Computer Associates' Unicenter TNG Advanced Help Desk Option 4.0 Provides Total Service Desk Operations Through Web Interface

Business Wire, March 29, 1999

ISLANDIA, N.Y.,--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 29, 1999--

Integrated Knowledge And Change Management Facilities Supplement Trouble-Ticket Workflow To Help Ensure Maximum Service Levels While

Lowering Costs

Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA) today announced Unicenter TNG Advanced Help Desk (AHD) option 4.0, a fully Web-enabled enterprise support solution that enables corporate customers to help reduce support costs, improve service levels, and boost productivity of both technical staffs and end-users.

AHD 4.0 delivers these critical benefits through sophisticated knowledge management and change process facilities that have been added to its robust trouble-ticket workflow capabilities - all of which can be easily accessed via intuitive desktop GUIs and/or Web browsers.

"Since its entry into the NT market space, AHD has been a tremendous asset in providing quality customer services to our end-users," said Ken Santoro, director of information systems for Dailey International Inc., a worldwide leader in providing premium drilling tools and technology to the world's oil and gas industry. "With the upgrade to 4.0, we are now able to process calls more quickly and efficiently, thus, providing even a higher level of service to our customers."

AHD 4.0's powerful and intuitive knowledge management tools provide natural language access to "self-learned" knowledge bases, as well as third-party knowledge and document retrieval tools via the LAN, WAN, intranet or Internet. This enables IT staff at all levels to take full advantage of all available in-house and on-line technical information in real time, significantly accelerating problem resolution. As a result, end-users can get back to work faster and support staff can get more done in less time.

AHD's new change management features enable IT staff to respond more quickly and accurately to end-user service requests, and track those requests historically to ensure compliance with agreed-upon service levels. By helping ensure that all infrastructure changes --from software installations to phone service moves-- are properly justified, planned, approved, controlled, and completed, AHD prevents business operations from being disrupted unnecessarily. Through integration with Unicenter TNG's asset management facilities, AHD's change management tools also keep data on resources and configuration fully updated via a common object repository --helping ensure that technical staff have continuous access to accurate information about all infrastructure components.

"AHD 4.0 is an exceptionally powerful enterprise service and support platform," said Yogesh Gupta, CA senior vice president of product strategy. "It provides a complete IT service operations center for Unicenter TNG users to manage all aspects of IT operations --including the administration of change orders, user support tasks, and service level agreements."

Fully Web-enabled, AHD 4.0 provides customizable support tools for both end-users and IT staff. A Client Web interface enables end-users and/or external customers to initiate support and service requests, solve their own problems, and monitor call status from any standard browser. An Analyst Web interface empowers support staff with access to all core AHD functions --including creation and editing of trouble-tickets, change orders and asset data.

A new data partition feature helps ensure that users get access to only the specific data they need to do their jobs. This function is extremely useful to outsourcing providers who must keep multiple customers' activities separate and secure.

Additional AHD enhancements help ensure that service level agreements are effectively tracked, met and documented. Based on the nature of the specific service request, support staff can track requests and change orders by end-user, problem type, affected asset, priority, organization or group, as well as time and condition-related criteria.

With AHD 4.0, help desk analysts can see "at a glance" the number of incidents and change orders currently active or completed. They can also quickly scan historical problem data by asset, type or other parameters --allowing them to rapidly pinpoint chronic issues and take appropriate remedial action.

AHD 4.0 also provides seamless integration with Unicenter TNG's asset management and remote control options.

Computer Associates International, Inc. (NYSE: CA), the world leader in mission-critical business computing, provides software, support and integration services in more than 100 countries around the world. CA has more than 13,000 employees and had revenue of $5.1 billion in calendar year 1998.

For more information about CA, please call 516-342-5224 or email info@cai.com. CA's World Wide Web address is www.cai.com.

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