Stomping Through Pink Elephant
Posted February 13th, 2008 by Joe Pendry
StackSafe is heading to the Pink Elephant 12th Annual International IT Service Management Conference & Exhibition at the Bellagio in Las Vegas next week. We will be demonstrating StackSafe Test Center (we will be in booth 203) and releasing our recently developed whitepaper – completed with Julie Craig from Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) – that talks about the importance of pre-production testing as part of the ITIL process.
We also are also very excited about the show because StackSafe Test Center was recently named one of the three finalists for Pink Elephant’s Innovation of the Year award. We find out next Wednesday evening if we will be in the winners circle.
We believe we were nominated as finalists because StackSafe Test Center allows organizations to cost-effectively improve their change and release management processes through better pre-production testing. In terms of Change Management, EMA reports that, for companies with very structured and conservative change processes, changes drive between 25% and 30% of production problems and incidents. In those with a less structured approach, changes contribute to as many as 75% to 80% of production incidents. You can learn more about Test Center and ITIL at our ITIL Knowledge Center.
So the obvious question is, “why is an organization that deals with ITIL called Pink Elephant?” Although I cannot verify it on the Pink Elephant blog, I seem to remember a story from my Pink Elephant ITIL fundamentals class that indicated the company was named after a pub somewhere in Europe. My guess is Belgium. Also, a quick google search shows that a Belgian beer named Delirium Tremens, shows a pink elephant on the label. It was actually once named Best Beer in the World. I guess the pressures of being a leading IT Service Management team require a good beer every now and then.
So if you are going to be in Las Vegas next week, come visit us to learn about our innovative product. If you mention that you read our blog, I am sure that Jonah will happily buy you a beer. Maybe even a Delirium Tremens if we can get our hands on one.
After all, when in Rome…
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Filed Under: ITIL, StackSafe Corporate, Testing
February 14th, 2008 at 9:57 am
[...] light of the fact that StackSafe is heading to the Pink Elephant conference next week, IT’s About Uptime spoke with Julie Craig, a Senior Analyst at Enterprise [...]
February 15th, 2008 at 8:16 am
Nice to see that “Pink Elephant” still is alive. Originally founded in the Netherlands by a couple of students late 1980’s “Pink Elephant” was the name of my employer when I started about ten years ago. Due to a couple of mergers Pink Elephant unfortunately lost the logo and name in the Netherlands.
In NL it was rebranded as PinkRoccade (to keep some of the identity “Pink” stayed as part of the company name) followed by Getronics PinkRoccade which recently became a subsidairy of KPN ICT BV (a major Dutch telco)
Even being an employee the exact origin of “Pink Elephant” never became clear to me. I was told it had something to do with students and beer, so the story about the name and the beer you mentioned popped up quite a lot. “Delerium Tremens” by the way is quite a name for a beer when you realize what it means:(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delirium_tremens)
Greets Gerben
February 18th, 2008 at 10:07 am
Hi,
I was in Las Vegas last year for the 2007 annual conference, and I was told that Pink Elephant was the name of a Coffee Shop in Amsterdam where the fundators used to go.
Who knows …
Fabien
February 19th, 2008 at 12:27 am
Thanks for the comments, Fabian and Greets. We are at the show this week trying to get to the bottom of the name change (and showing our product, of course). Our booth is right next to the Pink Elephant booth, so we’ll try to get someone to give us the true story.