Microsoft Offline VM Servicing Tool 2.1 Release

Microsoft have just released an updated offline VM servicing tool, which allows you to keep virtual machines that may be offline for a while, up to date with patches and the like.

Offline machines (which there are many of typically) do not automatically receive operating system, antivirus, or application updates that would keep them compliant with current IT policy. An out-of-date virtual machine may pose a risk to the IT environment. If deployed and started, the out-of-date virtual machine might be vulnerable to attack or could be capable of attacking other network resources.

You will need System Center (SCVMM) for this to work, which is understandable as this is a management operation.

You also need some mechanism for actually patching/updating the virtual machines.  This is handled by one of the following:

• Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) 3.0 or WSUS 3.0 SP1
• System Center Configuration Manager

OVMST uses “servicing jobs” to manage the update operations based on lists of existing virtual machines stored in VMM. Using Windows Workflow Foundation technology, a servicing job runs snippets of Windows PowerShell scripts (against SCVMM, which is built on PowerShell) to work with virtual machines. For each virtual machine, the servicing job:

• “Wakes” the virtual machine (deploys it to a host and starts it).
• Triggers the appropriate software update cycle (Configuration Manager or WSUS).
• Shuts down the updated virtual machine and returns it to the library.

Its a good solution to solve the offline issue of virtualisation – try it, you can download it from here:

Google Apps Beefs Up Enterprise Messaging

The Google Apps hosted communication and collaboration suite, which contains e-mail, calendar, office applications and a Web site builder, among other applications, is gaining a new component: discussion forums with mailing lists.

As has been the case with its other components, Apps is fetching this latest application from Google's consumer services,and giving it the necessary support to make it suitable for a workplace setting, like IT administration controls.

The Groups application, which will go live on Wednesday, allows for the creation of mailing lists for group members, but also lets users embed other Apps components into the forums, including calendars, word-processing documents, presentations, videos and spreadsheets. Content posted to the forums is indexed in full text and searchable.

Groups is available in the Education and Premier editions of Apps, but not in the Standard edition. Apps administrators need to activate Groups for their domain, at which point end-users can create forums  without IT intervention. The IT department can establish policies and access rights for groups. Group owners also can manage certain settings for their forums and lists.

Looks like a good addition to us, wonder when Wave will join in?

Microsoft Core Configurator 2.0 Ships

Anyone who’s deployed Windows Server 2008 (Pre-R2) with the Server Core deployment option will know it requires a slight behavioural change from what most Windows guys will have been used to.

With a reduced overhead, less patching, reduced attack surface, and the ability to trim the install size still further using DISM, there are some key benefits to using Core, however, for some, those benefits are outweighed by the additional ‘overhead’ around managing the thing!  Locally at least.

Step up Core Configurator.  Developed by Andrew Auret and Tony Ison from Microsoft UK, this little tool, which can be run from a USB stick, gave the usual GUI-admins much more of a GUI to work with, simplifying and speeding up implementation of aspects such as installing Roles and Features, managing Windows Updates, and Licenses, but also turning on things like MPIO and setting iSCSI options.  For those of you who haven’t seen it, it looked like this:

As you can see, even in V1, it was a much simpler and more streamlined interface than just using CMD!

Now V2 is upon us, with significant GUI and usability improvements:

 

As you can see, it’s pretty rich, and you can run it directly from a USB stick, so it’s always handy to have with you!  What else can it do?

• Product Licensing
• Networking Features
• DCPromo Tool
• ISCSI Settings
• Server Roles and Features
• User and Group Permissions
• Share Creation and Deletion
• Dynamic Firewall settings
• Display | Screensaver Settings
• Add & Remove Drivers
• Proxy settings
• Windows Updates (Including WSUS)
• Multipath I/O
• Hyper-V including virtual machine thumbnails
• JoinDomain and Computer rename
• Add/remove programs
• Services
• WinRM
• Complete logging of all commands executed.

Thanks to Matt from Microsoft for pointing this out to us!  Fantastic.

You can download it here.

Citrix Launches New Education Licensing to Jumpstart Campus-wide Adoption of Desktop Virtualisation

Citrix have officially announced the general availability of the campus wide licensing model for education users of XenDesktop, we first got wind of this a couple of weeks back and have already had a vast amount of interest shown in it.  The salient points from the press release from yesterday reads:

Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CTXS), today announced a new campus-wide licensing option for educational organisations worldwide, making it easy and cost-effective to deliver unlimited virtual desktops and applications to every faculty and staff member, and student. The new campus-wide option is part of the company’s longstanding Education Licensing program, which is a simple, flexible program that helps education customers get the most up-to-date technology, even on a limited budget. Academic institutions at both the K-12 and university level have been early leaders of the virtual desktop revolution, boasting significant cost savings with some of the largest desktop virtualisation deployments in production. With the introduction of the Citrix campus-wide option, educational institutions can now take advantage of the industry’s most comprehensive desktop virtualisation solution, Citrix XenDesktop™ 4, on a broad scale for as little as $9 per student.

Program Pricing
The Citrix Education Licensing program now consists of two options for customers based on their individual purchasing needs.

Campus-Wide Pricing – based on a specific Full-time Equivalent (FTE) student count where 100 percent of students are licensed in a school, department, district or campus. Faculty and staff can be covered under the same terms and pricing as students. Campus-wide pricing is available now for annual licenses (includes Subscription Advantage) of XenDesktop at the following suggested program list prices:

• XenDesktop 4 VDI edition – $9 per student per year
• XenDesktop 4 Enterprise edition – $19 per student per year
• XenDesktop 4 Platinum edition – $29 per student per year

For details on Campus-Wide licensing, please visit www.citrix.com/campus

Standard Education Pricing – provides a 40 percent discount from the Suggested List Price on “a la carte” purchases of all Citrix products.

For further information on this please contact us

Top 5 Cloud Predictions for 2010

Well the start of a new decade is looming large, and a decade of innovation is nearly over, already to be superseded by slicker ways of working; one such way that has seriously gained momentum is Cloud computing, so we thought we would share a recent survey from InfoWorld on the predictions for cloud computing in 2010.

1. Rise of standards

The development of cloud computing standards and the use of cloud computing standards to promote interoperability was more conceptual in nature in 2009. In 2010 we should start to see some real traction in this area. Many user organisations are waiting on the sidelines for these standards to become real before they move data and applications to cloud providers. Some of the organisations to watch include the Open Cloud Consortium (OCC) and committees work within the Object Management Group and Open Group. However, many of the cloud computing providers that are trying to create standards as a means of marketing will abandon them in 2010 or 2011.

2. First major cloud computing provider outages

While we did see Gmail go down a few times this year, for the most part we've not had a major outage of a large cloud computing provider. However, two things will change that record: the rapid rise of the use of cloud computing providers, and the fact that most of these providers are still testing and refining their platforms. This is bound to lead to one or two major cloud computing outages that will hit the press and once again call into question the value of cloud computing. Despite the outages, cloud computing providers will maintain an uptime record that far exceeds that of most on-premise systems, but you won't hear about that in the technology press.

3. Microsoft will be relevant in the cloud

Most people in the world of cloud computing consider Microsoft a punch line. However, with the rise of Azure and Microsoft Office Web Apps, Microsoft will find itself well placed in the clouds. Most Global 2000 companies, if they are existing Microsoft Office customers, will find Microsoft is the best glide path to cloud computing. Google will continue to dominate small to medium-sized businesses, using its free ad-driven model for delivery of Google Docs and Gmail, with a few larger enterprise deals thrown in

4. Rapid consolidation of existing providers

Cloud computing is exploding, and as it expands, the larger providers will either want to buy in or expand their presence in the marketplace. Either way, the smaller cloud providers will disappear from the landscape as companies such as Oracle, IBM, and Hewlett-Packard suck up as much as they can, as fast as they can, to keep up with expected revenue growth and the shift to a cloud-service delivery model.

5. Rapid rise of cloud computing start-ups

With consolidation comes increased market value. With increased market value comes VC-backed innovative cloud computing start-ups offering everything and anything that can be delivered as a service. I think the bulk of the innovation will occur here, and the most exciting aspect of what I do will be keeping up with those guys. Perhaps the best of cloud computing is yet to come.

EMC automates data tiering across storage array lines

EMC has announced delivery of its fully automated storage tiering (FAST) technology across its Symmetrix, Clariion and Celerra line of storage arrays. The technology will allow data volumes to be dynamically moved between tiers of storage, depending on business performance requirements.

The first phase of EMC FAST technology is available immediately for new and existing EMC Symmetrix V-Max and EMC Clariion CX4 networked storage systems, as well as EMC Celerra NS unified storage systems. FAST will identify data sets at the volume level only and, on average, will allow sets down to a gigabyte to be automatically moved between storage tiers initially.

EMC also laid out its strategic direction for other advances in automated tiering technology, which will eventually allow its software to identify data sets smaller than a megabyte in size and move them to the most appropriate level of data storage -- be it solid state drives (SSD), Fibre Channel, or SATA.

While it can be completely automated, FAST also allows storage administrators to work in a "user approval mode," where an admin is notified through a wizard before data is actually migrated to other drives. That way, users can get accustomed to using the FAST technology before implementing it in full auto mode.

EMC said its FAST roadmap involves combining capabilities such as sub-LUN tiering; capacity allocation on demand; block and file level deduplication; data compression; disk drive spin down; built-in archiving; and private and public cloud federation.

The state of Enterprise Architecture in 2009

In September-October Forrester conducted its State of Enterprise Architecture (EA) survey – a broad look at EA in the context of the IT & business organisation. They asked respondents questions ranging from where does the architecture function report, to the state of completeness of various architecture domains, the key technologies firms will be making significant architecture decisions about, and the degree of support for EA by various constituencies ranging from application developers to corporate business management.

From their survey two statistics really stood out:

They asked survey respondents – who were primarily architects in large enterprises – to identify the drivers for the EA program.

The interesting thing about this is that the top drivers are predominately strategic and business-focused ones: enable better planning, improve business agility, enable better Business-IT alignment. The more technical and tactical ones were generally lower in priority. 

But it is also clear that EA teams are struggling with how to act on these drivers. When asked about themes for the EA program for 2010, the results grouped around greater involvement with projects and project governance.  And when we asked about the state of completeness of various architecture viewpoints, it’s clear that EA has made the most progress on the more technical and less business-focused architectures:

Some interesting information to ponder on here, the original source of this is from Forester, and can be found here.

Framework for IT Strategy

A survey by McKinsey Quarterly, suggests that most CIOs believe that they are successfully aligning IT strategy with the needs of the businesses they serve.  This means CIOs are collaborating with the business in ways that add significant value, rather than just reacting to the demands of the business.

The important item from this article is the McKinsey framework for IT Strategy (see below)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Organisations that have mastered the art of business collaboration may be poised to move to a more advanced form of strategic planning, a level at which they can truly show the business how, where, and when to use IT as a competitive weapon according to the survey.

The survey also finds that IT strategy in most companies has not yet reached its full potential which involves exploiting innovation to drive constant improvement in the operations of a business and to give it a real advantage over competitors with new products and capabilities.

This shift to the next level of IT strategy will require changes in management and budget priorities, as well as multiyear planning, which less than two-thirds of our survey respondents acknowledge doing. To use IT as a strategic tool, a company must look beyond the annual planning cycle and take an integrated, midrange view of technology, competitive developments, and the strategic actions required to address them.

Based upon numerous conversations I have had within 2009 with organisations of many sizes, many IT departments have not yet made a significant push into this area of forward planning.

10 things to know about Cloud Computing Strategy

Here are 10 important aspects of Cloud computing according to eWeek print article titled “10 things you should know now about Cloud Storage and Computing”.

1)      Public/ Private Clouds: Cloud computing will not replace current IT infrastructure in a company but will morph into a mix of public and private cloud.   Most enterprises will take advantage of existing resource and will learn to bifurcate their infrastructure into private and public cloud.

2)      Cloud application: Cloud computing is ideally suited for pre-production workload like testing and development.  Organisations can take advantage of cloud infrastructure to build robust applications.

3)      One Size doesn’t fit all: Cloud computing should be built to take into account company’s specific business challenges and needs.  Just as ERP does not solve all the organisations business problem, cloud computing and storage will not solve all the business issues

4)      Cloud IT Strategy: Cloud computing is an important part of a company’s IT Strategy.  This means that IT organisations needs to spend quality time to make sure that their ‘cloud’ strategy should be in alignment with IT Strategy and Business Strategy.

5)      Planning: Sophisticated system management platform need to set up and cloud computing needs a viable management plan.

6)      Delivery model, not a black box: Important thing to recognise is that cloud computing is a delivery model, not a technology. It is a combination of some known mature technologies (like SaaS) has helped to create a paradigm shift in how IT is delivered.

7)      Not just for small players: Cloud computing is not meant for only SME (small and medium enterprises) only.  Similar to SaaS delivery model initially attracted capital strapped SMEs so is cloud computing.

8)      Self –service capacity: Cloud computing will help propel ‘self service’ capability just as ATM did for banking industry.

9)      Standardising business model: Cloud computing is not just about improving efficiencies by maximising capital expenses and reducing operating expenses.  It can help drive standardisation of business process within organisations and across organisations.

10)   Choose the right workload: IT management need to develop capability to understand merits and demerits of cloud and use it for the right workload.

Aligning IT Operations and IT Strategy

The CIO’s role is one of communicating a vision and driving a change management strategy that will result in greater user and organisational acceptance of the projects selected for development. 

Organisational change management is crucial especially in this global recession. A change management strategy formally introduces initiatives to everyone affected by them, and should also introduce any new roles or expectations to team members to get everyone on the same page at the same time.  The IT department should embark on projects that will positively impact business strategy.

Research from The Standish Group International Inc. on project success rates found that 24% of projects are cancelled partway through or delivered and not used. The SearchCIO.com survey showed that just 11% of large organisations complete all projects in their development queue; the majority (54%) report an abandonment rate of 1% to 10%. The final third don’t finish 11% to 50% of projects. The article also notes that change management should be the starting point because the overall [project management] strategy will succeed or fail based on this.  Tighter budgets have led many organisations to add checkpoints for proposals, aimed at weeding out unnecessary or unrealistic projects before they even start.

If there is a silver lining in this global recession, I think  role of CIO has been elevated.  Developing a vision that meets business objectives and the needs of stakeholders is now being expected for the first time from a CIO. CIOs are expected not only to keep operational spend under control but mainly make progress on IT strategies. The article notes that balancing IT operation with IT Strategy is  critical not just for managing IT but also for engaging the rest of the business leadership team.  That is one of the CIO’s most important responsibilities.

CIOs Rethink Their IT Strategies

CIOs are increasingly open to new, alternative IT operating models, which also could mean new vendor relationships. A grinding recession, paired with new choices in terms of online software, mobile computing, outsourcing, open source, and more, opens the door to this change according to Information Week article titled “Alternate IT”.   The article notes that CIOs are rethinking significant parts of their software strategies, considering alternatives to conventional licenses, maintenance, and fee structures, as well as alternatives to lengthy internal development cycles, complex customisation, and long global rollouts and upgrades.

Though the ‘alternative’ approaches to software are named differently, they are making software cheaper, simpler, more flexible, and more accessible. Alternative IT models are gaining ground because, in many cases, they make too much sense to ignore.  There is an interesting case study with GlaxoSmithKline in this article.  You can download the detailed report here (registration required).

IT serves to systematise and streamline the business process which in turn drives down the cost of operation.   As IT matures, the article points there is a major shift in CIOs’ openness to new IT operating models. What’s most striking about the alternative models is where they’re driving IT teams to think differently about their role and the value they provide.  Well it’s an overused cliché but “paradigm shift” is the only way to describe the changes happening in the software industry and how they’re helping IT organisations let go of the tactical issues of technology according to the article.

Collaboration not as simple as you think?

Steven Covey in his book The 8th Habit quoted the results of a Harris Poll of 23,000 U.S. residents employed full time within key industries and in key functional areas as follows:

Only 37 percent said that they have a clear understanding of what their organisation is trying to achieve and why only one in five was enthusiastic about their team's and their organisation's goals.  Only one in five said they had a clear line of sight between their tasks and their team's and organisation's goals.  Only 15 percent felt that their organisation fully enables them to execute key goals

Only 20 percent fully trusted the organisation they work for.

‘If, say a football team had these same scores, only 4 of the 11 players on the field would know which goal is theirs. Only 2 of the 11 would care. Only 2 of the 11 would know what position they play and know exactly what they are supposed to do. And all but 2 players would, in some way, be competing against their own team members rather than the opponent.’

There aren’t many companies who we talk to who don’t agree with the above.

And then you wonder why Enterprise 2.0 hasn’t taken off in organisations liked we’d hoped? Probably because people aren’t motivated to do use the technology.

Makes you wonder if it had taken off, would people be collaborating on the right thing anyway?

So how can technology help here? Key performance indicators.

Lets your people know what their individual goals are, how they impact on their teams goals and how they impact on their organisations goals.

And with Microsoft PerformancePoint services being rolled into SharePoint 2010 it’s going to be even easier to push KPI’s out to all your employees.

KPI’s when done properly can really align people and get the company moving in the right direction.

Using Exchange do you need Blackberry?

For those of you that don’t know, mobile support is built into Exchange via Activesync

But which mobile devices? There seems to be a perception that it’s only Windows Mobile Devices.

Well Windows Mobile (or should I say Windows Phone) devices are supported – but the protocol has been licensed by almost every SmartPhone vendor out there, including :

• Palm
• Nokia
• Motorola
• Sony Ericsson
• Samsung
• Symbian
• HTC
• Helio
• Remoba
• DataViz

and of course Apple and Google

So why switch?

• You could be paying twice for mobile support
• Don’t pay extra for mobile e-mail
• Don’t risk downtime at the hands of others
• You’ve already got enough to manage
• Control your border
• And probably one of the most important - Device choice.

Sounds pretty logical to me, interested then contact us.

Bing Maps

Microsoft has been trying to take down Google Search by not only advertising like mad, but by launching feature after feature. Now Bing is looking to outdo one of Google's best features: Google Maps. And it's making its attempt with its own version of Street View, integration with Microsoft Photosynth and a Silverlight interface.

The core to the new Bing Maps beta is Silverlight, Microsoft's competitor to Adobe Flash. Since the entire Bing Maps experience is done within Silverlight, it ends up being a smooth, visually rich experience.

Perhaps the killer feature of Bing Maps, though, are the Bing Map apps.

Perhaps the app that will get the most attention will be Twitter Maps, which utilises the new Twitter geolocation API to map out tweets onto Bing Maps. You can, for example, search for people discussing breakfast, parades or your favourite museum, and it will map out tweets about those things on the map.

Clearly Bing wants to make Google Maps seem prehistoric with its Silverlight-based interface. It's still unclear how accurate map directions are or if this new interface can drive people to switch to Bing and Bing Maps, but it definitely cannot hurt.

What are your Security Priorities?

Throughout each year, Gartner surveys hundreds of enterprise security end users for its IT Key Metrics benchmarking database, and each year Gartner publishes a high-level view of its findings.

Here's a look at the "Top 10 Security Priorities, Worldwide" from this year's survey, based on respondents' answers:

1. Intrusion Detection and Prevention
2. Patch Management
3. Data Loss Prevention
4. Antivirus
5. User Provisioning or Identity Management
6. Vulnerability Assessment
7. Firewalls
8. Security Information and Event Management
9. Network Access Control
10. Remote-Access or Site-to-Site VPN

Technologies that were mentioned but did not make the "Top 10 include storage/server encryption, email encryption, strong authentication, web filtering, spam filtering, and "integrated security appliance".

For the third year in a row, intrusion prevention tops the list. Patch management moved way up, from #8 to #2.

Doe's this allign with your 2010 Security Strategy?

Or indeed, do you need help formulating your IT Security Strategy? If so call us on 0845 260 5757 and ask to speak to Charles Barratt or email me

Moving to Windows 7? Try it the easy way!

Upgrading a desktop OS isn’t always easy. Typically, users have the OS, integrated with lots of applications, favourites, files, folders and other profile-related goodness. And when we move from Windows XP to Windows 7 – well we have a whole load of issues to consider from the profile. With that in mind, separation is a good thing! Separating the OS from the apps, which technologies like App-V, or XenApp can help with one part of it, and by combining this with capabilities like AppSense User Environment Manager, things improve even further.

For technologies like virtual desktops and specifically, Pooled Virtual Desktops (where users can get a random virtual desktop each day of the week!), the use of separation becomes near-essential.

So with this in mind you really should consider the value that Microsoft and Citrix bring when they are joined together, this video really highlights how easy it is to migrate your desktop, enjoy!

Upgrading to Windows 7, this could be a nice option for you. Contact charles.barratt@Dataplex-systems.com for more information.

What does UC have to do with Collaboration?

Time and time again collaboration and UC are commonly mentioned in the same breath, but why?

Collaboration means "working together," exchanging information, and "communicating" with people and processes in various forms. What UC as a concept is trying to do is make the choice of interaction more flexible for the parties involved.

So, depending on the circumstances, preferences, or whatever, people can communicate and exchange information in real-time or asynchronously. Obviously, it would be nice to do everything in real-time, face-to-face, but that's not the real world and it can be expensive in a global environment. So, with the flexibility of UC, we can try to come as close as possible selectively with real-time interactions such as phone calls, IM, voice/video conferencing, when they are really needed, not all the time!

We all know how inefficient it is to have a face-to-face meeting or conference call with people who have not done their homework and reviewed all the necessary information to discuss ahead of time. UC supports that asynchronous communication requirement as part of collaboration with "UC Messaging" (commonly called "Unified Messaging"), but also facilitates the dynamic transition to real-time interactions  when necessary and "as soon as possible," based on individual availability and accessibility, better known as "presence."

UC is also not just about person-to-person contacts, but also about pro-active process-to-person "notifications" that enable optional interactions with automated business process and service applications and access to live assistance when necessary.  This approach is coming to life under the label of "Communications Enabled Business Processes" or CEBP, and will be particularly effective with the growing market of mobile recipients that carry "smart-phones" for increased accessibility and availability.

So, yes, things are still evolving, but we just need to make sure we understand where we are really heading to when we talk about "Collaboration" and "Business Communications."

Want help on your UC strategy?  Then collaborate with Dataplex, contact us here: charles.barratt@dataplex-systems.com

Microsoft 2010 Products Hit Beta Milestone

This week Microsoft hit a milestone for products being released in 2010, this week Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Project 2010 and Visio 2010 have all reached the Beta milestone and are now available for download.

On Monday 9 November, Microsoft Exchange 2010 became the first product launch in wave of innovation across the Office system. The first half of 2010 will see this launch wave continue with the release of Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Project 2010 and Visio 2010 .

Microsoft Office 2010 provides rich and powerful new ways to deliver work. New features include enhanced tools, customisable templates, photo editing and the ability to work with multiple people from different locations at the exact same time using new co-authoring capabilities. By offering more ways to access files from virtually anywhere, Office 2010 gives users greater control.

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 enables organisations to connect and empower people through an integrated set of rich features. SharePoint 2010 facilitates business collaboration in its broadest sense and helps colleagues, partners and customers to work together in new and effective ways. Learn More

Microsoft Project 2010 provides teams and organisations of all sizes with the right project collaboration tools, and a pathway to step up to more advanced Project and Portfolio Management capabilities as their needs evolve. Learn More

The advanced diagramming tools of Microsoft Visio 2010 help you simplify complexity with intuitive and professional-looking diagrams, dynamic and data-driven visuals and new ways to share these on the Web in real-time.

Got to admit it, Office 2010 with Windows 7 – is better together!!

VMware vCenter CapacityIQ

It seems that over the last few months VMware has covertly developed and delivered plug in modules to vCenter to further enhance vSphere deployments.

One of the products that we are seeing adding great value to your deployments is vCenter CapacityIQ.

vCenter CapacityIQ is a vCenter plug-in for proactively monitoring the capacity of your VMware Infrastructure. vCenter CapacityIQ monitors cpu, memory and disk I/O usage and predicts future demands for resources.

vCenter CapacityIQ allows you to show impacts in capacity as well as forecasted capacity based on changes you predict will happen to the environment.

From the VMware site:

‘VMware vCenter CapacityIQ is a value-add component of the vCenter family of management solutions, providing capacity management capabilities for virtualized datacenter or desktop environments. CapacityIQ integrates seamlessly with VMware vCenter Server, ensuring that your virtualized infrastructure capacity is always predictable and efficiently used.

Eliminate waste by identifying any unused or over-allocated capacity Reduce operational overhead by automating routine capacity monitoring and management tasks Minimize business risk of outages or failures resulting from capacity bottlenecks and shortfalls.

So not only useful if you are adding additional VM’s to your architecture but surely a must for VMware View deployments…..

Office 2010 Beta is here

It's becoming more and more clear that Google is breathing down the neck of Microsoft when it comes to office and document-building software.

Microsoft isn't taking this threat sitting down, though. In July, it announced Office 2010. It hosts an array of new features, with the biggest being a full online version of Docs, PowerPoint, and Excel.

Now Microsoft is taking the next step to bringing Office 2010 to market the release of the Microsoft Office 2010 Beta.

The beta doesn't boast a ton of differences from the Technical Preview that Microsoft released back in July. However, as you might expect, it is more stable and fixes bugs found in the technical preview.

If you're interested in the beta, you can download it here after registering.

If nothing else see how many slide transitions you can put into a deck to turn the audience on its head!  Childish, but fun all the same!

Google Chrome OS Looming?

Its being reported that Google is planning to hold a special Chrome OS event at its headquarters in Mountain View, CA this Thursday morning. The plan is to give some technical background information as well as show off some demos. More notably, they will be giving a "complete overview" of the new OS, which they say will launch next year.

Sundar Pichai, Google's VP of Product Management and Matthew Papakipos, Google Engineering Director for Google Chrome OS will be speaking at the event. And there will be a Q&A session afterwards.

So as they are holding an overview meeting with a clearly defined road map for release it looks like they have made some serious ground on this since the announcement earlier this year.

When we know more, we will let you know more!

Google to Speed up the Internet?

Google is apparently in the early stages of a research project that appears to aim as high as perhaps replacing the HTTP protocol, the fundamental technology that essentially makes the World Wide Web possible.

In a somewhat obscure post on the Chromium blog, the development branch of their Chrome browser, Google reveals they've been working on a new protocol dubbed SPDY for "SPeeDY" for its goal of making the web faster.

While HTTP is an "elegantly simple protocol" that has powered the web since 1996, the tone of Google's post is almost patronizing, as if HTTP were our doddering old uncle that's had his day and needs to be put out to pasture. Then again, Google's hubris is perhaps warranted as one of the only companies with enough clout and resources to indeed spur on the "evolution of websites and browsers" with an entirely new protocol designed to speed up the communication between web servers and clients.

They reveal they've already got a prototype web server and a Chrome client with built-in SPDY support that they've been testing in the lab. With these tools they've reportedly been able to see an up to 55% speed increase in page loading, and feel like the project is now stable enough to warrant soliciting feedback from the web community. The SPDY documentation is now available, as well as the source code. Google encourages feedback on the new protocol in the Chromium Google Group.

Google Wave – Follow Me!

Borrowing a page from the Twitter handbook, Google Wave has just introduced the concept of “following” and “unfollowing.” The feature applies to public Waves, which, as the name suggests, are Waves that anyone can see.

Here’s how it works according to Google: “When you see a public wave that you would like to get updates on, you can chose to follow it by hitting the follow button in the wave panel toolbar. You can remove these waves from your inbox by hitting the "archive" button, but when there is an update they will pop back in. You can switch between following and unfollowing a wave as much and as often as you like.”

Information overload has been one of the early criticisms of Google Wave, so this move makes sense as the team behind it continues to evolve the product. Meanwhile, the potential utility of following Public Waves is intriguing, not completely dissimilar from the idea of following a List on Twitter - find public Waves that you're interested in, follow them, and get updates as they happen.

Google hints that there's more to come with the follow concept. "Following is the first step towards a set of new tools for managing waves in your inbox We're also thinking of expanding the following concept to let you follow people, groups, and searches," they write.

Don’t Make /tmp too Small!

The default GUI install of ESX4 makes the /tmp partition 1GB and even then it is only categorized as optional.  I've been asked several times why you'd want to make /tmp any bigger.  If it fills up you just clear it out, right?

Well here's a good reason.  It seems that VUM (vCenter Update Manager) uses /tmp.  When you stage updates, VUM copies all the patches to the folder /tmp/updatecache.  It does the sensible thing and checks that there is enough space first, but if it can't then it tries to create a ramdisk.  I don't think I'm that keen on my server's ram being tied up with patches.  Sometimes you might want to stage the patches days in advance of an outage.  

Anyway, with ESX3 I know the patches could accumulate to quite a size (a couple of GBs if you left them a few months). I hear ESX4 is better in this regard, however I would suggest keeping at least 2GB for /tmp during the install.

VUM isn't a crucial service.  You can always manually copy patches to a different partition, but VUM (especially the new staging feature) is a real time-saver so I know I'll be making sure there is plenty of space in /tmp.

Bing out of Beta in the UK

Whilst the internet has drastically grown in depth and complexity over the last decade, search engines had not followed the same evolution, leaving users with ten blue links to find their way in this always more complex maze. But in June, Microsoft launched Bing, a faster way to make more informed choices.

On November 12^th, Microsoft Bing moved out of Beta.

Over 60 engineers, based in Soho, have done an in-depth job at localising Bing global experience for British users in just 5 months. Under Jordi Ribas' direction, the team has crunched historical algorithmic results to identify local intents and integrated them into Bing unique categorised search.

Microsoft worked with local partners to enrich the search results with highly relevant information that could address consumer passion points. For instance, thanks to a partnership with TopTable, searching Bing for a restaurant in Hammersmith will provide you with restaurant ratings and one-click booking option.

Into football?

Type your favourite Premiership team and Bing provides you with an Instant Answer with the latest fixtures thanks to SkySports.

Interested in celebrities?

The Twitter integration enables you to keep pace with the latest gossips of your local heroes.

But the engineers did not stop there. They also enriched the index with UK URLs and taught the algorithm how to cope with information such as partial postcodes, local abbreviations and acronyms, common British misspelling and alterations, etc.

This results in a better understanding of the semantic context of queries.

So will you be Binging?

Windows 7 Launch Sales up 234% over Vista

The NPD Group has some figures now from the Windows 7 launch, and are reporting that the new Microsoft operating system is selling well or at least, much better than Vista did at its launch. In the first few days of sales, Windows 7 units in the U.S. moved 234 percent faster than Vista did in its equivalent launch window.

Of course, in many ways the bar wasn't set too high. Still, Microsoft must be feeling relieved at the good sales clip for what is still, after all, its core business.

Unfortunately, thanks to pre-sales discounts and general lack of promotional effort behind the Ultimate version, revenue growth wasn't quite as impressive. Looking strictly at dollar sales, Windows 7 is up 82% over than the equivalent time period for Vista.

The NPD reported the top-selling versions of the software and their average prices for the week ending October 24 as follows:

1. Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade / $76

2. Windows 7 Pro Upgrade / $147

3. Windows 7 Home Premium Family Pack 3 User Upgrade / $149

In a tough economic time for packaged software, Windows 7 appears to be faring fairly well. The PC hardware sales picture wasn't nearly as rosy, however. Although total PC sales were up 49 percent in year-over-year sales and a full 95 percent over the previous week, the overall growth rate was not as high as during the Vista launch window, which saw a 68% jump in year-over-year and 170% gain over the week prior to Vista's launch. Vista had a slight advantage with its January release however, which typically shows a larger PC sales footprint than the month of October.

50% of all Workloads will be virtual by 2012

Last week Gartner released a press announcement disclosing that only 16% of workloads run inside virtual machines at present.

The analysis firm predicted that this amount is going to reach around 50% by 2012, which is equal to 58 million deployed virtual machines.

Gartner also adds:

…by year-end 2010, enterprises with 100-999 employees will have a higher penetration of virtual machines deployed than the Global 500…

In May 2007 for example Gartner predicted that virtualization will be part of nearly every aspect of IT by 2015.

In April 2008 Gartner also said that 4 million virtual machines were expected by 2009, while we would have 611 million virtualized PCs by 2011.

VMware Keeps vSphere Enterprise!

Citrix is not the only company listening to customers feedbacks. After much debate around the decision to kill the vSphere Enterprise Edition by December 15, VMware decided to keep it.

Those customers coming from VI3.5 were entitled to keep their existing Enterprise license while moving to the new vSphere 4.0 platform. But VMware originally planned to kill this upgrade option by the end of the year.

Exchange 2010

Two weeks ago Microsoft announced that Exchange 2010 was code complete and we thought as it sets a milestone for Microsoft Messaging we would highlight some of the key features of it.

One server, many solutions

One of the things that is interesting is the evolution of Exchange from an e-mail server to a multi-workload communications backbone. Some organisations are now bringing in Exchange to do the job once managed by four or five different systems, and the results are really impressive. With Exchange 2010, you’ve got a full e-mail, calendar and contacts solution, built-in information protection, built-in mobile e-mail and mobile device management, a full voice mail replacement, and a brand new archiving, retention and discovery solution. Exchange administrators have seen their roles grow from simply providing great e-mail to providing an end-to-end communications solutions.

It does e-mail

It always has, but in 2010, it does it better. With the new high availability, disaster recovery and back up capabilities combined with the significant IO reduction a few very cool things become possible. First, what used to take multiple applications to achieve mailbox resiliency becomes possible using just Exchange. Second, a very large mailbox – even 10 gigs+ becomes very affordable and supportable.

It makes everyone mobile

Let’s face it – people want access to e-mail, calendar and contact information from everywhere. Outlook Web App, Outlook Mobile and Exchange Active Sync have long been the leading solutions for web e-mail and mobile phone access for businesses. But, Microsoft didn’t rest with 2010, and it shows in the positive user feedback – from the improved OWA UI with integrated IM/presence, to conversation view in mobile, to EAS device management – every user can now have a rich mobile experience, while you don’t have to pay anything more since it’s all ‘in the box’.

It archives and discovers

At a regional healthcare group, they are able to use the integrated archiving, retention and discovery capabilities of 2010 saving them the cost and maintenance of using third party solutions that resulted in $250,000 they didn’t have to spend – and that was just the first year savings.

It protects people

Using the combination of Exchange 2010 and Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server, a global electronics firm has seen a 90% reduction in unwanted e-mail, meaning less time deleting and more time making new gadgets for you and me.

Since many of our customers have highlighted they intend to move to Exchange 2010, I wanted to take this opportunity to make sure everyone knows the licensing options, so you can plan accordingly. Just like 2007, Exchange 2010 will offer a Standard CAL and an Enterprise CAL. Standard CAL includes all e-mail, calendar and contacts capabilities, mobile messaging with Exchange ActiveSync, plus the new over-the-air updates of Outlook Mobile on Windows Mobile 6.1+, and Outlook Web App. The Exchange Enterprise CAL adds e-mail archiving, discovery and retention functionality, integrated voice mail (i.e. unified messaging) and Forefront Protection for Exchange.

On the server side, Exchange Server Standard will now support high availability, so all customers can take full advantage of the new database availability group capabilities. Exchange Server Enterprise enables configurations with up to 100 databases per server.

Need to know more?  Contact us.

Windows 7 Security

Windows 7 officially launched on October 22nd, which offers so much value and ease of use that even my wife can use it, which is a great testimonial to Microsoft.  But apart from all the speed and GUI improvements there are a plethora of Security enhancements too. 

And we thought we would highlight a few of them here:

There are a LOT of new and improved security capabilities with Windows 7. Some are completely new – like AppLocker and BitLocker To Go. Others are improved over what shipped with Windows Vista (like BitLocker), but are new to XP users.

Here’s a list of the prioritized features discussed in the note (I’m sure there are more, these are the major ones that I get questions on):

• AppLocker
• User Account Control
• BitLocker
• BitLocker To Go
• Internet Explorer Version 8 Security
• DirectAccess
• Windows Services Hardening
• Windows Firewall
• ASLR, DEP and Safe Unlinking
• USB Device Control
• Kernel Patch Protection (formerly called PatchGuard) and Signed Device Drivers With 64-Bit
• Windows 7 Network Access Protection
• Windows Defender
• Domain Name Systems Security Extensions Support
• Windows Audit Function
• Rights Management Services Client 

One important note: Because many of the more popular security features such as BitLocker, BitLocker To Go, AppLocker, DirectAccess and so on require EA/SA, the cost of EA/SA must be factored into any cost-benefit analysis of migration. .

System Center Configuration Manager SP2 Released

As if October 22nd wasn’t busy enough for Microsoft with their release of Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2, and supporting Dataplex with our heavily subscribed Virtualisation Event, they also release SCCM SP2.

Windows 7 is a fantastic opportunity for Microsoft to drive the love back into the client OS after Vista, and in Server 2008 R2, there are enough Enterprise-class features and capabilities, for this to be classed as a major release, not the minor release suggested by the R2 naming…

Anyway why is SCCM SP2 significant?  Well it has the following capabilities:

• Full Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 support that enables customers to deploy and manage their Windows 7 client and server based systems.
• Version 2 of the Intel AMT integration that includes the addition of updated firmware support along with support for key new features such as wireless profile management and 802.1x.
• BranchCache support that enables customers to significantly reduce WAN utilization in branch office scenarios by leveraging new technology in Windows Server 2008 R2.
• Greater 64-bit support that includes Remote Control, App-V, and the 2007 System Center Operations Manager agent

You can grab SP2 here.

Combine SCCM, with the free Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010, and you’ve got a very powerful platform for deployment within your infrastructure.

Microsoft System Center Service Manager

Microsoft have made available as public beta 2 Microsoft System Center Service Manager ready for download.  Firstly let’s expand on what Service Manager actually is.  I’m going to take this directly from the Microsoft site:

Microsoft System Center Service Manager is an integrated platform for automating and adapting your organisation’s IT service management best practices, such as those found in Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) and Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL). It provides built-in processes for incident and problem resolution, change control, and asset lifecycle management. Through its configuration management database (CMDB) and process integration, Service Manager automatically connects knowledge and information from System Center Operations Manager, System Center Configuration Manager and Active Directory. Service Manager delivers integration, efficiency, and business alignment of the datacenter IT services by:

• Optimising processes and ensuring their use through templates that effectively guide IT analysts through best practices for change and incident management.

• Reducing resolution times by cutting across organisational silos, ensuring that the right information from incident, problem, change, or asset records is accessible through a single pane.

• Extending the value of the Microsoft platform through automated generation of incidents from alerts and the coordination of activities among System Center products.

• Enabling informed and cost-effective decision making through its data warehouse, which integrates knowledge from disparate IT management systems, delivering out-of-the-box reporting and flexible data analysis through SQL reporting services.

Social Media is needed

Gartner spoke about Social Networking last week and the need to utilise it within a business to embrace new technologies and forge stronger business relationships, so we thought we would also add some additional comments to it:

• Social media is a new and emerging communication channel. Enterprises will make the decision to utilise, resist or ignore it in the workplace. But opting to resist or ignore it is a decision – one that shuts your organisation off from valuable insight. 

• Work is a collaborative activity and humans interact as social beings during work. Few, if any, jobs can be completed without the involvement of collaborators so providing the resources makes users more effective.

• An employee wasting time on social media is a performance problem. Don’t blame it on social media. Productive employees are too busy with work to spend lots of time in social media having personal conversations. Instead, they use social media as a means to get their work done. 

Social media is an additional communication channel that augments others such as the phone and email. It offers a new source of information and, perhaps, insight. I’m talking about the opportunity to actively seek information in real-time, as well as to mine collected information for new ideas and perspectives. As a Unified Messaging (amongst other technologies) consultancy, Dataplex can continually monitor what’s being said in social media such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn about topics and issues relevant to our customers (both internal and external). 

Work is a collaborative activity. Today people work on 8 – 15 projects at any point in time. They are constantly switching contexts and needing to create or re-establish work relationships. Social profiles give people the opportunity to find out about the expertise of colleagues and ‘get to know them’ even before they meet. They can shorten the bonding process that occurs as a new team forms and allow fellow workers to stay in touch with each other.

Need help on establishing your social media strategy and above all how to ensure it remains secure?  Email us.

Software Assurance - Don't be a Cynic read on...

For those of us out there who think that Microsoft Software Assurance is purely about software upgrades this blog entry could be right up your street.... Microsoft have made available a very useful tool indeed..... The interactive benefits tool helps you to understand which Software Assurance benefits you’re entitled to with each of Microsoft's licensing agreements – the easy way. A new, user-friendly comparison table shows at-a-glance which of the sizeable suite of benefits you can access. Easy!

I’m not sure there is any difference in these two versions, but I’ll provide them both nonetheless:

Software Assurance Benefits for Volume Licensing Agreements (less than 250 PCs)

Software Assurance Benefits for Volume Licensing Agreements (more than 250 PCs)

Simply tick your chosen agreement (or, multiple if you want to compare side-by-side)…

then see your results:

Use the icons scattered about to find out more information, and for those wondering what App, Sys and Ser mean:

APP = application, e.g. Microsoft Office SYS = system, e.g. Microsoft Windows operating system SER = server, e.g. Microsoft SQL Server, Windows Server, Server Client Access Licences (CALs) Useful stuff!

Citrix Listened and Citrix Delivered - XenDesktop 4.0 License Changes

Citrix recently announced XenDesktop 4.0, which in our opinion is set to be a game changer and drive virtual desktop projects into businesses who to date have been sceptical about the performance, price point and flexibility to deliver relevant content on demand to authenticated in users in the way THEY want to receive it.

Amidst all the positive conversations we have had with customers there has been one area which was not as well received - the new Citrix licensing framework which was set to per user, well Citrix have been gauging the general feeling about this and understand that they need to be more flexible in their approach to virtual desktops, and have delivered three new options for XenDesktop adopters:

• NEW device-based licensing option.
• NEW VDI Edition available in both user/device and CCU licensing
• NEW Campus-wide Licensing Program for customers in the education industry

Flexible licensing based on user or device

Customers in some industries have scenarios where multiple users share the same device. To help with these situations, Citrix decided to enhance XenDesktop 4 licensing to offer more flexibility by adding a new device license option - available at the exact same price as the user-based license.

This means that users can access their XenDesktop from an unlimited number of devices with the user-based license option, and devices powered by XenDesktop can be used by an unlimited number of users with the device-based license option. As a result, your XenDesktop 4 product license can now be assigned to either a user or a device.

VDI-only solution for people getting started with virtual desktops available in user, device or CCU licensing

This option is based upon customers who only want to deliver VDI desktops without the ability to use Flexcast technology and be flexible in the approach to content delivery and a cost effective way to trial in a wide variety of VDI use-cases.

In response, Citrix are creating the new XenDesktop 4, VDI Edition available for $95 per user/device, or $195 per concurrent user (CCU). XenDesktop 4, VDI Edition gives customers the ability to deliver VDI-based desktops with a true HDX experience, and scale them up with built-in provisioning services, profile management, and StorageLink™ technology.

As with all the XenDesktop editions, the new VDI edition lets customers use any hypervisor, including XenServer or Hyper-V (both of which ship with all XenDesktop editions) as well as VMware ESX or vSphere.

Desktop Virtualisation in Education is ready to go Campus-Wide

University users have highlighted they need the ability to deliver desktops and applications to a wide range of users and faculties. They also want the flexibility to deliver either the full Windows desktop, or just some applications to a wide variety of use cases, including enabling access from smart phones, etc.

To address this customer requirement, Citrix are adding the Citrix Campus-wide Licensing Program. This program, available starting November 16th, will offer extremely compelling prices to accredited educational institutions in K-12 and university campuses who adopt XenDesktop 4 for campus-wide use.

Putting it all together

Citrix XenDesktop™ 4, VDI Edition - VDI-only solution available at $95 per user or device, or $195 per CCU
Citrix XenDesktop™ 4, Enterprise Edition - Enterprise-class desktop virtualisation solution available at $225 per user or device
Citrix XenDesktop™ 4, Platinum Edition - Best-value comprehensive desktop virtualisation solution available at $350 per user or device

Microsoft SCDPM 2010 - Hyper-V R2 Support

At the end of September Microsoft launched the public beta program for Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2010 (codename Zinger).

DPM 2010 beta introduces support for Hyper-V R2 (both the Windows edition and the stand-alone Hyper-V Server edition).

More importantly, the product finally introduces the capability to backup virtual machines running on the Windows Server 2008 Cluster Shared Volumes (CSVs), a technology that is used to perform the VMs live migration with Hyper-V R2.

Without DPM 2010, and similar 3rd party solutions, the only way to backup Hyper-V virtual machines in CSVs is by running the backup agent inside the guest operating systems.

On top of that DPM 2010 introduces other virtualisation-friendly features, like the capability to restore virtual machines to an alternative host, or the capability to restore single items from within the VHDs.

Dataplex Move Offices

Dataplex Makes Room for the Future with New Oxfordshire Offices

UK Leading ICT Consultancy switches location to Deer Park House, Witney.

Oxfordshire » 19/10/2009 » Dataplex Systems, the UK’s leading provider of ICT Solutions and Consultancy services across physical and virtual technologies has opened a new office in Deer Park House, Witney to house its growing team, and provide a base for enhanced services across the country.

The company has moved its Oxfordshire team from their previous location in the Long Hanborough, to new, larger, more modern premise. The new offices will allow more space for the continued expansion of the team, and are better suited to the needs of the business. The company will be able to provide seminar, training and demonstration facilities from the state of the art premise, adding exceptional further value to our new and existing clients.

“We’re very excited about the move and see it as a great opportunity for the business,” said Richard Sparrow, Managing Director, Dataplex Systems Ltd. “It was really important to us that we remained within Oxfordshire, so that we can continue to benefit from our long relationship with surrounding businesses and close commutable links to our business partners. Being able to tap into the highly skilled local workforce is also a big advantage for us.”

Dataplex Business Development Manager, Charles Barratt comments “The office move marks a momentous occasion for Dataplex Systems to elevate our capabilities and services as one of the UK’s leading ICT consultancies. And as we continue to integrate our business practices further we will be making additional announcements about our enhanced services and capabilities, so please watch this space.”

Dataplex Managing Director, Richard Sparrow will officially open the new offices in due course. If you would like further information about attending the opening ceremony, please contact: Sarah Morris (sarah.morris@dataplex-systems.com).

About Dataplex

Dataplex Systems was founded in 1996 as a company of excellence in the delivery of ICT solutions and support to assist our clients in achieving their business goals; Dataplex has grown through organic and inorganic means year-on-year, and has developed an industry recognised brand for delivering solutions on time, on budget and exceeding expectations.

Our capabilities are recognised by our vendor partners with accreditations and specialisations that acknowledge the depth of our expertise and the priority that we place on ensuring our Architects, Consultants and Engineers have the highest technical capabilities available.

Our services range across the following disciplines, Design, Implementation and Support.

Our new contact details are:

Dataplex Systems Limited

Deer Park House,

Windrush Park,

Network Point,

Witney,

Oxfordshire,

OX29 0YN.

Telephone: 0845 260 4747

Fax: 0845 260 4748

The Planning Season!

Welcome to Q4 2009; what we at Dataplex call planning season for most IT departments. In a typical year, this is the time that infrastructure and operations professionals spend lots of cycles burning through what remains of the 2009 budget and building plans for investment in 2010 with the hope of gathering a bit more budget than last year. Of course this is no ordinary year. Economists are predicting a long recovery from the recession, with many turning to IT to help pull through the recession. However, this can also mean another year of your infrastructure getting older. There’s two ways of looking at this problem and thus your budget proposals for 2010:

• You can either predict when you will get the rights to refresh the systems and return to the infrastructure spending patterns of old, or

• You can realise that a long recovery means a new way for IT spend is in order.

We think the latter is far more fruitful even if it isn’t entirely accurate. It’s both prudent and different because your go-forward infrastructure strategy likely isn’t the same anymore either. We still see many customers doing the following

• Continue to consolidate infrastructure

• Are repackaging workloads into VMs

• Are standardising everything from hardware, golden master server images to change management processes as consistent and repeatable as possible.

• Are racing to shorten deployment times from weeks or months

• Are learning to love automation.

In other words, you aren’t buying, running or managing infrastructure the way you used to. So why plan your budget the old way.

In other words you’re evolving into an Infrastructure as a Service cloud. But despite vendor claims for products such as the VMware vCloud, Citrix C3, Microsoft Azure offerings, most businesses can’t just drop in an IaaS platform and they have a cloud. You have to prepare your organisation and your operations staff for this. But that doesn’t mean you can’t achieve this aim in a short time horizon or that you can’t embrace public or hosted cloud infrastructures in the near term.

Forrester feels that cloud computing is one of the Top 15 Technology Trends and that it warrants investment now so you can gain the experience necessary to take advantage of it in its many forms to transform your organisation into a more efficient and responsive service provider to the business.