The 2015 ITSM Show – The Greatest Show on Earth

It may be in a completely different month to normal, and at a new venue, but the buzz around the upcoming SITS15 – IT Service Management (ITSM) Show (formerly known as the Service Desk and IT Support Show) is as intense as ever. After all, it’s one of the biggest ITSM events in the world (as what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, we’ll just completely ignore that big shiny Knowledge thing), so what’s there not to be excited about?!

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The Content

Whilst this event is primarily an ITSM tool vendor exhibition, its ITSM presentations should not be underestimated. Some of the hot topics at this year’s event include:

• Service integration and management (SIAM) – what it is, it’s importance, and best practice
• Customer experience – as opposed to user experience, it’s a new hot topic in ITSM
• Service catalogue – still popular after all these years, but it is so hard to get service catalogue right
• Continual service improvement – it should be the first ITIL “process” adopted but often gets lost in a melee of incident, problem, and change investment
• DevOps – so hot you might burn your fingers, find out why its DevOps and ITIL, not DevOps instead of ITIL
• Service desk success – listen to those who have been there, done it, and bought the t-shirt

If you feel a little spoilt for choice and aren’t sure which sessions to attend, then let me help with some personal recommendations based on my knowledge of the presenters and their chosen topics:

Day 1

10:30–11:30: Stuart Rance, Optimal Service Management – Putting people before technology and process

11:30–12:30: Andrea Kis and Martin Goble, Tata Consultancy Services – Creating seamless service with SIAM

12:30–13:30: Girish Mathrubootham, Freshservice** – Using service catalogue for non-IT functions

13:30–14:30: Ian Connelly and Gregory Baylis-Hall, BCS – Perfecting the service desk personality mix

14:30–15:30: Helen Bayliss, Accenture – Building a culture of Continual Service Improvement

15:30–16:30: Daniel Breston, Qriousity – Doing more with less – a crash course in lean ITSM

Day 2

10:30–11:30: Patrick Bolger, Hornbill** – Is collaboration the future of business IT?

11:30–12:30: Duncan Watkins, Corporate Executive Board – Next-generation IT service skills

12:30–13:30: Sarah Lahav, SysAid – What IT can learn from external customer relationship management

13:30–14:30: Jon Hall, BMC** – Swarming – a radical approach to managing critical problems

14:30–15:30: Tobias Nyberg, Handelsbanken – How to win at configuration management

15:30–16:30: John Fahey, STI Training – Re-invigorating a tired service desk

** At SysAid we’re not afraid to recommend that you check out presentations by our competition. Good quality content is good quality content no matter where it comes from.

If you also find time to squeeze in a keynote or two I also highly recommend the Women in IT panel (more information below), and “Does your business really need a service desk?”, hosted by Stephen Mann. As an aside, and as a polite warning to Stephen Mann, if the answer is “no”, then neither I, nor any of the other vendors attending the event, are going to be very impressed (i.e. prepare to be lynched).

The Exhibition

Are you looking for a new IT help desk, service desk, or ITSM solution? Or are you simply out hunting for the best free giveaways (*cough* our swag was voted the best at a recent SDI event)? Or perhaps you’re a huge fan of Joe The IT Guy?

If you answered “yes” to any of the above, then be sure to add a visit to the SysAid stand to your agenda. In addition to showcasing our ITSM product, we’ll also be offering a first peek at our new mobile asset management module and application (on iOS), which provides barcode scanning, audit, and reporting capabilities. The new module (driven by customer feedback) helps to address challenges such as:

• Loss of assets
• The inability to track inventory, including checking out and in scenarios
• Limited auditing and reporting capabilities

Swing by and we’ll provide you with a little more information.

Then, as if that isn’t enough, when you drop by you can also pick up a Conference In A Box, packed with free information and wisdom around improving service management and customer experience (as well as free chocolate).

Phew, that’s the shameless marketing plug out of the way, now back to the event…

Women in IT

In the run up to the event, the team behind the ITSM Show has launched Women in IT Week, an initiative to inspire more women to pursue positive career pathways in IT. The aim is to help bridge the gap of gender inequality within the IT sector; something that us at SysAid fully support (not least with a female CEO at our healm).

I’m personally very excited to listen to the all-women panel on Wednesday 3^rd June at 13:45, hosted by Karen Ferris, on why we should champion equality in the IT workplace.

You can also enjoy the upcoming series of blogs, written by women in IT, on how they started in their career, and what advice they have to offer to other women interested in joining the industry. Karen recently kicked off the blog series by sharing her Six life lessons for every ambitious IT professional.

Customer Dinner

Just like last year, we’ll also be holding a special customer dinner after day one of the ITSM Show. Hosted just across the road from the Olympia venue, you can expect to swap stories and ideas with other SysAid customers, hear about the upcoming SysAid roadmap, learn more about how to get extra value from your investment in SysAid, and enjoy free booze and food (which will be much needed after a long day on your feet at the show – trust me).  There’s also a rumour going around that there may be some special free gifts for the customers that attend…

The dinner will take place at The Hilton London Olympia on Wednesday 3^rd June from 5pm – 7pm. If you’re interested in attending, please contact my colleague Kim Haimovic.

We look forward to seeing you at the show! And don’t forget to follow the Twitter feed with the hashtag #SITS15.

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