Where are all the HP people?

[Micky]

For the last few weeks I have been head hunting two kinds of HP people: Service Center people (6.x) and Service Manager people (SM 7). Sadly I have only got hold of a handful of those based in the UK and Europe. Where are the HP professionals??!! Are HP failing to put on enough training??
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With a masterful understanding of Information Technology and piercing insight into the ITSM market place, I find the right HP Professionals for my Clients. Simple.

[wodisch]

Well,
we are here - doing ServiceDesk and ServiceCenter/AssetCenter/ConnectIt for years.
This very week I am delivering a training for/about ServiceManager7...

At least here in germany there are still some of us

(and we are pretty sure that's within europe's boundaries)

[Micky]

I bet you there is more training lined up for Service Manager 7 in Germany than in the UK....it is barren here when it comes to SM 7 people. I basically have a database of every HP person in the UK, and very very few of them can scope SM7, let alone implement it.

You guys are a few steps ahead....
_________________
With a masterful understanding of Information Technology and piercing insight into the ITSM market place, I find the right HP Professionals for my Clients. Simple.

[RFedoruk]

This doesn't bode well. The migration path from OVSD 4.5 is to SM7 (us OVSD 5.1 people get the shaft again). That migration completely obsoletes the resources with 4.5 admin skills, so anyone wanting to move to SM7 is going to have to acquire new resources OR train their current ones and wait the year or so it takes to get competant. Because lets be honest here... as flexible as SM7 is, its more than a few steps backwards in ease-of-use.

[Micky]

RFedoruk, I understand what you are saying...but it is the market that is controling things.

HP are very keen to take on BMC's dominance in the market, and they are hoping SM7 will eat away at BMC's Remedy. A colleague of mine met with some BIG users of Remedy, and he said Remedy users they are doing away with it in place of SM7. He said HP have a banner in their offices that reads 'We are going to destroy BMC' (I don't know if this banner story is true...but sure sounds like a big fight is on for the helpdesk market share).


I think going on an SM7 training course is not a bad idea.
_________________
With a masterful understanding of Information Technology and piercing insight into the ITSM market place, I find the right HP Professionals for my Clients. Simple.

[RFedoruk]

[Micky]

The word on the street is that SM7 is overpriced. I haven't heard clients say it is cumbersome to use....though you maybe right (I have not used it myself). I was at the ITSM Roadshow at Kensington Olympia the other day, and some good softwares were on show. Among those that caught my eye were HelpSTAR, TouchPaper, Hornbill, Netsupport, and Symbox. They seemd good; but I don't have enough of experience of them to know which of them is up and coming.
_________________
With a masterful understanding of Information Technology and piercing insight into the ITSM market place, I find the right HP Professionals for my Clients. Simple.

[RFedoruk]

Yeah I haven't heard much about price, but I've seen some deep-dive demos of Service Center 6.2 and SM7 and its definitely way more cumbersome for three reasons.

First, nothing is wizard driven anymore, so form customization, business logic, and view building are functions of coding in a pseudo-C language. Oh, and to make it even easier to swallow (warning: sarcasm) the language isn't fully documented yet.

Second, the fact that practically all customization is code based, you'll forever have to balance customizability vs upgradeability. The HP apologists usually downplay this, but forcing users to chose between getting the app to do what they need, and keeping the app at a supported version is a recipe for disaster.

Third, they're staying with the legacy database structure, names and all. This makes proper reporting even harder than it was in applications like OVSD 5.1. ___________ horrible (insert your favorite explitive).

[DeepikaSood]

Hi all,

I have just joined Service Management web and find it quite intesting. Could anyone suggest me from where i can get some good learning. Suggest any of the tutorials or trainings going to happen soon.

Take care.

[RFedoruk]

Hey Deepika,

It would mostly depend on what product you're interested in. There's a very small number of us here in the OVSD / Service Center / Service Manager space, but I'm sure we'll help where we can.