Archive for March, 2009

Are you currently managing an Active Directory within your organization?

If yes, then managing the users within the AD environment can be quite difficult without the right tools in place.

One of the most important aspect when managing and Active Directory has to be Security. We have heard about top secret information being accessed simply because one user decided to make his password empty or null because he kept forgetting it. Having an empty password pose a very serious security threat as it can be easily guessed and hacked through brute force.

As the manager of the Active Directory, it’s good that you occasionaly use this free Active Directory Tool called ADManager Plus by ManageEngine to help you list out users with no passwords in your AD.

Utilizing this tool will help you list out all users with null passwords. Once you know who they are, you can proceed to request the users to update their passwords for security purposes.

Hope it helps.

A Must: The Complete ITIL V3 Readiness Assessment KitIn the last post, I talked about the key differences between ITIL v2 and ITIL v3. While researching on ITIL v3, I stumbled on this site called The Art of Service.

The Art of Service is authorised by the Examination Institute EXIN to act as an examination venue for specified Examinations provided by EXIN and they have a dedicated development team that consists of IT Service Management Professionals with over 20 years of experience.

Browsing through the site, this advertisement popped up:

I was supprised to see that the ITIL v3 Toolkit that I used to promote is now available for Free. This material is worth $249 if not given out free. Without hesitating I entered my email in the textbox above. Moments later, an email which required my verification reached my mailbox. Verifying the mail allowed me to proceed to download the free ITIL v3 Toolkit. Continue Reading »
How to get free ITIL v3 Toolkit and Resources

ITIL stands for IT Infrastructure Library and it’s a set of proven IT processes for organizations to adopt and implement to ensure that IT services can be delivered effectively and efficiently.

Is your organization currently suffering from any of the following IT problems?

• The quality assurance tester keeps leaving the company
• The users keep bugging the developers for new enhancements
• Version 12 of the intranet system was occasionally rolled back to version 11
• Users are complaining of frequent IT service downtime to the Managing Director since there is no one else and no where else to complaint to

If yes, then it’s about time your organization begins to look into implementing some IT processes best practices.

A quick and simple way would be to adopt the ITIL processes which have improved a lot since it started way back in the 80’s.

For those who have adopted ITIL v2, are you aware of ITIL’s latest verson v3? Photo credit: cote Continue Reading »
Differences between ITIL v2 and ITIL v3

The other day, I was reading an article which stated that ITSM and UC are beginning to be adopted by more businesses and will become even more significant during these hard times.

ITSM stands for IT Service Management and its key aim is to assist in providing excellent services to customers through proper and proven IT processes. Implementing the right ITSM tool is vital to differentiate your services from your competitors.

As for UC, it’s a concept very new to me. I researched about it, only to find out that UC stands for Unified Communications.

Basically UC refers to a trend in business to simplify and integrate all forms of communications. Photo by msandy.

Forms of communications these days refer to Voice Over IP (VOIP) phone calls, instant messaging, emails, voice mails, etc. In the olden days when the Internet did not exist, businesses relied on private branch enchange (PBX) to accept calls and route them to the correct extentions. Having such capabilities then helped to ensure communications were effective.

Today, having a flawless communication system within the office environment is a must. For business users, they can be more productive by relying on their communication system to manage calls and voicemails, send instant messages and even schedule meetings.

Some common Unified Communications software includes Microsoft’s Exchange Server and Office Communications Server. Another good one which is worth mentioning is UNISON – unified communications alternative to Exchange Server and Office Comunications Server. Continue Reading »
UNISON – a unified communications alternative to Exchange Server