Ovum Recognizes Cherwell Service Management 5.0 as 'Most Significant Release to Date' From 'Very Reputable, Innovative Player in Service Management Solution Space'

Extensibility and Community Features of Mergeable Applications Help IT Departments Build Strategic Business Integration


COLORADO SPRINGS, CO--(Marketwired - Jan 8, 2015) - For CIOs and IT directors worldwide focused on delivering strategic business value across the organization, the latest IT service management (ITSM) report from Ovum offers a useful and timely business analysis. According to the independent market research firm, Cherwell Service Management® 5.0 delivers significant progress towards this objective with new mergeable applications (or mAppsolutions), a community-driven mApp Exchange, and business intelligence and mobile improvements. "Cherwell Service Management 5.0 is the company's most significant release to date. The new mApp (mergeable applications) solutions functionality is undoubtedly, in Ovum's view, the flagship capability introduction in this release. The mApp solutions offer a new level of extensibility to the solution that will help customers in realizing new value from a deployment," says the report. "The community features that Cherwell have introduced in support of this feature, such as the mApp Exchange, are also an important addition. Ovum anticipates that these community features will help educate and expose customers to the value of the wider ecosystem of integrations Cherwell Service Management is able to support."

Tweet This: #CSM 5.0 awarded 'most significant release to date' by 'very reputable, innovative player' in #Ovum report: bit.ly/1xDXKAz

"Cherwell Service Management 5.0 further establishes Cherwell as a very reputable, innovative player in the service management solution space," continues the report. "The new functionality introduced, in support of the already strong capabilities, positions Cherwell Service Management 5.0 as a solution that should be considered by organizations of varying sizes and levels of process maturity when looking for technology to support an ITSM initiative.

"The business intelligence dashboards and user-configurable metrics introductions in the 5.0 release represent other notable improvements. IT departments are expected to be able to report both internally and externally (to the wider business) on the value that IT services are providing. The new capabilities introduced in Cherwell Service Management 5.0 aims to help organizations in achieving this through introducing dashboards that have been developed to deliver not only improved insight, but also to deliver an improved user experience across a variety of different devices."

  • Cherwell Service Management 5.0's significant functionality improvements add to ease of use, making the platform more extensible and even more user-configurable.

  • The newly introduced mApp features enable customers to leverage new functionality as a snap-in integration to an existing CSM installation.

  • New dashboard capabilities and multi-platform support have the potential to help IT departments both better understand and communicate the value of services being delivered.

  • As with previous versions, CSM 5.0 can help support an organization's efforts around embracing ITIL practices.

"Building true strategic business integration requires IT departments to not only be responsive to changing business demands, but to also have the knowledge and capability to effectively communicate the value being provided by IT. Cherwell Service Management 5.0 introduces a variety of new capabilities aimed at helping IT departments achieve this ideal in supporting more proactive service management activities.

"One of the flagship features of the Cherwell Service Management (CSM) 5.0 release is the introduction of mApp solutions -- capability that enables customers to leverage new functionality as an extension to an existing Cherwell Service Management installation. New solution functionality (that could also be exploited by departments beyond solely IT) can be created and deployed by users with no coding experience. The mApp technologies created can also be shared with the wider Cherwell customer community via the newly introduced mApp Exchange over an open-source or commercial model."

This capability is important as ITSM technology is often extended beyond IT and into other business units. "In order to further grow market share, Ovum anticipates that Cherwell will continue to engage with its customer community in identifying new features that can better support an organization's objectives. Ovum has been exposed to examples of how CSM has been utilized to support the needs of other business units such as human resources, managing the student lifecycle, and managing a broad set of business requests. Attracting and marketing similar adoption use-cases, whilst also further developing adoption and presence of CSM globally should certainly be an ongoing goal for Cherwell.

"New reporting and analytics capabilities have also been introduced as part of CSM 5.0. Reporting and analytics remains a focus of improvement for many vendors in the ITSM space, largely as a result of it being functionality that has been of increased importance to organizations over the past few years especially. Reporting on the value of ITSM activities in a context and format that is of use to a wide variety of not only IT, but also business users is of increased importance.

"In support of these needs, CSM 5.0 introduces dashboards and widgets that have been redeveloped with new visual capabilities and improved multi-platform support. From the new dashboards, users are now able to drill-down and gain a much detailed level of insight on a particular component. A new metrics manager has also been introduced that enables users to define and manage custom, user-configurable metrics. From this manager, users can also set custom thresholds that can trigger visual cues on a dashboard and track their own organization's key performance indicators.

"In complementing an existing iOS® mobile application, native mobile access to CSM has now also been extended to Android. Cherwell Mobile for Android enables users to leverage common CSM functionality on a mobile device, including the ability to view dashboards and alerts, manage incidents and other records, and integrate gesture recognition. Native hardware functionality, such as GPS technology, and a digital camera, found on many mobile devices can also be leveraged by the mobile apps.

"From a capability perspective, Cherwell Service Management is aligned well with ITIL best-practices, supporting core processes such as incident, problem, and change management, plus others out-of-the-box (OOTB). The OOTB functionality can also be configured and scaled to meet the individual needs of a customer. Cherwell have also shared use-cases where the solution has been utilized effectively by other business units aside from just the IT departments -- further testament to the solution's flexibility.

"Cherwell Service Management can be deployed on premise or via Software-as-a-service (SaaS) -- with 99.98% SaaS availability per customer contract. Customers can choose which data center to host an instance on from the multiple Cherwell have globally. A single code base means customers can also migrate between an on-premise and SaaS deployment at their discretion.

"In Ovum's experience, Cherwell Service Management product evolutions have historically been in line with ever-changing customer needs. Specifically, the solution has evolved well in helping customers realize new efficiencies from mobility, social, usability, and reporting and analytics. Cherwell Service Management 5.0 is no exception, and it will be especially interesting to see how the Cherwell customer community responds to the mApp solutions functionality."

Click here to link to the full report: http://bit.ly/140u7gC

1 Source: Ovum, Adam Holtby, On the Radar: Cherwell Service Management, October 2014

Connect with Cherwell
Facebook
LinkedIn
Twitter (@Cherwell_CSM)
Google+
Cherwell Blog
CEO Blog
YouTube

About Ovum
Ovum has more than 220 country market forecasts and KPIs and 180 analysts, each with on average more than 10 years of industry experience, working with telecoms operators and service providers, TV and digital media companies, telecoms vendors, telecoms regulators, technology suppliers, and enterprise IT buyers. Ovum is part of Informa Group, the world's leading provider of business intelligence. Informa has over 6,000 employees and delivers specialised information to companies operating in sectors including agriculture, consumer, commodities, energy & utilities, financial services, healthcare & pharmaceuticals, maritime, telecoms, media, and IT.

About Cherwell Software
Cherwell Software is the developer of Cherwell Service Management®, an award-winning business technology and IT service management (ITSM) platform recognized by leading industry analysts worldwide. Cherwell customers are part of a fast-growing, caring community using Cherwell Software to implement both ITSM solutions and business technology that goes beyond ITSM. Cherwell Software has the deepest expertise in the service management industry, including a global network of expert partners currently serving customers in more than 40 countries. Corporate headquarters are in Colorado, USA, with EMEA headquarters in the United Kingdom.

Contact Information:

For more information:

Contact
Mike Bradshaw
Phone (801) 373-7888
Email
Website www.cherwell.com