For the first time, a single managed service offering, has at its core realistic Quality of Service indicators that are linked to individual customers’ exacting requirements. This on-site offering is aligned with the working practices of the client, so it appears as a seamless element of its business operations.

Many organisations have discussed creating solution offerings to address this critical business need. However, given its high degree of complexity, and the level of granular knowledge required, in the current economic climate most companies have balked at committing the required investment. Therefore, the functional richness of the Tiberone managed service encompasses the evolving business needs of BMC Remedy ITSM customers and exceeds this discipline’s traditional envelope.

A summary factsheet is attached, but if you desire the full press pack, then please reply to info@tiberone.com

Initial Press Release

Download PDF Summary Factsheet

The answer is to implement a policy-based server automation solution that ensures the highest level of uptime for business critical services. This can be done using the BMC BladeLogic Server Automation Suite which enables provisioning, configuration and compliance of both physical and virtual infrastructure environments.

Within Tiberone’s online video’s, Pieter Stanbridge demonstrates the three key aspects of BMC BladeLogic Server Automation Suite.

The short presentation by Michael Levy is about the business value, provisioning and configuration, as well as the solution to the headache of auditing and compliances, using BMC BladeLogic Automation Suite.

Business Related:
	Data Centre Automation – Business values and drivers (05:33) (towards bottom of page) In this video Michal Levy presents the business values of provisioning and configuration and the value of auditing.

Technical Related:
Data Centre Automation Using BladeLogic Part 1
	Part 1.1 Using BladeLogic to browse server information (02:23) In this section Peter Stanbridge will demonstrate the BladeLogic Configuration Manager console. The video will cover browsing system objects in the BladeLogic server.

Data Centre Automation Using BladeLogic Part 1 – continued
	Part 1.2 Using BladeLogic to create a package for deployment (01:36)  The following video will cover MSI application packaging for deployment on Windows Server Using BladeLogic Configuration Manager Console.

Data Centre Automation Using BladeLogic Part 1 – continued
	Part 1.3 Using BladeLogic to deploy a package (02:40) Following Part 1.2 the Demo shows how a package created in BladeLogic can be deployed to remote servers.

Data Centre Automation Using BladeLogic Part 2
	How BladeLogic Audit Job is used to compare server objects (02:03) In this section Peter Stanbridge will demonstrate the BladeLogic Audit Job, used to compare server objects such as file or registry setting against a live server a snapshot.

Data Centre Automation Using BladeLogic Part 3
	BladeLogic results from a server compliance job (03:55) This final BladeLogic demonstration video will look at results from a server compliance job.

Here is the solution from the Microsoft IE team.

Please use the instruction below to disable the pop up blocker message via Registry. I have tested it and it works

 ===================

• Resolution:

Reg key provided by the IE team

Create a dword reg key “TabProcGrowth” under:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\MAIN

AND

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main

TabProcGrowth (dword 32-bit) with value = 0

===================

Hani

Make your resolutions count this year.

Happy New Year to all of you!

January is considered the time for reflection, growth and change. It’s the time to look back at the previous year and learn from its mistakes (and successes) and then apply its knowledge to the year ahead.

For this reason it’s no wonder that the name was derived from the Roman god Janus, which had two heads facing in opposite directions – one looking to the past and another looking to the future. To reflect this, we still practise the age old tradition of making New Year’s resolutions on the 1^st of January.

Making New Year’s Resolutions is easy, but applying them to the year ahead can be difficult. January is a cold and wet month and snuggling up under the covers, seems to take priority over everything else.

This year I would like to provide you with a different view in order to help you keep the resolutions you‘ve made. Instead of making it a yearlong resolution, make it a resolution for January. Scientifically proven, it takes 21 days to adopt a new habit or break an old one. Since January has 31 days, you’ll get an extra 10 days to make it work, so don’t despair if you struggle the first week.

Start with a single resolution and work on it throughout January. By the time February comes, it’ll be second nature to you and you can move on to the next resolution on the list. If you repeat this every month, you’ll have completed twelve resolution by the end of the year.

Create a symbol for the resolution and mark that symbol on each day of your calendar for January. This will remind you every day of the resolution you made. It can be a picture of an apple if you want to eat healthier or a clock, if you want to be on time for meetings. You can even create a code, such as removing the repeating letters of the resolution i.e. IWANTOEHLY for “I want to eat healthy”.

Whichever method you settle for – you’ll be amazed with the results.

Good luck with 2010,

Celeste Groenewald

PS. Why not emphasize your resolution by adding it as a reply below.

DMTF President, Winston Bumpus presented sessions covering the organisation´s work on Cloud Computing and Virtualisation Management. These sessions were amongst the most popular due to his genuine in-depth knowledge, snappy delivery and relevance in today´s market.

With Phil´s wealth of experience in CMDB implementations, he particularly enjoyed the joint presentation of CMDBf (federation of CMDB data) by industry leader BMC and IBM. Vince Kowalski and Mark Johnson shared the stage and spoke about the principles, benefits, development and adoption of federation standards for CMDB.

A follow-up session presented by Digant Kasundra from Stanford University covered an actual implementation of a CMDB using the DMTF CMDBf standards and based on a leading commercial CMDB product. This grounding of the theory into the reality of implementation and operational use, served to impress the normally cynical Phil, who himself is only too familiar with the technical, security, and even political challenges and, of course, the strategies for surmounting them.

For further information about DMTF and references to subjects mentioned, please visit the Tiberone site.

The topic covered data visualisation and how important our readers though it was, for managing their company´s assets and CIs.

The questions were as follow:

1.  My current software allows easy management of my assets / CIs.
2.  I do not need visual presentation of my assets / CIs in order to manage them effectively.
3.  I can easily foresee how a change to a CI can affect my overall service to the customer.
4.  I clearly know the relationships between my CIs and how a change in the relationship would affect other CIs.
5.  Creating a new Business Services Structure, along with its Underlying Supporting Infrastructure and dependencies with my current software is quick, informative and effective.

Related Items:

• Please view our CMDB-Data Visualisation presentation at Tiberone TV.
• Our December 2009 Questionnaire can be found here. It covers DMTF as an industry standard.

Phil Hogan will be following the CMDB track, covering the motivation behind the specification, the use cases that are driving the work, the architecture, the data model, services and the current status of the specification. This will be presented as technical detail, walk through examples and demonstrations.

Tiberone’s consultants always strive to deliver practical and comprehensive solutions to their customers, by following the best Standardised Models in the industry. Phil’s goal is to provide them with this information – giving them the leading edge they need.

¹ Distributed Management Task Force, Inc.

Improving the training to operational personnel will increase customer satisfaction but more importantly, improve the return on your investment.

At Tiberone, we specialise in creating training solutions for many of our clients, working with them to maximise utilisation of many service desk solutions as well as developing bespoke training for BMC Remedy.

Providing training in the classroom is perceived by many larger organisations to the natural way to deliver training, but now many businesses require a much more agile approach to learning.

Weve created a short video introducing the different methods that can be adopted across organisations, covering classroom, one-to-one and online learning solutions.

Please take a moment to view our clip and if you would like further information about training or any other service offered by Tiberone, please feel free to get in touch.

It’s been a little while since I sent out the last thought for the week. It’s been a bit busy on the projects recently, as I’m sure you all know. Last weekend, I found a little booklet entitled ‘Professionalism 101’ by a chap called Nicholas Bate, amongst some material I was reading. The following link brings you to the online version.

Professionalism.html

It’s worth-while taking a few moments to read all the way to 101, honestly!

As you’ll see, this chap is quite prolific. If you get a chance to browse and find something pertinent, please share it.

It’s a pleasure working with you all.
Thanks, Phil

Many studies have shown that time wasted reading emails is the major contribution to ineffective working in the workplace. The truth is a working day could consist of many distractions, such as telephone calls, people stopping at the desk for questions and instant messages.

On a normal day you can receive anywhere between 120 and 150 emails a day.  On average if you dedicate 1 minutes of your time to read each email, this will easily equate to 2 to 3 hours a day!! At this point we are only talking about reading emails and not even action or reply to mails.

For a project or operations manager this is very concerning.  The key element in any operation is productivity, and one of the factors effecting productivity is time management.

There are a number of methods that can be used to manage email and productivity. Some of these take months of practice, but here is some simple advice:

1. Schedule a time to read your emails or messages. You have enough distractions during a day and every interruption like the “ding” on your email client or Blackberry device could easily put us off what we are working on. If possible close your email client or switch off your wireless email device. One hour is all it takes to Read/Classify and action emails.
2. Classification is key.  All emails can be classified as either “Reference” or “Action”. Statistics shows that using such a technique can save 50 minutes per day, almost 7 hours per week.

Create folders in your email client and move emails to these folders. Try keeping your inbox empty. If you have hundreds or thousands of emails in your inbox then that is a good indications of bad email management, leading to inefficient time management.

• Reference email: These are emails that you receive where you do not have a task or action but you wish to keep it, so you can refer to it later.
• Action emails: Data that you use to complete and action a task.

1. One at a time: Avoid the temptation to open emails at random. Most people open emails where the subject is of interest. However, working through emails one by one has proven to be more effective and increase productivity.

More to tips to come soon …………..