At OpenSRS, we have a talented array of women who are developers, programmers, implementation specialists, professional service experts, technical support, reporting specialists, account managers, customer service, sales representatives, video technology consultants, accounting, NOC analysts, technical writers, managers, directors, quality assurance specialists, marketers, communicators, ITIL-certified technologists, web designers, compliance officers, usability experts, human resources, internet savvy and more. Each of these talented folks makes our corner of the Internet run smoothly. We are in awe of their sheer force of knowledge. Here’s a picture of some of our talented folks:

We hope to inspire you to talk about the great work women contribute in your workplaces. And, we hope we can inspire young women to join our profession.

By the way, OpenSRS is looking for Application Developers, NOC Analysts, and QA/Developers . We welcome all skilled talent. And, men too!

In part one of the series, A.J. Mirani, Manager, Technical Operations, talked about how we analyze changes and manage risk. Creating categories for changes and risk is only part of a solid change management process. In part two, A.J. provides more context to the life-cycle of a change request:

You might also be interested in A.J’s introduction to the Technical Operations team that we posted a few months back.

Stay tuned for more videos about the Technical teams at OpenSRS. Also, if you have any suggestions for topics you’d like to hear more about, let us know.

In our last video, A.J. Mirani, Manager of Technical Operations, provided us with a brief overview of the Technical Operations team. He joins again with two videos explaining the OpenSRS/Tucows Change Management processes.

In this first part, A.J. talks about how we analyze changes and manage risk using our version of ITIL/ITSM: (5 minute video)

Next week, we’ll post part 2 of our conversation on Change Management.

In our last videos we talked about how Technical Support and our Network Operations Center (NOC) investigate your requests and conduct service monitoring. Once their work is confirmed, they hand off tickets to our Technical Operations team to investigate and work to resolution. Members of the OpenSRS Technical Operations team are the key owners for our incident, problem and change management processes. They also manage our software, servers and data centers. AJ Mirani, Manager of Technical Operations, and I will provide you with several videos all about his team and their work. The first video is an introduction to Technical Operations:

In the video, AJ discusses how important Open Source is to OpenSRS. What types of Open Source applications do you use in your day-to-day operations?

Next up: AJ and I will discuss how Change Management has helped OpenSRS improve and grow.

In these three 5-minute videos, we talk with a few folks from our NOC and Support teams. We refer to our OpenSRS tailored ITIL/ITSM process for ticket handling which uses 4 basic types of tickets (Request, Incident, Change and Problem). In today’s videos we will focus on Request and Incident tickets. Requests are tickets that you submit to our Technical Support team via reseller.supportATopensrsDOTcom or calling us (Toll Free Phone: 1-800-371-6992 or Toll Free Phone (Intl): + 800-371-69922). These tickets are reviewed by Technical Support and can be handled using their expertise or escalated to the NOC for further investigation. If the NOC receives a ticket, it becomes an Incident ticket. They work with Technical Support and other teams to resolve issues. Incident tickets are also created by NOC for items identified by internal troubleshooting or monitoring. (We will talk about Problem and Change tickets later this month when we focus on Operations). All tickets are rated by the type of issue, the service or functionality affected and the number of users affected, so that we can address and report issues in a timely manner.

The first video features Kevin Rueckert, NOC and Support Manager. Kevin talks about his department and how they are working to fulfill the Reseller promise.

Next up is Frank Lemire, Technical Support Team Lead. Frank is very passionate about doing the right thing for Resellers.

Ben Zanin is a Senior NOC analyst. He provides insight into the types of tickets and how NOC responds to escalations and monitored issues.

Let us know if you have any questions about NOC and Technical Support. You can leave a comment or join us in the forum. In the next part of this series, we will talk with AJ Mirani all about Operations.