CPTTM CIO newsletter issue #7

Topics in this issue:

• Case study 2 on applying ITIL at CPTTM
• Work at Home

Case study 2 on applying ITIL at CPTTM

ITIL is a set of best practices put forth by the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) of the UK Government for better IT management. We (CPTTM Cyber-Lab) are implementing some of its practices and it is not hard at all. Here I'd like to share with you how we're doing it.

For example, one of the best practices in ITIL is "Enable the level 1 technical support to solve more problems". What does it mean to Cyber-Lab? We have about 100 PCs in our classrooms and some of them will be out of order from time to time. When it happens, the instructor will record the problem and let the student use another PC. The next day our engineer will fix the problem. This is not good. Applying ITIL, we should enable the level 1 technical support (our instructors!) to solve this problem immediately, without resorting to our engineer (level 2 technical support).

How to enable our instructors to fix the problems?

1. Identify what is the most common problem.
2. Find out the solution.
3. Tell our instructors the solution.

In our case:

1. Our engineer said that the most common problem is that a PC may fail to boot.
2. He said usually it can be fixed by either unplugging and replugging the power cord or hitting the power button (because it was stuck).
3. We inform each instructor of this problem and solution and then quiz them. They are required to answer correctly otherwise they won't get paid :-)

After implementing this, we have not received a single report on a PC failing to boot. This is a significant improvement! Now our students will have a better learning experience and our instructors will have a better teaching experience. Our engineer (level 2 support) will also have less tedious work to do.

Simple to do, isn't it? To learn more about ITIL best practices, you may consider taking our upcoming ITIL course taught by *the* ITIL expert, Pink Elephant in Nov. For more details, please see

Have any question regarding ITIL or a best practice/case study to share? Contact me at 781313 or kent at cpttm dot org dot mo.

Any ideas or questions? If so, please contact us at 781313 or kent at cpttm dot org dot mo.

Work at Home

Did you try to use a floppy or USB disk to bring some files to your home?
Did you try to want to edit some urgent files but they are in office server?
Did you try to want to use some softwares/application in your office, but you are in home?

Did you imagine that you can check your office emails, open the files in file server in office, run softwares/applications at your home? A concept - Office Everywhere - is reaching us. It's time for us to well prepared for that.

How can we achieve that? VPN partners Remote access softwares work perfect. For VPN, OpenVPN is hot and recommended. For remote access softwares, Terminal Sevice, the serivce bundled with Windows are most efficiency.

This services are available to you and your employees no matter where they are, and no matter what time of the day or night they need to connect.

Until next time, 

Kent Tong