IT service management encompasses several disciplines ranging from service desk to service-level management (SLM) to ITIL processes, and Digital Fuel plans to address the gamut with its hosted offerings that help enterprise service desk managers create service catalogs, define service levels and better manage support across the organization.

The company, founded in April 2000, designed its IT service management offerings to work with management products from the likes of BMC, CA, HP and IBM -- which customers may already have in house. The software, which can be purchased outright with a license or as a hosted subscription service, uses the existing infrastructure to collect data on IT services. Digital Fuel applications process such data to help customers optimize service desk operations and streamline service delivery, company executives say.

"Our offerings are really about taking out expertise in how to manage service levels and the financials of IT and putting that know-how into our applications," says Yisrael Dancziger, CEO of Digital Fuel.

Customers choosing the software-as-a-service model, log into Digital Fuel's Web site to purchase users and can start working. With the service catalog offering, there is no requirement for data integration and customers can start defining services. With other offerings, such as the company's new service-level management product, Digital Fuel must tap into customer data by performing a data integration process over the Web, which connects the company’s online product to customers' underlying service desk.

Recently Digital Fuel unveiled its Pre-Defined Service Level Management solution for Service Desks, which provides customers with pre-defined reports, dashboards, service-level objectives (SLO), data interfaces and best practices for running IT services in a customer-centric way.

"This solution enables IT organizations to adhere to the best practices of ITIL with a low total cost of ownership and out of the box capabilities," Dancziger says.

Pricing for the SLM solution starts at $200 per user per month. It is available now.

Denise Dubie is senior editor with Network World.