Merkel Victory as German Court Backs Euro Rescue Fund

The following is an excerpt from an article in:


The New York Times
Thursday, September 13, 2012

Merkel Victory as German Court Backs Euro Rescue Fund

By NICHOLAS KULISH and MELISSA EDDY

KARLSRUHE, Germany — The Federal Constitutional Court in Germany gave Chancellor Angela Merkel a significant victory on Wednesday in her bid to master the debt crisis that has buffeted the Continent for years and endangered its common currency, granting approval to one of the main pillars of her strategy.

With the ruling, the 17 European Union countries that use the euro will be able to move ahead with the establishment of the European Stability Mechanism, something like a Continental version of the International Monetary Fund. The mechanism will handle bailouts and work in tandem with the European Central Bank to buy the bonds of countries like Italy and Spain that are straining under high interest rates.

The court ruled that Germany could proceed with its contribution to the mechanism, but it set certain conditions, including a requirement for parliamentary approval of any increase in the agreed-upon German contribution of 190 billion euros, or about $240 billion.

The fund, with $644 billion, is intended to buoy struggling countries and help protect the common currency, an impossible mission without Germany, which has the European Union’s largest economy. Although the ruling is unlikely to still Europe’s economic crisis entirely, a rejection could have unleashed new waves of instability and thrown the fitful march toward European integration into question.

“Once again, Germany today sends a strong signal out to Europe and the world beyond,” Ms. Merkel told Parliament. “Germany is decisively true to its responsibility in Europe as the largest economy and a reliable partner.”

For more, visit www.nytimes.com.

News Release from BMC Software

Customer Success: Lenovo Manages ITIL®-Compliant Service Delivery with BMC Software’s Remedy ITSM Suite

Lenovo, the world’s second largest personal computer vendor, is using BMC Software’s (NASDAQ: BMC) Remedy  IT Service Management Suite (ITSM) to manage IT Infrastructure Library® (ITIL)-compliant service delivery. Lenovo has developed a new unified managed services offering for its customers that is powered by the BMC Remedy IT Service Management Suite. BMC is delivering improved system stability, significantly better service performance and enhanced customer satisfaction.

The market for managed IT services is exploding in China as organizations seek more efficient and effective ways to deliver information services to clients and end users. A growing challenge for IT service providers, like Lenovo, is the need to maintain control and visibility over an increasingly diverse range of infrastructure and management processes.

Lenovo launched its IT managed services, including device debugging, software maintenance and post-guarantee equipment servicing, in August 2010, offering multi-vendor infrastructure management for PCs, network equipment and printers. In order to optimize its own efficiency, Lenovo implemented the BMC Remedy IT Service Management Suite to provide a framework for enjoying greater process control and systems stability while enhancing customer satisfaction. 

“Since the data from different resources could not be integrated, we faced the challenge of controlling service processes, response times and service quality,” said Mr. Lv Zaifeng, general manager of service operation and support, emerging markets business group, Lenovo. “BMC Remedy incorporates ITIL best practices, offering incident management, problem management, change and configuration management and improves service levels from every corner.”

Although Lenovo’s managed services team is highly trained and effective, the company needed to streamline their schedules and monitor their performance with staff spread over more than 1,000 locations. Additionally, Lenovo had no way to manage the handovers needed when Line 2 service personnel passed a job over to Line 3 personnel, either because of scheduling or skills issues.

The company suffered from a relatively low front-line incident resolution rate and keenly understood that it needed to implement a solution that would deliver increased service quality without sacrificing efficiency or flexibility. Following a review of all available solutions, Lenovo decided on the BMC Remedy IT Service Management Suite as the best solution for its needs.

The BMC Remedy solution offers customers the ability to easily configure the solution without the need to build or maintain code. Underpinning this flexibility is the BMC Remedy Action Request System (ARS), a powerful and scalable workflow engine.

By providing more transparency into the process and immediate access to supporting data, it is possible to significantly improve help desk or service desk performance and boost the first-call resolution metrics. Lenovo’s first call resolution rate has increased drastically following the introduction of the Remedy suite.

“We will continue to work with BMC as a strategic partner, and the next step includes data center integration, automation and monitoring,” said Mr. Lv. “We plan to expand Lenovo IT outsourcing services business into a new realm.”