The It Skeptic Looks At Cmdb

This book is for those who work in Information Technology (IT) and for those who have IT done to them. Service Management is all the rage in IT at the moment, hence "ITSM". The leading description of ITSM is ITIL®. This book is not about ITIL. Really. Real ITSM⢠is a tongue-in-cheek satirical look at what the real-life practices might be, as compared to the idealised models in frameworks like ITIL or COBIT or ISO20000 or ... "[My wife] read the introduction and said it was the first IT book that held her interest past page two" Change Manager, postal service"I experienced numerous moments of amusement, humor and outright hilarity, which made reading this book at my desk during work hours a bit difficult." Bob GrinsellFor more on Real ITSM (and more samples from the book!) come to the Real ITSM website.

Service Management is the potent idea that could change your business. This useful little book is a pocket guide on how to operate any enterprise, described from the point of view of the services it delivers. After all, delivery is what success is all about. It describes the basics, in realistic pragmatic terms. And it is brief - we limited ourselves to 50 pages. Whether you are in manufacturing, trades, retail, IT, not-for-profit...; whether you provide service internally to the rest of your organisation or externally to paying customers; whether you work anywhere from a small business to a government department; this book introduces you to service management. It will get you started, get you up and running, and it will set you on the path to the advanced concepts if that is where you need to be.

Organize your network resources by learning how to design, manage, and maintain Active Directory. Updated to cover Windows Server 2012, the fifth edition of this bestselling book gives you a thorough grounding in Microsoft’s network directory service by explaining concepts in an easy-to-understand, narrative style. You’ll negotiate a maze of technologies for deploying a scalable and reliable AD infrastructure, with new chapters on management tools, searching the AD database, authentication and security protocols, and Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS). This book provides real-world scenarios that let you apply what you’ve learned—ideal whether you’re a network administrator for a small business or a multinational enterprise. Upgrade Active Directory to Windows Server 2012 Learn the fundamentals, including how AD stores objects Use the AD Administrative Center and other management tools Learn to administer AD with Windows PowerShell Search and gather AD data, using the LDAP query syntax Understand how Group Policy functions Design a new Active Directory forest Examine the Kerberos security protocol Get a detailed look at the AD replication process

"As networks become ever more complex, securing them becomes more and more difficult. The solution is visualization. Using today's state-of-the-art data visualization techniques, you can gain a far deeper understanding of what's happening on your network right now. You can uncover hidden patterns of data, identify emerging vulnerabilities and attacks, and respond decisively with countermeasures that are far more likely to succeed than conventional methods." "In Applied Security Visualization, leading network security visualization expert Raffael Marty introduces all the concepts, techniques, and tools you need to use visualization on your network. You'll learn how to identify and utilize the right data sources, then transform your data into visuals that reveal what you really need to know. Next, Marty shows how to use visualization to perform broad network security analyses, assess specific threats, and even improve business compliance."--Jacket.

If your customers see your group as bureaucratic and inflexible... If your staff feel process bound... If your process doesn't adapt to a changing world... See service response in a new light. Standard+Case is an exciting new approach to categorising and resolving any sort of response activity, such as service desk, tech support, public safety, social welfare, or health. If you have anything to do with responding to situations when providing a service, read this. It will change your view of how responses are handled. Standard+Case applies to anything that requires a human response: there's either a standard response or there isn't. Standard+Case is a new paradigm for categorising and resolving any sort of response "tickets", such as service desk requests (including incidents), problems, or operational changes. The phrase "a new paradigm" gets much over-used but this time it applies. This approach changes the way we think about everything to do with response. Standard+Case is a universal approach to responding to situations. It offers the following tangible benefits: -better utilisation of staff resources through greater throughput of responses because of more effective and efficient resolution of unknown and unfamiliar situations -reduced user down-time and time spent waiting on responses -fewer errors in complex and complicated situations. Standard+Case offers the following intangible benefits: -greater flexibility in responding to user needs -higher customer and user satisfaction -improved staff morale -better metrics: greater predictability of Standard responses and more meaningful monitoring of Case responses Much of our thinking in providing service is drawn from manufacturing, and focuses on standardisation (definition, repeatability) and statistical improvement of repeated tasks. But we no longer live in an industrial economy; we live in a service economy. We no longer manage industrial production lines; we manage the delivery of services to people. People cannot to be standardised. Much of our traditional approach tries to make them be standardised: to engage users in a standard manner, to respond back to them in equally standard ways. We pretend the world is standardised. When it is not - when non-standard things happen - we treat them as exceptions, and as failures of the system. Think of long-running incidents, or requests that do not fall into any defined category. As a consequence, non-standard responses are poorly controlled, misleadingly reported, and no formal practices exist; so there is minimal structured improvement of how we deal with them. Standard+Case acknowledges reality: much of our service activity will always be non-standard and has to be dealt with in a formalised way in order to manage, report and improve it as we do for the standardised part. We do that by treating non-standard responses as cases. Standard+Case accepts that much of the service world is non-standard. It is not a new way of responding to situations; it is simply a new way of looking at what we do now. We do respond to non-standard situations now, but we have little rigour around who and how. Standard+Case formalises and brings rigour to our ad-hoc response, so that all instances of service response are managed, reported and improved, not just the standard ones.

ITIL(R) is a framework for IT service management and provides best management practice to meet ISO/IEC 20k. This guide introduces ITIL to Foundation Exam candidates and offers a practical understanding of IT service management. The new edition is fully updated and contains several additional processes. An ITIL(R) licensed product.

The Service Catalog is a fundamental IT tool covering the services themselves, default capabilities, measures and primary means of access and provision. In short, it represents the value IT provides to facilitate business operations. Written by industry experts and using real case studies, this valuable title takes the reader beyond the theoretical to focus on the real business benefits of Service Catalogs and how to implement them successfully within an organization: Services are made standard and rational, leading to lower costs and increased service availability Standard service products enable forecasting of demand, leading to better volume discounts from vendors and improved inventory and capacity planning Controls over consumption of services are enhanced The fulfillment of IT services is improved with the catalog. Standardization of services leads to recurrent workflows, rather than relatively expensive one-off projects

Provides information on the features, functions, and implementation of Active Directory.

An introduction to a range of cyber security issues explains how to utilize graphical approaches to displaying and understanding computer security data, such as network traffic, server logs, and executable files, offering guidelines for identifying a network attack, how to assess a system for vulnerabilities with Afterglow and RUMINT visualization software, and how to protect a system from additional attacks. Original. (Intermediate)