Want to know what you need to know to pass the ITIL 4 Foundation Exam? Check out this great ITIL 4 Exam Tips Video by Dr. Suzanne Van Hove.
PeopleCert Releases Recertification Program
As of January 1, 2023 PeopleCert instituted a Certification Renewal program which applies to all PeopleCert certifications, all students and all trainers. All certifications will need to be renewed after three (3) years.
- If you certified before 30 June 2020: you will have until 1 July 2023 to renew your certification, regardless of when you were awarded the certification.
- If certified after June 2020: you will have to renew your certification(s) within 3 years of the original award date.
Recertification Paths
From 15 January 2023 to 28 February 2023 there are two renewal paths are available:
- Retake the same exam: You can pay and re-take the original exam before the renewal date.
- Take further courses and certifications: You can renew certification by attending another course and taking an exam within the same product suite before the renewal date.
From March 1, 2023, a third renewal path will be available to candidates:
- Collect and log CPD points: You can collect and log 20 CPD points by accruing Professional Development Points (CDP’s) on the MyAxelos membership program. More details on this path will follow in sometime this month.
Successful Candidate Register
When you receive certification, your name will be included in the Successful Candidates Register (SCR) and the Candidate Verification Service. If you elect not to recertify, a note will be added to their record to indicate that their certification needs to be renewed to align with current certification requirements.
ITIL Exam Prices in 2023
For anyone or organizations planning to do ITIL Certifications in 2023, be advised that PeopleCert raised prices effective January 1, 2023 and has a second price increase planned for April 1, 2023.
ITIL exam vouchers are valid for 1 year from the date of purchase so if you are planning to take an ITIL certification this year, you will want to purchase before April 1, 2023, to avoid the second price increase.
Claim Your Free ITIL 4 Course Today
This Holiday Season, GogoTraining is giving away 1 ITIL 4 Managing Professional course per person. If you are interested in getting ITIL 4 Certified, Contact Us Today and let us know which ITIL 4 course you would like to receive at no charge.
Please note that PeopleCert, the ITIL Exam Institute, requires students to purchase the exam voucher for their ITIL courses before they are granted access to the course. To assist our students, we are offering exam discounts up to $200 depending on the exam required.
To find out more, Contact Us Today.
Wishing you the Happiest of Holidays and best wishes for the New Year ahead.
What’s In the ITSM Online Video Library?
The Online ITSM Video Library is the perfect reference tool. It includes over 450 video tutorials on key ITSM concepts so you have the tools you need to succeed. It offers a comprehensive database of ITSM concepts. It is accurate and reliable. Organized by topic and taught by world-class ITSM practitioners. For more details on the Library and what comes with it, Click Here.
The ITSM Video Library is Here!
The Online ITSM Video Library is the perfect reference tool. It offers over 450 videos on key ITSM concepts so you can update easily and cost effectively.
- It’s Accurate
- It’s taught by ITSM Practitioners
- It’s easy to use
- It’s time friendly
- It’s the perfect reference tool
Why was the Online ITSM Video Library Created?
Except for taking expensive certification classes, reading time consuming books, or searching endlessly for information that may or may not be accurate on the internet, there is no comprehensive ITSM resource available and that’s why we created the Online ITSM Video Library. Whether you are new to service management or need deeper insight into key concepts, the Online ITSM Video Library has it all.
Benefits of the Online ITSM Video Library
- It offers a comprehensive database of ITSM concepts
- It is accurate and reliable
- It’s available 24/7 so no delays in learning
- It includes ITIL 4 and V3
- It is easy to find what you need as content is organized by topic
- It offers short digestible videos, so you don’t need hours to learn
- It is very low cost and is available for individuals and organizations
What the Online ITSM Video Library is Not
Please note that the Online ITSM Video Library is not a class. It is a resource tool designed to help individuals learn about key ITSM concepts. It has nothing to do with PeopleCert Accredited classes. If you are looking for PeopleCert Accredited classes, Contact GogoTraining.
Your Cost Effective ITSM Support Solution
The Online ITSM Video Library solution offered by GogoTraining can be purchased by individuals and organizations.
- Individual access is $995/year.
- Rates for organizations can be as low as $25/person.
To find out more about how to bring the Online ITSM Video Library Solution to your organization, Contact Us.
Cyber Monday Offer
Looking for accurate information on key ITSM concepts just got easier.
The ITSM Online Video Library is your on-the-job ITSM reference tool. With over 450 videos tutorials on key ITSM concepts, the ITSM Video Library gives you the tools you need to be successful in the real world.
On Sale This Cyber Monday for only $295 (You SAVE $700)
Why was the ITSM Online Video Library Created?
Classes are great, but students forget 70% of what they learn the day after the class ends. So how do you apply what you learned in the workplace with only 30% of the knowledge you learned?
- Do you have unlimited time to research on the internet or read books, or you can look up what you need to know in seconds using the ITSM Video Library?
- Are you certain that the information you find on the internet is accurate?
On Sale This Cyber Monday for only $295 (You SAVE $700)
The ITSM Video Library offers over 450 hours of video tutorials and executive overviews on ITIL 4. Tutorials are taught by experts, short, accurate and categorized by topic. Everything you need to know to be a successful ITSM practitioner.
Buy Now And Receive 2 AMAZING Cyber Monday Bonuses
Cyber Monday 2022 Offer Rules:
- This offer may not be combined with any other offers.
- Library access is for 1 year.
- The library is a resource tool.
- Library content is arranged by topic and in no way offers a replacement for official ITSM Training Courses.
- Offer expires November 30, 2022.
Free or Accredited Training – Which is Best?
By Jim Ragle
When preparing to take an IT-related certification exam, one needs to decide whether to self-study using free content found online or to pay for an accredited, on-demand training course specifically designed to prepare you for the relevant certification exam.
I’ve had to make this choice several times. And while I like to think of myself as resourceful and adept at filtering through online nonsense to find the good stuff, when it comes to certification exam prep it’s not worth the effort and risk to go it alone with free online content.
Choose the accredited training. You’ll get certified much easier and faster. Why?
First, let’s talk about the certification program content – the stuff that you will be tested on. For most certification programs, that content is copyrighted by the owner of the certification program. ITIL certification content, for example, is developed and maintained by Axelos, which is owned by PeopleCert. Axelos/PeopleCert protect their copyright, as any commercial company developing content would do. They make money by licensing that content to accredited training organizations and selling the certification (via an exam) to would-be practitioners like us. As such, non-accredited training programs that do not license the ITIL content from Axelos/PeopleCert are prohibited from using the copyrighted content in their training offerings.
So, how can a free, unaccredited ITIL training program do a good job of training you for the exam if they aren’t allowed to share with you the copyrighted ITIL principles, practices, and methodologies?
One way they try to get around this is to simply provide free (or even paid) “practice exams” or sets of test questions you can review. Just test questions and answers – no theory, no context, nothing taken from the copyrighted material (or not enough to raise any copyright issues). I’ve seen plenty of these free exam prep questions and they are often terribly written. Here are some issues I’ve repeatedly seen in free exam prep questions:
- Only basic knowledge of English grammar is needed to select the right answer. The question asks you to select the “action” that is most important in….whatever. Of the four answer choices, only one of them (the right answer) is an action. The other choices are simply not actions at all. Trust me, your actual certification exam will NOT pull this trick on you.
- Only a basic ability to count is needed to select the right answer. The question asks you to select the three elements of…whatever. Each available choice is a list of items, but only one of the choices lists three things. Again, you won’t see anything sloppy like this on a certification exam.
- Harder to spot are just wrong answers, where the available choices don’t contain the correct answer or the answer marked as correct is, in fact, not the correct one. If you’ve not been exposed to the program content through training, how would you know that the answer is not D, but is actually C? You are putting blind trust in these free test questions.
- Also hard to spot are questions that are simply irrelevant, off-topic, and thus highly unlikely to be on the exam. Again, if you’ve not been trained, how would you even know that the question was irrelevant? Why waste your time on this?
I’m not saying all the free exam prep content out there is bad. It probably isn’t. But how do you know if it’s good or bad if you don’t know the subject matter? After all, you are admittedly a beginner if you are seeking a training course in ITIL Foundation V4, for example.
- As a beginner, can you spot training content that is wrong, misleading, or irrelevant and thus highly likely to not be on the test?
- Can you spot test questions that don’t include the correct answer in the available choices? How would you know?
If you have a lot of time and are willing to wade through an abundance of ad-supported sites offering free sample test questions and can spot the red-flag test questions as described earlier, then maybe it will work for you. However, you still have to pay for the certification exam, and there is a risk that you fail the exam and have to pay to retake it. Are you willing to take that risk?
I’d rather pay for an accredited training program and save the time, hassle, and significantly reduce the risk of failing the test. What you get when you select an accredited training program is the following:
- Actual content from the certification owner’s materials, which is what the test will be based upon.
- If the training program is specifically for certification exam prep, then it will be targeted to exactly what will be on the exam, nothing less, not much more.
- If the training program is good, it will likely be developed and presented by someone who is expert in the field and who can provide context, real-world anecdotes, and other supplementary information to help build a fuller understanding of the content, but still within the bounds of what will be covered on the exam. This never hurts, as the test questions can and do change and sometimes they are situational and require more than just memorizing definitions.
- In addition to training content, good training programs include practice quizzes and practice tests, to help you gauge whether you are assimilating the content well enough to tackle the certification exam.
When I was preparing to take the ITIL Foundation V4 exam, I reviewed some of the free content (mostly free mini quizzes) and quickly realized this was a minefield. After some research into accredited training programs, I chose the ITIL Foundation V4 training program offered by GogoTraining. The course is structured as a series of modules (all on-demand) that include video presentations with accompanying slides, delivered by Dr. Suzanne Van Hove, who is a seasoned expert in IT Service Management and ITIL. She brings vast, real-world Service Management experience to the training and does a fantastic job of adding context to the sometimes seemingly abstract concepts in ITIL. Even with this additional context, the presentations were quickly paced – fast enough that I didn’t feel like I was wasting time but slow enough to follow (also, you can always pause and go back). Dr. Hove’s delivery is enthusiastic and animated, which helped make the training interesting and engaging. Also, after every couple of modules, there are quizzes to gauge your progress and two full practice exams to take after finishing the course. All helpful. Most importantly, after taking the training, I immediately took the ITIL Foundation V4 certification exam and passed quite easily.
Accredited is the way to go, in my opinion. And GogoTraining worked great for me.
Is it possible to learn about ITIL by taking accredited courses and not get certified?
Please note: If you find a provider willing to sell you a full ITIL Foundation course without an exam voucher, it means that the course is not accredited so you don’t know if it is accurate. PeopleCert has a department that works to police unaccredited courses because they want to make sure that students have the highest possible success rate.
If you have questions, happy to help. Thank you, Marianne
Software Asset Management Saves Up to 30%
By Jeffrey Tefertiller
Hello, this is Jeffrey Tefertiller, I want to take just a moment to talk about Software Asset Management. Some people call it SAM, for short. Software Asset Management is growing in prominence as well as importance throughout many organizations. The function is used, and frankly needed to control risk and cost.
For example, on cost, many studies have shown that a good SAM program can save an organization up to 30% of its software spend. That is a huge, huge savings that requires investment.
What makes SAM more difficult, is that technology is everywhere in an organization. Think about how many types of software your organization has now and trying to control the usage versus the entitlements that you own. Entitlements is just a big word for what licenses do have you paid for that you can use. So, SAM is always looking to strike that balance of paying for what you use and use what you’re paying for. That’s difficult in these large organizations. And software publishers want to keep it that way.
There are audits that go on that make it difficult for software asset managers. These audits try to see if a company is over deployed in a certain publisher. The results of these audits is usually pretty interesting to me, because the software publishers, want you to overpay. Yes, that is what happens. But, they also use the results of that audit, as incentives to push you towards a certain type of products skews, if you will. And as been a trend, in the last five years is the push towards software as a service SaaS).
Let me give you an example. When Microsoft comes in, they do an audit, usually through a third party. They say you owe hundreds and 1000s of dollars. And they say well, you can pay this or will discount it if you promise and sign right here to move these workloads that you now have on premise to our cloud version. It’s real prominent with Microsoft Office moving to 365. They incentivize it through pressure and organizations must be wary that this happens. They must understand their entitlements versus their deployments.
I want to close with some numbers and statistics from Gartner that I find interesting. Gartner has traditional on premise spend, staying pretty flat with nominal one or 2% growth throughout the year 2025. That growth is probably just growth in business not growth in that area. If you compare it to the cloud, cloud is going up 10 to 20% every year. So, think about that, that line that’s going up at almost 20 degrees on a chart. And so, when you think about this cloud spend going through the roof, it comes back to Software Asset Management, and how do we manage the software publishers and that leaks over to how we do cloud asset management. And the topic is a big one, because organizations can spend millions and millions of dollars on software.
In fact, the average employee has well over $10,000 of software spent on them every year. In some companies that’s close to 50,000, Now do the math in your company. That is a lot of money spent and that’s why investing in a good SAM program can help save.