Tiberone BLOG

Tiberone sponsors UKRUG 2010

Celeste Groenewald — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 14:39:19 +0000

Every year, the UK Remedy User Group Conference provides the opportunity for like-minded Remedy enthusiasts to gather in London, UK. This conference is aimed at providing in-depth and real-life scenarios on how Remedy is used by customers and how improvements to the product affect both the customers and the Remedy Developer Community.

This year, Tiberone was the proud sponsor of the event, providing free drinks to everyone throughout the day as well as giving away an Apple iPad in a free prize draw.

Talks and presentations makes out most of the preceding for the conference and Phil Hogan, director of Tiberone, provided information on how customers can go beyond the CMDB and use BMC Atrium Orchestrator at an Enterprise Level. Key concepts he addressed included:

Driving an Efficient Asset Management process
Service Oriented Incident Management
Supporting your DR planning
Improving Service Charging
Automation of Service Provisioning
Closed Loop Remediation

These real-life examples give customers and developers a thorough understanding on how Remedy is currently used and how it can be expanded to improve functionality to ultimately provide cost savings across the Enterprise.

If you would like to know more about Phil Hogan’s presentation and how BMC Atrium Orchestrator can be used in your Enterprise, please contact Phil directly.

Tiberone would like to thank Doug Mueller for participating in the prize draw and we would like to congratulate Jacques André of Cable and Wireless, who is now the new proud owner of the Apple iPad giveaway.

Thank you to everyone who made the event possible and for all of those who annually attend the UKRUG.

UKRUG 2010 - Doug Mueller and Phil Hogan

UKRUG | Westminister | London

Presentation: BMC Atrium Orchestrator at an Enterprise Level

iPad Prize Draw

Tiberone Team: Ben Chehraz, Meaghan Burns, Phil Hogan

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Tiberone Roles with the changes

Celeste Groenewald — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 17:15:40 +0000

Tiberone’s team leads went to Cork, Ireland, for an intense weekend of team building and strategic formulation. The agenda included improvised growth plans, important goals to achieve, organisational structure changes, roles, responsibilities, communication and collaboration. Although the meetings were intense, the group still managed to have a little bit of fun. It’s either that or the new strategy includes shotguns…

One of the most important topics covered was the importance of effective team work and enterprise wide collaboration between departments. As a team lead, they are responsible for the well-being of each individual, as well as the overall performance of the department. Each team is only as effective as the weakest link and it is the team lead’s responsibility to know what strengths and weaknesses each individual holds. To demonstrate this topic, Tiberone made use of Belbin’s Role model which was developed by Meredith Belbin in 1981. Many scholars over the years have debated just how relevant this model within the modern enterprise is, but it is still considered to be an effective tool and thus widely taught in many strategic management courses.

The main idea outlined by Belbin is the link between team roles and the team’s performance. Each role has a unique function within the team and if implemented correctly; it can eliminate team quarrels, poor team performance as well as the lack of communication. The table below outlines the widely accepted roles with their strengths as well as their weaknesses. Although the strengths are always a focal point, it is also of great importance to look at the weaknesses of each role, because it creates an understanding of how the individual will communicate with the rest of the team in certain situations. For example, the Implementer likes the way things are and would therefore resist change. It is the team lead’s responsibility to anticipate this and to make sure that an Implementer has enough time to adapt to the changes and challenges that lies ahead. On the other hand, if the team lead wants a (what they would consider mundane) task done right the first time without following up, the Implementer would suit this task well and more importantly, they would enjoy doing it.

All focus does not fall solely on the team lead. Each individual should know where their role within the team lies. If you know your own strengths and weaknesses then you’ll be able to find a task within the organisation that makes you happy. After all, one of the most important things in life is that you are happy with the work you occupy and the tasks you complete.

Take a moment to review the table below and then think about which role best describe you. It is possible to fall into more than one role, but one of them should be more dominating than the rest. Once you’ve done this, contact your team lead and ask about how your talents can be better utilised based on the information below.

Clay Pigeon Shooting

www.castlemartyrresort.ie

Quad Bike Ride

A round of golf

Belbin, R.M. (1993). Team Roles at Work. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann

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Tiberone is flying high!

Celeste Groenewald — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 13:02:05 +0000

Stuart Kelly and Ben Chehraz

Tiberone enjoys a diverse group of talented individuals with an even more diverse range of interests – one of which is light aircraft piloting. Ben Chehraz and Stuart Kelly took to the skies from the small historical Biggin Hill airport, renowned for its profound participation in WWII as a RAF Spitfire airbase.

Howard of Cabair (http://www.cabair.com) took the newbie pilots under his wing and after a quick basic lesson they took to the skies, avoiding the temptation of ramming a commercial aircraft. Motives included, but were not limited to, a recent delayed flight from that particular airline.

With a near perfect 50-mile visibility and with Ben at the controls at just below 3000 feet, he was reminded to use VFR (Visual Flight Rules). These rules exclude the use of electronic instruments and solely rely on paper maps and various two-fingered signals, which carry the risk of being misinterpreted if used on the ground. With Shoreham approaching, Ben was advised to ignore the passing trains directly before the landing strip and calmly concentrate on the landing. A few terrifying heart-beats later, of what would’ve been a perfect landing, Howard finally took the controls for a safe landing.

After lunch, it was Stuarts turn to avoid the temptation of ramming the unsociable, non-radio, glider pilots from a nearby teaching school. With so many hours at the helm of Microsoft’s Flight Simulator, he too was disappointed with Howard pushing a paper map under his nose. The return journey was more eventful with a distress call from a light sail aircraft, having trouble with its landing gear and a last moment gust wind, which Howard handled smoothly.

With a safe landing at Biggin Hill Airport the fun day came to an end, but the dream lives on – will they return to get their PPA’s next year? Watch this space…

Special thanks to Howard from Cabair for his great instruction throughout the day and to Ben for organising the day event.

Ben is reminded to use his fingers to get the aircraft level

Stuart flies with a paper map as his guide

Aircraft for the day

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Press Release: Tiberone’s Managed Service Enables Business Agility

Hani Sasani — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 10:42:19 +0000

London, UK – 5 February 2010. BMC Software’s ground-breaking EMEA partner Tiberone Technologies, formally launched today a world first in its BMC ITSM managed service proposition.

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

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Data Centre Automation Using BladeLogic

Celeste Groenewald — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:52:09 +0000

Large organisations and enterprises have hundreds, if not thousands, of servers deployed across multiple geographies. Quite commonly, the provisioning, configuring and maintenance of such a large number is a challenge, resulting in an increased complexity of data centre management. It’s understandable that IT managers struggle to find the right tools to automate the administration process.

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.

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Pop up Blocker on IE8 and Dynamic CRM – annoying issue.

Hani Sasani — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 16:27:56 +0000

All,

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

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Thought for January

Celeste Groenewald — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 15:18:00 +0000

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.

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Results from DMTF Conference 2009

Celeste Groenewald — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:43:13 +0000

The annual DMTF Conference was held at Santa Clara (California, USA) in November and was attended by Tiberone´s Director, Phil Hogan. The conference demonstrated that DMTF continues to provide strong industry leadership in driving forward systems interoperability. Many of the major vendors were represented and presentations covered not only niche topics, but also initiatives around cloud computing and virtualisation.

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.

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November Questionnaire Results

Celeste Groenewald — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:35:47 +0000

Please find below the answers to November´s Questionnaire.

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:

My current software allows easy management of my assets / CIs.
I do not need visual presentation of my assets / CIs in order to manage them effectively.
I can easily foresee how a change to a CI can affect my overall service to the customer.
I clearly know the relationships between my CIs and how a change in the relationship would affect other CIs.
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.

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Phil Hogan is following the CMDB track at DMTF

Celeste Groenewald — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:42:32 +0000

Phil Hogan is meeting with the DMTF¹ Industry Experts at the fifth annual MDC. This year’s show takes place in Santa Clara, California, on 16-19 November 2009. The DMTF is the industry’s only developers conference dedicated to standards-based systems and network management technologies.Since most IT organisations have a mixture of tools and heterogeneous data models. Integrating some of the data would enable more reliable and efficient management processes, but it’s impractical to attempt to convert existing investments to a single data model or repository. Therefore, the DMTF working group was established to develop a standard for federating resources data in heterogeneous repositories.

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.

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