Symantec Corp. has announced Symantec Workflow 7.0 and Symantec ServiceDesk 7.0, two updates designed to its IT management offerings. Workflow 7.0 is intended to help customers enforce policies, automate repetitive tasks and accelerate the delivery of IT and business processes. ServiceDesk 7.0 will offer customers a new process-driven and incident, problem, change, release and knowledge management tool based on the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) best practices.
"One of the key aspects that we have been focusing on in Endpoint Management is really around the cost of automation-how can we help our customers do more with less," Christine Ewing, director of product marketing, Endpoint Product Management Group at Symantec, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "The fundamental goal is how can we take this concept of process automation and really help how our customers work day in and day out especially now in this economic climate and do a lot more with the existing tools and technology, making them more efficient in what they already have. That is really the goal of both of these products."
Both Workflow 7.0 and ServiceDesk 7.0 take a drag-and-drop visual designer approach, enabling businesses to develop automated processes without requiring a fundamental knowledge of the coding behind the applications, the vendor says. Both products also can integrate directly into an existing environment without requiring integration services or deep technical knowledge that is usually necessary when combining diverse technologies. Both products are also built on the Symantec Management Platform, which also integrates security, data loss prevention, systems management, and backup and recovery capabilities.
Workflow 7.0, which is now shipping, is designed to deliver IT and business process automation with increased support for business systems, advanced reporting, increased performance and an expanded end-user portal. Workflow can be used to automate common IT processes such as new employee provisioning, self-help service catalogs, new hardware and software requests, and password resets. The new version improves manageability by providing customers with a visual, self-documenting workflow designer, helping customers deliver processes by simply dragging and dropping predefined components to create a flow diagram.
New features in Workflow 7.0 are intended to help businesses find inefficiencies, view trends and analyze process details to reduce bottlenecks. Workflow 7.0 offers additional views to show the exact status of a process, customizable settings to show appropriate information to users, and an end-user inbox for current task status, historical views and task delegation. ServiceDesk 7.0, to ship at the end of this summer, is intended to accelerate and enhance service delivery from the IT organization through process automation and self-service capabilities for end users.
ServiceDesk 7.0 will provide ITIL best practice processes "out of the box," including Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management and Release Management, Symantec says.
For more information on Workflow Solution 7.0, go here and for more information on ServiceDesk 7.0, go here.