January 2008

NetworkD is the number one provider of Infrastructure Management Software and Business Process Solutions - designed and delivered on a global platform.

We focus on solutions that take the best of ITIL®, Operational Best Practices, and the most effective Technologies in the market today to drive value, lower cost and enhance the customer experience in utilizing IT services.

www.networkd.com

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 The Risky Business
of Change


If you’re a business leader who has been negatively affected by change or an IT manager seeking to make changes predictable, this article is for you!

Change and associated risk management are not sexy subjects.  In fact, management of change risk tends to be shorted or avoided altogether. Still, 20 years of experience in IT risk management and consulting have highlighted these disciplines as keys to execution success and, more critically, failure.  This article is about laying out why and how strategic changes fail and, thereby, an understanding of what must change to create a business climate that fosters success!
 
The simple truth is that large businesses do enough right that they can absorb a certain amount of change failure.  Such failures abound and, in retrospect, can almost always be prevented.  The largest change failures alter fortunes, negatively impact tens of thousands, and are frequently sensationalized in the media, irreparably damaging reputations. An example of large scale changes that, more often than not, were deemed failures were the mergers and acquisitions of companies between 1985 and 2000.  An alarming 64% of these decreased shareholder value after the change!  This statistic leaves no doubt as to the significance of change risk.

Full article

More about our IT Service
Management Practice

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E-Commerce Capability on iValueSuite.com


NetworkD has just announced an enhanced version of iValueSuite.com that now includes the ability to purchase iValue Suite™ solutions online. 

The iValue Suite solution family includes ADGroups Pro™, iControl for Windows™, iRecall™, iLaunchPad™, iBridge™, and iSurvey™. 

Read Press Release

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New Whitepaper: Achieving a Best-Practice Service Desk from Desktop to Data Center LANDesk

This white paper discusses how mid-size organizations can employ configuration management, service desk, asset management, and process automation technologies on a step-by-step basis to improve service delivery through a true ITSM best-practice service desk.

Download Whitepaper

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LANDesk New Online Community

LANDesk has launched a new website community.landesk.com, an online community focused on providing solutions to technical issues our customers face. This new site will replace the current Support Knowledge Base and the Support Forums.

The LANDesk Customer Support organization is dedicated to solution-driven support, providing customers the information they need, when they want it. Customers have asked to share more technical solutions online and make those solutions easier to find. The Community answers this call by providing many improvements over the previous online support offerings, including:
  • A powerful, unified search of Forum and Knowledge Base content

  • Enabling members of the community to easily share solutions with other members

  • Recognition of community members who contribute the most valuable content

  • The ability to comment on articles

  • The ability to reply to forum posts via email

Visit community.landesk.com today to check out the new site.

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LANDesk Success Story

The Kennedy Center Success Story

When The Kennedy Center wanted to maximize technology usage for efficient and effective business operations while spending as few resources as possible, it turned to LANDesk. The organization chose LANDesk Management Suite and LANDesk Patch Manager and quickly saw results, including extending the life of hardware assets through automated inventory management and tracking, instantly resolving computer problems regardless of location, and providing auditing capabilities that enable the demonstration of efficient operations.

“LANDesk Management Suite empowers us to be proactive in ensuring our systems are operational, while enabling us to be agile in moving the business forward and responding to business needs,” says Alan Levine, Chief Information Officer at The Kennedy Center.

Read Case Study

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Industry Resources

©2008 NetworkD Group
All rights reserved

 
iControl
 Reduce Password
Reset Calls to Your Service Desk

On average, 30% of calls to the Service Desk are password related.  iControl for Windows™ is a self service password reset application that empowers end users to control and reset personal passwords without calling the Service Desk. 

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LANDesk Complimentary Utility

Enhance Your LANDesk® Inventory with the Power of Directory Information

A common question we have received over the years is whether LANDesk can be configured to collect the group memberships of the logged in users.  Various techniques have been attempted but these normally involve custom scripting and the need to update the client agents with some kind of inventory helper.  The collection and population of this information is a powerful component of end user support as well as very useful way of targeting software distributions based on this inventory data so we have always seen this as something that should become part of LANDesk.

To make this task much simpler, we have created ADGroups Lite.  This is a powerful utility that allows group memberships to be populated into the LANDesk inventory at the press of a button.  This update is performed centrally and therefore requires no agent or client modifications in order to function. ADGroups Lite is a free utility from NetworkD to be used whenever you wish to update your database prior to reporting or software distribution. 

  • Download ADGroups Lite

  • Upgrade to ADGroups Pro, Which Includes

    • Scheduled Inventory Updates
    • Auto-Updating on Login Change
    • Statistic Reporting
    • Removal of Unused AD Computer Accounts
    • Computer and User Information collection
      • Last connected to Directory
      • Number of connections
      • Department
      • Email Address
      • Telephone number
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Painting a
Brighter IT Picture
 Kelly-Moore Paints

Kelly-Moore began in 1946 as a single manufacturing facility and store in San Carlos, California and has grown into a nationally recognized brand. The expanding growth of the company has also brought with it a need to increase efficiencies in upgrading operating systems and distributing new software applications to corporate desktops.

Four years ago, Kelly-Moore was using manual labor to manage the corporate environment. When IT needed to move the entire organization to Windows XP, their journey of process standardization began. Kelly-Moore initially chose a simple desktop management tool and deployed it to their infrastructure. After two years, hundreds of thousands in consulting, and countless IT man hours, the tool could only provide remote control; no asset inventory or OS deployment.

Read Case Study

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LANDesk Tip

Using Custom Definitions for Simple Tasks

Whilst it is not difficult to create a LANDesk package and scheduled task to make simple changes such as copying files or manipulating registry keys on devices, it is sometimes difficult to track which machines have received the update and to ensure the update is applied to any new devices.

As an alternative, look at creating a custom definition in Security & Patch Manager; then you can scan for, repair and potentially auto-fix any vulnerable devices.

Complete Tip Here

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 Global Training Schedule

NetworkD is an Authorized Training Center for ITIL® Foundations courses, HDI®, and LANDesk®. Our factory-certified instructors have the credentials and skills to provide you with a highly valuable training experience.

Achieving Operational Success through
LANDesk Best Practice

  • January 21 – 24, 2008
    March 10 - 13, 2008
    April 28- May 1, 2008
    Basingstoke, United Kingdom
    Register Online

ITIL® v3.0 Foundations Courses

LANDesk Management Suite DM87 Training

LANDesk Advanced Administration PE87 Training

More information, including a full list of training dates can be found here.

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Global Events

HIMSS 2008