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As organizations look to do more with fewer resources and better leverage scarce knowledge across their entire organization, they have found that the traditional hierarchical management structure no longer meets the needs of the business. Enterprises have turned to the matrix organizational structure for increased flow of information across departments and greater flexibility and responsiveness.

Virtualization is a constantly evolving process, with new platforms introducing tools every day that are designed to make the process of moving to the cloud simpler.

While the recent trend towards cloud computing might make it seem like virtualization is new, it has existed in some form for many decades.

Look back at the some of the highest paying IT certifications of 2020.

It’s been about 10 years since public cloud offerings like AWS opened up the world of big data analytics. This post examines the top five most useful architectures used for big data stacks to learn the sweet spots of each.

The 2021 revised and updated version CISSP (Certified Information System Security Practitioner) certification exam will be released on May 1, 2021. This new version of the popular CISSP exam will include a modest revision and re-organization of previously included topics, but will integrate a significant number of new topics.

Keep your project on time and within budget by controlling the baselines, budget, and schedule. View our comprehensive guide to project management, from project scheduling to cost control, from the experts at Global Knowledge.

Project quality management is the process of determining the quality standards that are applicable to a project and devising a way to satisfy them. Learn more here.

Project Scope Management sets the foundation for the creation, development and successful delivery of a project. Learn about the project management process here.

Implementing business analysis (BA) in organizations needs to be done in a well-planned process. The three steps are contingent on the BA maturity of the organization, its vision for how BA will be used and the degree of executive sponsorship.

As IT departments struggle with skills gaps and businesses attempt to recovery economically from the COVID-19 pandemic, these 10 IT skills are essential to drive success. Job roles in these areas pay well, but decision-makers are struggling to find qualified candidates. If you’re looking to make an IT skills investment or start a new career path this year, these are the areas to consider.

These technology job roles are proven to be essential during a crisis as enterprises scramble to change strategies and meet goals. The skills demonstrated by IT professionals in these 10 positions can make the difference between business success and failure, especially during a recession.

While cybersecurity remains the most popular certification category in our IT Skills and Salary Report, foundational-level certifications highlight our list of the most popular IT certifications of 2020. 

For women in IT, advancing your career can be a challenge in itself. In the Global Knowledge 2019 IT Skills and Salary Report, only eight percent of senior- and executive-level IT professionals are women. We have pulled data from our research that sheds light on the job roles, skills, challenges, certifications and experience of women in tech who have progressed to the highest levels of an organization.

According to the Global Knowledge IT Skills and Salary Report, women make up 16% of the tech workforce, and an even smaller percentage (8%) are at the senior or executive level. Here’s an overview of the most popular and most pursued certifications by women in tech.

If you’re looking to fortify your cloud expertise, there are a number of certifications to consider. We have compiled 10 cloud certifications that are sure to positively affect your career. 

Global Knowledge subject matter experts predict the top trends for 2020 in IT training, Microsoft, Cisco, AWS, cybersecurity and more.

The value of IT certifications has grown considerably over the last decade. Examine the evolution of certification trends, see the top-paying certifications and learn how decision-makers are struggling to hire certified employees.

Looking ahead at new and emerging certifications provides insight into the areas deemed valuable in the IT industry. If you are an early adopter or in a position where you need to show that you have the bleeding-edge expertise of a technology, this list of recent and upcoming certifications is for you. 

Google Cloud certifications had a breakout year according to the Global Knowledge 2019 IT Skills and Salary Report. GCP Cloud Architect is the top-paying IT certification in North America and Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), while Google Cloud salaries are 34% higher than the average for North America. As more IT departments adopt multi-cloud strategies, Google Cloud skills are increasing in popularity.

In 2019, Microsoft has thoughtfully adapted their curriculum to boost Azure skills adoption. And to further speed up Azure consumption, Global Knowledge has stepped in to support Microsoft’s evolution and their new strategy. We’re fighting change with change. And here’s how we did it.

For organizations with the willingness to get in shape and regain their corporate vitality, combining and aligning best practice frameworks is a sure way to achieve that goal. Admittedly, it takes work. Combining ITIL® 4 and project management should be high on your list.

Cloud computing has risen from relative obscurity to the No. 1 tech area of interest in the world, according to the 2017 Global Knowledge IT Skills and Salary Report.

How do you measure the experience and knowledge of an IT professional? One way is through certifications. Earning any certification is a notable achievement, though not all certifications carry the same perceived worth.

Cloud adoption continues to soar. In fact, worldwide Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) public cloud services grew by 29.5 percent in 2017, according to Gartner. If it’s not in a company’s current plans to utilize cloud technology, it most certainly will be (or should be) in the next couple of years.

Technology trends such as these show no signs of abating, and IT administrators need to be prepared. Having a well-rounded and versatile team of IT practitioners is becoming increasingly necessary. In the following article, we examine five key skills that every IT department should have covered, regardless of the size of the company.

Behind various Google services lies the powerful Cloud AI, a neural net-based, machine learning technology that Google has perfected for use with services like image search and voice recognition. Here are five ways you could use Cloud AI to improve your business.

A longtime leader in data analytics, Google continues to earn their position by continually improving their data analytics offerings. Now, with Google Cloud Platform (GCP), you can capture, process, store, and analyze your data in one place, allowing you to change your focus from infrastructure to analytics that informs business decisions. However, you can also use GCP Big Data tools in combination with other cloud-native and open-source solutions to meet your needs. Below is an overview of GCP Big Data Tools and how you might utilize them to improve analytics.

Google takes security to a whole new level thanks to their years of experience as one of the most popular targets on the internet for would-be hackers and denial of service bots. This led Google to build a sophisticated security infrastructure the likes of which few companies or organizations can claim. Google approaches security holistically and involves everything from the physical data centers, to the data pipelines between them, down to the training of each employee that is responsible for managing the infrastructure.

Moving capabilities to a cloud provider such as Microsoft Azure is pretty straightforward. However, given the depth and breadth of service offerings provided by Azure, it’s easy to miss the product’s less obvious capabilities. If you're implementing a Microsoft Azure cloud platform, you'll want to consider these five services to save time, money, and your sanity.

Quality, as we know it today, is an accumulation of several concepts that together create a comprehensive approach to quality. The views of quality, as described in A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) and tested on the PMP® exam, focus primarily on the work of three major contributors: W. Edwards Deming, Joseph M. Juran and Philip B. Crosby.

If you’re looking for serious change, why not focus on your IT professional career? How much can you really learn from a five-point “Hack” list that speaks to everyone, yet no one? Not much. Too many articles rattle off a quick hit list. After reading this goal-setting guide you’ll be able to develop a game plan to bring successful change in your professional life.

Each year as the data from the Global Knowledge IT Skills and Salary Survey is put through the analysis process, certain trends become clearer. One of those is the prevalence of IT professionals who pursue certifications across multiple categories.

Data center return on investment – which is measured by time to cost savings, time to revenue, time to break even, etc. – has proven more elusive than expected. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t attainable. To understand the genesis of the bad and ugly parts of data center ROI, we need to recognize the good parts and appreciate why so many companies are putting their faith in new and unfamiliar technologies.

You might already know what cloud computing is, and you might already be implementing it into your business, but are you able to have a conversation about it? The lingo surrounding this newer technology can be a bit, well, cloudy. Here are just some of the terms we keep hearing as cloud computing spreads from organization to organization.

There is a wide-range of services available in GCP ranging from Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) to completely managed Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). In the first part of this series, we will discuss the available infrastructure components and how they provide a powerful and flexible foundation on which to build your applications.

As with all technologies transforming the way organizations operate, it’s expected that roles will also evolve. Cloud computing already has and will continue to change traditional IT roles and functions for years to come. We'll begin our overview of the transformation of cloud job roles with a look at some of the top cloud computing roles and responsibilities for architects, engineers and developers.

We spoke with Doug Cutting about his role with Cloudera and learned more about Big Data, training options for IT professionals interested in Big Data, and how Cloudera compares to Red Hat.

Whether you are just getting started in business analysis or want to gain a better understanding of certain aspects of business analysis, we have compiled a list of frequently used terms to help you get started.

Having a breadth and depth of skills -- especially on new and emerging technologies -- can only weigh in your favor.

Get an insider’s take on 2017 cloud computing, DevOps, and Internet of Things (IoT) trends from an industry expert.

Modern quality management and project management are complementary. They both emphasize customer satisfaction and the underlying belief that quality leads to customer satisfaction. The main objective in quality management is making sure that the project meets the needs it was originally created to meet—nothing more, nothing less. In other words, to ensure quality, you must meet the needs of the stakeholder.

The question of how a project manager working in a functional or matrix organizational structure gets team members to perform is asked in almost every project management class I have taught.

Are you prepping for the PMP exam? What should you know about the impending new edition of A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge PMBOK® Guide before scheduling your examination?

Projects are a social endeavor. Traditional project management approaches have shied away from the social advantages a more agile project environment brings. By nature, we are storytelling, pattern seeking and social people. We need colocation to shine truly in a project environment.

You are estimating the total project cost using three points for cost estimates with a 95 percent confidence level. What is the cost estimate range if the estimated project cost is $120,000 and the standard deviation is $2,500?

You are the project manager on a construction project where you are deliberating between renting, leasing or purchasing a large piece of equipment. Equipment pricing: Rent at a cost of $2,500 per day; Lease for a 60 day period at $2,500 per day, with a 10% discount; Purchase at a price of $100,000. By looking at your project schedule, you have estimated that you will use the equipment about 50 to 60 days. Based only on price, which decision would you recommend?

Your organization and a seller have just agreed to a contract with a total cost of $150,000, an estimated profit of $10,000, buyer/seller sharing of 70/30 and a ceiling price of $170,000. What is the PTA (point of total assumption)? A. $170,000 B. $160,000 C. $164,2...

In this blog series, we'll get you up to speed on using the key tools listed in the PMBOK® Guide, including Decision Tree Diagrams.

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.

In this blog series, we'll get you up to speed on using the key tools listed in the PMBOK® Guide. First up, Work Breakdown Structure (WBS).

Young adults unable to find work, employers unable to fill jobs, a recent GAO study that reported substantial declines in telecommunication expertise — there has been a lot of news about the pervasiveness of skills gaps, their causes, the actual impacts and what to do about them. It’s rather confusing, because the term “skills gaps” has been hijacked to politicize an extremely wide range of issues.

In this series, we are looking at six things that can trip up project managers. We’ve covered the hazards of overcommitting, how to provide feedback, the importance of taking responsibility, staying focused, and what leading from the front can actually look like. Finally, we’ll take a look at handling team input.

The demand for skilled business analysis (BA) professionals is on the rise, and a great way to declare your expertise is with a BA certification. But which BA certification is right for you: PMI-PBA, CBAP or CCBA? Here is a look at the eligibility requirements and steps for obtaining each.

Communication is vital within projects and contributes significantly to project success. PMs and BAs have important—and different—roles. Let's take a look.

Enterprise thinking, simply put, is the practice of considering the entire enterprise in decision-making, not just a given group or department. This style of thinking makes the organization both leaner and more agile—lean by reducing the waste and inefficiencies that come from blinkered and siloed thinking and agile by increasing everyone’s understanding of enterprise goals, vision, and functions.

Now that we have looked at the similarities and differences between the first two steps of the military decision-making process (MDMP) and the project management processes from the planning process group that align with them, it’s time to take a look at the third ste...

For a project manager (PM) who has served as a military officer on a battalion or higher staff, the parallels between the military decision-making process (MDMP), the orders production process, and project management doctrine prescribed by the Project Management Institute (PMI) are difficult to ignore. Both the MDMP and the processes outlined in A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge—Fifth Edition (PMBOK® Guide) are iterative in nature, allow for the introduction of changes to the original plan, assign tasks and responsibilities, and involve the concept of managing the scope of the operation or project.

As mentioned earlier, one of the most useful pieces of guidance that ITIL provides relates to the categorization of suppliers. ITIL describes four categories of suppliers:

Enterprises, whether they are commercial, non-profit, or government entities, are operational organizations that operate through the execution of hundreds of processes. The quality of these processes affects every aspect of the enterprise and these processes are rarely static. Business Process Analysis (BPA) is the discipline of examining processes so that they may be changed to align with enterprise objectives.

One of the many useful features of tunneling is to carry non-IP traffic across an IP network, and this is still the case when dealing with IPv6 traffic. This transition mechanism makes use of a configured tunnel to transport IPv6 over a native IPv4 network, which may consist of two sites or more. Unlike the previous transition mechanisms, tunneling is not monolithic; while the basic principles may be similar, the operations are different. The following chart gives a breakdown of the current, major tunneling types in use, particularly in a Cisco environment:

In a recent post, I gave an overall description of a service portfolio and the key components of a portfolio. Here, I will describe how a cloud services provider might implement an ITIL service portfolio. A cloud services provider will regularly have a set of services under development, a set of service in live operation, and a set of services that are retired.

ITIL describes a service portfolio as a collection of the overall set of services managed by a service provider. A service portfolio describes a service provider’s boundaries and promises across all of the customers and market spaces it serves. I like to think of a service portfolio as describing the past, present, and future collection of services offered by a service provider. The figure below shows a high-level view of a service portfolio.

We already covered the first three of the twelve advantages of Agile software development. These three advantages focus on team development and refining the process. Advantage #4: Motivated Development Team The positive relationship with a reasonable and satisfied customer is only one of the reasons why many developers prefer to work on Agile projects. The other main contributor is that they tend to value working in self directed teams (which the Agile methods require for success).

There is a reason why the Agile methods are becoming mainstream. They can work! Although every Agile practice is not necessarily appropriate for every organization, each practice has delivered real value to many organizations, and some Agile practices can be used by anyone! This four part series explores twelve ways in which the Agile methods are valuable. I’ll bet that you will find more than a few that could be valuable for you!

Knowledge Management examines how we acquire, organize, manage, share, and utilize knowledge and information. The Internet gives us an overwhelming amount of information on a daily basis — and the volume of information available is growing rapidly! One of the biggest challenges for individuals and organizations involved in project management is to make the best use of this knowledge and information so they can operate more efficiently, improve decision making, and sustain a competitive advantage.

Lessons learned is a theory, or conclusion, based on evidence at a given time and describes what went wrong (as well as what went right) throughout the lifecycle of a project. Although it’s completed during the project closeout process, it should occur during the entire project lifecycle to ensure all information is captured and documented. Consequences of not having a project review of lessons learned are the increased likelihood of repeating actions that might have caused:

During a recent ITIL foundation class, a student asked an interesting question. She wanted to know: “What is the difference between a project and a service?” To be honest, I haven’t spent much time thinking about this distinction. However, I think that those of us who practice ITIL consulting and training should have good answers to questions such as this. Here’s how I answered this question.

The term "life cycle" implies two things: that a process is perpetual and that the sequence of events is obligatory or uni-directional. There is no beginning or end to a life cycle and the sequence of events cannot change. A seed cannot go directly to being a mature plant nor revert back to the blossom stage.

In my last post I discussed aspects of problem management in the context of a real-life situation regarding the first vehicle I owned. In that scenario, and throughout this series of posts, I’ve demonstrated a real-life situation from a standpoint of the incident and problem management processes that ITIL describes.

In the fourth of his five-part series, Eric Strause explores the hardware and application benefits inherent in a cloud-based architecture.

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.”

No matter which IT field you're working in, there are several skills that are useful for every IT professional to know. Here, seven experienced IT professionals working in the networking, programming, project management, and security fields, share what they believe a...

Project procurement activities are often managed by specialists. By this I mean that the procurement department takes over responsibility for purchasing and contract management from the project manager. As a result of this separation of responsibilities, the steps and stages of procurement are often poorly understood by PMs. In this and the next few blog submissions, I will attempt to shed light on procurement activities and relate these activities to the PMI PMBOK.

No matter what book or manual you use to study for the CCNA examination, you will see various protocols and processes referencing an RFC. And, although frequently referenced, the RFCs are seldom actually included in the documentation. So, the logical question becomes...

The triple constraints model has been one of the main staples for teaching project management for as long as I can remember. The model is generally represented by a triangle with Scope on the horizontal leg, Time on the left leg, Cost or Resources on the right leg an...