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 Why choose EasyVista ?

The Benchmark IT Management Tool

EasyVista is a software solution covering the whole of IT Management in a single, modular product. Effectively an ERP for the IT department, EasyVista supports all ITIL v3 processes with an easily customised TurnKey approach.

With a full range of functions, EasyVista has been designed for quick and easy deployment, and the solution can be easily developed over time, in a market which consists largely of ‘toolbox’ software.
As our clients testify, EasyVista deploys faster, develops more easily over time and has recurrent costs which are significantly less than conventional solutions.

EasyVista simplifies IT Management and leaves you free to focus on your real aims: improving your quality of service (so making your organisation more competitive), while at the same time reducing your IT costs.

« EasyVista has enabled us to integrate all Service Desk functionalities and processes in an ITIL process in a single fully integrated solution. » Bruno Diaz -
Project Manager - CNR – Suez Group

All-in-One Modular IT Management

EasyVista is an integrated, modular product, including all the functionality you need to manage your IT more effectively (IT Service Management, IT Asset Management):

Unlike many products on the market today which cobble together different solutions resulting from acquired technologies, EasyVista is a totally integrated solution:

• A single database and reference developed from the ground up as shared templates

• Centralised rights management

• Consistent interface

• Consistent reporting

• All modules updated during upgrades
  
  
  As it does not require any middleware between modules, the EasyVista solution is cost effective to deploy and maintain, and easy to use.

1. TurnKey ITIL v3

EasyVista integrates the main ITIL v3 processes natively

EasyVista: the generic ITIL solution

EasyVista is designed to make implementing ITIL processes in your organisation easier. With EasyVista you don’t have to start from scratch. All ITIL processes are supplied out-of-the-box with more than 200 task wizards and workflow types. To implement just apply your organisation’s specific requirements.


2. Easily Customisable

EasyVista works out of the box, unlike toolbox type solutions, which are time consuming and expensive to deploy, and complex to develop.

Nonetheless, EasyVista is highly customisable (reporting, workflow, data model screens, gateways to third party solutions etc.), thanks to the EasyVista Studio module which comes with the solution as standard.

EasyVista is highly scalable, giving you a solution which can grow with your organisation, limiting deployment costs and above all hidden development costs.


3. The Benchmark Solution

With over 3,300 clients, Staff&Line has specialised in IT Management for 20 years and is establishing itself as the industry benchmark:

• In all sectors: public sector, industry, services, finance, Managed Service Providers
• In organisations of all sizes, from a few hundred users to tens of thousands
• In Europe, America, Africa and Asia


4. Available In SaaS or Traditional License Mode

Staff&Line has been pioneering SaaS for over 10 years, with several hundred clients.
EasyVista is offered in two versions:

	EasyVista.com, a SaaS-based solution, hosted and managed by Staff&Line, invoiced on a lease basis.
	EasyVista Classic, a solution hosted by our clients, in perpetual license mode.

5. At a Fair Price

Thanks to its integrated, modular approach and its ease of deployment and flexibility, EasyVista enables our clients to make 40-50% savings on their total cost of ownership (TCO) compared with other toolbox type solutions.

EasyVista could save you 40-50% on total cost of ownership compared with other conventional solutions

"We opted for EasyVista because we were looking for an ITIL and SaaS solution. Our global ServiceDesk was set up in just six weeks." Martin Ogden - IT Director - Expro

SaaS: a revolution in progress for clients … and software publishers

Having risen to prominence in the Internet era of the late 1990s, the concept of an ASP (Application Service Provider) has now almost entirely been replaced by the term ‘SaaS’ (Software as a Service), creating a degree of confusion among clients.

However, it would be a mistake to see this as a semantic or marketing dispute of the kind so beloved of the IT industry. An evolution of the traditional ASP model, SaaS actually represents a genuine revolution for clients and a complete paradigm shift for software publishers.

From ASP to SaaS:

With the advent of broadband Internet, ASP initially made it possible to share single-function applications remotely via mutualised servers, using an economic ‘rental’ model which flew in the face of the well-known licence acquisition model. However, the potential offered by hosting seemed insufficiently persuasive to clients concerned about security and confidentiality issues as well as facing restrictions of interoperability with internal applications. For this reason, the initial incarnation of ASP failed to produce the expected market explosion: according to IDC, ASP currently accounts for only a fraction over 20% of the French outsourced applications market.

However, as it has matured, ASP has reinvented itself as Software as a Service (SaaS), a service proposition offering genuine advantages to clients. Firstly, SaaS solutions are now capable of addressing one or more business processes in areas as diverse as CRM, ERP, security, storage and collaborative applications. They address wider functional requirements by providing native support for solutions from various providers. Secondly, SaaS offers extensive configuration options and credible solutions which enable outsourced applications to be incorporated into in-house software packages (via Web Services, for example). Lastly, in some cases, SaaS solutions offer additional services which add significant value from the client’s perspective: automatic reporting, alerts, online third-party application maintenance, etc.

SaaS: the reasons for its success

SaaS has now become a tangible reality within the enterprise space. In addition to the media success of Salesforce.com, the SaaS market now generates turnover of €122m in France (source: IDC) and $5.7bn worldwide in 2007 (source: Gartner) –in fact, the Gartner Group estimates that this market will double by 2011.

In addition to these macroeconomic indicators, we believe there are four reasons explaining the current and future success of SaaS:

The first of these stems from the sharp reduction in application deployment time. SaaS solutions can offer considerable time savings during the configuration phase (because of their prepackaged nature) and technical integration phase (provision of hardware and human resources for the installation of applications on company equipment). At Staff&Line, we have observed that when comparing like for like in terms of scope, rollout times can be reduced by eighty or even ninety percent. In addition, the SaaS model also lends itself to phased rollout (by functional module or process), producing quick wins which ensure successful project completion.

The second reason for the success of SaaS is linked to the extra value added by these solutions. At a time when many clients are concerned about the low rate of use of deployed applications, SaaS solutions enable these applications to be used to their maximum potential. An improved interface, a better balance between functional cover and ease of use, extended configuration options, improved security and reversibility; these are all differentiating factors offered by SaaS-type solutions. Furthermore, the publishers of SaaS solutions often offer additional functionalities which build on their own business specialities. This is particularly true in the case of functions for automatic reporting (KPI, dashboarding) or sending alerts, which enable the client to make better use of the data contained within applications without the need for costly investment.

Thirdly, the SaaS model gives clients better control over an application’s induced costs. It is known that the initial costs of acquisition and deployment rarely account for more than a third of the full cost (TCO, or Total Cost of Ownership) of an application over a period of five to seven years. Indeed, two-thirds of the overall sum derives from the costs of maintenance and later upgrades. The rental model offered by SaaS offers companies better control over hidden costs as it usually includes version upgrades and their induced costs. since version updates are transparent to the client, and support is facilitated from the point of view of the publisher, who else is better positioned to reproduce and fix problems by accessing the defective application online than the Saas provider.

Lastly, the SaaS model produces a stronger and more lasting involvement with the publisher in its relationship with the client. Having potentially previously been an “occasional supplier” with visibility at the sales stage, and maybe during implementation and maintenance, the publisher now becomes a service provider with a responsibility, bound by undertakings of quality, availability, security and product upgrades over time. It is encouraged in this virtuous approach by a new, more persistent and profitable business model which constitutes a better fit for what the client is actually looking for – a long-term partner-based relationship.

Staff&Line: a French SaaS pioneer

A French pioneer in outsourced applications in the IT Management sector (Service Management, IT Asset Management), Staff&Line launched the EasyVista.com service in 1998, providing companies with rental-based dynamic control panels offering data on the quality of their IT infrastructures. In 2004 Staff&Line launched EasyVista, a genuine IT ERP system, available in SaaS form. In the past 10 years, Staff&Line has provided services of this kind to several hundred clients of all sizes in Europe and the United States.

 

Staff&Line is certified as being in conformity with the ITIL recommendations by PinkElephant for the 11 processes:

• Incident management
• Problem management
• Change management
• Service Asset & Configuration management
• Event management
• Request Fulfilment management • Release & Deployment management
• Knowledge management
• Service Level management
• Availability management
• Financial management

According to Laurie Dolan, IT Management Consultant at Pink Elephant, "the grouping of the processes under Strategy, Design, Operation, Transition and Continual Improvement within the product is a unique approach and certainly supports the ITIL v3 perspective of the service lifecycle."

EasyVista and ITILv3

After years of large scale IT deployments, businesses have entered into a consolidation and optimization phase, aiming at improving quality of service to users and optimizing IT costs. In this context, ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) has been experiencing exponential growth for a number of years.

At the same time, Service Management software solutions have progressively adapted ITIL principles, by integrating them with more or less rigour in the way they work. Staff&Line, which cofounded itSMF in France, began promoting ITIL in Europe as soon as the standards were established. EasyVista, its flagship solution, has been entirely developed in respect of the ITIL standards. Compatibility with the ITILv3 recommendations has been validated by PinkElephant. Many companies train their personnel at ITIL each year. They often have difficulty finding the relationship between ITIL theory and its proper use for the solution already in place.

EasyVista and ITIL regroup the best practices necessary for managing an IT infrastructure centred on the user, and aimed at improving the quality of services and optimizing IT costs.


ITIL Expertise within Staff&Line

Staff&Line has ITIL expertise on many levels:

• Staff&Line is a founding member of it SMF France and a member of numerous international organizations in Europe.
• Staff&Line regularly participates in the work of it SMF, notably through annual conferences.
• All Staff&Line consultants have a minimum ITIL Foundation certification in all countries where the company operates (France, Spain, Italy, United Kingdom and Portugal).
• Staff&Line created the EasyVista solution based on the ITILv3 referential to insure perfect conformity with good practices.
Reference: http://www.pinkelephant.com

December 2007 - In today’s environmentally sensitive world, companies and individuals must ensure that IT equipment is effectively managed from the beginning to the end of its life cycle in order to ensure that it is recycled or destroyed in an eco-friendly way.

Nowadays, the major leaps forward made by companies in terms of IT progress are clear for all to see. But at a time of great ecological initiatives, what is being done about waste - and in particular, electronic and electrical waste which, as we are now hearing, is starting (more than any other kind of waste) to represent a real time bomb?

The average householder in the UK now owns 25 electrical and electronic appliances and the UK still disposes of at least one million tons of electrical waste every year and almost all (90 per cent) of this ends up as landfill. This waste contains many dangerous substances with a potentially harmful impact on the environment, such as cadmium, mercury, lead, aluminium and copper. Waste from the IT industry is among the most dangerous kind, and requires special handling. Monitors and electronic cards in particular top the IT waste pollution list, and require special processing to prevent pollution.

Meanwhile, the pace of replacement of IT and electronic equipment continues to accelerate year on year. Worldwide PC shipments totalled 68.5 million units in Q3 2007 with Western Europe Q3 sales of 13.8 million units, an increase of 17.7 percent on the same period in 2006. In Britain sales were slightly slower than France and Germany but according to Gartner PC shipments in the UK still totalled 2.9 million in Q3 a 13.6 percent increase on the same period in 2006. Technical and functional innovations are leading companies and households to upgrade their equipment before it reaches the end of its life cycle. Products are being scrapped while still in working order. For the environment’s sake, therefore, sorting and reprocessing is becoming a necessity.

Aware of this problem, European legislators have implemented an ambitious plan of action and, in 2003, voted for the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive. The WEEE Directive aims to minimise the impact of electrical and electronic goods on the environment, by increasing re-use and recycling and reducing the amount of WEEE going to landfill. It seeks to achieve this by making producers responsible for financing the collection, treatment, and recovery of waste electrical equipment, and by obliging distributors to allow consumers to return their waste equipment free of charge.

WEEE in a professional context

In the UK, the regulations came into force on 2 January 2007. Producers of electronic and electrical equipment had to join a compliance scheme by 15 March 2007. Following this all producers had to clearly mark electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) from 1 April 2007 and finally full responsibility for treating and recycling household WEEE began on 1 July 2007.

IT hardware life cycle management gets strategic

For companies and official bodies, electronic equipment tracking is thus becoming an unavoidable strategic necessity. For this reason, in response to imperatives from management (General Management, Quality Department, etc.), IT departments are having to find ways of complying with the WEEE directive and of producing precise records of the company’s IT equipment to enable its tracking and processing at the end of its life.

IT Management’s information-based solutions (inventory management and IT services) play a front-line role in equipment tracking. Regardless of the type of structure (simple or complex, single-site or multi-site, national or international), these tools can produce automatic inventories of IT equipment and provide centralised life cycle management: delivery, installation, physical relocation, repairs, scrapping, etc. In this way, the company has constant access to information about the equipment which forms its IT infrastructure, its operational status, its allocation to workers, and its current whereabouts, etc., right up to its final retirement from inventory. At the time of retirement, the fate of the equipment will be specified: scrapping, reuse (for the public sector), return to the manufacturer, etc. Using control panels created to track the equipment, companies can monitor the life cycle of their IT hardware and take appropriate steps to ensure compliance with environmental directives.

IT Management solutions are part of a company’s sustainable development policy

In this way, IT Management solutions not only form a key link in the IT governance chain, but also play a part in companies’ sustainable development policies. Environmental issues are becoming increasingly important in day to day business. The impact of new legislation, coupled with rising levels of concern from customers, means that few organisations can afford to be complacent when it comes to monitoring the environmental impact of business activities. Many organisations specify in their annual business report what they are doing to address the social and environmental consequences of their activities.

It is therefore evident that with regard to IT equipment, businesses need to find a way to trace their equipment life cycle - right through to scrapping or retirement. This is becoming increasingly important for most organisation’s sustainable development policies. IT Management solutions assist in achieving compliance with environmental directives, helping businesses to avoid penalties and play a part in the creation of an eco-friendly image for the organisation.

Once again, technology is stepping up to meet the needs of companies and official bodies in terms of change and compliance!