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IT professionals benefit from gaining skills in data analysis, cybersecurity, cloud computing, virtualization and hyperconvergence, and mobile app development.

You may have heard about IT service management and ITIL being yesterday’s news, but the survey suggests you need to re-evaluate those rumors. The enduring value of ITSM credentials and practices have been championed by Gene Kim, one of the Godfathers of the DevOps world, who has said, “It is my firm belief that ITSM and the DevOps movement are not at odds. Quite to the contrary, they’re a perfect cultural match.”

Shortly after being awarded an ITIL® Foundation certification, a recipient’s natural inclination is to ask: “Now what? How do I take the best practices I’ve learned and apply them to my organization?”

As the technology industry has advanced, the professional certification industry has grown alongside it. The Global Knowledge 2016 IT Skills and Salary Report revealed that Cisco, Microsoft, IT service management, ITIL and security certifications are the most lucrative to obtain.

IBM WebSphere Business Modeler (WBM) can be used in conjunction with an adoption of ITIL best practices. It is a full-featured process modeling and simulation tool that fits well with other IBM products that are used to define various service management processes and activities. In this white paper learn more about how WBM provides both the ability to visually define process activities and the ability to define detailed information about processes, including inputs, outputs, cost, revenue, roles and resources.

Which mainstay certifications should be in your list of credentials? What's the next up-and-coming certification? This article will help you answer both questions by providing a review of the 15 top-paying certifications.

AMC’s television series “Halt and Catch Fire” shows North Texas’ rise as the “Silicon Prairie.” In the 1980s and early 1990s, it’s where IBM PC cloning was explored and where first-person shooter games were created. It’s also the site of the first “logic bomb”—the source of my horror story.

Managing users' access to an organization's resources via portals is convenient with IBM's WebSphere Portal Scripting Interface. Compare tools available to the portal administrator and identify some use cases where IBM's Portal Scripting Interface may be the ideal choice. Review basic commands and find out how to create custom scripts.

A major challenge of problem determination is dealing with unanticipated problems. It is much like detective work: finding clues, making educated guesses, verifying suspicions, and other considerations. An ideal strategy for problem prevention is to monitor the system regularly. Use the strategies outlined in this paper to minimize downtime and detective work so you can maximize performance.

CompTIA has raised the bar for Network+ candidates. The new certification exam has significant changes to the five "domains" or knowledge areas with new content related to security, cloud, data-center and operational concerns and troubleshooting. There is also a greater emphasis on wireless networking and VoIP. Use this white paper to help you gain an overview of what's new and what's different.

Using ITIL can improve your IT service levels, customer service ratings, business productivity and reduce operating costs, but getting started can be overwhelming. Gain the understanding you need to adopt and adapt ITIL with instructions and tips for important steps such as internal employee communications, determining potential pain points and methods for evaluating your existing processes.

Businesses today are more dependent on technology than ever. And, more than ever, they're looking to IT for ways to improve employee productivity, customer service and innovation. The challenge is that in order to achieve results with technology, IT and the business have to work collaboratively. IT needs to be able to develop the right relationships and communicate with different stakeholders from a business perspective - not a technical one. As a result, the transformation of the IT department has become a top-level priority for many leading organizations. At the same time, business leaders need to strengthen their business technology IQ and play a more significant role in the governance of IT.

The ITIL® event management process defines three event types: informational, warning and exception. In this post, I will discuss the different event types and give real-world examples of each.

Change is the order of the day, and if anything, the pace of business and technology change is accelerating. The business and customers are looking to IT service providers to be more responsive, delivering more frequent service changes with higher quality-resulting in services that deliver more value to the business. In order to continue to be relevant and of high value, ITIL must continue to benefit from other complementary best-practices for IT. DevOps, an approach that encourages improved communication, collaboration, and teamwork across development and operations, can have a positive influence in improving ITIL processes across the service life-cycle.

This white paper describes a technique for defining processes called SIPOC (Suppliers, Inputs, Process, Outputs, and Customers). SIPOC provides a structured way to define the key elements of any process. SIPOC can be used as a means of defining any of the service management processes presented in ITIL® best practices. Furthermore, SIPOC can be used as the preliminary input into the more formal documentation of a process in one of many process design tools.

In this hour-long webinar, Global Knowledge instructor and ITIL Expert Michael Scarborough will share his knowledge and expertise on various aspects of incident management and problem management processes. He will help you understand the difference between incidents and problems and between incident and problem management, providing examples from his own experience to drive the concepts home. Michael will also provide an overview of who performs various incident and problem management activities in an organization.

Learn the ITIL® concepts of accountability, boundaries, and consistency (the ABCs) and discover how ITIL helps establish, manage, and maintain the ABCs.

One of the most significant new features in Microsoft Windows Server 2012 is the Hyper-V Replica (HVR) capability. Whether you are considering this for your own organization or just prepping for your Windows Server 2012 MCSA, this white paper presents the essentials of deploying this disaster recovery feature.

You will learn how many organizations approach change management as compared to how best practices dictate that change management should work. Global Knowledge instructor and ITIL Expert Michael Scarborough will fill you in on the purpose of change management and the difference between change management and change tickets. He will provide a high-level guide for establishing a change management process that uses real-world examples as its basis.

Michael Scarborough and Ryan Ballmer, co-authors of Global Knowledge ITIL courseware, discuss how to become an ITIL expert.

In this video, instructor Charles Strother does a quick overview of what is needed to install a Read-Only Domain Controller (RODC) in a Windows Server 2008 environment.

Simulate the ITIL v3 Service Management Lifecycle with an interactive gaming experience.

Often, we don't have time to learn the reasons behind the standards we use. But learning what instigated a standard goes a long way toward not only understanding its importance, but also more easily and effectively applying it in your workplace. In this hour-long webinar, Global Knowledge instructor Keith Sorn will discuss common networking standards and explain how they were determined and why they are relevant. He will fill you in on things like why it's important to use proper color-coding standards when making cable and why the length limitations on wired cable are essential. He will also explain new standards, such as power over fiber.

In this hour-long webinar by Global Knowledge instructor and ITIL Expert Michael Scarborough, you will learn how to study for and succeed in passing ITIL Intermediate Exams. You will learn how to approach an ITIL Intermediate exam, the true/false approach and why it works and how to study for the ITIL Intermediate exams.

In this video, Practice Leader Craig Brown discusses our exclusive Server 2008 course - Configuring, Managing, and Maintaining Server 2008 R2 (M6419). Specifically, the enhancements we've made to this course through Server 2008 R2 supplemental learning materials and custom hands-on labs that enable the student to utilize critical Server 2008 R2 functions after completing the course.

Nasser El-Batal will walk you through the most useful, recognized, and mandated ITSM best practices in the industry: TOGAF, COBIT and ITIL®. He will highlight the benefits of integrating them into a single implementation program to avoid project disaster. Discussions are focused on "Getting Your House in Order" and how to establish your own organization-specific business transformation program, while increasing your organization maturity.

Cloud computing enables development teams to get applications into production faster. IT Service Management (ITSM) leaders must adopt new strategies and change existing processes or risk becoming a barrier to success. Cloud computing requires DevOps-the blending of development and operations with the goal of accelerating time-to-market and reducing time-to-value. The good news is that ITIL® is uniquely positioned to accelerate DevOps, but it requires changes to existing ITSM processes.

Global Knowledge Practice Leader, Craig Brown, explains what students will learn in our "Monitoring and Troubleshooting the Performance of a Windows Server Environment" workshop.

As an IT professional you deal day in and day out with securing operating systems, patching software, installing and configuring firewall and routers But what about the physical infrastructure? Do you understand how simple techniques can allow theft of your company resources? In this session we will discuss how to reduce the possibility of loss of data and equipment. Physical security may not be part of your job but you should be aware and having discussions with the personnel who are responsible. Or does Physical Security become one of your job responsibilities? Come to this session and learn about one of the most important and yet least thought about areas of security by IT professionals.

Nearly every WebSphere administrator has desired a deeper understanding of how passwords are created, used, stored, and encrypted. Learn about the different types of passwords used inside of the WebSphere Application Server and the recovery plans to help restore your server when passwords go awry.

Michael Scarborough and Ryan Ballmer, co-authors of Global Knowledge ITIL courseware, discuss the difference between ITIL Capability courses and ITIL Lifecycle courses.

In this report, I've reviewed the 15 most popular certifications according to our more than 12,000 North American respondents to our annual IT Skills and Salary Survey. For each certification, you'll find a brief description, the average salary, and some insight into why it is popular.

You know you need to invest in training, but how do you get the best return on investment (ROI) from your training dollars? To help you make smart training decisions, we've put together this guide, which illustrates some alternative and little-known payment options, the types of discounts and promotions available with training and a suggested list of courses that give you excellent value.

A gap analysis is a tool that ITIL recommends organizations use to compare their current state to some future desired state.

Co-authors Michael Scarborough and Ryan Ballmer discuss some key differences in the new Global Knowledge ITIL courseware.

Michael Scarborough and Ryan Ballmer, co-authors of Global Knowledge ITIL courseware, discuss why ITIL is important to businesses.

You have spent money on software and hardware, implemented best practices, and believe you are secure, right? You may have overlooked the weakest link: your employee. Many breaches occur as a result of an employee mistakenly clicking on a link or visiting a site that allows a virus to be unknowingly downloaded, giving hackers access to your network. Today, a well-trained workforce is a necessity and may even be your most important cybersecurity tool. In this webinar, security expert David Willson will discuss how many breaches have occurred and are occurring, the tools and techniques hackers use to trick employees into clicking on links or opening attachments, and how to prevent such behavior.

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. 

Many I&O leaders and customers see little value from investments in ITIL. Not getting the Return on Investment (ROI) you expect normally comes from using ITIL incorrectly. You, your staff, and your customers must share the same goals and understand exactly what to expect from your ITIL investments. The goal of ITIL is not “business and IT alignment” or “competitive advantage from IT investments.” Instead, its first goal is to stabilize service operation. This builds a base for the second goal: increasing value through service optimization. You must have clear-cut, documented, and managed expectations for each activity, and order is vital. Success requires that you stabilize service delivery before trying to optimize. Focusing on the correct goal and linking each ITIL task to that goal is the correct use of ITIL.

SOA is all about architecture-after all, it's right there in the acronym-yet most organizations think it is about turning existing software components into web services. When you adopt SOA, remember that it is all about design and governing that design. It's about how you design your service interfaces, your services, your data model, and your business processes. It's about how you keep track of your services, how you control the design, definition, deployment, and distribution of your services and their artifacts, how you define a service contract and service level agreement for your service consumers, how to secure your services, and how to react when things go wrong with them.