WE'RE IN IT REAL-WORLD TECH STORIES FROM IT PROS

In anticipation of the upcoming release of Microsoft Office 2010, as a Microsoft MVP I recently got the opportunity to take a trial run of the new version of Office. The upgrade went fine on top of Windows 7 Ultimate. But the first stop in the application suite was going to be the place where we all spend a great deal of time: Outlook. Here are my impressions of my first contact with Outlook 2010.



Even though I upgraded from Office 2007 to Office 2010, I still had to re-create my profile. When Outlook first started, I noticed that my profile was below the default profile. ALL calendar views are open at the first launch of the application. Seems like an attempt to get all the tools open for a user so they know their options. But in truth, there are so many options that you will spend some time orienting yourself in the new environment.

The ribbon has large icons, which tells me that Microsoft is thinking of us more-seasoned Office users who started out on 14-inch monitors and whose vision isn't what it used to be. Also I noticed that the terminology is less technical. This seems to an effort to "reach the masses," but for veteran users I think a New Email button is somewhat of a way to remove a mouse click. With so much opening within the app itself, the email-viewing area is narrowed and the column headings are reduced to Arrange by Conversation and Newest on Top. Expanding it gets the fields that you configure.



If you support end users, you may have had times when they called the Exchange administrator and told them the Exchange server was down. But in reality they were offline. You notice VERY LARGE BUTTONS for these users for their connections and Working Offline/Online options. Now that should reduce the phone calls….

Opening an email sent from Windows IT Pro, we see we have lots of "billboard-sized" options for working with it.

 

For security folks, your eyes will be drawn to the option for controlling the rights to this email. Launch this, and you will see a launch to a free Information Rights Management (IRM) server of Microsoft's Rights Management Server.



Once again, we see how our Windows Live ID accounts are important.

The Move Item to a different folder option created the "spirit of exploration" in me, and I was given the option to create a new folder if it wasn't in the browse list. So I created a folder with a URL to a SharePoint document site, and it went right there. Nice feature for SharePoint integration.

There are some more features that will help us manage our packrat email habits. Most of us have large volumes of mail. Yes, I'm guilty. I always have to save that joke of the day from1999 about the Jersey City version of Windows 98. Anyway, the Conversation View in Outlook 2010 improves the tracking and managing of email conversations while saving valuable Inbox space. Compress your long email threads into a few conversations that can be categorized, filed, ignored, or cleaned up with a few clicks.

There are also some new efficiency improvements when you schedule appointments, share your calendar availability, and manage your work schedule. With the email calendar feature, you can send your schedule to others so that they can quickly find time for your next appointment. If you're using Outlook 2010 on Exchange Server, you can use the new Group Scheduling View to see multiple calendars side by side or save frequently used groups of calendars together from one place.



And if you find yourself deleting lots of out-of-office emails, there is now some help for that. For business users, sending unnecessary email messages to OOF contacts, accidentally replying to a large distribution list (DL), and distributing confidential information outside the company are frequent concerns. With the new Mail Tips feature, you're alerted when you're about to send email to a large DL, to someone who is out of the office, or to individuals outside the organization. I know this will help me when working with the Microsoft CRM user group DL.

Well, that's it for my one-hour first contact. There is a lot more to explore, but to sum up, the new interface is much more than eye candy. There is new functionality that seems to be thought out for a new generation of Outlook users. You can configure it the way you like, but I would give the new features a chance and see how it will help the serious users.

[6/8/2009]

Do You Need a Shrink?
(9 Comments)
POST A COMMENT

Stress is mounting for IT professionals, and for some fear is the dominant emotion of the day. Some realize the need for professional help. Let's look at a typical IT worker, Dave, who is experiencing "high anxiety."

The setting: A quiet therapist office at the Windows IT Pro building with Dave on his first visit to Dr. Avatar.

Doctor: So you're an IT administrator. Why don't you just fix it?
Dave:  Because I'm afraid to touch it.
Doctor: Hmm…  Odd phobia for an IT admin.
Dave: No, I mean touch the SQL Server database and the application. I don't know anything about them, except for the five minutes I spent on the phone with their support team, which cost me.
Doctor: Dave, there are different kinds of fears for Microsoft SQL server–based applications:  irrational fear of SQL Server and a healthy fear of SQL Server. Let's see if we can help you develop the latter.

Dave: Well, it didn't help that the server installers from the Mega Vendor Server Corp. made the system partition so small, and that the vendor took all the defaults within the installation wizard.
Doctor: OK, Dave, that's in the past. It's your job to move forward. You can do this by gaining a better understanding of your server, MSSQL, and how databases work. Now do you have the most recent SQL Server service pack installed?
Dave: Well, I've downloaded it, but if something goes wrong and there is any down time, I'm afraid the owners will have my head—no offense, Doc.
Doctor: None taken, it goes with the territory. So how much space is available on the drive now?
Dave: 27MB.

Suddenly, Dave's cell phone goes off with a text message: There's an error on the accounting package again.

Dave: You see, this is what I mean, I'm going crazy! Do you mind if I use your laptop over there to get a session to my server?
Doctor: Not a problem, perhaps I will get a better understanding of what is happening.
Dave: OK, here's what I've been doing. Every time they get a message like this, I compress some files on the C drive or move them off, but I'm running out of options. The size of the partition is 20GB.

Doctor: It just so happens that we run the same program at the office here, and even though I'm a doctor I have to wear many hats in this economy.

Let's take a look at my SQL Server—at the data subdirectory of my SQL Server folder in the programs folder. I'm running Dynamics CRM to keep track of my patient history. Notice the file extensions, Dave?



Dave: Yes, they're MDF and LDF. But your LDFs are real small. Mine are really large, and I stopped to back up because they were filling up the drive. I feel like I'm caught in a web!
Doctor: Not to worry Dave, not to worry. The first thing we must do is to alleviate your fear of running out of disk space for the next few days. Let's start with understanding what the LDF file is. Understanding is the key to overcoming irrational fear of SQL Server.

Dave: So why are my LDFs so big?
Doctor: Well, you have to understand that the first place that data is placed in SQL is in the transaction log. Then there is a process called the commit process that runs every 10 seconds by default and writes or commits that data to the MDF file.

Dave: So why are they bigger than my MDF files?
Doctor: Well, we all like head room. People often like tall ceilings for rooms, except when they have to change a light bulb up there. SQL Server likes head room, too, and whenever it thinks that a decent amount of data is coming its way, it expands the room, so to speak, to keep that head room. The problem is if you don't take care of your SQL Server transaction logs, they don't contract. That means that you have this big file that has basically nothing in it, yet it takes up lots of space on your drive. In this case, it's your C drive.

Dave: Can I just erase them?
Doctor: Well you could, but you'd have to shut down the Microsoft SQL Server service, and then your users wouldn't be able to reach the server and do work. You could detach the database and re-create the log file and point it to another drive and folder on your server.
Dave: Sounds scary. That's the kind of stuff that keeps me up at night.
Doctor: Well, there's a first time for everything. After all you learned how to ride a bike, didn't you?
Dave: Uh… that's another issue.

Doctor: Well that being said, you can also "shrink" those transaction logs right now while your users are connected.
Dave: Really? Can I do that through the GUI?
Doctor: There is an option to shrink files through SQL Server Management Studio, but in some instances people have less success than others. But there is T-SQL code.
Dave: Yikes! Did you say code? I'm not a developer!
Doctor: No worries, I'm sure you've done batch files before. It's not much different.
Dave: OK, now I think I'm breaking out in hives.
Doctor: Well, we won't get into the registry right now. So then, open up SSMS. Notice that in Management Studio, we have to option to shrink a database file. Either the MDF file or the LDF file.




- posted by Curt Spanburgh

[5/4/2009]

"Well, This Is Another Nice Mesh You've Got Me Into"
(5 Comments)
POST A COMMENT

That famous line from camp comedy great Oliver Hardy was uttered in a negative sense, but now in the modern time of "applications in the cloud," we really are in a "nice mesh." What am I referring to? Well, it's been a few years now that we citizens of the Internet have been offered free software utilities that have given us options for our daily computer life. At the beginning of the decade, many of us scoffed when certain vendors proclaimed in the industry press that the "computer is the Internet." The very thought of ceding control from our UNIX, Novell and Microsoft networks—not to mention the applications that ran on them—was frightening.

For a company like Microsoft, Internet apps were truly their nemesis. Microsoft purchased Hotmail in 1997, and for the majority of Internet users this was the first application in the cloud that they used. But when Google established a large Internet audience, the time came for a release of all sorts of applications on the Net that we would now call cloud applications. Microsoft's experience with the insidious landing of a toolbar in its browser and the advent of Gmail, Google Docs, and other competitive cloud applications, can only be described as an invasion. In fact if it was a sci-fi movie, we could call this period "Google Attacks."

Now we're in a time period that could be a movie called "Microsoft Strikes Back." With the Windows Live initiative, many of us industry watchers wondered how far Microsoft would pursue the concept of providing useful applications on the Net for Windows Live subscribers. In the meantime, we've seen the .NET Framework mature and Microsoft's browser assimilate the best of other innovations in the browser space. We love to see innovation, but Microsoft seems to absorb the best results from these sojourners of new technology ideas and incorporates them into its mainstream software. From this tech's viewpoint, Microsoft Live Mesh is a great answer to Google Docs.

What is Live Mesh? It can be described as a cloud application in the sense that it provides a "live desktop" in the cloud. Software is downloaded to your local machine, which is defined in Live Mesh beta as a device. The first thing you notice is that there is an intuitive method to have you start creating folders on this "desktop in the cloud," and you have the option of having counterparts of these containers created on your Live Mesh desktop (called the Live Desktop)—or as I like to call it, the Meshtop.


Live Desktop

Microsoft has reason to be proud of the technical success in this application. In fact, Ray Ozzie and Dave Treadwell had the honor of receiving a Crunchies 2008 Award earlier this year.

It shows that Microsoft can produce an "I'll do ya one betta" response to Google's cloud apps. It also indicates that being first is not always an advantage—after all, many guitar players started playing Chuck Berry's guitar licks, but most of us still emulate Clapton and Hendrix, whether we know it or not. So it goes with the cloud applications that are now appearing from Microsoft.

Going deeper into the Meshtop, we quickly see the tabs and click Devices. This displays to us a "ring" of Device resources. These include all desktops and laptops where we have the Live Mesh client installed. Eventually, we'll even have access to our mobile phone devices and Mac desktops via Live Mesh.


Live Mesh devices list
 
Similar to the behavior of IM, all clients that are potentially accessible are displayed in the ring. If a device isn't powered on, it's displayed as offline. A user can bring a device into the context of the Choice area and can use two provided options to either rename or delete this device from the ring on the Meshtop.


"Ring" of Live Mesh devices

So what are the advantages of being the lord of this ring? Well this allows us to remotely connect to these resources, work with remote desktops, and gain access to files on those devices, including the option to transfer files from the devices to our Meshtop. As I'm writing this, I'm waiting for my long-delayed flight in the Virginia Beach Airport. Just a day ago, I was speaking at the Mark Minasi Forum Conference about hybrid solutions using cloud applications. As I was displaying the features of Live Mesh, some in the audience had fearful reaction regarding security in their networks. Others saw a new array of options for collaboration.

Now it would not serve any useful purpose to connect to the device that is the laptop I am already using to type this. Let's look at a demonstration of connecting to a remote Live Mesh resource, as I connect to one of my devices in another city a few hundred miles away.


Connecting to another device in your mesh

Now, without a Terminal Server CAL, I'm connected to my Windows Vista Ultimate machine. I'm given the options to send a Ctrl+Alt+Delete to the machine to log on to the desktop, run full-screen mode, and transfer files. In a few moments, I have access to my remote machine and all of this over a wireless card.


Accessing a remote system via Live Mesh
 
When I subscribed to the Live Mesh beta, I took the option of having 5GB of storage for folders on my Meshtop, which is fine for transferring files in general or an ISO file and perhaps even the occasional DVD that I might need in a pinch.

Regarding the folders you create, you can invite other users on the Net to have access to these folders with different roles. To do so, you open a folder that you created and invite other users to receive the roles of Owner, Reader, or Contributor.


Inviting members to access a folder

When changes are made to these folders, the Live Mesh account owner is notified of the change, whether it's a contribution or a deletion.

I can also see any news of changes in the News tab. Similar to the activities we would see in Twitter, the News tab displays all the actions that have occurred in the folders historically. Now this is a beta, and the wish list is already long. So I hope that, in a future Live Mesh version, Microsoft provides some method to manage the history. Some questions and concerns about a new application like this are valid. I will try to address those concerns in a later article. For now, I like this Mesh I'm into, and I hope you give it a try as well.

Find Out More about Microsoft Live Mesh:

• Live Mesh Preview--Part One: Introduction
  Live Mesh Preview--Part Two: Hands on with Live Mesh
  With Live Mesh, Microsoft Firmly Embraces Cloud Computing
• Making a Mesh of IT
• What You Need to Know About Microsoft Live Mesh
  

[3/4/2009]

How to Change the Name of a Certificate Server
POST A COMMENT

This is a reader-submitted article, published "as is" and unedited by Windows IT Pro staff. As such, Windows IT Pro is not liable for any inaccuracy, omission, or misrepresentation herein. It is the reader’s responsibility to verify the accuracy of the content presented here.

Certificate services allow us to create a Certification Authority (CA). This CA is typically used for encrypting the content of a Web site. After the certificate services are installed, Windows does not allow us to change the name of the machine, nor the the domain it belongs to. But you can easily overcome this restriction.

First, some background information: The information about installed services is stored in the registry, under HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services key. Info about Certificate Services is stored under "CertSvc" title.

Now, the procedure goes like this:

1. Using the Regedit registry editor, export "CertSvc" value to a file then delete "CertSvc" value.
2. Restart the computer.
3. Rename the computer and before restarting the computer, import the content of the file you created before.
4. Restart the computer.

[2/25/2009]

Free Hypervisors Extend Your IT Resources
(3 Comments)
POST A COMMENT

It is 2009 and, to my disappointment, we're still not able to press a button on our briefcase or, to be more realistic, our laptop backpack, and see it turn into our flying car. But the good news is that we're seeing adoption of a technology that may free up enough of our time to develop that backpack.

Everywhere we look in the tech sector, there's talk about how hot virtualization is and will continue to be this year. During the current economic crisis, we all must summon up our creative juices to meet these tough times. One of the best ways to do so is to employ free hypervisors. With budget cuts slashing IT staff and projects while management and customers demand better uptime and lower risk, these free hypervisors may be the panacea. Take a look around your data center. Perhaps there is a Microsoft Exchange email server or SQL Server machine running at 5 percent utilization. Why not use that server as a virtual host and run multiple applications on it?

Free Hypervisors Get You Started on Virtualization
Let’s go over some free hypervisor products that you can download and use in your environment. Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware ESXi, and Citrix XenServer are free hypervisors. These free tools could in fact save your job or one of your co-workers' jobs in such an economy. Upper management is still being tasked to move critical business-driven projects ahead, but they're being told they need to do so with less capital. The glaring expense that will be cut first is staff that's deemed as unnecessary or at least expendable to make room for the new hardware and software for the critical projects.

Granted, these free hypervisors provide only the most basic features of the vendors' enterprise offerings. Think of the free sample dish in your favorite chocolate store here. Sure, once you take the small bite you want the entire bar of chocolate—but it does allow us to get a taste for it, yes? The beauty of these tools is we can use them to build virtual environments at little to no cost, and when the economy does turn around, we'll have the option to gain the features of the enterprise set without having to go back and re-create the entire environment.

Keep the Business Moving Forward
The goal here is to get the software up and running so we can keep driving the business forward without taking three steps back in a staffing level. Those new servers that the critical applications need are simply built with existing hardware. This solution speaks volumes to management: They know that the business needs to keep moving forward and that no person is larger than the business, but they also know when they have a solid team and really don’t want to rip it apart.

The idea of server consolidation and/or containment is well known, but what most IT shops don't grasp is the ease of management of their newfound best friend. It's not uncommon to hear things like, "Look how fast the Windows server boots!" or "It only took me an hour to fully configure a web server from the ground up, I mean loading the operating system and all."

Once the staff realizes the true power and ease of maintenance of the virtual platform, it becomes very easy to convince upper management that it's the right thing to do. All the software vendors provide ROI/TCO calculators on their websites to help us develop our business case and convince the executives. Sometimes the ROI is so great that we see the project get the funding for the enterprise software as the project pays for itself. That doesn't happen as often as one would hope, though, as many times new servers, shared storage, and network switch upgrades need to be purchased. It's during these times that we see the ROI, while still acceptable, isn't good enough for the management to give the project the funding needed. They're not only protecting this investment but the company as a whole. Leveraging the free hypervisors during these uncertain times is crucial to the lifecycle of the IT environment. Innovation must continue to move forward as fast as business or faster.

So no matter which hypervisor you prefer, I know that you'll look back on your decision to give it a try and wonder, why did I wait so long?

Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008


VMware ESXi 3.5


Citrix XenServer



- posted by David Bisson

[2/17/2009]

Live Chat Feb. 27: IT in the Cloud
POST A COMMENT

Cloud computing: It might be great for your budget, but are online services robust enough to meet your business needs? Get answers to this and more of your questions about cloud computing from Windows IT Pro authors Brett Hill and Curt Spanburgh. Brett wrote the February cover story, "Get Started with Microsoft Online Services" and Curt is a consultant who's seeing more of his clients move to cloud services and has written several articles about cloud computing on Windowsitpro.com--see "Do You Drive a Hybrid?" and "SaaS: It's Closer Than You Think."

Join the live chat with Brett, Curt, and Windows IT Pro editors on Friday, February 27, from 1:00-2:00 p.m. Mountain Time--or check back here after the chat to replay it.

 

 




- posted by Editors

[1/22/2009]

Windows IT Pro Detective Agency: Who Killed the Microsoft Dynamics Server?
(3 Comments)
POST A COMMENT

Hi, there. My name is Jack.

Er, you come down here to SOCAL often? No? That’s too bad.

"What do I do?" you ask? I work the consultant beat in north county San Diego and the Orange county area, when there’s action up there.

Yep, that’s right, action.

It’s the kind of action that causes a company to hit the horn and scream for help. Only they don’t really scream too loud because they know that it... raises the price.

One time back at the office, the dispatcher Bonnie gets a call from someplace in north county, just beyond the morning fog that comes in from the coast. Some lady says that they need SQL Server reinstalled.

“That’s odd” Bonnie says. “We have you down as one of our Dynamics Great Plains customers, and it says here in the CRM system that you have a SQL Server.”

“Please send someone,” responded the voice of an absolute femme fatale.

Bonnie hits my cell. Here’s what happened after that.

Bonnie: Jack, how’s my best man doing?

Me: Well maybe you can swing it so’s I can be your best man someday, Bonnie. How’s it going with that guy you’re hanging with?

Bonnie: Never mind that now Jack, I have a hot one. Woman called in with a SQL problem. They sound worried. Here’s the address. They need you up there.

Me: No problem, the traffic’s not so bad at this time in the morning.

So I drive up route five and pull off the highway (excuse me), freeway to a swank office park with the required fountain in the parking lot.

As I park my ride, I notice what looks to me like a fire drill rehearsal going on in front of a nice office building. There must have been over 100 people standing outside.

Not knowing what was going on, I just grabbed my laptop bag and went walking toward the main entrance.

As I got near the crowd, a classy woman’s voice with a British accent called out and said, “Are you Jack? Are you here to rescue us?”

Then another voice rang out with a distinct Windy City flair, “Are you the GURU that’s going to ‘fix’ us?” Man, I hate that word GURU.

I walked into the elevator with these people, and they informed me that we were to have a meeting in their conference room first. The elevator was shaking… and so were the passengers’ feet in their boots.

The front door of the suite did not impress me… But, the conference room did. Around me were arrayed the cream of the company and one very overdone tech who looked like he should be in a sleep-aid commercial. I looked at his hands, and he was a few centimeters from the cuticle, if you know what I mean.

Exec1: We have a problem with our Dynamics Great Plains server.

Me: What’s the problem?

Nervous Wreck Tech: It……. crashed. I was on the phone with Microsoft all night, but they couldn’t help me.

Me: Are you the company IT person?

Nervous Wreck Tech: I work as a consultant like you. Do you want to see my Linux certification?

Me: Eh! Perhaps some other time. So what’s the impact of the server crash?

Master Piece: We haven’t been able to pay our employees for three days. All 800 of them.

Femme Fatale: Some of them are of …. questionable background, so we are not sure what action they will take. We’re rather frightened.

Me: So how many servers do you have?

Exec1: One.

Me: One?

Nervous Wreck Tech: One. My company recommended that since they only have 35 workstations, they needed only one server.

Me: So the operating system is Small Business Server?

Nervous Wreck Tech: No just Server. It’s a standalone.

Me: And your boys recommended this, huh? Interesting!

Femme Fatale: Oh, save us, Jack, save us!

Me: Take it easy, lady, there’s only one of me. OK, this is what we are going to do. Ms. Fatale, get me all the software CDs you have in the office. Look for any papers that say “license number” on them. Those are our letters of transit out of this situation, and they’re real important. Master Piece, you get me the administrator password to the box, or any other passwords and usernames you know.

I was escorted to the server room, a 4’ x 4’ unfinished closet at the end of the office. I saw pieces of sheet rock and construction dust on the floor. The “server” was just a single (popular vendor) box, with two drives and 2GB of RAM—and all the server roles that a modern office needs today were configured on this box. There was even a pair of remote users that were waiting to connect to the box on Terminal Server sessions. The box was a file server, print server, SQL Server, Great Plains server.

I stood at the console of this hole in the wall and went to the command prompt to take a look at the boot.ini file.

I went to the root and typed

attrib b*.* -h -s –a

and in a moment I was looking at the first piece of evidence. I noticed that the boot.ini had three entries on it.

Nervous Wreck Tech: Wow, I haven’t seen that file since my certification test that I <cough> didn’t pass.

Me: I’m not surprised; most techs get sloppy and forget about the fundamentals.

Nervous Wreck Tech (who was right behind me): I had to install a third instance because I couldn’t get the other two to boot.

I felt the floor give beneath my feet for a second. Then Nervous Wreck Tech grabbed the mouse and opened a folder.

Nervous Wreck Tech: I found these files that were real big, so I think they’re important or maybe they’re just corrupted junk. I moved them to the new machine on the receptionist’s Desktop. She has the largest drive in the office.

Me: They are .bak files, SQL backup files. And yes, they’re very important. Maybe even more valuable than gold, at this point. We’ll see what’s in them later today IF we’re lucky.

Nervous Wreck Tech: There wasn’t much space on the drives last night while I was working with the Microsoft Tech, so I removed some of the folders in the Program Files folder.

Me: And who came up with that little approach?

Nervous Wreck Tech: Well… I did.

Me: Would you happen to have a TUMS on you?

I was able to boot the machine and, exploring all the volumes, we moved off to a USB drive every possible thing we could, in all the instances.

Femme Fatale found the CDs and better yet, the license codes. I installed SQL Server and the service pack while the machine was disconnected from the Internet.

Then I looked for a text file called acctfram.txt, since this file contains the account framework for their financial system that ran on Microsoft Dynamics.

Femme Fatale (batting her eyelashes): So what’s the account framework for Jack?

Me: Well, lady, the account framework defines the place segments and the account format. This format defines the account numbers that ID a “company” in the accounting system.

Everything has to be tied up nice with string and paper for the government auditors. Otherwise there could be… well, let’s just say we wouldn’t want the auditors to be unhappy now, would we?

Often a site will make a shotgun kind of choice to cover all the bases, like five segments with a max of 25 characters. But this was like a complicated safe combination. It was a good call to check all this out before attempting the restore the SQL Server database .bak files we found on the receptionist’s Windows XP machine at the front desk.

With SQL Server installed, I installed the Microsoft Dynamics ERP software and duplicated the account framework. For the uninitiated, the base program is installed, as are the modules that the client has licenses for. A look at the Microsoft Dynamics Web site gave me the client’s site name, so I could re-create the server and get the licenses installed.

After a few hours, when we restored the SQL Server data for the company databases we found that we had ducked a bullet. All the data up to a few days ago was there, including the reports and the Check templates.

Just then, the owner of the operation came in. Mr. Guttmann was his name. He was the reincarnation of Alfred Hitchcock, down to the voice.

He wanted to tell me the long-winded history of how this mess got started. He also thanked me when, a few minutes later, the accounting people were connected and they could do payroll.

Me: You know, this was never going to be a permanent solution for you. What you basically have here is a plan to fail.

Mr. Guttman: Apparently we were badly advised.

Me: Yeah, well considering how much money they charged you to make this mess, perhaps you should call the police.

Mr. Guttmann: Well, Jack, can you give us some guidance?

Me: I’ll write a project plan and a Statement of Work.

So I went on my merry way and sent him the proposal. Two months go by, and I hear nothing. Finally I get a call. It’s Femme Fatale.

Femme Fatale: Jack, we had our old IT support firm in again, and now nothing works.

Me: I’ll be up in a few hours.

This time, I took my associate Dave with me to the office. We walked in and were escorted to the server closet again. The door was opened and there stood… a brand-new SINGLE server.

Dave: So what’s this?

Me: It’s the stuff that dreams are made of.


- posted by Curt Spanburgh

[11/5/2008]

Recession and Rebirth: Why IT Matters in Tough Times
(2 Comments)
POST A COMMENT

Executive Summary: Increasing spending on information technology (IT) in a recession might seem counter-intuitive—but there are sound reasons to spend money wisely on IT innovation. Romi Mahajan, former director of technical audience and platform marketing for Microsoft and now chief marketing officer for Ascentium, explains why investing in IT makes good business sense even in a slow economy.

Neoclassical economist Paul Samuelson’s quip that “funeral by funeral, theory advances,” is particularly appropriate to the year 2008 as the fundamental structure of financial and credit markets is undergoing a tectonic shift, from which its recovery will be at best partial. The grim pall-bearers of peoples’ hopes and dreams and the shriveled corpses of our collective economic perceptions are attempting to justify death (actually murder) by invoking and inventing tepid arguments about “excesses” and not about the fundamental flaws in the system. As we speak in soft whispers of the trillions of dollars of wealth that has been erased and of the need for austerity, as we call up the specters of The Great Depression, two categories of white-collar professionals are running scared. Both Marketers and IT staff are looking over their shoulders, hoping to avoid the sickle. Inversely, in the case of both, an era of recession is exactly the time to redouble our faith in (and investment in) both of these categories. In this instance, I plan to focus on the topic of IT in a recession.

In many cases, conclusions are not truths per se, but instead are the results of assumptions we make. If we assume IT is a discretionary cost, then we are no doubt to conclude that IT budgets should be slashed in tight times. If we assume that IT is a commodity, without nuance and specificity, then we diminish its value and must indeed conclude that recessionary times imply a requisite “belt-tightening.” If we assume that IT Professionals are “latent” talent whose collective intellectual and creative potential is “limited to IT,” we are easily led to the bitter conclusion that both the art and science of IT and its practitioners represent that very status quo that hard economic times force us to change.

I make no such assumptions.

Smart IT as Comparative Advantage
Does IT cost money? Yes. It is a “cost.” No. IT, done well and coupled with business process, renders comparative advantage and must be put on the “investment” side of the ledger, not the “cost” side. To understand this concept, it is entirely unnecessary to spend even a moment in the realm of theory. Instead, it is more revealing to examine everyday practicality as evidenced by a few representative examples:

• Single sign-on. The ease and time-savings conferred by single sign-on in an enterprise that demands complex functions of each employee is impossible to overstate.  That ease and yielded time can be directly correlated to increased productivity, which is a clear source of comparative advantage in the marketplace.
• CRM. The real-time ability to understand the delicate equation between company and customer through this “artifact” of IT is increasingly seen as a differentiator between top-tier and also-ran companies.
• Communications. IT-mediated messaging is a necessary component in the production of value.
  Security and Provisioning. In a slow-growing economy, one’s assets have to be protected and leveraged in ways unnecessary in boom times. Thus, recessionary times call for increased attention to security and adjacent areas.

• Innovation comes from the systematic and irreverent process of though-trial-error-revision.  IT lives on this process.  There is never only one way to do IT.
• IT cuts across the organization; as such it can either enable or stifle all activities.  All the more reason to continue investment in it.

[10/17/2008]

Top 3 IT Stressors
POST A COMMENT

What cranks a sys admin's blood pressure? Depending on the size of the environment a sys admin supports, he or she might not be able to narrow the cause down to just three top stressors. However, we took a stab at it in an informal Friday afternoon poll. Besides the issues involved with less-than-knowledgeable managers and users, as well as the usual migrations, patches, and hardware replacements, we singled out three top IT stressors:

1. Security, particularly user permissions. "User permissions are an endless task. Do people have access only to what they need, no more—balancing security against user access and ease of use."

2. Disaster recovery. "Are DR procedures in place? do they work....reliably? There's nothing worse than stressing about the Exchange server because there isn't a good DR plan in place."

3. Tape backups. Ugh.

We can't ease your pain, but we'd be happy to try to help lower your blood pressure. A little reading on the side, perhaps, might help. Though we also threw in a link for "Do Good" gaming. Call us in the morning.

Permissions:

"Safeguard Sensitive Content with Information Rights Management" by John Howie

http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/99821/safeguard-sensitive-content-with-information-rights-management.html

"Use PowerShell to Manage Fine-Grained Password Policies in Windows Server 2008"

http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/99929/use-powershell-to-manage-fine-grained-password-policies-in-windows-server-2008.html

"Using Access Denied: Restricting Users' Read Access to AD Objects"

http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/98297/using-access-denied-restricting-users-read-access-to-ad-objects.html

Disaster recovery:

"Exchange Server Archiving Software" by B.K. Winstead

http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/97738/exchange-server-archiving-software.html

"Spring-Cleaning for Your Exchange Server Deployments" by Jerry Cochran

http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/24405/spring-cleaning-for-your-exchange-server-deployments.html

"Disaster-Preparedness Checklist" by David Chernicoff

http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/94564/disaster-preparedness-checklist.html

Backup:

"Server Storage Options" by Alan Sugano

http://windowsitpro.com/Windows/article/articleid/99920/server-storage-options.html

"Enterprise Backup and Recovery Software" by Lavon Peters

http://windowsitpro.com/Windows/article/articleid/100032/enterprise-backup-and-recovery-software.html

"Your Worst Recovery Nightmare" by Karen Forster

http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/45399/your-worst-recovery-nightmare.html

Readers Review Hot Products"

http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/98120/readers-review-hot-products.html

Games With a Purpose (GWAP):

http://www.gwap.com


- posted by Caroline Marwitz

[10/2/2008]

Do You Drive a Hybrid?
(4 Comments)
POST A COMMENT

Hybrid is a term that you find in many contexts. Hybrid vehicles are hot items in the auto world. And there are hybrid bicycles and food from hybrid crops. But whatever the context, hybrids are models that fit a special situation.

What about IT—where does “hybrid” fit into our world? Microsoft’s Software plus Services is one hybrid, and its cousins cloud computing and software as a service (SaaS) could also be components in hybrid IT solutions that combine offsite services and onsite hardware and software in a way that makes the most practical sense for a company.

Hybrid IT solutions are looking better all the time. Hybrid solutions can reduce cost for IT departments that need to extend services while profits and budgets are down. Doing more with what you have is the order of the day. And often there is little chance of adding more personnel and getting them trained to support these new offerings.

Why Hybrid IT?
Let’s look at what the average IT shop may have for their 25 to 50 users. They need their anytime, anywhere email. Many IT shops have Exchange Server and Outlook Web Access (OWA), so that traveling employees can work in a company a flight away and still get their email.

But how often have you been in a hotel where OWA doesn’t work through the provided Internet access? Or a VPN connection is somehow restricted through the hotel’s system. And what will the client think if the salesperson asks if he can use the company’s network to check his email?

Then you have the single point of failure, in your small server room. The UPS that’s keeping the switch on or the firewall that’s out of warranty. Or perhaps a telco employee is working in a wire closet in your area and takes everyone’s T1 down for a few blocks. In the meantime, business needs to go on.

At that point, it starts to look like a good idea to have some sort of hosted email and alternate Internet access, so that you could create a “hybrid” of an email solution for your critical business communications. It’s kind of like switching to Impulse when the WARP engine is offline. Thus Software plus Services starts to make sense when the solution is reasonably priced, easily available from anywhere at any time, and can be integrated into your existing systems. Let’s call this the “work-with-what-you-have” concept. That doesn’t include just hardware and software but also the combined experience of your IT staff and knowledge workers.

More Hybrids “on the Road”
I recently saw a company that was using a hosted email system with 100 email accounts for less than $100 a month. Now the mailbox limits were 100MB each, and the service could be configured with Microsoft Outlook and had an Outlook Web Access (OWA) web interface as well. Sure, it’s not Exchange, and the CEO’s administrative assistant cannot rack up a 12GB PST file, but it gets the job done when the VPN or remote access to your company network is inaccessible. And as I mentioned before, it’s a simple matter to move data around and marry the two systems together.

So now there are services like hosted email, security services, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) making their way into the mainstream offerings for small-to-midsized companies. These are the IT requirements that businesses need to stay in the game. If deployed on premise, these technologies have a high “time tag” along with a price tag.

Now could be the right time for IT organizations to launch “driving a hybrid”–type data-delivery structures for their revenue-generating users and systems by combining such SaaS offerings. Microsoft has unfurled its adoption of the SaaS concept, and I’m seeing many tech people scoff at the idea, perhaps remembering previous attempts to have all IT resources served up via the Internet. Perhaps some of that is career protection.

Skepticism about SaaS notwithstanding, most of us are already driving a “hybrid tech” system in the form of our ISP’s DNS servers. It’s SaaS—and how many of us would be willing to become an ISP just to get our 100-seat network Internet connectivity.

How to Make It Work
So the concept is far from new. Therefore, it really makes sense to look into some of the newer SaaS offerings and see if you can extend this hybrid IT shop concept. For instance, collaboration is in large demand in businesses today. Reducing office space and phone requirements and creating “composite” software deployments for business use are the order of the day. Project managers, sales execs, and business intelligence (BI) consumers all need to converge to conduct business in such a way that the “cash stays found” and there is something in the profit column at the end of the month.

In my next post, we’ll take a look at a possible hybrid deployment of applications for business use, combining Microsoft CRM Online with an inhouse SharePoint deployment. We’ll look at an example IT company that has consultants, salespeople, and decision makers assigned to sites around the country. SharePoint is part of their intranet, but the sales people also need CRM tools. Salespeople work on quick access to up-to-date information, and often in technical sales they need to include other resources in their organization, such as technical people and project managers.


- posted by Curt Spanburgh

[1]  2   next page