Intensive information exchange at third Savvy Suite customer forum.

This year’s Savvy Suite customer forum took place in Worms, Germany, on June 7 and 8, 2016. This was the third time the event has taken place, which practically makes it a tradition. Once again, the organizers were pleased with the increased number of customers who registered. For the first time ever, the customer forum took place in the “Das Wormser” event center.

Managing director Dr. Peter Schwamb in his key note address

In his key note address, syscovery managing director Dr. Peter Schwamb looked back on his presentation from 1999 and compared the customer requirements from back then to their present-day implementation.

Following Schwamb’s presentation, participants briefly introduced themselves. Out of all the participants, a participant from Sofia, Bulgaria traveled the furthest to attend.

The first customer presentation focused on Workplace Management. The presentation vividly illustrated the challenges and obstacles involved in introducing standardized products into a very large organization with many national subsidiaries. Many participants jotted down new ideas while the solution approaches were being presented.

When it was time for a lunch break, several syscovery employees joined the customer forum participants. This enabled both parties to finally put faces to the voices they were used to hearing on the phone, and it was an opportunity for everyone to get to know one another.

Bastian Wolf presenting the new features of release 1.9.3

Like in previous years, the customer forum was also used to present the newly published 1.9.3 release. The head of Savvy Suite development, Bastian Wolf, explained the new key user functions in the new web application. He also presented the modified configuration options for attributes in the administration application. These were the modifications which received the most points during the voting session in the 2015 customer forum.

The next presentation scheduled was supposed to be a progress report on a customer project regarding workstation virtualization. Unfortunately, the presenter had to cancel on short notice, so the head of Savvy Suite Consulting, Reinhard Kehl, presented the key points of the project. These included the connection of multiple separate networks and Active Directories, logical separation of customer data, standardization of services as well as the organizational integration of different participants.

The day ended with the presentation of customer suggestions that were collected throughout the year through Feedback & Future workshops with the customers. Uwe Sacherer explained the four suggestions regarding order proposals, attribute texts and inventory evaluations. The runner-up, with a total of 16 points, was the suggestion to allow order proposals consisting exclusively of accessory items. The winning suggestion, with 25 points, which is scheduled to be implemented in the next release, is the suggestion to provide administrators with an analysis option which analyses existing configuration items in Savvy Suite and creates recommendations for catalog offers or order proposals based on target groups.

After a very unique and interesting tour of the St. Peter’s Cathedral with Provost Tobias Schäfer, the day ended without so much as a drop of rain (despite thunderstorm warnings) and with participants enjoying a glass of wine and other Rhine-Hessian delicacies.

One of our longtime customers opened the second day of the customer forum with a report on a project that is currently being implemented. The goal of the project is to gradually replace an aging software program created by the customer for automating actions in the Active Directory. The first step was the connection of AD components in the cloud using the Savvy Suite’s PowerShell connector.

In the next presentation, Dr. Bernd Mügge compared the use of mobile device management for different customers. In this process, the MobileIron and IBM MaaS360 software solutions were connected via the PowerShell connector or via SOAP web services. There were differences, especially when it came to billing, but also in the processes offered and in the number of permitted end devices.

As usual, the participants used the breaks as an opportunity to share their experiences. Participants were invited to try out the new release for themselves on two demo systems. The syscovery experts were there to answer all kinds of questions.

Ramin Mashaykhi gave visitors a more in-depth look into the technical details of the PowerShell connector in his presentation on automated provisioning. The flexibility for different application scenarios and the transparency of the processes for the operation team have been significantly increased as a result of integrating work orders. Participants took a complete list of best practice suggestions with them as they left.

The following customer presentation was dedicated to a completely different topic. Audience members took a quick journey through time back to 2005. The IT service provider at the time earned an annual flat rate from its client. Since then, Savvy Suite has ensured that IT services can now be invoiced individually and on a cost-driver basis and have drastically reduced the efforts for invoice control on the customer side and for forecasting on the IT side.

Klaus Kirchner closed the session by discussing the outlook for planning Savvy Suite further developments. Key topics here include further cost cutting as well as governance and security. Specific plans have been made for the use of additional key user functions and the use of Work Order Management in the new web application. The support of additional languages and the decentralized catalog administration are on the agenda in the long term.