FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Biomni Announces Release of Free IT Service Catalog Software for Enterprise Information Technology Service Management (ITSM)

Customer-Focused Service Catalog Extends IT Department’s Business Value

PINK ELEPHANT, Las Vegas, NV., Feb. 20, 2012 –  Biomni, the pioneer of User-Centric Enterprise Service Catalog and Request Fulfillment solutions, today announced their free, entry-level edition of Front Office Essentials is available in the United States. Biomni’s iTunes-like approach to the presentation of IT Service Catalogs provides business users with a single point of contact for viewing and requesting new IT services. Biomni Front Office Essentials allows IT Departments to easily define, manage and publish their service offerings, deliver tangible cost savings, improve business operations and increase customer satisfaction.

“A well-run Information Technology Department is a tremendous asset to any global enterprise, especially when it eliminates paperwork, streamlines shopping and ordering, and delivers great customer service,” said Angus Gregory, Chief Executive Officer, Biomni. “In-house business customers expect an Amazon or iTunes-like experience. Biomni Front Office Essentials quickly helps IT departments establish a strong foundation for a customer-centric IT Service Catalog and Request Fulfillment solution with zero up-front investment and limitless potential for future expansion.”

Front Office Essentials is Biomni’s stand-alone, flexible, intuitive and free solution that allows IT departments to clearly define and publish the services that they offer to the business as a customer-focused IT Service Catalog.

Gregory added, “The industry is changing on a fundamental level and there is more need than ever before for Front Office Essential. We are launching in the U.S. in direct response to the market. Biomni is educating the market, eliminating confusion and bringing a level of maturity to ITSM.”

“Biomni Front Office Essentials has helped us gain a competitive advantage by increasing efficiencies, and decreasing costs,” said Adrian Hodder, Managed Services Operations Director, Computacenter. “As a service provider to our company, Biomni has simplified day-to-day business interactions between our IT Department and other teams, delivered great customer service, and streamlined the procurement process for new IT goods and services with our vendors. “

How it works: Facts about Front Office Essentials

Biomni Front Office Essentials is a cost-effective, powerful, easy to configure, and dedicated Front Office solution for IT Departments. Front Office Essentials displays a catalog of standard IT services – from devices to cloud provisioning – and defines these services in a language that customers can easily understand.

Biomni is platform agnostic and its point-and-click configuration is optimized for the way services are requested, approved and fulfilled, with maximum automation and minimal human involvement.  IT teams do more with less with an actionable service catalog that automates repetitive and often mundane tasks.   Automated request fulfillment frees valuable IT resources and improves IT service quality, which ensures consistency and transparency.

IT Departments choose Front Office Essentials when starting Services Catalog projects to define, manage and publish service offerings to the business.  Some IT organizations deploy Front Office Essentials as a way to automate existing services definitions from spreadsheets, documents or custom web pages to the next level.

Availability: Front Office Essentials is available either via SaaS or hosted on premise at no cost, without the need to purchase a license or ongoing support.   Register for a free copy of Essentials here.  http://www.biomni.com/essentials_reg/

About Biomni

Biomni is an international pioneer of Service Catalog and Request Fulfillment solutions. With Biomni in play, IT departments transform into the agile business partner that the overall business demands. BIomni is ideal for the business customer who expects a self-service shopping experience with excellent customer service from IT.  Biomni helps IT departments deliver and support an ever-increasing range of physical devices, software and virtual infrastructures. Well over 1.4 million users are in production worldwide at leading global service providers and in corporate enterprises. Biomni is a proud member of VMware’s Tap Alliance Program, an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Solutions Provider, a certified Microsoft ISV, and an accredited Symantec™ Developer Partner.  www.biomni.com

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For more information, press only:
Heidi Groshelle

Groshelle Communications

+1.415-307-1380

heidi@groshelle.com

Biomni are proud once again to sponsor the annual Pink Elephant IT Service Management Conference and Exhibition.

Hosted at the Bellagio Hotel Las Vegas, Feb 19th – 22nd, the event is in its 16th year and is widely recognized as the world’s premier IT Service Management conference.

If you’re attending please drop by our stand to see the latest version of Front Office.

http://www.pinkelephant.com/Pink12/

Speaking of the release, Andreas Antoniou, CTO at Biomni said, “7.1 has seen a mix of enhancements covering three broad areas, a more appealing and intuitive service discovery and requesting experience, greater configuration and integration flexibility, and deeper integration to the IT Management toolset of our strategic partner Symantec.”

Key enhancements for v7.1  include:

Active Directory

Front Office users accounts can now be synchronized directly from one or more Active Directory sources reducing the effort required to keep user details, access profiles, and group memberships up to date.

Importing User Accounts

Themes

Additional out of the box themes have been included to allow customers greater choice over the Front Office color scheme and user interface style. To achieve a completely unique style, customers can still modify the style sheet.

Selecting a Theme

Visual Approval Routing

The approval routing for requests is now displayed graphically with each step depicting the approval type, approver name(s), and the current status. Hovering over a step displays more details.

Request Approval

Quick Links

A new optional quick link panel can be enabled to display useful shortcuts to the current user. The panel can be left hidden and slid out when required or pinned in place. It contains sections for Service favorites, recent requests, approval and inbox items. Additional custom sections can also be configured.

Quick Links

Front Office for Symantec™

Front Office for Symantec™ has had a number of enhancements in the version. The solution is now available for download via the Symantec Installation Manager and is bundled with specific sample content, adapters, and a suite of Workflow Solution processes.

Business Time

Workflow SLA, Workflow Task Duration and Approval Reminders / Escalation periods are now calculated using individually defined business days, as well as the operational hours within those days, allowing greater accuracy of the calculated time. Calculations now encompasses hours and minutes.

Integration

The Front Office web services API has once again been extended and simplified in response to customer requirements.

The request External Listbox form field provides a highly flexible means to dynamically present data from external systems within Front Office forms. It has been extended to support multiple selections, searching, filters and paging.

Front Office is built on the Biomni Directa™.

“We are pleased to welcome Biomni as the newest member of the VMware TAP program,”said Sheryl Sage, Director, Alliance Programs, VMware. “The VMware TAP program offers companies like Biomni the tools and resources they need to develop high-value solutions thatmeet the needs of our mutual customers.”

Commenting on joining the TAP program, Andreas Antoniou, CTO, Biomni, said “Biomni Front Office is being chosen by increasing numbers of enterprises as their self-service cloud provisioning solution. Working together with VMware via their TAP program, we can beconfident of continuing to offer compelling solutions to our customers.”

With more than 2000 members worldwide, the VMware TAP program works with best-of breed technology partners to provide them a comprehensive set of VMware technical and marketing services, support, tools and expertise to deliver enhanced value to joint customers.

PinkVERIFY™ measures a tool’s compatibility with key IT Service Management (ITSM) processes and seeks to validate that a product can meet a basic set of functional requirements as defined by ITIL. Meeting these functional requirements indicates that a tool supports ITIL processes.

Commenting on the extended verification, Biomni’s Services Director Jon Hunt said, “Front Office provides a rapid and cost effective enabler to the definition and publication of your Service Catalog whilst also providing a highly intuitive self-service request experience. We’re delighted it’s capabilities have been recognized as reflecting ITIL best practice by the PinkVERIFY™ scheme.”

AWS provides a highly reliable, scalable, low-cost infrastructure platform in the cloud that powers hundreds of thousands of businesses in 190 countries around the world. With data center locations in the U.S., Europe, Singapore, and Japan. Companies of all sizes, from all around the globe use AWS to build applications, store data, manage business processes, and more. The AWS Solution Providers Program provides marketing tools and training to Systems Integrators (SIs), Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), and other channel solution providers, to help broaden their suite of offerings and enter new market segments and verticals.

By developing a relationship with AWS, Biomni can now provide our ‘Front Office’ customers automated cloud application and infrastructure provisioning with significantly reduced delivery times from a single intuitive Cloud Service Catalog.

“We are pleased to have established this relationship with AWS and look forward to delivering many integrated cloud provisioning solutions for our customers” said Kesh Dhillon, Business Development Director of Biomni. “Our new membership in the AWS Solution Providers Program extends the suite of automated service request fulfillment scenarios Biomni is able to provide our customers at no extra cost. Working with AWS enables us to deliver even more value to our customers. Now we can support the business demand for cloud IT services, provision those services immediately with AWS and then report back important consumption and financial information back to IT organization and the business it supports. A real ‘win-win’”.

To view Biomni’s Directory listing, please click here  https://aws.amazon.com/solution-providers/isv/biomni

“In an era where IT Self Service is more important than ever, the release of Biomni Front Office provides tangible value for our joint customers enabling IT self-service and request management process.” Mark Magee, Senior Director, Product Management at Symantec.

Biomni has worked closely with Symantec to ensure tight integration with Symantec’s Endpoint Management solutions, providing numerous benefits:

• Improved transparency and customer satisfaction through the ability to publish IT policies and selectable infrastructure and services as well as configuration options through a unified IT “storefront” specifically designed for business user consumption.
• Increased efficiency through bi-directional integration with Symantec “back office”components including the CMDB, ServiceDesk and provisioning tools, which enable complete round-trip automation through request, approval and fulfillment across all published services.
• Improved compliance through bi-directional asset management integration as software requests are linked real-time into to underlying CMDB license availability.
• Vastly improved implementation time frames through a simplified interface specifically designed for business analyst skill-sets instead of programming.
• Support for 14 languages.

“Implementing Biomni has enabled Computacenter to automate and standardise request processes which were manual and spread across multiple systems, improve efficiency by integrating requests into existing corporate systems and implement transparency of the request process for all users.” - Adrian Hodder, Director of Tools & Systems Governance at Computacenter.

About Biomni

Biomni is a leading provider of Service Catalog and Request Management solutions and an accredited Symantec™ Developer Partner. Biomni’s partnership with Symantec offers a comprehensive Service Catalog capability to the Symantec™ Endpoint Management solution suite.

Biomni provide both the front office view into IT for the business, as well as the fulfillment and measurement capabilities that leverage existing IT systems, people and processes. Biomni supports an IT function’s growing necessity to evolve as a business service provider, and are strategically placed in the solution portfolios of leading global service providers and corporate enterprises.

For more information and to understand how Biomni can extend your Symantec investment,visit www.biomni.com/symantec

Contact: Kesh Dhillon, tel: +44 (0) 20 7557 4200 or email Kesh.Dhillon@biomni.com

If you get a chance to attend please drop by stand S4 to catch a preview of the latest version of FrontOffice for Symantec™. Version 7.1 features even closer integration to the Symantec™ Management Platform and several out-of-the-box workflow processes, including automated VMWare™ virtual server provisioning.

Click here to discover more on Symantec™ Vision Barcelona.

Server request bundle in Front Office

The Transat North American IT organization provides centralized, bi-lingual management and support for a 5,500 strong North American workforce. As an IT organization looking to align itself more closely with the needs and objectives of the business, the team recognized that providing a consistent level of service and customer experience across this entire user community would be a high-value win.

The Transat team chose the Biomni™ Front Office solution for Symantec™ to provide a CMDB and Help Desk integrated Service Catalog for some 5,500 users in both French and English. The solution allows IT to create and publish service offerings to the business within the Service Catalog, and continually manage changes through version control. It also provides point-and-click configuration for the way services are requested, approved and fulfilled, with maximum automation and minimum human involvement.

Click here to view the full Transat case study.

Front Office Essentials is the free entry level edition to the Front Office suite and provides foundation Service Portfolio/Catalog management and publishing functionality along with scores of example services and how-to guides to help you kick start your Service Catalog project.

What’s more, Front Office Essentials is now available in the cloud with zero installation effort and fuss.

Getting started couldn’t be easier. Simply fill in the registration form and we’ll notify you within one working day on how to access your personal cloud based instance. If you subsequently decide to take the solution on-premise, we’ll provide you a link to the installation pack, along with instructions on how to export/import your existing cloud based catalog.

Upgrading to the actionable Service Catalog editions of Front Office Express and Front Office Enterprise couldn’t be easier. Simply apply your license key and take advantage of the highly configurable and proven self-service request features that are used to generate millions of requests every year. Click here to discover more on how to upgrade.