Even More ITIL Support with Latest IT Service Desk from Aldon

Aldon Community Manager 9 includes ITIL v3 Integrated Service Catalog, Enhanced Approval Workflows, and Drill-down Reporting Analytics

Emeryville, CA—February 25, 2009—Aldon, the ALM company for IT compliance, today announced Aldon Community Manager 9, the latest release of its comprehensive service desk management solution most widely used for improving an organizationâs response to business, technical and operational issues. Equipped with new and enhanced features that include an integrated ITIL v3-compatible service catalog, increased approval workflow mechanisms, and additional reporting functions like drill-down reporting analytics, Aldon Community Manager 9 elevates best practices for IT Services management, and helps IT organizations get compliant and stay that way.

The ITIL v3 Factor

A major addition to Aldon Community Manager 9 is the ITIL v3 integrated service catalog, where users will have a “one-stop-shop” for service request management. They can view a catalog of all services provided by the service desk, get detailed information on those services, select the one they need, and then submit the request. The catalog can be set up with standardized icons and language so that users can identify and communicate an issue more effectively. That means IT can solve and route the issues faster, because they are not left trying to interpret an issue. Because the service catalog is tightly integrated with Aldon CMDB as well as Aldonâs approval management workflow, organizations also gain a traceability factor to better manage resources, increase productivity, and ensure compliance.

Approval Workflow Engine

One of the biggest advantages of using Aldon Community Manager is that it allows IT teams to stay aligned with the needs of the business, through its powerful approval workflow engine and communication and collaboration functions. From the moment a service request is posted -- from a PC problem to a requirements change to an application update -- Aldon Community Manager routes the request through business defined workflows, assigning tasks and notifying users when necessary and appropriate. Notes, discussions, emails, and chats are recorded and allow authorized users to communicate with each other throughout the request lifecycle. The new version provides additional support for automated customer and supervisor approvers, and adds an option to identify approvers from custom fields.

Reports and drill-Down Analytics

Aldon builds on its already strong reporting capabilities in this latest release, with powerful graph and chart drill-down capabilities. Some of the new reports include the “N query” report which allows users to customize queries with numerical parameters, e.g. “The Top 5 issues in February 2009.” There is the new built-in “Age-in-Status” metric report, which shows how long any specific issue lived in a particular status. Another is the “Project Totals” dashboard, which gives an analysis across multiple projects from a single dashboard. You can also double-click on results within a report and drill down deeper into those metrics. Aldon provides an array of customizable reports and dashboards that deliver instant overviews of project status, metrics and key performance indicators. For compliance, these reports are invaluable because they document all the historical data you need for an audit, like service requests, application changes, authorization levels, and incident trails.

Carol Berger, Vice President of IT with Londen Insurance, has been using Aldon Community Manager for the past three years. She calls Aldon Community Manager “the hub” of their IT Department that helps them deliver what the business needs, while meeting compliance with ease. With more than 120 users accessing the solution regularly, she can't imagine what they would do without it.

Berger says, “With Aldon, we actually wow our auditors when it comes to compliance documentation. And as an IT Team our productivity is up and errors are down. Aldon Community Manager is not just our service desk, it’s our application development manager, infrastructure monitor, and asset tracker.”

Aldon Community Manager 9 is available immediately.

About Aldon

Aldon is the ALM company for IT compliance. For over 25 years, we have been the experts in providing application lifecycle management solutions to ensure that change management, collaboration, and compliance are applied consistently across all areas of IT. Through our user-centric approach to process management, our service, change, and release management products help you focus on what you do best—providing superior services, rapidly developing applications, and efficiently managing your IT operations. Behind the scenes, we help you increase productivity, accelerate time-to-market, fully understand your IT assets, and easily achieve compliance with regulatory standards. A true testament to our products is our customer base with over 1,300 companies worldwide in over 70 of the Fortune 100. These companies rely upon our solutions to manage their global IT business and operations processes including application development, network operations, and services management. We are headquartered in Emeryville, California and have offices around the world serving more than 60 countries.