Johannesburg, 20 Jan 2014
Dee Smith and Associates is proud to announce that Lee Smith, director of Data Centre Services and Training, has been invited by The Uptime Institute to participate as a judge in the upcoming and inaugural Brill Awards for Efficient IT.
The mission of this awards project is to recognise efficiency in the broadest sense of the word – efficiency of capital deployment, technology, design, operations and overall management. The Brill Awards for Efficient IT will showcase companies and technologies that improve the industry's ability to sustainably deliver IT services to the end-user.
"It is a great privilege to be recognised by The Uptime Institute and, subsequently, invited to participate as a panel judge in this programme," says Smith. "The awards program is a global platform for the data centre industry and to be involved in it is both humbling and gratifying." Smith is also an Uptime Institute Accredited Tier Designer (ATD).
Dee Smith and Associates expands its training offering in 2014
One of our objectives is to improve the overall level of data centre design knowledge and data centre management on the African continent. Complementary to this, we listen to the market and strive to grow our course portfolio with material that is relevant and adds value to organisations. We are committed to provide training that is of the highest standard and to the satisfaction of our client base.
Therefore, we are adding two new courses into the schedule for 2014.
Certified Information Technology Manager
In a recessionary market, most businesses take a hard look at their operations. In an attempt to go back to basics, organisations focus on their core business activities and "optimise" everything else. A frequent casualty of this optimisation is the information technology division.
IT is commonly outsourced or relegated to a purely functional role with the business unable to utilise new and emerging technologies to drive innovation. Despite these limitations, a good IT manager is able to easily see how the wide range of available technology can enable business efficiencies and reduce the risk inherent in operational environments, ultimately driving innovation and aligning IT with the business strategy.
To this end, Dee Smith and Associates is proud to present EPI's Certified Information Technology Manager (CITM) course in South Africa, which is globally accredited with EXIN.
This course is intended to assist new and existing IT managers in understanding the modern requirements and core competencies for managing IT in mission-critical environments. It provides the fundamental knowledge, hands-on skills and managerial aspects, touching on important aspects of the role. This course is applicable to new IT managers and individuals working across IT domains. Here are some of the topics introduced during this course:
*IT steering committees
*Data centre facilities and operations
*Equipment life cycle management
*Cloud computing
*Application management
*Project management
*Business continuity / disaster recovery
*Security and risk management
*Vendor and financial management
*HR management
*Audit and compliance
*IT governance management
Certified Data Centre Risk Professional
The convergence of physical and logical (IT) security disciplines bring with it numerous benefits – primarily a more unified view of an organisation's security posture and risk profile. It is not uncommon, however, to find that the teams performing these duties are completely separate and operate in a silo fashion.
The team typically responsible for the physical security and facilities of a data centre is unaware of logical security requirements, and the IT security team is unconcerned about physical aspects of security. This leaves risk officers the unenviable task of having to co-ordinate and manage two independent teams to achieve their goals for enterprise risk management.
To assist in closing this gap, Dee Smith and Associates is proud to present EPI's Certified Data Centre Risk Professional (CDRP) course in South Africa, which is globally accredited with EXIN.
This course is intended to provide IT, facilities and data centre professionals, and individuals working across domains, to identify, mitigate and manage both physical and IT risk in data centre environments.
Some of the topics covered in this course are:
*Introduction to risk management
*Data centre risk and impact
*Standards, guidelines and methodologies
*Risk management definitions
*Risk assessment software
*Risk management process
*Project approach
*Context establishment
*Risk assessment - identification
*Risk assessment - analysis and evaluation
*Risk treatment
*Communication
*Risk monitoring and review
*Risk scenarios
We have experienced proficient and skilled experts within multiple industries, with solid track records, to which our achievements bear testimony.
Please refer to our Web site (www.deesmith.co.za) for details, or contact us directly as follows: E-mail: lee@deesmith.co.za; tel: (+27) 11 575 3359.
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