Virgin Media Television (VMTV), the content division of Virgin Media, has selected Hornbill's Supportworks ITSM to support over 400 staff working with more than one hundred different business systems. With a US parent company, VMTV has to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation and is using Supportworks ITSM to provide audit trails for all its communications. Scheduled tasks are recorded, using Supportworks ITSM to both trigger work requests and automatically provide the necessary evidence for both internal and external audit requirements which saves the IT department significant amounts of time.

The specialised systems used by Virgin Media that are supported by Supportworks ITSM provide applications for viewers - TV shoppers and the applications behind the 'red button' - as well as for scheduling advertisements and programmes. The IT team also supports the usual desktop office applications, printers and network used by VMTV staff. Supportworks ITSM was chosen for its ease of use, competitive price and Hornbill's ability to provide a personalised post – sales service.

Monica Bhudia, Service Delivery Manager of the IT department at VMTV commented; "Transmitting live TV broadcasts means systems cannot go down, so any problems have to be dealt with as soon as possible. What we really like about Supportworks ITSM is that it helps us to provide a better service to our customers and it is easy to manage. The systems administration is straightforward and we are able to make minor customisations, like screen layouts, ourselves without the aid of specialist developers.

"We had no real processes before we started down the ITIL path. Supportworks' ITIL-compatible solution was ideal because it gave guidelines and a framework to work with."

The IT team uses Supportworks ITSM for incident and problem management, configuration management and change management. The front line support analysts deal with over 200 calls per week, which are logged and allocated to the appropriate team for resolution. The number of calls is expected to reduce when customer self-service portal is introduced in the early part of 2009.

The team also uses the reporting functionality extensively to record the configuration history of servers and incidents, which enables them to review changes and plan proactively. In addition, the reports are used to monitor third party suppliers' performance against agreed Service Level Agreements. VMTV also intends to adopt the Visual Configuration Management Database and Calendaring facilities now available within the solution.

Gerry Sweeney, CEO of Hornbill Systems commented, "VMTV's business requires its systems to have maximum uptime, which means that its IT support service must not only be responsive, but also proactively managing its systems. Hornbill's Supportworks provides all of the tools necessary to monitor and manage such infrastructures. Increasingly also, legislation such as Sarbanes-Oxley can increase the administration burden for IT departments. By adopting ITIL work practices IT teams can work more efficiently, automating processes and providing audit trails that lighten the load of meeting such regulatory compliances."

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NOTES TO EDITORS
About Virgin Media TV
Virgin Media Television is in the business of entertainment, providing innovative programming and cutting-edge broadband content to all the major digital television platforms, including Sky Digital, Virgin Media and Freeview. In all, its portfolio of channel brands is available in over 21 million homes in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Virgin Media Television is part of Virgin Media, the UK's leading entertainment and communications company.

For more information please visit: www.virginmediatv.co.uk
For press enquiries please contact Judy Wells, Head of Press, VMTV judy.wells@virginmediatv.co.uk