ITIL E-Learning

There are a lot of online ITIL(ITSM) courses that are available in the e-market place today which have been well designed but they cannot be substitute for Instructor lead courses. Online courses provide you limited time and content, for example a HP ITSM Online Foundation course has a time limit of 16 hours and fixed set of training slides that the participant will be "shown" during the course. The advantage of online courses is the anytime and anywhere access (on demand ) but they cannot address the following which are the advantages of instructor lead courses:

1. Group Simulation, arouse interest in Particpants.
2. Enhance Participation, getting people involved.
3. Encourage Participant Thinking.
4. Check Understanding, Trainer can seek understanding of the subject and discover if thereare any areas that need to be clarified, repeated or emphasized.
5. Personal and Group Guidance.
6. Games, which are important for process training.
7. Case studies: Based on factual information and students asked to discuss, analyze and suggest recommendations....and many more.

There are lot of online courses which you can try (there is even a FREE five hour introduction course from Hewlett Packard) costing from 495 USD to 695 USD. All these courses are of 16 hours duration. There are also some online training organizations offering Service Desk Institute's (Formerly HDI) Help Desk Analyst Certification Course for 12 hours. You can also find other Foundation courses like COBIT and ISO 20000.

ITIL Credit Profiler

OGC website has provided a Credit Profiler tool that explains the credit system and suggests the route you should take towards acheving the Expert Level Certification.

ITSM and ITIL - Are they different ?

If you are new to ITIL or ITSM you may have seen these two words being used interchangably and may think that they are synonymous with each other. You may have to understand both these terms to know that ITSM is not synonym with ITIL exclusively. Here are the two terms explained:

IT Service Management (ITSM): It is a sort of discipline or methodology that uses a process approach to manage small, medium or large scale Information Technology Infrastructures. It puts the customer first by emphasizing on customer centric philosophy. ITSM is often associated with many other management methodologies like Six Sigma, Total Quality Management, COBIT and Business Process Management. IT Service Management initiative is always concerned with either deliveing or supporting IT services to meet the organizational business requirements.When you take up a ITSM initiative it is up to you which framework (or good practice) you would like to adopt, depending on what suits you the best. For example if your organization uses Microsoft technologies in your information technology applications or your infrastructure then Microsoft Operations Framwork (MOF) may be the best bet as MOF provides guidance based on Service Management Function (SMF) Operations guide. What is this MOF?..Well the basis of MOF is ITIL but Microsoft has provided specific guidance applicable to customers using microsoft technologies in their IT Infrastructure and therefore MOF itself is a proven Good Practice as it is resultant from experience of Microsoft customers. I can say that for Microsoft customer organizations this is the best as MOF documentation is short and available for Free on Microsoft website.

ITIL®: This is the most widely accepted process oriented framework or Good Practice (a service management framework) for managing IT services. There are other service management "Good Practices" which can be used to manage your IT services. For Example Microsoft Operations Framwork (MOF) for organizations using Microsoft technologies, i repeat MOF is based on ITIL but provides additional guidance. The other Good Practices available to address your specific IT Service Management initiatives are IBM ITSM and ASL (Application Services Library).

ITIL V3 Foundation Syllabus and Exam Revision

ITILV3 Foundation syllabus has gone through a revision and new (improved) syallbus was developed. Training hours has been increased and new exam will be out soon. For more information you can read: http://www.itil-officialsite.com/nmsruntime/saveasdialog.asp?lID=579&sID=157. V3 Foundation bridge course also has been revised and training hours increased.

New Qualification in ISO/IEC 20000

There is another qualification program in IT Service Management called ISO/IEC 20000 which has been restructured. ISO/IEC 20000 is an Independent Standard for Quality in IT Service Management. This new qualification program is called "IT Service Management according to ISO/IEC 20000" . It comprises Foundation and Professional Level. Professional level has two tracks, Management track and Audit track. With this new program in place the old Service Quality Management Foundation (SQMF) and the Service Quality Management Advanced (SQMA) have been withdrawn by July 1, 2008. ISO/IEC 20000 specifies the quality requirements that an organization should fulfill to deliver quality services. In other words the standard focusses on "What" and not "How to". While its link with ITIL is clear other standards like Six Sigma, ASL and COBIT can also be used to fulfill the quality requirements.Adoptation of this standard gives a competitive advantage to Service Provider organizations and have an opportunity to prove their compliance to clients by means of certification. "Who are the target audience for this Qualification Scheme?", the below points answers this question

• IT Executives/Professionals who would like to know the quality requirements imposed on IT Service Management.
• IT Professionals who want to support thier organization in implementing and maintaining ISO/IEC 20000 Certification.
• IT Professionals who are responsible for management and support of IT Services and who would like to obtain Auditor certification