KASPERSKY LAB automates internal IT PROCESSES with assyst from Axios Systems

United Kingdom, 1st March, 2010 – Axios Systems, the world’s leading provider of IT Service Management (ITSM) solutions, and Kaspersky Lab, a leading developer of anti-virus software, today announce their joint project to automate IT processes with the ITSM solution assyst from Axios Systems.

Kaspersky Lab, the largest Russian developer of anti-virus software, is the only internationally recognised IT company to have originated in Russia and achieved significant results in markets worldwide. Today, Kaspersky has more than 20 offices in different countries and over 500 local partners. The company’s products and technologies provide protection for over 300 million users worldwide.In 2008, 60% of its total turnover was from Western Europe and 27% was from EEMEA (Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa). The products developed by Kaspersky Lab are top sellers in the end-user German anti-virus software market, number 2 in Spain, Italy and the UK and number 3 in the US[1]. Kaspersky Lab has also been the top anti-virus vendor in Russia since 2008 and has an impressive customer base, which includes large official bodies such as the Federal Tax and Customs Offices of the Russian Federation, the Bank of Russia and Sberbank.

The ITSM project was started because the IT department was breaking away from the R&D section to form an independent unit – a scenario which has become quite typical for Russian IT companies. The new IT department faced the challenge of understanding the entire IT infrastructure, formalising the internal processes and automating the day-to-day processes in order to provide the business with the services required. A strategic decision was taken to follow ITIL recommendations and implement the processes according to industry best practice, thus providing a solid foundation for further development.

Kaspersky also had to formalise communication with the business. In accordance to best practice recommendations, this is a task best addressed by formalising the portfolio of business services provided and implementing a Service Catalogue.

After extensive research, assyst by Axios Systems was chosen, as it is closely aligned to ITIL recommendations and is on a flexible and configurable platform, where all the ITIL processes are pre-integrated around a federated CMDB. The availability of Service Catalogue functionality also played a key role in the choice. The implementation is being carried out by Sitronics IT, an Axios Systems partner in Russia. During the first phase, Incident, Problem and Knowledge Management are being implemented, as well as a single federated CMDB and the Service Catalogue.

This implementation is the first step for Kaspersky to create a single global Service Desk, which will serve close to 2,000 end-users in all corporate offices worldwide. Local 1st line support specialists will be registering the calls in the system and will have access to a single knowledge base. This will significantly reduce the incident resolution times and increase the first-line resolution rate. All business users will have the option to register their incidents through the self-service portal, assystNET, and track progress of their resolution. Both the knowledge base and the web interface will be available to the users in their local language.

The implementation of the comprehensive assyst Service Catalogue will empower Kaspersky to manage the full lifecycle of a service and provide the mapping of relationships between services and the underlying infrastructure.

The assyst Service Catalogue will enable Kaspersky to formalise the portfolio of services and their attributes (such as cost, provisioning times, criticality, etc). It will also help them to reduce costs to the business through the standardisation of services. For end-users, the Service Catalogue within assyst acts as a “one-stop-shop” providing a familiar online retail ‘shopping cart’ style experience.

As part of the implementation, the assyst solution will be integrated with the main monitoring systems in use at Kaspersky Lab – Nagios and SCOM. These systems are responsible for business critical services, such as the product code activation system which supports online retail sales of anti-virus software, which is required 24/7. Both monitoring systems will be fully integrated with assyst through the assyst AlertBridge. As a result, any failures in business critical applications will generate automatic alerts, which will be assigned to the corresponding workgroups in conjunction with the agreed SLAs.

Harlan Vold, Deputy CIO at Kaspersky Lab, says “We chose assyst because it was the only product on the market where all ITIL processes and the Service Catalogue were pre-integrated around a federated CMDB. We were also impressed that assyst was fully aligned to ITIL and fulfilled all of our requirements. Due to the process development logic suggested by assyst and the professionalism of the Sitronics team, we are able to build our internal IT processes in alignment with ITIL, which provides us with a solid foundation for further development.”

Andros Symeonides, Senior VP Business Development says “At Axios, we are delighted such an internationally recognised IT company as Kaspersky Lab has chosen our solution assyst to start on its ITIL journey. This demonstrates the rich functionality within assyst and the professionalism of the Axios and Sitronics team. We are sure that a successful implementation with Kaspersky will strengthen our presence not only in Russia, but also in other countries where Kaspersky is a recognised and well-established brand.”

Andrey Volodin, CEO at Sitronics IT, comments: “Our partnership with Axios Systems has proven to be very successful. We have quickly received support from the vendor during the implementation. Axios has also provided highly skilled personnel for the project, and we are grateful to benefit from the wide experience of their international consultants. We are currently working on a number of projects with assyst from Axios Systems, and I am sure that we will successfully continue with future implementations”.

About Axios Systems
Axios Systems is the world’s leading provider of IT Service Management (ITSM) solutions. Its customer-centric approach, combined with its award-winning software, enables customers to improve their Service Delivery and Support and deliver Continual Service Improvement (CSI) by helping to align and realign IT services to changing business needs, supporting business processes and improving productivity.