LANDESK White Paper Maintaining User Productivity through Effective Endpoint Management
Contents Executive Overview... 3 Integration Increases Context... 3 Integration Drives Action... 3 Integration Provides Assurance... 4 Summary... 5 This document contains the confidential information and/or proprietary property of LANDESK Software, Inc. and its affiliates (referred to collectively as LANDESK ), and may not be disclosed or copied without prior written consent of LANDESK. LANDESK retains the right to make changes to this document or related product specifications and descriptions, at any time, without notice. LANDESK makes no warranty for the use of this document and assumes no responsibility for any errors that can appear in the document nor does it make a commitment to update the information contained herein. For the most current product information, please visit www.landesk.com. Copyright 2016, LANDESK. All rights reserved. LSI-1607 MK/BB/DL 2
Executive Overview Nexthink is the pioneer and leader in end-user IT Operations Analytics. Nexthink s unique software provides enterprise-wide, real-time analytics covering all endpoints, end-users, applications, services, and network connections and visualization of IT infrastructure and service delivery. Nexthink helps IT departments connect, communicate, and collaborate to achieve their most important goals. LANDESK provides an end-to-end service management solution that unifies and automates the delivery of assets and services users need to be productive. Delivering ITSM functionality incident, problem, change, self service, configuration management, and more organizations can maintain an enterprise-class service management operation through a solution that s easy to use and own. applications and services running locally on the endpoint and how those applications are interacting with network resources. Nexthink also provides visibility into applications that are accessed via remote console sessions. At any time an analyst knows exactly what applications are being used; the servers, websites, or web services those applications connect to and the experience of users as well as any issues with those applications or services. For example, let s say a service desk analyst is working on a problem where certain systems are experiencing errors when connecting to a line-of-business application in a remote data center. From the Nexthink Finder, the service desk analyst can readily see all the systems across the enterprise, allowing them to interrogate which systems have an issue making a connection, or if the issue is isolated to systems with a common location. The goal of many service management teams is to maintain the productivity of their end users; providing access to services and remediating issues quickly. Knowing what is happening at the endpoints used by end users enables teams to be more effective in their approach. When Nexthink is applied in conjunction with the LANDESK ITSM solution, the additional real-time information provides the context and visibility needed for the operations and support teams to diagnose and resolve incidents or problems more quickly and efficiently. Integration Increases Context For customers that use LANDESK ITSM solutions, it s critical to understand the scope of any outage, the impact on other endpoints, as well as any common characteristics of endpoints where the user is experiencing an issue in real-time. Nexthink provides real-time visibility into changes in the system, connections, and servers, as well as connections to external websites and application behavior. This gives service desk analysts access to detailed information that they can interrogate for greater context to quickly determine if an issue is at the endpoint, server, or on a network. With this information analysts can speed up diagnosis and make more informed decisions. The Nexthink Collector monitors both physical and virtual desktops in real-time. It sends this data to the Nexthink Engine for realtime analytics. Nexthink analyzes all local processes and software changes, local resource usage, network response times, throughput, and network latency. This provides the IT operations team real-time visualizations of the IT infrastructure from the end-user perspective. Nexthink maintains this real-time repository of information on a broad range of data associated with the end users and their associated endpoints. This data includes information regarding all Nexthink Finder displaying a service overview Nexthink Finder displaying a service error Integration Drives Action Nexthink analytics features or data can be easily accessed directly from within the LANDESK Service Desk toolset in the context of the process, activity, or configuration item being worked on, optimizing activity. 3
Nexthink generates a dataset periodically, which can be configured hourly, for example. LANDESK Service Desk can import this data and provide a graphical representation for a service desk analyst in the context of the record being worked on. User view in Nexthink Graphical representation of seven-day history of device metrics Furthermore, suppose a service desk analyst is responding to an end user reporting an application fault on their machine. This type of application information is captured by Nexthink. From the LANDESK incident record (or any record), analysts have access to in-context, right-click actions on the associated configuration item (CI) or on the end user details that will take them to Nexthink. This allows navigation through recent activity on the device or user view at the point of failure immediately from within Nexthink. With this level of information, the analyst is able to take the appropriate action such as deploy a patch using LANDESK Management Suite. This activity also works in the other direction via Nexthink Custom Actions, offering cost and resource optimization opportunities to IT operations teams. From the context of looking at the details of an endpoint from the Nexthink Finder, it is possible to create an incident; for example, if desktops identified in Nexthink are encountering issues. By using LANDESK Event Manager, events can also be logged in LANDESK based on monitored thresholds such as system crashes, excessive CPU usage, or other risks to user productivity. This enables pre-emptive action such as the initiation of an incident or any other ITSM process in LANDESK automatically. For example, Nexthink monitors activity on endpoints and identifies potential harmful binaries that could create incidents for analysts to remediate or to alert the security team. Integration Provides Assurance Nexthink complements not only the LANDESK service management tools but can also provide benefits to customers of other LANDESK products. Right click CI in Service Desk to go to Nexthink device view Suppose a LANDESK administrator is planning to deploy a new version of a line-of-business application. With Nexthink analytics, the administrator knows exactly how the current application is performing and interacting with the network resources. Once the new version is installed, the administrator has immediate feedback on how the updated application is behaving on the system. Similar to this would be the rollout of patches, providing confidence that there were no unintended side effects. Of course, many applications are more than simple executables deployed and run from the local hard drive. Many organizations leverage applications that connect to servers in the cloud. It is also more and more common for critical line-of-business applications to be accessed through browsers. These browser applications connect 4
to web services both inside the organization as well as services from the cloud. Nexthink provides the visibility to help LANDESK administrators fully visualize and understand the interaction of traditional and browser applications and the usage of cloud-based services such as Office 365. Summary The combined power of Nexthink end-user analytics and LANDESK service management capabilities gives customers the insights needed to know more, do more, and remediate more to better serve end users. Through Nexthink s integration with LANDESK, contextual information is delivered into the hands of IT analysts, telling the complete story of each end user s IT user experience. In addition, Nexthink gathers valuable data automatically and can notify an analyst of a technical issue or initiate an incident in the LANDESK service management system, presented in the context of the user s individual experience of IT. Contact LANDESK to Learn More Or visit us at: http://www.landesk.com/itsm E-mail us at: sales@landesk.com Speak with a LANDESK product representative by calling: n The U.S. call: 1.800.982.2130 n In Europe call: +44 (0) 1344 442100 n In APAC call: 1300 661 871 For specific country offices and contact information, visit: www.landesk.com. LANDESK service management customers now have detailed, dynamic insights of IT usage to make better decisions and optimize operations and costs. Note: A predefined integration service is available to LANDESK customers that use Nexthink. LANDESK customers that do not have Nexthink can now contact their LANDESK representative and evaluate how Nexthink enables smarter IT through analytics. 5