Hewlett

Packard Enterprise (HPE) for Incident

Management
Executive Summary – HPE Service Manager

Overview • Enterprise level Incident Management functionality

• Pink Verified
• Available On-Premise and as Hosted
• Impressive use of Big Data analytics
• Partnership with Xmatters, Bomgar, Westbury, KBI

Strengths • Comprehensive Incident Management offering
• Can be used for other functions for example HR, Legal &
Facilities Management
• Big Data analytics
• Image based auto categorization
• Smart phone access
• Hot topics & trending
• Tightly aligned CMS
• Strong linkages to event management

Weaknesses • Not designed for the small business market

• The tool has been round a long time; some customers
might not be aware of newer capabilities. And, customers
on older versions might not be able to take advantage of
new capabilities.

Primary • Large & very large customer accounts
Market Focus
Analyst – Vawns Murphy
Independent Review
Irish mum of 3. ITIL V2 Manager (red badge)
Let’s be honest, HP is a company in no need of an introduction. Everyone and their
mum knows about HP be it for hardware, software or enterprise solutions. I’ve used HP and ITIL V3 Expert (purple badge). SDI
software since the very beginning of my career in IT back in 2000 when I was a baby Managers certificate. Further qualifications in
techie using HP Openview to manage tickets between queues. Since then I’ve used HP
Service Centre and HP Service Manager and its position as one of the big four is well COBIT, ISO 20000, SAM, PRINCE2 and
established. But, not everyone knows that HP split into two companies last fall. Service Microsoft. Author of itSMF UK collateral on
Manager is now provided by the new Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)
Service Transition, Software Asset
The first thing that impressed me about the product was how well it was designed for Management, Problem Management & the
your typical stressed out Incident Manager. The initial landing page opens up into a
comprehensive reporting dashboard full of charts, tickers and drill down-able graphs. “How to do CCRM” book. Reviewer for the
There is nothing worse than dealing with a busy Service Desk or a Major Incident (and Service Transition ITIL 3 2011 publication.
believe me, I’ve been a stressed out Incident Manager, I even had a mug that said
“there’s a good chance there might be vodka in this”) than being asked to provide a When not being pelted with brightly coloured
detailed management report ASAP. HPE takes this issue out of the equation by balls in the name of ITIL, I am a senior analyst
empowering higher ups to make their own pretty pictures. You can even customise
your profile with viewing preferences, expanding or collapsing data streams with the for Enterprise Opinions.
click of the mouse.

Service Desk analysts can sort Incidents by a wealth of categories and can export data
easily into a medium of choice. The reporting module within HPE Service Manager has
been rebuilt completely to move away from Crystal Reports; something that makes me
ridiculously happy. In a previous role, I always felt like I deserved a medal or chocolate
every time I successfully completed any Crystal Reports faffery so anything that makes
data easier to work with gets my vote.

Linking Incidents is easily done and instead of the usual parent - child relationships;
HPE Service Manager enables you to specify the relationship type for example
“caused Incident” or “fixed by Change”. All fields within the Incident form can be made
auditable if the automatic auditing check box is selected; a very useful feature
especially for users in Basel 3 or SOX environments.

End users can log into the product via the web interface or via their mobile devices and
can immediately log Incidents or Service Requests. There is also a very handy search
bar that can point them straight at pertinent Knowledge Base articles. It was here that I
got my first glimpse of how impressively big data analytics have been woven into the
product. The tool uses smart tag technology to automatically categorise Incidents
based on the attached pictures - the guys at HPE use all sorts of pictures (including
Minions!) to demonstrate this. If your organisation is starting to look at Agile or Lean
then this could be a significant source of efficiency savings.

The chat functionality also makes use of analytics and the system will even suggest
people that could help resolve the related Incident for example the service manager or
CI owner. The chat bubbles feature pictures of all participants so again Minions were
used to great effect here!

Big data is used to power the Knowledge Base; fixes and workarounds are
automatically suggested and task management can be used so that multiple teams can
work on the same Incident without multiple reassignments and the system is
configured to ensure an Incident cannot be closed without all related tasks being
resolved preventing zombie tasks.

The system is very much geared towards proactive Problem Management; hot topic
analysis can identify what Incidents are trending and raise related Problem records as
appropriate. Fun fact; NASCAR use the same tool to identify trends amongst viewers;
a sort of x is trending so let's run a commercial on it during the next ad break. In short if
Lightning McQueen ever needed to log an Incident or Service Request (I know, I know
he’s not real but I have a five year old who loves him, ok?) he’d be using HPE Service
Manager to do it!

The heat map also looks at Incident volumes so can be used as a visualisation tool
during fault analysts e.g. a CPU bottleneck. Options will also appear in the drop down
menu e.g. raise Change or log Problem record. Stop words can also be built into the
system to exclude certain scenarios.

An Incident can be promoted to a Major Incident by ticking a simple check box which
adds extra fields into the Incident form. The extra fields included out of the box are:

• Designated Incident Manager

• Major Incident review
• Root Cause

In summary; this is a fantastic product for large organisations. The tool has a
comprehensive engine behind it that can manage any enterprise level ITSM task it
encounters. Big Data analytics drive efficiency savings and support a move to more
proactive service model without compromising on functionality or management
information.

Technical Summary

Incident logging, Incidents can be logged from an e-mail, tweet, directly from a CI
categorization & or Service Catalogue entry, via Event Management or through
automation options an integrated ACD system. With Service Manager Smart
Analytics an incident can easily be logged via remote devices
like Smart Phones using a simple natural language based text
message or a screenshot. This smart ticketing will automatically
classify and assign based on historical patterns.

System access On premise and hosted. Access primarily via web and mobile.
options (web, fat
client, mobile, etc.)

Technical Summary continued

Incident tracking The Incident management system knows how many times an
and lifecycle issue is reassigned and this information can be used to trigger
special handling, notification, etc. Also linkage to service level
management (SLM) to track compliance and drive workflow
based on service targets.

Prioritizing and The out of box system provides an ITIL® based framework for
escalating incidents processing Incidents. The solution allows the business to adjust
the processes and data necessary to control all parts of the
incident process including escalation handling via simple
tailoring.

Major Incidents The system provides flag field to identify many characteristics
such as major incident, total loss of service, escalated. The
major incident flag fields trigger unique workflow and adds new
columns to the forms. Particularly, an incident manager is
required and incident review fields are exposed to ensure proper
follow up per ITIL expectation and new emails are generated.

Applying industry Aligned to as ITIL®, COBIT & ISO 20000.

models and
frameworks

Incident closure Typically, a two stage closure process. Service Desk
agents/analysts are prompted to enter resolution information
when they close Incident records, including a Closure Code. The
system automatically records the date/time stamp at time of
closure. Several other closure models are supported, and the
use of these optional closure models can be quickly defined via
simply configuration

Reporting and HPE Service Manager includes three tools for generating reports
analytics using key performance indicators: Service Manager reporting
tools, reporting using Crystal Reports, and dashboard queries
and charts. These tools allow users to generate predefined and
ad hoc reports to display any information. Reporting provides a
near real time visibility of issues in the production database.
These reports, KPIs, and dashboards are delivered in such a
way as to minimize impact on the production system. Data can
also be offloaded from the production system to third party
reporting and business analytic solutions.

Interaction/workflow Incidents can be directly linked to Problem records. All records in

with Problem Service Manager have the ability to link with other records of
Management differing or the same type. These relationships encompass
Incidents, Problems, Known Errors, Service Requests, and
Changes. The relationships support either the linkage of existing
records or the creation of new records of any type.
Further, Service Manager Smart Analytics can analyse this data
for patterns and help create problems from clusters of data.

Incident Mgt The Incident Management module can be transposed to other

beyond the Service areas of the business such as HR & Facilities.
Desk

Strengths Commercial Summary
• Excellent Incident Management process
• Excellent customer and user interface
• Impressive use of big data analytics
Vendor
• Can be used for other functions for example HR, Legal & Facilities
Management Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)
• Image based auto categorization
• Smart phone access
• Hot topics & trending
Product
• Tightly aligned CMS
• Strong linkages to event management Service Manager

Weaknesses
• Not designed for the small business market. I know that HPE are the daddy of
Version Reviewed
toolsets but I think they're missing a trick by not having an offering for smaller
businesses. Maybe some sort of cut down Service Manager Light could work? Service Manager 9.41
• The tool has been round a long time; some customers might not be aware of
newer capabilities. And, customers on older versions might not be able to take

advantage of new capabilities. Date of Version Release

In their own words
December 2014
“Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Service Manager (SM) software enables IT to
increase service quality, improve staff efficiency, reduce associated costs, and reduce Year Founded
operational and business risks. Trend identification and pattern matching, provided by
big data analytics, enables faster and more efficient ticket handling, more proactive
management, and superior knowledge delivery. Hewlett Packard (HP) - 1939. HPE -
Service desk organizations can start with built-in ITIL® best practices and expand as
needed including easy process configuration, automation of common tasks, and
2015 when HP recently split
integration with complementary IT management software. The capability to manage
services using a lifecycle approach, with continuous improvement built into the Customers
governance model, allows IT to truly enhance the value to the business.
Service Manager is at the core of HPE IT Service Management (ITSM) solutions and
combines with a powerful suite of operations and extended service management 1,500+
software to provide some of the most robust solutions in the market today. It is central
to end-to-end change, configuration and release management (CCRM), as well as a

comprehensive closed loop incident process. Close alignment exists with proven Pricing Structure
industry best practices and new initiatives like the Open Group’s IT4IT initiative
(http://www.opengroup.org/IT4IT).
Service Desk teams significantly accelerate implementations and future upgrades with Typically priced by number of IT
comprehensive out-of-box capabilities, an intuitive interface, and a wide-ranging set of service desk users (Service Desk
predefined components.”
agents/analysts or managers). A
Further Information Service Manager Enterprise Suite
license provides access to all core
Product Brochure: http://www8.hp.com/h20195/V2/GetPDF.aspx/4AA1-6148ENW.pdf
Technical Brochures: http://h20195.www2.hp.com/V2/GetPDF.aspx/4AA0- modules. This is available as a
4877ENW.pdf dedicated named license or as a
shared concurrent license. Each
This independent review is part of our Incident Management group test 2016, read the
full report at http://www.theitsmreview.com/2016/02/incident-mngt-2016/. Enterprise Suite license includes
TM
1000 catalogue and knowledge ESS
Also participating; Alemba Ltd, Atlassian, Cherwell Software , InvGate Inc.,
ManageEngine, Marval Software Limited, Matrix42 AG, Nexthink, SUMMIT Software (end) users. Common variations
Inc. include combinations of individual
module licenses (e.g. for Help Desk
Agents), subscription licensing
options, enterprise license
agreements, and as a managed
service (provided by service
provider partners and HPE
Enterprise Services).

Enterprise Opinions is a global research and advisory
organisation specializing in IT Asset and Service
Management