After attending the Service Desk’s “preview” last Microsoft TechDays at Lisbon I do have some notes on this promising product.
They got it right regarding usability and already existing Microsoft technology. The strong points I see:
Integration
SMS – Inventory, CMDB related activities support
MOM – Automatic Incident creation, knowledge base
SharePoint – Knowledge base
InfoPath – Customized forms (really flexible this part)
Outlook – Approval and notification tool
Powershell – Scripting
Workflow Foundation .NET – Workflow
For the first two an umbrella called System Center gathers tools for Service Management. Service Desk closes neatly the basic Service Support underlying technology.
Self-service Wizard
A traditionally strong point for Microsoft is the Self-service Wizard for registering Incidents, Service Requests and Knowledge base. All with search and RSS feed notification.
Solution Packs
Like Management Packs for MOM, these Solution Packs extend the Service Desk and are an excellent way of opening up services on top of the product.
All-together-demo
An impressive demo showed how a Configuration Baseline discrepancy my be “automagically” dwelt with. SMS (well, the new product’s name: System Center Configuration Manager 2007) knows what desired configurations one wants and matches them against the current configuration. Any delta found will initiate a Change that will go through Service Desk, get approved via Outlook and finally deflagrates an advertisement for SMS to apply the needed patch.
The most intriguing (and promising) part for me was the SML (Service Modelling Language) which was presented like a meta-language for the CMDB. On top of this, a Common Modelling Library gateways CIs representation to other Service Management frameworks.
The big four of ITSM (BMC, CA, HP and IBM) will have to make room for Microsoft… in a year or so.
ITIL Blues 
August 8, 2007 at 6:58 am |
Has anyone seen any more about Microsoft Service Desk. I’ve searched and searched and I can only find articles that are around 12 months old.
Is there any new news in relation to this product?
August 14, 2007 at 4:27 pm |
I’m trying to find info about this as well but keep coming up blank. There’s a whitepaper on microsofts site but its dated July 2006 re: Service Manager.
August 14, 2007 at 11:42 pm |
I recommend applying and participating on the Microsoft Connect:
https://connect.microsoft.com/default.aspx
As they state, things you can do there are: “downloading the latest software and written material, taking surveys, exchanging ideas in newsgroup forums, and, most importantly, providing and reviewing feedback about your experiences.”
There is some activity on the newsgroup forums, that could be a source of more information.
The most I could get is that Microsoft Service Center Beta 2 will probably come out early 2008. So, the Release Candidate will come out the second quarter of 2008 and the Release to Manufacturing will go further to the end of 2008 (beware this is me guessing…).