subscription based on usage metrics.

The adoption of the SaaS software delivery model has varied significantly by market segment. SaaS accounted for approximately 8 percent of CRM total software revenue in 2005 (Gartner estimates 2006 SaaS revenue to reach 12 percent of total CRM software revenue) and integration as a service had 10 percent adoption in its market. But, other markets, such as the ERP and supply chain management segments, had less than 4 percent adoption.

As SaaS solutions become more mainstream, and more enterprises adopt them, the dynamic of how they are bought and sold is changing. During the past few years, the primary acquirer of SaaS has been a line of business leader, such as the vice president of sales or the head of human resources, without much involvement of central IT.

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The Next Wave of Software Licensing
Users are fed up with the way vendors sell them software. How upset are they? A recent survey by software management provider Macrovision found that only 28 percent of enterprises were satisfied with their vendor’s pricing and licensing strategy. That means the door is open to a number of alternative, emerging models, notably subscription and per-use schemes. Meanwhile, changes in where and how software runs -- including SaaS (software as a service), virtualization, and multicore processors -- are accelerating the rate of change.
Full Article...

Where I.T. Matters: How 10 Technologies Transformed 10 Industries
Over the last five years, there haven't been any great technological breakthroughs on the order of the personal computer or the Internet. Yet organizations around the country continue to embrace new technologies, such as Web services, digital supply chains, open systems, wireless communications, and self-service and collaborative technologies. And the net result is that technology is having as much of an impact, if not more so, on how business operates than at any other time. This article takes a look back over the last five or so years and examines 10 major industries to see how leading companies in each of those sectors used information technology to boost not only themselves, but the entire market in which they do business.
Full Article...

The New Science of Change
Advances in brain analysis technology are bringing a much-needed hard foundation of science to a leadership challenge that to CIOs has long seemed hopelessly soft and poorly defined: change management. Pictures don't (usually) lie, and the pictures of the brain show that our responses to change are predictable and universal. From a neurological perspective, we all respond to change in the same way: We try to avoid it. But understanding the brain's chemistry and mechanics has led to insights that can help CIOs ameliorate the pain of change and improve people's abilities to adapt to new ways of doing things.
Full Article...

Don’t Get Left Behind In The IT Manager Boom
IT managers now represent 11.2% of IT employment, the fourth-largest tech job category, up from 7.8% in mid-2001, when it was the sixth-largest job category. This trend is critical for IT pros to understand as they manage their own careers or make decisions about hiring and developing staffers. Even people who want to stay on a technical track must pay attention because this isn't just a matter of changing titles on business cards. The labor stats are based on people describing their work, not their titles. The surging number of managers reflects the skills that companies value and the way IT is used and implemented in business today.
Full Article...

IT & Innovation: Out Of Sync?
Innovation means implementing new ideas that create value. In the mid-1990s, IT was an innovation enabler. But today, instead of being innovation enablers, many IT organizations today are innovation barriers. Why has IT changed, and how can it restore its role as a builder of innovative capabilities?
Full Article...

Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win
by William C. Taylor, Polly G. LaBarre

Business as usual is a bust. In industry after industry, the old guard is cutting back and losing ground. Meanwhile, organizations that were once dismissed as upstarts, as wildcards-or mavericks-are making waves and growing fast. There is a reason: In an age of hyper-competition and nonstop innovation, the only way to stand out from the crowd is to stand for something truly original.

That's the lesson behind the companies, executives, and entrepreneurs you'll meet in Mavericks at Work. They are winning big in business by rethinking the logic of how business gets done. They have devised exciting new answers to the timeless challenges facing organizations of every size and leaders in every field: how you make strategy, how you unleash new ideas, how you connect with customers, how your best people achieve great results.

More Info...

New Research: 2006 Service and Support Metrics
The valuable research provides insight into a range of issues and challenges important to service and support executives, including the channels organizations are leveraging to deliver support, the technologies they’re deploying to improve service delivery, the metrics they’ve established to measure their performance, and the salaries they’re paying their help desk staff, contact center agents and higher-level support executives. Click here to get your free copy!

2006 Service & Support Technology Showcase
The 2006 version of our Service & Support Technology Showcase is now available! This valuable, in-depth buyer’s guide features the latest tools and technologies in the support services industry that enable your support operation to deliver superior customer service.

White Paper: The Role of Web-Based Self-Service in the Support Organization
Today, as enterprise knowledge and content management takes on greater importance, self-service technologies are allowing users to search disparate, dynamic data sources using such sophisticated search mechanisms as natural language processing, precision optimization and adaptive learning. Not only are users exploiting Web-based channels to find answers to questions, diagnose problems and download fixes, but to perform such transactional duties as product registration, email opt-ins, user profile enhancements, service agreement updates and more. (please note – you will need your member log-in to view this white paper)
Read the full white paper!

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Carolyn Healey, Editor - chealey@supportindustry.com

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