Think fast
Thoughts and ideas on how to build tools, automate workflows and speed-up the workplace.
Illuminating the Shadows: How to Manage and Mitigate Shadow IT
Shadow IT isn’t a new phenomenon. It’s been in organizations for years, surfacing whenever employees can’t find (or don’t trust) official channels to get the tools they need. And as digital transformation accelerates, those unofficial pathways multiply. According to Qualys’ State of Cloud and SaaS Security Report , 28% of organizations experienced a cloud or SaaS-related breach in the last year, with over a third of those hit multiple times within 12 months.
Jamie Birss
Mar 24, 2025
Top 6 Open-Source IT Ticketing Systems
Ticketing is absolutely fundamental to how IT teams interact with their service users across the organization. But, they come in a variety of forms, with many vastly different platforms on the market. At one end of the spectrum, we have very basic tools that allow users to submit simple requests. At the other, we have highly customizable solutions with more advanced capabilities for integrating with our wider ITSM stack. Today, we’re looking at one cluster of options by checking out the top open-source IT ticketing systems.
Ronan McQuillan
Mar 19, 2025
Top 5 Incident Management Tools for 2025
Incident management is one of the most challenging aspects of IT service delivery. However, it’s also critical, as incidents can come with huge costs, including financial, security, compliance, reputational, or service continuity issues. Of course, prevention is always better than cure. However, the reality is that we can’t prevent every possible incident from occurring. So, where problem management and risk management might stop incidents from occurring, incident management is concerned with minimizing the impact of those that still do.
Ronan McQuillan
Feb 28, 2025
Top 6 Software Asset Management Software Tools
Businesses of all sizes face a growing challenge of staying on top of the software tools they use. Combating shadow IT, managing costs, and ensuring our team have the capabilities they need can be a massive undertaking. But, the actual practicalities of this can vary from one organization to the next. For example, because of the scale of your team, the scope of the tools they need, or the complexity of your wider IT environment.
Ronan McQuillan
Feb 21, 2025
Top 5 Free Asset Management Software Tools
Asset management is one of the most common, mission-critical ITSM workflows. Efficiently handling requests for devices helps us to minimize internal admin costs. This ensures that our IT resources are deployed as effectively as possible. At the same time, we can improve experiences for service users with a centralized, accessible tool to submit and manage requests. Today, we’re checking out a range of open-source and free asset management software. We’ll be picking out tools from different corners of the market, from COTS applications, to highly customizable solutions.
Ronan McQuillan
Feb 11, 2025
Top 6 Change Management Tools
Managing changes to projects, systems, or processes is one of the most fundamental challenges that businesses face. Change is both inevitable and necessary. For example, if we want to streamline processes, adopt new solutions, or add features to internal tools. However, this also comes along with associated risks, costs, and other potential downsides. So, we need to take a structured approach to maximize the success of our change initiatives. Today, we’re taking a look at the top change management tools to help us achieve this.
Ronan McQuillan
Feb 11, 2025
Top 16 IT Newsletters for 2025
The IT department is probably the team under the greatest pressure to stay informed. The problem is finding the time. IT teams already have some of the busiest, most varied workloads across the organization. How do you carve an hour to get to grips with the latest AI fads when you’ve got a full backlog of tickets to work through? To try and alleviate this pressure, countless brands run IT newsletters, claiming to give you the key facts in your mailbox.
Ronan McQuillan
Feb 5, 2025
6 IT Risk Management Tools for 2025
Risk management is one of the key challenges for IT teams of all sizes. This comprises all kinds of operational, technical, financial, security, compliance, and other risk factors. Recording, assessing, and acting on these can be an enormous undertaking. These days, there’s a huge market for software tools to help IT teams stay on top of risks within their organizations. These range from relatively straightforward solutions for gathering and managing data to more complex platforms that offer advanced capabilities for specific types of risks - like regulatory change monitoring or network threat detection.
Ronan McQuillan
Jan 28, 2025