CA Technologies announced the latest release of CA Nimsoft Service Desk (NSD), the transformational, SaaS-based ITSM solution that empowers organizations to respond more quickly and cost-efficiently than ever to the relentlessly growing demands of business users.

This latest release facilitates the kind of true IT transformation customers need to achieve as part of their broader quest for IT-enabled business agility through three key new capabilities:

• Self-service/cloud automation. With CA NSD, IT organizations can quickly and easily implement Web services that automatically trigger activation, de-activation and/or modification of resources such as compute capacity or applications running in the enterprise data center or in the public cloud based on appropriate policies and approvals. This reduces operational cost and accelerates fulfillment of requests from the business by eliminating the need for manual action by IT staff.

• Easy integration with complementary solutions. New Web services capabilities in CA NSD can dramatically simplify integration with other potential components of an enterprise ITSM environment—such as other third-party service desks including Cisco Smarts and SAP Solution Manager and enterprise solutions such as and CA LISA Release Automation. Advanced “click and go” integration enables IT organizations to build and evolve end-to-end service management processes directly through the administrator interface. This helps ensure fulfillment of business requirements and support execution of ITIL best practices.

• Enhanced mobility. CA NSD delivers a progressive mobile experience that empowers consumers of IT services to create incidents, manage tickets, monitor approvals and view critical service communications information anytime or anywhere from any device. This rich mobile functionality includes geographic location and the ability to leverage native phone capabilities such as GPS and the camera, and optimizes responsiveness to end-user needs.

As a SaaS-based solution, CA NSD can be rapidly implemented without the capital costs associated with conventional service desk applications. Web form based configuration eliminates the need for specialized administrator or programming expertise to configure automation workflows and Web services integrations.

“SaaS is more than a convenient delivery model, it can provide significant advantages in enabling more diverse and flexible IT services without incurring burdensome administration and management requirements,” said Dennis Drogseth, vice president, Enterprise Management Associates. “The latest version of CA Nimsoft Service Desk captures these core SaaS advantages, with a focus on ease of use, easy customization, flexible integration and enhanced levels of automation. These strengths are pivotal in enabling IT organizations to focus increasingly on delivering business value with reduced TCO and back-office overhead.”

CA NSD lets customers choose monthly subscriptions based on named or concurrent-user licensing. The SaaS model also gives customers immediate access to any and all upgraded functionality as soon as it becomes available. CA NSD is available directly from CA Technologies and from the company’s global partner network.

“Increasingly, IT is less about command-and-control and more about engineering a set of virtualized hybrid cloud resources that the business can access on-demand,” said Lokesh Jindal, general manager, IT Business Management, CA Technologies. “With CA Nimsoft Service Desk, we have designed and delivered a solution that IT can use to automate and deliver business services without getting bogged down in writing a bunch of inflexible code, tapping into its limited capital budget, or ripping-and-replacing existing resources that still have genuine value.”