Are You Prepared to Handle Disasters ?

Hurricane Irene slammed The Bahamas in August 2011, transforming an idyllic setting with pristine white sand beaches, gently swaying palm trees and crystal blue waters into a scene of devastation and destruction.  Its immediate impact was felt by the tourists, but it equally tested the resilience of businesses located on the islands, and in particular their IT infrastructure.  Bristol Group of Companies is one example of an organization that withstood Irene’s wrath.

For the Bristol Group of Companies, who operate 15 stores across 7 distinct islands in the Bahamian archipelago, the storm’s damage could have been catastrophic.  With the Internet down, a critical link between the servers at head office and those at the stores was disrupted, jeopardizing Bristol’s ability to maintain operations.  One possible solution to this situation would have been to hire contractors on the remote islands to act as an extension to Bristol’s IT team, but at a cost of thousands of dollars.  Fortunately for Bristol, they had another option.

Despite the disruption of their traditional communications network, the islands’ mobile network remained operational throughout, and offered Bristol an opportunity to immediately manage their distributed systems.  This was only made possible through an investment that Bristol’s VP Business Intelligence, Craig Thackray, made months earlier, when he acquired Rove’s Mobile Admin software for their IT staff.  Mobile Admin enabled Bristol’s IT team to remotely access all of the systems in the stores, triage the situation, remediate issues and monitor their ongoing operation—all of this being done by a staff that was continually on the move between various locations.  This maximized the staff’s productivity and ensured all Bristol locations remained operational.

As Craig Thackray states,

“During Hurricane Irene our team was able to monitor and manage a network of 15 locations throughout the islands of The Bahamas, using Android phones. We would not have been able to do so without Rove’s Mobile Admin. It has been invaluable in getting the business back up following the hurricane.”

Financial losses stemming from IT downtime are starting to become a main focus of many corporations. Eweek.com has just completed a survey of nearly 6,000 IT personnel that sheds light onto some of these losses. See the complete story and data here.

Considering the different emergency situations organizations face, most of them not natural disasters, but other network emergencies (i.e. malicious activity, server crashes, employee mistakes, etc.), does your team have a mobile way to be notified of issues, access the problems, and resolve the issues?

A great day to have rove mobile admin - Groundhog Day storm

It's days like these - buses and trains running late, cars stuck in traffic jams, users trying to access services from home - that Rove Mobile Admin shines. Stranded on a bus/train platform and need to address and IT issue, no problem. No internet availability, still no problem. Picking up slack from delayed teammates, even less of a problem. Working remotely but need to take a break from the laptop, less than less of a problem.

And the real-time Dashboard makes staying on top of everything, especially the stuff that's having trouble, much easier.

We're thinking on all our customers in the snow belt and hope they stay safe and warm. The Groundhog Day storm is hitting us now (started in the middle of the night) and the snow is building by the minute. Here's a snapshot of the view from Rove's first floor.

So stay safe and warm....the whole team here at Rove is with you!

Rove Adds Support for CA Service Desk Manager

Just announced adoption of our Service Desk Manager integration.

We're getting a great response from the community.

Ottawa, Ontario – November 17, 2010 – Rove, the leading provider of mobile IT solutions, today announced adoption of the CA Service Desk Manager integration available with their award-winning mobile IT management solution Rove Mobile Admin. With secure, mobile access to their automated support processes, IT teams can improve their responsiveness and gain sizable efficiencies, significantly enhancing departmental productivity and improving their enterprise’s bottom line.

Introduced recently with Rove Mobile Admin 6.0, Rove’s integration with CA Service Desk Manager extends CA’s powerful incident management capability to smartphones and tablets, providing IT staff with immediate notification of tickets, and secure mobile access to their system to acknowledge service requests, create new requests, search requests, update requests, and to view activity logs and queues. Additionally, Rove Mobile Admin provides IT staff with an arsenal of IT functions and controls they can use to diagnose, triage and resolve issues directly from their smartphone/tablet, giving them the ability to accelerate incident resolution and close tickets.

Advantages of using Rove Mobile Admin with CA Service Desk Manager:

• Extend workflow-driven automation of incident management for IT staff on the go
• Extend view of incident detail, priority and changing status for management review
• Reduce downtime
• Meet service level agreements
• Improve performance metrics
• Capitalize on CA Service Desk Manager investment
  
  

Rove Mobile Admin’s real-time monitoring provides immediate notification of CA Service Desk Manager tickets based on customizable, personalized criteria such as new tickets assigned or tickets with updated status. Incident details are delivered directly to the mobile screen alleviating the need for IT staff to dig through a bursting inbox and adding an extra layer of protection against a down email or messaging system. 

“Rove Mobile Admin 6.0 with its CA Service Desk Manager interface gives us the ability to receive tickets, solve the issue and close the ticket while mobile,” said Richard Rowthorn, UK Infrastructure Manager for Givaudan SA, the global leader in the fragrance and flavor industry. “All the time we save by not having to get our laptops out and up is time we have to address the next request; it’s easy to see how the returns can add up very quickly.”

As with its support for many other leading IT systems and infrastructure, Rove Mobile Admin provides access to CA Service Desk Manager through a native interface optimized for all major mobile operating systems including BlackBerry, iOS, Android and Windows Mobile.

In praise of unsung IT heroes!

So true Michael Krigsman, for all we put them through - the same questions over and over, problems that could have been avoided if only we'd listened, the calls and emails - we're lucky we still have our trusty IT Admins. Indeed we must remember that IT is often understaffed and over-worked, and folks in the trenches are just trying to do a good job.

Here's Mike's full blog post

Spotlight on 10 issues to watch for when implementing Windows 7

Did you catch this one from [ci] channelinsider? It's a spotlight on 10 issues to watch for when implementing Windows 7. This is a good one. Many of you have completed Windows 7 roll-out, are planning it or are in the middle. Read the full article and let us know what you think. Did Don get it right?