Independent Research Firm Cites Digital Fuel In IT Operations Financial Management Report

Case Study Points to Nationwide Mutual Insurance's Use of Digital Fuel's IT Cost Visibility Solution to Optimize IT Costs for Improved Business Results

SAN MATEO, CA – January 30, 2009 – Digital Fuel, the leader in IT Service Management (ITSM) solutions, today announced that independent technology and market research company Forrester Research, Inc. has acknowledged the use of Digital Fuel's ServiceFlow Cost Visibility in a January 21, 2009 case study involving Nationwide Mutual Insurance. The case study, entitled "IT Operations Financial Management Helps The Business Control Its Service Consumption", demonstrates how "IT operations financial management turns 'IT' into a business operation".

In the report, Nationwide is referenced as a company that is using ServiceFlow, Digital Fuel's suite of Web-based IT Cost Visibility solutions, to reduce unnecessary or underutilized IT spend, reduce service costs through better visibility and collaboration, establish programs to continually reduce the unit costs of services; automate cost allocation/chargeback/showback; and streamline the budgeting process. The case study states that "[Nationwide] has found that even a coarse analysis of IT costs—if presented in an intuitive and transparent way to business units—helps drive better business decisions that optimize IT costs for improved business results."

"IT Service Management has reached a tipping point that demands a new level of service cost visibility. Increasingly, companies battling the current economic climate are finding that ServiceFlow makes it possible to identify targets for IT cost reduction, quickly and efficiently," said Yisrael Dancziger, CEO of Digital Fuel. "The Nationwide case study published by Forrester Research is a strong example of how a major company has implemented, and is benefiting from, such a program."
As explained in the case study, "the project at Nationwide demonstrates that good transparency and analysis of IT operating cost, if presented in an intuitive way to business units, helps drive better business decisions for IT cost optimization – and that the business and IT can jointly make these decisions." The case study adds, "the measure of success for [the project] is that business units should have full control over how and how much they consume the business services that IT supports."

The report further explains that Nationwide is achieving its goals by integrating Digital Fuel's ServiceFlow Cost Visibility solution with other ServiceFlow modules for service portfolio and catalog management. "With ServiceFlow Cost Visibility, Nationwide has implemented an IT operations financial management collaboration platform between IT and the consuming business units to continually improve the way it streamlines and automated the processes to cost, price, bill, charge, and control services spend and usage—and can base these on complete cost transparency," it noted.

"IT cost transparency and analysis are imperatives for corporations today," said William Miller, Assistant Vice President of Finance for Nationwide Mutual Insurance. "What's more, these imperatives, to be satisfied effectively, must involve collaboration between IT and the respective business unit customers. Digital Fuel's ServiceFlow suite is helping us accomplish this and maximize the efficiency of our IT investments."

To view the Forrester case study's executive summary, or to purchase the report, visit http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,48166,00.html.

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About Digital Fuel

Digital Fuel Technologies, Inc., is the leading provider of IT cost visibility solutions including IT Cost Management and Service Level Management (SLM) applications used by enterprises and commercial service providers. The company's business software applications manage billions in IT, telco and other business services at companies and governments around the world including BBC, BT, Capital One, Cisco, Computacenter, CSC, Cummins, Dell, Deutsche Bank, General Electric, Global Crossing, IBM, Nationwide, Nestle, Procter & Gamble, Siemens, SITA, Sprint, Steria, Telefonica, Telus, VW and Wipro. Digital Fuel is headquartered in San Mateo, California, USA, with offices across North America and Europe. Learn more at www.DigitalFuel.com.