Numara aims to make bigger service desk management tracks with FootPrints

Numara's acquisition of FootPrints puts it in the big league

Industry analysis by Beth Schultz, plus the latest news headlines.

In a sea of help desk products dominated by a few vendors, one small to mid-tier provider gained strength through acquisition. Numara Software expanded its reach into the service desk management space last month when it bought UniPress Software, maker of FootPrints, a Web-based service desk automation product.

As many companies with simple help desk requirements know, Numara Software has offered a help desk and asset management tool called Track-It for many years. The product is aimed at small and midsize companies with limited service desk requirements but has largely served smaller businesses.

Service desk management helps organizations make the most of their IT investments, anticipating and resolving infrastructure problems through incident and problem management, configuration and asset management, service-level management, and change management capabilities. Numara Software, with its UniPress acquisition, can now meet more complex service desk needs delivering change management, asset discovery and management, Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) and HIPAA compliance, workflow, and data synchronization capabilities - all key requirements for growing businesses. Numara FootPrints supports the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)-based best practices framework and provides a migration path for users of Track-It where more complex service desk functionality is needed.

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In a sea of help desk products dominated by a few vendors, one small to mid-tier provider gained strength through acquisition. Numara Software expanded its reach into the service desk management space last month when it bought UniPress Software, maker of FootPrints, a Web-based service desk automation product.

As many companies with simple help desk requirements know, Numara Software has offered a help desk and asset management tool called Track-It for many years. The product is aimed at small and midsize companies with limited service desk requirements but has largely served smaller businesses.

Service desk management helps organizations make the most of their IT investments, anticipating and resolving infrastructure problems through incident and problem management, configuration and asset management, service-level management, and change management capabilities. Numara Software, with its UniPress acquisition, can now meet more complex service desk needs delivering change management, asset discovery and management, Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) and HIPAA compliance, workflow, and data synchronization capabilities - all key requirements for growing businesses. Numara FootPrints supports the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)-based best practices framework and provides a migration path for users of Track-It where more complex service desk functionality is needed.

Offering ease of installation and configuration, FootPrints customers can use wizards and templates to design and deploy a simple help desk quickly, and a more sophisticated help desk with modest increases in time investment. Numara scales its Web-based service desk products to match feature and cost expectations of the mid-market. Adding FootPrints to its product mix brings Numara offerings to a more mature and competitive level, giving customers greater options to add integrated functionality as their needs demand and budgets allow. Product options, such as Numara FootPrints Change Management and Numara FootPrints Sync, enable customers to add functionality when they are ready for it. Separately packaged products, such as Numara Asset Manager and Numara Network Monitor, also extend functionality and elevate FootPrints to a higher position competitively.

This is a mature market with many products and has long been dominated by large management vendors such as BMC, HP, and CA - BMC with the greatest focus on SMBs. For the SMB, the trick is to find affordable functionality that meets their needs, doesn't sacrifice quality, and allows companies to expand the product with the business. Indeed, the mid-market mantra has become "pay less for more."

While Numara has gained strength with UniPress, it faces competition from players such as Touchpaper and Hornbill, both well known in Europe, as well as Altiris and hosting vendors such as Service-now.com, GoToAssist, and Right Now Technologies. In addition, Numara FootPrints is now positioned to square off with FrontRange HEAT and BMC IT Service Support Express (formerly Magic Service Desk). Both of these products address SMBs and offer ITIL-based IT service management (ITSM) capabilities. Numara Software now reaches more than 50,000 users giving Numara the insight and platform from which to grow and strengthen its edge in the mid-market.

Schultz is a longtime IT journalist. You can email her or find her here.