Numara Software Introduces Numara FootPrints 7.5 and 3 New Service Desk Products  (email this article)

Tampa, Fl (September 13, 2006) – Concurrent with its acquisition of UniPress Software (Company Profile, Past Stories, Case Studies), as announced today in a separate press release, Numara Software Inc., a leader in service desk management solutions for small-to mid-sized enterprises, announced the availability of Numara FootPrints 7.5 and three new service desk products. These releases are aimed at enhancing user performance, adding new synchronization technology and SOX support, and delivering stronger IT asset discovery and software license management. The Numara FootPrints line of 100% web-based service desk software was formerly owned by UniPress® Software and is used by nearly 2,500 organizations throughout the world.

“Service desk applications are playing an increasingly larger role in the workplace, giving organizations a centralized platform to automate employee and customer support as well as other strategic business applications, such as IT tracking for SOX compliance,” explains David Coyle, Research Director at Gartner. “Applications that have the capability to help proactively manage multiple projects, support complex workflows, and easily scale will enable organizations to improve their service delivery and keep pace with the changing needs of their business.”

Building on the success of previous FootPrints versions, this release of Numara FootPrints 7.5 will help both mid-sized enterprises and departments in large enterprises improve their business-driven support operations, reduce costs, improve customer interactions, and implement industry best practices and compliance standards, including ITIL®, SOX, and more.

Numara FootPrints 7.5 offers numerous new and enhanced capabilities including the following:
• Enhanced Workflow: Numara FootPrints 7.5 now provides the ability to automatically document escalation processes and time fields based on local time zones. New service-level field definitions also allow managers to more accurately measure and track their responsiveness to customer SLAs and new permission capabilities.
• Improved Performance: Users will realize significant improvements in response times for core Numara FootPrints functions. Enterprise-level customers that process large ticket volumes will be able to scale their existing Numara FootPrints implementations to meet increased workloads without investing in new hardware.
• Advanced Reporting: Separating itself from competitive offerings, Numara FootPrints 7.5 enables service desk managers to more accurately analyze their operations through time dimension reporting of custom metrics. Managers can now compare metrics across day, month or other time intervals and create richer time-based metrics for comparison and performance optimization purposes.
• Improved Section 508 Compliance: Improved interface better supports third-party text-to-speech software for vision-impaired users.

These enhancements are available for all versions of Numara FootPrints software, including Numara FootPrints, Numara FootPrints for eService, and the Numara FootPrints Hosting Service.

Numara Software is also introducing:
Numara FootPrints Sync, its newest tool for two-way data synchronization between the service desk and popular personal information managers. This time-saving add-on module to Numara FootPrints software enables agents and technicians to easily synchronize calendars, tasks, and contacts between their Numara FootPrints service desk implementation and their personal information management (PIM) applications, including Microsoft® Outlook, Outlook Express, Lotus Notes®, and Palm Desktop®, as well as PocketPC and BlackBerry® devices.

Numara FootPrints Change Management now gives organizations a more powerful tool to manage and automate change processes throughout the organization. This add-on module to Numara FootPrints now includes more detailed, real-time information on approval processes. Administrators now have more power to manage balloting, while approving parties are now better informed throughout the voting process through automated emails. Service desk agents will now be able to more effectively collaborate in their decision making and react more quickly to a changing business environment. Three new built-in project templates will help track and manage IT compliance for HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley, and other regulations.

Numara Asset Manager provides immediate access to the latest and most accurate information of IT installed assets to the IT manager - optimizing the return on investment in IT assets and speeding problem resolution of help desk tickets. The software integrates with Numara FootPrints and gives managers detailed information about installed software, configuration of every PC, accurate and up-to-date records of locations – on every piece of hardware and software on the network, as well as dynamic business level reporting. With accurate asset discovery, Numara Asset Manager can help organizations achieve up to 25 percent savings on enterprise license renewals, cost reduction of major IT projects up to 40 percent and a near 100 percent improvement time of help desk trouble ticket resolution.

Through Numara Asset Manager’s unique, customizable dashboard, IT managers across an organization can assess levels of hardware standardization, risk of software violations, IT asset usage and confirmations. The solution contains standardized reports for BSA and SIIA compliance and for individual software vendors such as Microsoft, to quickly assess software that is over- or under- licensed.

“We see the centralized, web-based service desk continue to be a strategic tool for organizations to manage employee and customer support, and this new version, Numara FootPrints 7.5, provides a variety of features and functionality to streamline business processes, reduce costs, and manage service levels more effectively,” said Mark Krieger, Vice President of Product Development, Numara Software.

About Numara Software, Inc.
Founded in 1991, Numara Software, Inc., (formerly the Blue Ocean business unit of Intuit), is a global provider of service desk management solutions for IT and support professionals who need to simplify and gain control over their increasingly complex environments.

The company’s two flagship products, Numara Track-It! and Numara FootPrints, make it the service desk management leader in small to mid-sized enterprises, serving IT and support professionals at more than 50,000 customer sites worldwide. Overall, the Numara Software trusted solutions automate critical IT and support functions, such as service desk automation for internal and external support along with asset management, software patch and deployment, and network monitoring for small and mid-sized enterprises.

To register for a one-on-one guided walkthrough, attend a webinar or download a trial, please call (800) 557-6970 or visit: www.numarasoftware.com.