Let’s clear up five common myths about ITIL certification:

The class is boring. In fact, the discussions, real life examples, and simulation exercise keep students awake and engaged.

The certification exam is tricky and unfair. The Foundation test consists of forty multiple choice questions, 65% of which must be answered correctly in order to pass. Thorough review of the material should guarantee a passing score.

A classroom experience is necessary to pass the exam. Self-paced online training is available. For approximately $300, it is possible to achieve ITIL certification in your spare time. The official ITIL website also provides a sample exam and other study resources.

It's not important to one's career. Although you may not miss out on a promotion for lacking it, ITIL certification is increasingly recognized by and important to management. It can only help to have a tangible record of your service management knowledge.

The old V2 certification is good enough. V3 is a replacement of the previous release, not an add-on. There are thirteen new ITIL processes and it's important to keep up with changes to the framework.

Smartphones have replaced desktops and laptops as the communication platform of choice. Improved bandwidth and usability on these devices have opened up new markets for interesting enterprise applications, particularly those that can improve business productivity. A few years ago, mobility in IT meant giving users laptops and maybe a BlackBerry so they could get access to email where and when they wanted. BlackBerry and Windows Mobile were the only games in town for business mobility.

Today Apple, Symbian, Palm, and Google are joining the fray. Android devices and iPhones are hot with consumers, and more and more workers are bringing these smartphones into the enterprise and connecting them to business systems. However, when it comes to smartphones that do deeper integration with business processes and the devices that companies deploy to their workers, BlackBerry remains the runaway leader. In fact, BlackBerry is actually growing stronger in the enterprise because its former archrival, Windows Mobile, has been floundering for the last couple of years and Microsoft has recently decided to focus most of its attention on the consumer market with Windows Phone 7.

Smartphone enterprise market share

Companies are recognizing that mobility is core to IT infrastructure and imperative for strategic differentiation. The mobile workforce is growing. That’s why many organizations are looking to companies like RightStar with process-oriented mobile applications to help them work and communicate more effectively.

Mobile Applications

Email has been a great first step for many IT departments to make use of mobility. The next step is to mobilize applications that create a true competitive advantage. Mobile applications leverage inherent advantages of a mobile device such as reducing the data transferred, being able to operate disconnected from the corporate network or storing critical business data.

We see the greatest opportunities for our customers to benefit from the use of smart devices lie with Asset Management and Service Management. The demand for “anywhere access” to BMC’s service management applications is increasing dramatically.

Service Management: RightStar developed MagicMobile to provide instant access to the Service Desk using a device’s wireless capability. It was designed as a web application that specifically supports mobile requirements (small screen size, lower bandwidth, etc.). MagicMobile is completely browser-based in order to leverage the widest possible array of mobile devices, most all of which have an internet browser. Popular uses for this application include:

Asset Management: RightStar’s MagicWand was created as a native application primarily used on Motorola’s MC series of barcode scanners, which are based on the Windows Mobile OS. These devices provide a robust processor and ample memory to keep a snapshot of the enterprise’s physical assets locally and close at hand even when wireless access to the enterprise is not an option. Barcoding offers many advantages, including speed, accuracy, and data integrity. Popular uses for this application include:

By waiting to implement mobile solutions like these and others, companies run the risk of failing to keep pace and being outmaneuvered by competitors that become more agile and profitable through mobility.

The Future of Mobility at RightStar

RightStar Systems continues to enhance existing products and develop new ones to further enable the growing mobile workforce. We’re giving our flagship product, MagicWand, an overhaul which will allow the user greater flexibility to customize the application to their needs. The barcode application will also provide connectors to other popular Service Management systems such as Remedy ARS and Microsoft Service Manager. MagicMobile is slated for a facelift and usability upgrades to take advantage of the latest devices and operating systems.

I attended a panel discussion this week hosted by my college alumni association. The panelists were five Washington, D.C. venture capitalists and fellow alumni. Each had a different focus area, ranging from the U.S. intelligence community to the high tech sector to social entrepreneurship (individuals with solutions to society’s most pressing social problems). My main takeaway from the evening: all that really matters are great ideas.

Although I consider myself to be an entrepreneur, having started or helped start three companies, most of my time now is spent on the day-to-day reactive activities required to run a sixty-person company. It is very rare for true innovation to come from established companies. Fortunately there are plenty of good ideas at RightStar, including:

ADSync. Since there was no easy way in Remedy to synch up Active Directory accounts, we built our own utility. This brand new product has already been sold to two customers.

Service Catalog/PMG. PMG offers an actionable service catalog that works with SDE and Remedy. After seeing the demo, we realized that this is the first “game changer” in our space in a long time. RightStar quickly became a partner.

dbObjectCreator. We’re always thinking about ways to significantly reduce our SDE implementation time by automating the implementation process, leaving more time for better upfront process and design.

ScanStar for SCSM. ScanStar (a.k.a. MagicWand) will soon work with SCSM, Microsoft’s new service desk product. Microsoft’s entry into this market could be huge, meaning that ScanStar for SCSM should be a big seller.

MagicPortal. SDE Client Services did not meet a customer’s requirements, so we developed MagicPortal, a better product that we have already sold to several customers.

RightStar and Hitachi ID Systems held an identity management (IDM) webinar recently to present IDM solutions to our install base. After all, IDM automates user provisioning, role management, single sign-on, and password management to deliver improved security and lower IT costs. But despite RightStar’s involvement in IDM solutions for several years, we have only a handful of IDM customers. What’s the deal?

It could be that IDM is a difficult sell because of its complexity. According to Bill Nagal, an analyst at Forrester Research, IDM “is really a combination of at least a dozen different technologies.” Forrester evaluates IDM vendors based on fourteen different technologies, including single sign-on, federation, identity audit, password management, and provisioning. This complexity means that multiple groups and decision makers need to get involved, ranging from the Service Desk Manager to the Chief Security Officer.

In our IDM webinar, Hitachi CTO Idan Shohan said, “Technology is really the easy part. What’s difficult is getting consensus on the upfront process design.” Like a Remedy or SDE service management implementation, an IDM implementation often requires the customer to agree on what is necessary to meet business needs. This includes policies, procedures, workflows, hardware, data sources, and software. It must include all departments. Idan went on to say that a typical IDM implementation could last 100 days.

It’s interesting is that one of the key ITIL V3 processes is access management (a.k.a. IDM), which is defined as the process of granting authorized users the right to use a service. Since we have experience with ITIL processes and complex Remedy implementations, it’s a natural extension for RightStar to implement more IDM solutions.

In the area of process consulting for RightStar customers, we focus on ITIL as the industry standard best practice framework for IT service management. This framework is central to our work because it is the standard by which BMC’s products are measured and the guideline that most of our customers trust when developing processes for IT support. There are, of course, a number of other guiding frameworks for IT to consider. Most complement or otherwise support our focus on ITIL and include:

ISO 20000 has been of interest to me lately because it most closely reflects the ITIL framework, but goes beyond guidance and provides specific requirements for a standard of organizational certification.

All of these other considerations and practice areas were set aside, however, when a recent project opportunity required Help Desk Institute certification. Their certification standards cover HDI Support Center Analysts just starting out in the field all the way up to HDI Support Center Director level and HDI Support Center certifications for the entire organization.

For RightStar’s new project, I was tasked to pursue the HDI Support Center Manager certification and therefore to attend a recent certification class in Arlington, Virginia. Although many of the course topics were a review of familiar material, there were still opportunities for me to apply the lessons learned in performing my own role at RightStar.

Many of the units covered related to general management theory and good practices including the definition of a leader, effective communication practices, building a team, and managing stress, time, and organizational change. We also studied team strategy including vision and mission statements and workforce management, which are all applicable to my role at RightStar.

There were many worksheets and methodology concepts that will be useful guides in refining RightStar’s own assessment toolset. Many of these resources are standard and familiar, but it was helpful to review them and to confirm their continued usefulness in directing a course of action for the support center.

It was also interesting for me to analyze and discuss many of these topics from essentially our customers’ position. We reviewed IT service management system selection and, sometimes, frustration from the buyer’s perspective. My classmates often had questions, which the instructor would sometimes direct to me, about how to apply the ITIL process concepts taught in the course to their real life situations.

This story has a happy ending, of course. I passed my HDI Support Center Manager certification, which means I can sign this…

…Nikki Haase, HDI SCM