Press Releases : 2007

Oblicore Accelerates Adoption of ITIL Service Level Management with Oblicore Guarantee 5.0

Inc. 500 Honoree, Oblicore introduces a unique, role-based approach for ITIL compliant Service Level Management

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., September 20, 2007 - Oblicore, the leading provider of ITIL compliant Service Level Management software, today announced the launch of Oblicore Guarantee™ 5.0. This major release introduces a unique, role-based approach to service level management which significantly enhances the service portfolio and contract management process.

Oblicore Guarantee™ 5.0 features an enhanced executive dashboard that revolutionizes how companies report service levels internally and externally. This dashboard introduces role-based personalization, collaboration, and a unique Current Status Engine™ which provides companies and service providers with a current window to operational performance in addition to the lifetime and contractual period perspective that Oblicore Guarantee traditionally provides.

Dashboard personalization enables users to set a personalized, role-based view of service performance.    With dashboard personalization, companies are able to communicate service level performance in a tailored way to internal stakeholders such as partners, customers, service level managers and business executives.  Role-based security ensures that each user may see only appropriate information. The dashboard supports the ability to organize dashboard pages, views, and widgets to fit both job responsibilities and personal preferences. Customizable thresholds allow administrators or users to tailor dashboard indicators according to criteria that make sense for their business role.  By having the most relevant information at their fingertips, Oblicore Guarantee 5.0 empowers users to make more effective business decisions.

Oblicore Guarantee 5.0 also enhances a user’s ability to resolve Service Level Management issues by enabling identical, web –based dashboard pages to be shared between users.  As a result, Service Level Managers are able to share and compare report information and collaborate with their coworkers, partners and customers on current issues. With Oblicore Guarantee’s dashboard collaboration features, organizations will greatly reduce the amount of time needed to manage service levels and resolve performance issues before they result in contract penalties or customer satisfaction issues.

The dashboard leverages a unique Current Status Engine™ which augments Oblicore Guarantee’s contractual view of performance to provide a view of performance over a rolling window of time. This capability enables the company to:

• View performance across contractual periods. It is difficult to project how contractual obligations will perform when it is still early in the effective period.  Early strong performance tends leads to optimistic projections and early poor performance leads to pessimistic ones. The Current Status Engine™ enables companies to balance this contractual status problem by enabling the company to consider data that sits outside the contractual period and tempers overly optimistic and overly pessimistic views.
• View performance within existing period. The Current Status Engine™ enables companies to consider rolling windows of time that are shorter than the contractual period (e.g., month, week, or even day). As a result, the company is able to understand how the obligation is currently performing and to correct problems before they effect the contractual obligation.

“Oblicore’s Guarantee product reflects an understanding of the fact that at most companies Service Level Management is a collaborative, not an independent exercise,” said Lisa Erickson-Harris, Research Director, Enterprise Management Associates. “Products like Oblicore’s can help companies establish Service Level Management as a core component of their business. Its features and functionality are clearly aimed at demonstrating the value of service level agreements and SLM more generally to business and user constituencies.” 

Other key features of Oblicore Guarantee™ 5.0 include:

• Contract Repository - Oblicore Guarantee 5.0 enables users to store all contracts and service offerings information in a centralized area and make it available for other system users using an intuitive interface. The solution leverages an attachments capability that allows the user to associate Word documents, Excel worksheets and PowerPoint presentations to contracts, contract templates and service bundles. With the contract repository, all the information needed to manage an individual account can be stored in a single repository making customer management easier and less time consuming.
• Enforced Contract Standards & Validation - Oblicore Guarantee Service Catalog provides service managers the means to build standardized service offerings that perform as the baseline for the creation of customer-centric contracts by account managers. The solution provides enhanced capabilities in applying validation rules and enforcing standardization on the contract creation process.  These advanced capabilities provide service managers more means to enforce contract standardization, validation and completeness while decreasing the time and effort required for creating complete and valid contracts.
• New Dashboard Look & Feel - Oblicore Guarantee 5.0’s dashboard includes an enhanced look and feel.  With cutting edge, intuitive widgets, dashviews, dashboard pages, embedded HTML pages, and service level reports. This dashboard advances the solution’s capabilities to display performance data in real time and ensures that service level management personnel will simultaneously find use of dashboard more intuitive and meaningful.

“With the release of Guarantee 5.0, Oblicore continues to extend the boundaries for service level management,” said Michael Carabetta, CEO of Oblicore. “We are enriching the ability for companies and service providers to make effective business and investment decisions by simultaneously improving the robustness of the performance information that is available and increasing the relevancy of that information to the decision maker. With capabilities like the Current Status Engine™, personalization and collaboration, we ensure that service level executives are effective and are driving success for their organization.”

About Oblicore

Oblicore is the leading provider of ITIL compliant Service Level Management software. Our flagship product, Oblicore Guarantee™, automates, activates, and accelerates the monitoring, reporting, and management of all business technology service level agreements and service delivery for enterprises and service providers. An enabler of business management, Oblicore Guarantee™ allows organizations to understand the cost implications of service delivery agreements – in real time – for penalties, rewards, and new opportunities. For the first time, enterprises and service providers have complete visibility and can proactively manage service delivery across business and technology infrastructure from one solution.

Oblicore’s software solutions are leveraged by both service providers and global 1200 enterprises, such as ABN Amro, BT, Cable & Wireless, E.ON, Lufthansa Systems, Siemens Medical Solutions, and T-Systems, to align their organizational performance with business objectives. Oblicore is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with offices across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific. For more information, please visit http://www.oblicore.com.