BMC Software’s Remedy Help Desk

Kevin Clark • Title: Director of IT operations, Lucasfilm Entertainment, in San Rafael, Calif. • Years in networking: 15

In our Linux environment, there aren’t a lot of off-the-shelf products we can use. However, the Remedy Help Desk application is great at helping us identify and track issues appropriately. It also lets us communicate out to users, and it’s going to be extremely important as we move forward.

We purchased the tool about a year ago. The intent was to better monitor and manage issues across IT – not only from end users but ones we find internally. The goal is now to use the product to help us adopt a stronger change-management philosophy.

Remedy holds us more accountable, because customers have access to this tool as well. A customer can open a trouble ticket on his own and track it. If there’s a critical issue that hasn’t been addressed for 15 minutes, our team will automatically be notified.

IT also uses it to make sure we’re not stepping on each other’s toes. We can see if people are working on similar projects. Before, we would never have an idea where we were in projects and what everyone was spending time on. It helps us track that information more effectively.

We want to find trends in trouble tickets and not be like the movie “Groundhog Day,” doing the same thing over and over again. For instance, a user might call in to the service desk because he is having trouble with a password. If the [technicians] aren’t communicating, then they’ll just reset the password and move on. However, if you see [via the application] that 10 or 15 people are having problems with their passwords in a matter of minutes, then you know there is a bigger problem, and you can quickly address it. While the tool won’t fix the problem, it allows us to manage the process that leads to fixing the problem.

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