OTRS came out with a flurry of news, so we asked OTRS General Manager Paul Salazar in Cupertino, CA, what OTRS is all about.
Why is the OTRS helpdesk a game changer in customer service?
Paul Salazar: OTRS brings ten years of experience to bear in the competitive Help Desk and IT Service Management marketplace. Over the past ten years, the OTRS platform has been deployed in over 80,000 organizations worldwide, and the OTRS Group has developed a range of services that optimize deployments and ensure reliable support. The OTRS platform is very versatile, with over 1000 configuration options, making possible unique configurations that precisely implement necessary processes for each user. OTRS is now available on the iPhone and future innovations will extend the reach of the product in terms of mobility, improved usability and ease-of-deployment.
What are the advantages of an open source solution like OTRS over proprietary software?
Paul Salazar: OTRS and other open source solutions have four key advantages over proprietary software solutions: (a) the software can be used with no license fees, in perpetuity, (b) the software code can be studied and changed to suit unique needs, (c) a community of like-minded technical users contribute to the improvement of the code with bug reports, user forums and code contributions, and (d) users can easily extend the code with their own modules.
How can I evaluate your offering to see if it fits our project requirements?
Paul Salazar: OTRS is open source and free to download, so prospective users can download and install the product anytime and use it for as long as they would like. For those who would simply like to try a few functions, demo systems are easily accessible in the Products section of the OTRS.com website.
How does OTRS tie in with a company database or any pre-existing CRM or content management software?
Paul Salazar: OTRS can be connected to external data sources or third party applications through a SOAP interface that enables application-to-application exchange of data. OTRS is investing in further expansion of its interfaces to support a broad range of data exchange through API calls using SOAP and other Internet-standard protocols.
I read that OTRS considers itself a platform rather than software. Does that mean that I can deploy OTRS in multiple ways? Please explain the options.
Paul Salazar: At its core, OTRS is a highly versatile platform that implements a range of business processes optimized around the notion of a ticket and other service-related data structures. OTRS has over 1000 configuration options, so from the base platform there are numerous ways to configure a specific solution. The most common configurations are Help Desk and IT Service Management, but there are many more ways to deploy OTRS. The Customer section of the OTRS website details the broad range of possible uses.
What does it take to implement OTRS?
Paul Salazar: OTRS is a simple-to-install application most often deployed on Linux and Windows systems. For Linux installations, basic knowledge of Linux administration is helpful to connect OTRS to databases, mail systems and directory services. For Windows installations the process is somewhat simpler. In any case, an implementation benefits from expert support and consulting from OTRS because the platform is a very flexible, expansive application and it is best optimized by an experienced professional.
Can companies lacking an IT department still deploy OTRS for their customer service?
Paul Salazar: OTRS is easy to download and install for the non-IT expert, especially on Windows. To make things easier, OTRS is going to roll out an on-demand (SaaS) version this fall with pre-built configurations, making it even faster and simpler to get started with OTRS-no IT experience required.
How many of your clients are using the iPhone app? Do you plan to support Android phones and other mobile devices?
Paul Salazar: We have just launched the iPhone App publicly so we are awaiting feedback from customers as they deploy the iPhone App into their helpdesk environments. We plan to support a range of mobile platforms in future releases.
What makes the new beta 3 of OTRS so exciting ... is it a major platform enhancement?
Paul Salazar: OTRS 3.0 is a major step forward for the users of OTRS who want a simple, intuitive user experience based on new technologies such as AJAX and on improved information architecture that presents information in a more intuitive design. There are numerous enhancements that are described in detail on the OTRS 3.0 Beta press release.
OTRS innovations are coming at a rapid clip ... what else is in the pipe?
Paul Salazar: We are building up a range of new offers, both to the core platform as well as the modules we create to extend the platform into new capabilities, as we have done with ITSM and the iPhone. In the future, we will be extending the platform to more easily integrate with third party applications.
In addition, we will be rolling out OTRS in an on-demand (SaaS) offer this fall, expanding the reach of OTRS to those who are less inclined to download and install it themselves. We believe this will be a significant step for the Help Desk users worldwide who would like the breadth and depth of OTRS without the hassle of installation and configuration.
# # # For more news, please follow OTRS at http://www.twitter.com/otrsUSA or download OTRS at http://www.otrs.com/en/get-it-now/
OTRS is the leading open source service innovation suite. The OTRS product suite comprises a Help Desk, an ITIL V3-certified IT service management (ITSM) solution, an associated iPhone App and an underlying technology platform. Over 80,000 corporate groups worldwide use OTRS to improve service, increase customer satisfaction and lower costs. OTRS is available in 27 languages, enabling multi-national corporations to consolidate their service operations onto a single, unified solution. OTRS Group provides worldwide enterprise support, consulting and engineering including process design, implementation, customization, application support, and fully managed hosting. Key customers include industry leaders such as NASA, Siemens, Nokia, and Toshiba. For more information on OTRS products and services, please visit http://www.otrs.com/.
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