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I had a great discussion about Windows 7 today. Two things were immediately obvious. One is a little scary, but the other is pretty exciting (for geekettes like me, at any rate).
The scary thing is that for those XP houses that don’t have Software Assurance on their desktop Operating System licenses, options are starting to [...]

I thought I might have a bit of a brainstorming session about what processes we actually need to put in place.
Where to begin? A good place is the beginning, I guess. Which for most people is when they join a company or organisation. We need to have processes in place to ensure that new joiners [...]

SIM Cards
SIM Cards hold the circuitry that provide the physical and electronic link between the telephone and the physical device. Not long ago, they were quite expensive and it could be difficult to reprogramme them so they were connected to a different phone number. These days, however, it is possible to programme them remotely (which [...]

I spotted a link to this webcast on LinkedIn – although a little long, I enjoyed it, particularly the IT Service Management oriented approach to SAM and Lifecycle Management.
http://www.absolute.com/resource_center/webcasts/gartner2010?aa=true

In the last couple of posts, I’ve talked about the basics of mobile devices, and the risks they present to the organisation. Over the next two posts I’ll bring the discussions together and talk about what we want to manage, and how we should go about doing it.
This post will look at options for managing [...]

Mobile devices are so complex that if we tried to manage every aspect of them, our administrative costs would skyrocket. We need to figure out what are the important things to manage, and what are the things that can look after themselves.
It helps to understand why we care about mobile devices and want to manage [...]

Mobile Devices are anything that uses the public mobile telephone system, or the GPS or other satellite tracking systems to communicate either voice or data or both. Mobile phones, and of course Blackberries, are the most common types of mobile devices that need to be managed, but in certain industries telemetric systems such as location [...]

I’ve just spotted a really good article about building the business case for ITAM on the ITAM Review website. It’s actually an interview with Jenny Schuchert of IAITAM.
It really struck a chord as in real life I’m in the process of building just such a business case for ITAM. I recognised many of the ‘gotchas’ [...]

So as promised, here are my top tricks for effective management of support, maintenance and subscriptions. They are in no particular order!
Storage
Support, maintenance and subscriptions are all types of contracts. You should scan them in for your own reference and as a back-up, and send the originals for storage by the legal department in their [...]

I hope everyone had a good Christmas and New Year! Mine was… interesting… to say the least, as I was visiting my brother’s in-laws in the South of Italy. Highlights of the stay included helping with the slaughtering of two pigs and processing the meat for salami and hams! Very cultural to say the least, [...]