Network Associates Taps Channel

Called Service Management Integration (SMI), the new solution will be offered only through Network Associates' channel partners, said Gary Brand, director of alliances for the vendor's Magic Solutions product line.

SMI allows organizations to use Web services to seamlessly integrate information from external sources, such as Oracle and Microsoft SQL databases, with Magic Service Desk's help-desk tickets and problem-management processes. Users can access the information via a single browser-based interface.

SMI offers solution providers the opportunity to extend the Magic solution far beyond the help- and service-desk area and into more robust, complex environments, Brand said.

Dick Stark, senior vice president of Evergreen Systems, a Reston, Va.-based solution provider focused on infrastructure management, said SMI looks promising. Evergreen does a lot of integration work melding help-desk solutions with customers' legacy systems, he said.

For example, SMI would streamline a customer's help desk for human resources calls by allowing the help-desk agent to quickly access information from the company's PeopleSoft database through Magic Service Desk, Stark said. "That's the power it brings," he said. The solution is well-suited for midsize companies that can't afford expensive integration work, he said.

Partners interested in offering SMI must first attend a five-day BEA Systems training course and a one-day SMI training session. BEA developed the Web services tool that SMI is built on, Brand said.

SMI is priced at $1,500 per seat, with a 15-seat minimum.