The results of my ITIL Masters - Service Delivery examination that I took in April came out last Thursday and I have passed!  Hurrah!  I now have my Masters Certificate in ITIL Service Management. 

The journey started with my ITIL Foundations in 2005.  Right from the time I started to get to know about ITIL I was wanting to specialize in that.  To do the ITIL Masters, the training was mandatory and it was expensive to pay from my pocket!.  Drawing more inspiration from the ITIL Guru's at Swisscom in Bern, I was determined to undergo the training and get my certification too.  I attended the training program with QAI India @ Bangalore in June / July 2007 (Thanks to my client, was able spent two full months in India and work remotely!!)  When the results of the July examination came out in September, it was a bit of disappointment as I cleared just Service Support and failed in Service delivery by 2 marks!!

As I couldn't find a training provider in Switzerland who could let me do the examination, I wasn't able to re-do the Service delivery in Oct & Jan. Finally, I got the chance to sit for the Apr 2008 exam as my client UNICC's training was conducting the exams through their vendor!  I took this as a divine opportunity to do my Service Delivery and worked hard towards it!

The result, is of course quite rewarding!

Today I installed Beta 2 of Windows Longhorn Server.  It is running in my laptop on Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 with 1GB ram allocated to it.  Before I plunge myself deep into the sea exploring the new features of Longhorn, the first thing that impressed me was a very simple installation.  Looking back from the days of my server installation from Windows NT thru 2003, I can say that Longhorn server installation is a cake walk.  The only screen where I had to choose something was the language of installation & country initially, and entered the Product key.  The installation was silently running in the background as I was busy with other tasks.  When I switched back to the remote control view, thinking that the server installation would be waiting for the screen where I have to choose the regional options, give computer name, set administrator password etc etc, I was pleasently surprised to note that the server installation was completely over, it had logged in automatically into the Administrator.  There is a screen as you see below with initial configuration tasks where we set the administrator password, change computer name, login to domain, add server roles, etc!

I will be updating this blog regularly on my experience with Longhorn.

Swisscom Mobile announced the first public beta of Media Bridge.  This enables remote connectivity to PC from any mobile that supports GPRS. I love the organizer that connects to my Outlook Inbox.  This enables me to be in touch with important emails even when I'm away from my desk, without having to upgrade my phone to a Windows Mobile device for Smart Office! The other interesting features of Media bridge is connectivity to the desktop and support a wide range of applications that we can customize, including Windows Desktop Search.

The Hindu is available as a e-newspaper from yesterday.  This is a real boon to regular readers of The Hindu like me.  All these days in Switzerland, I was reading the paper daily through my RSS reader and now I am having the feeling of reading the paper like in back home, thumbing through the pages of the print edition. 

The sections like My News, My Clips & My photos tap the advantage of electronic media.

Last saturday was an unforgettable day in my life when I with my wife and kids went on a trip to Jungfrau, the Top of Europe.  It was a beautiful 3 1/2 hours journey by train amidst the scenic routes of moutains and valleys. 

We were on top of the Europe for our 4th wedding anniversary!