Resource Library

I attended a meeting this week with a customer of mine and a potential new vendor. The new vendor was there to pitch his configuration and setup service offerings for a specific ITSM toolset. My customer has already had one bad experience with an ITSM tool configuration vendor who promised one thing and delivered much less. He ended up with a tool that’s minimally used and not configured to match his business needs. He’s looking for a vendor that can understand his business needs and priorities and quickly help him get his tool configured and working in a short time frame. Then the topic of standard changes came up. My customer asked for examples of standard changes. The vendor responded, “Server reboots are an example of standard changes.”

“Twisted Pair” is another way to identify a network cabling solution that’s also called Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) and was invented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1881. Indoor business telephone applications use them in 25-pair bundles. In homes, they were down to four wires, but in networking we use them in 8-wire cables. By twisting the pairs at different rates (twists per foot), cable manufacturers can reduce the electromagnetic pulses coming from the cable while improving the cable’s ability to reject common electronic noise from the environment.

In the last two posts I discussed aspects of services in the context of some landscaping work that I’m having done. This is clearly what many people would call a “non-IT example.” I often use similar examples in my classes. However, I might initially describe an example that seems unrelated to IT, but will conclude with a challenge to students. That challenge is, “identify the IT in this example.” The truth of the matter is that most businesses these days are underpinned by some form of information technology. In fact, technology has become so ingrained into everyday services that often even the service providers themselves don’t realize how technology supports their business.

I recently responded to a message on LinkedIn from a regular reader of this blog. He asked several questions which I will answer over the course of several posts. As part of his first question, he described a strategy report that his group is producing. The audience for this strategy report considers ITIL important to the future of their business, and so he must describe which ITIL processes his data center operations group works most closely with.

Traditionally, ITIL and TOGAF professionals have been part of different teams within an organization. Due to the ongoing alignment of business and IT, these professionals now often find themselves on the same team. Because of this crossover, there is a growing trend towards organization of work based on multiple best practice models. 

The Logical Volume Manager (LVM) is a powerful tool for managing storage on Linux servers. This video provides an overview of how LVM works and explores several ways that LVM makes storage management easier and more flexible. Examples include how to expand storage capacity on the fly using LVM and resize2fs, and how to migrate data from local storage to a storage area network (SAN) without downtime using pvmove.

Successful transformation initiatives are driven by Business Architecture. The Business Architect plays a key role in bringing all of the portfolio components together and consistently reinforcing senior management's voice throughout the ADM lifecycle. This begins with establishing strategic goals and outcomes that set the context for the entire program and service transformation. Establishing context serves as the basis for strategic project portfolio definition and integrated execution. This approach mitigates the risk of executing projects in isolation without considering the needs of the entire portfolio as a whole. This session will boost your knowledge of these concepts and help you and your team to achieve the best possible outcomes for your organization.

Accessing cloud-based resources, whether they be IaaS/PaaS/SaaS-based, is very convenient. With a browser and Internet connection, you are up and running. No driving to your work office, no need to log into the corporate network. Just open up your web browser and go. This convenience, however, comes with a security risk. All of your business work is conducted over an insecure communication network. Unlike your office network, where the network link between you and the data center is under corporate control and is physically secure, the cloud access link is over the Internet.

This paper provides an overview of how to judge the rigor of one's decision making. It describes how anyone can make better (higher quality) decisions, in any situation.

In this hour-long webinar, IT service management expert Nasser El-Batal will introduce you to the TOGAF framework. You will learn about its business benefits, critical factors for implementation success, and TOGAF's relationship to and integration with other best practices.