IBM Sees Strong Demand in Service Management

Service Management Solutions to become critical for Middle East Business

Dubai-UAE, April 11^th 2007 - IBM announced today that it sees strong potential for its IT Service Management (ITSM) solutions in the Middle East as many large organisations in the region focus on integrated IT infrastructure management to improve operational efficiency and effectiveness. IBM has a highly integrated set of ITSM tools, designed to accelerate the connection of people, technology, processes and information across an enterprise to deliver service excellence and innovation for businesses.

"More Middle East customers are realising the importance of having an integrated, flexible IT infrastructure to adapt to constantly changing circumstances and we have been encouraged by the response to IBM's ITSM solutions in the region," said Bashar Kilani, software group manager, IBM Middle East, Egypt and Pakistan. "ITSM helps organizations to better manage their IT infrastructure and deliver service excellence through a structured approach that reduces errors and manages risk."

ITSM helps businesses automate and standardize the way they design and integrate information technology across separate departments within an enterprise. It allows large organisations to respond proactively to change, manage complexity and reduce costs. IBM's ITSM offering provides a tightly integrated environment that assures scalable cross-platform process integration, but remains open enough so that third-party tools and systems can be incorporated as businesses grow and change.

By standardizing and optimizing end-to-end IT management processes and tools, IT organizations will be able to operate more efficiently and with more flexibility, reducing errors and service-level violations. They can determine the root cause of problems more quickly and define and enforce consistent operational policies across the board. Over time, these policies can be used to drive automation tools that further reduce costs and increase service reliability and performance.

"Today's businesses need to respond quickly to change in order to drive growth and differentatiation in increasingly competitive markets and so a flexible IT foundation is definitely required," said Kilani. "IT Service Management helps businesses automate and integrate IT processes across all areas of operation, allowing them to offer high quality services to their customers while saving time and money."

IBM IT Service Management solutions consist of:

- Process Management Products - which integrate and automate IT management processes across organizational silos for rapid responsiveness and greater flexibility;

- Service Management Platform - which standardizes and shares information that integrates people, processes, information and technology for real business results;

- Operational Management Products - that automate tasks to address application or business service operational management challenges;

- Best Practices - based on IBM's global practice experience from proven consulting services to maximize your current investments and make Service Management and ITIL actionable.

IBM recently introduced its range of ITSM solutions to customers across the region at a series of in-country events.

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