Microsoft releases new Service Desk software

25.04.2006
Microsoft Corp. Tuesday announced a new management application as part of its growing System Center family of tools, this one aimed at reducing the time and effort involved in servicing help desk calls.

In his keynote address at the Microsoft Management Summit in San Diego, Bob Muglia, Microsoft's senior vice president of server and tools business, also showed off features in the upcoming Systems Management Server (SMS) Version 4.

Muglia also said the next version of SMS, which helps IT administrators set up and manage large groups of Windows machines, would be renamed as Systems Center Configuration Manager 2007. The next version of Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM), the company's event and performance monitoring software, will also be folded under the Systems Center umbrella and renamed Systems Center Operations Manager 2007.

Bryan Henson, a senior systems engineer at Pioneer Natural Resources Co., an oil and gas company in Irving, Texas, said he was interested in the new Service Desk software, which Muglia described as an "ERP system for IT." Service Desk will tie in events created by MOM and other software so that the help desk can quickly connect problems, processes and resolutions while keeping end users better informed and thus reducing extra calls or e-mails.

He said Pioneer had already been looking to switch off its current help desk software, Service Center from Peregrine Systems Inc., because it doesn't import events well.

Henson was also impressed by Network Access Protection (NAP), a feature coming in SMS v4. NAP can check that client PCs running the upcoming Windows Vista operating system have the latest security updates. If not, SMS will prevent them from accessing the corporate network until the updates are installed, all the while keeping users notified through pop-up messages.