In its ongoing commitment to provide quality support for customers, Quest Software, Inc. (Nasdaq: QSFT) today introduced three customer care programs for the company’s application management solution, Foglight®. Quest’s new initiatives consist of a Customer Advisory Board (CAB) to offer strategic guidance to Quest on behalf of current and future Foglight customers, an online community to provide a forum for networking with application management professionals, and transition services to help customers deploy the latest version of Foglight.

Quest’s Foglight CAB provides the company’s leadership with direction and support on issues critical to Quest, delivering value to the current and future community of organizations that depend on Foglight. The Board comprises IT professionals that have strategic- and execution-level responsibility for critical applications and their supporting infrastructures. The CAB offers Quest valuable insight from key Foglight customers on a wide variety of topics including the portfolio roadmap, sales and services, technical support, and marketing initiatives.

Along with Quest’s executive team, the charter Board members include:

• Shelderick Bailey, vice president of global investment management technology, JPMorgan Chase
• Bruce Harbour, executive of integrated application support technology, Telkom SA
• Juergen Janovsky, head of service management provisioning, Vodafone D2 GmbH
• Greg Monn, director of capital projects, Benefitfocus
• Michael Palmer, executive director of IT solutions, Verizon Business
• Patrick Patten, manager of I/S base technology, American Family Insurance
• Kevin Sheehan, director of architecture, enterprise application solutions, Unisys
• Michael Swinhoe, chief infrastructure architect, News, Ltd.
• Kyle Welsh, vice president of technology services, BECU

“It is a real benefit for Foglight users that the CAB includes organizations of various sizes and industry verticals,” said Greg Monn, director of capital projects, Benefitfocus. “As a growing service provider in the healthcare industry, we want to help Quest take advantage of their flexibility in order to serve customers that take practical steps to achieve their vision for application management.”

Foglight.org is an information and networking community dedicated to helping IT professionals advance their application management strategy and take full advantage of the Foglight solution. Community members can explore best practices that stem from the real-world experiences of peers and participate in discussion forums about their specific challenges. Additionally, the Quest team will blog about market trends, share strategies for the advancement of Foglight, promote customer successes, and illuminate pitfalls to avoid when implementing application management solutions.

As a Foglight user and Quest partner, Kevin Sheehan, director of architecture, enterprise application solutions at Unisys, noted, “The use of forums and networking sites is a great way for customers to connect and share information. Foglight.org is a new resource for application management professionals and, if people take advantage of this opportunity, the entire community will benefit.”

Quest’s Foglight transition program ensures that Foglight 4 customers receive the maximum benefit from Foglight 5 while minimizing project effort and risk. A Quest consultant works closely with each customer to assess the organization’s current utilization of Foglight and determine the best transition strategy according to the organization’s IT and business plans.

According to John Newsom, vice president of worldwide solutions engineering at Quest, transition services are the key to unlocking the full value in Foglight. “Quest will work with customers on strategic planning, training, technical implementation, and tailoring Foglight to each customer’s workflows, environment and objectives. Our number one goal is to make Foglight 4 customers successful before, during and after the transition to Foglight 5.”

Quest’s transition services provide customers with options to add to, redesign or migrate their existing Foglight installation. The services also offer a scoping and needs review, knowledge transfer, and migration of agents, customizations and other components of the existing Foglight 4 environment.

Foglight customers, CAB members and Quest experts will be available at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Las Vegas, April 6 – 10. Live Foglight demonstrations will take place at Quest’s booth #201.