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Microsoft Hits a Home Run with Windows 7

Trust me, the last thing I want to do is provide free advertising for anyone here, and rarely do I get wobbly legged over OS changes, but I have to admit, Windows 7 is the real deal, and Microsoft has regained my confidence.  As a matter of fact, Microsoft has sold a staggering 90 million copies of Windows 7 to date, making it the fasted selling operating system in history.

What really makes this matter is that there are finally compelling reasons upgrade, and not just because you don’t like Vista. In fact, Windows 7 is giving all the XP hold-outs a great reason to upgrade also.  With the prevalence of viruses (our experience is that virus activity has been up strongly, especially as measured by the tenacity of the viruses in terms of difficulty of detecting and removing), including those that seem to target XP specifically, there are certainly some compelling reasons to upgrade to a more secure OS, which Windows 7 appears to be, offering more ways to control your environment and limit exposure to many types of trojans and malware.

It sounds like the time to move on is here, and Windows 7 is giving us compelling reasons to do so. The functionality sells itself, and the interface has taken some real steps forward. Do some research and take some time thinking about how ready you may be to upgrade your OS from XP or Vista, and possibly even your hardware. Time is money, and a frustrating user experience due to slow hardware, outdated OS, or constant viruses may lead you to a decision to upgrade and make sure your users are happy with their computers again.

Happy computing!

Richard Brunke

Do You Speak “IT”?

I was reading an article on CIO.com and watching the video clip that accompanied it entitled Enterprise IT’s Top Enemy: Its Own Arrogance this morning and after watching the video, I had a minor epiphany. Minor only because it is not a new concept. I hear it from our customers all the time, but the video really brings it home.

We all hate it when someone who knows something we don’t lords it over us.

Yes, and more-so, we hate the embarrassed feeling we get when someone speaks over our head and makes us feel dumb for not understanding.

It is a trap we all fall into, myself included. At the end of the day, what IT has to keep in mind is that you have needs, but they are not technical needs. Technology is the tool by which your need will be fulfilled, but you should not have to do the translating, nor should you have to sit and listen to all the translations, unless you want to. The job of IT is to interpret business needs and translate them into technology solutions, then communicate back, in plain English, how you will experience your new solution as a user. You really do have the right to not care about the technical terms.

This is something I talk about a lot with my teams – the concept of being an invisible provider, when that is what the customer desires. Our importance is defined by our success in keeping employees productive and supported, not in our ability to mystify and impress with techno jargon. I often think that IT, at its best, needs to behave like the electric company. Our users don’t thank us when things work (I know I did not call the electric company this morning to thank them for my lights turning on). Nor do our users usually want to understand all the difficult technical ’stuff’ we have to do to make it all work (yeah, I know something goes on beyond that little outlet in my house, I just don’t care what). And when something goes wrong, they just want it fixed quickly and efficiently without having to understand all the details. Fix it, and do what you can to assure me it will have as little downtime in the future as possible.

So take note – I get it. We get it. While the desire to explain the work we take such pride in can be overwhelming at times, we understand that you reserve the right to not hear all the details. Whomever you work with in IT, tell them how you want to be communicated with. Just be honest and let your IT know what you do and don’t want to know. After all, it is the job of IT to work to meet your needs; technical, business, and communications.

After all, you just want the stuff to work, right? If you wanted to understand it all, you’d likely be doing what we do!

Happy Computing!

Richard Brunke

Windows Azure is here! Great – what the heck is it and should you care?

With little fanfare, Microsoft made its cloud computing service known as Azure generally available this week. When was the last time Microsoft released anything so quietly, and why don’t we know more about it?

I suppose the answer is fairly simple: Microsoft likely released Azure with little expectation of it being a revenue or technology game changer. Amazon Web Services, as well as many others, have been in the space successfully for some time, and Azure is not bringing anything new to the game, nor is the pricing anything game changing. So why is Microsoft playing the game? We’ll get to that in a minute. First, I would like to explore Azure and cloud computing a little more.

So, what is Azure (or more broadly, what are cloud computing services)? Cloud computing has many definitions, depending on who you ask and what their offering is. Personally, I like the following definition “Cloud computing is a general term for anything that involves delivering hosted services over the Internet. A cloud service has three distinct characteristics that differentiate it from traditional hosting. It is sold on demand, typically by the minute or the hour; it is elastic — a user can have as much or as little of a service as they want at any given time; and the service is fully managed by the provider (the consumer needs nothing but a personal computer and Internet access).” If I had to explain it to my dad, however, I’d just say “It’s sort of like renting computing power through the internet instead of owning it, with the idea being to not have to buy expensive machines so often”.

Microsoft is specifically focused on the Infrastructure as a Service part of the market at this point and their Platform is focused around storage and flow of data in and out, along with all the normal complexity in pricing we know and love from Microsoft, such as transaction pricing for:

• Each 10,000 storage transactions (that will be one cent please)
• Number of web databases
• Access control transactions
• Service bus connections
• Data transfers (differing by world region)

While I have no intent of going into that stuff, it does show that there is some complexity to deal with here, though in all fairness, there are some all inclusive bundles for fixed monthly amounts that solve for 90% of all basic needs.

So what does this all mean?

As to whether you should you care about this at all, the answer for most small businesses is “Not today, but someday.” The concept of moving all of your infrastructure offsite and ‘renting’ capacity is compelling in a strange futuristic way, but there are many things to be worked out for this to make sense from a daily computing standpoint. Security, access, application integration, compliance, and other issues lead this list. Today, these services are most heavily used by those who need short term excess space for project or transactional work, or for those who chose to move a certain aspect of their infrastructure to the cloud. In small business, cloud computing needs are most often seen as offerings to host email or another simple application, but of course, that is not what Azure is doing just yet.

At some point in the relatively near future, this base of storage and capacity will start to be the underlying infrastructure for a robust offering that will include the full breadth of Microsoft’s software offerings, and likely will even include tools for management, integration, etc. At this point IT infrastructure looks much the same as it does today, it just lives somewhere else. As things stand today, the simplistic view of this offering is really just a server replacement, when what we really care about is what the server is running. Very few people really want to think about hardware and technology, and outsourcing this. What we want is a solution, fully fleshed out, simple, and cost effective. When that is offered, we’ll start paying attention.

So back to the last of the unanswered original questions: Why did Microsoft roll this out, and why with so little fanfare? No one has told me the answers, but I suspect they fall into the following groups:

• Because cloud computing is the future and waiting to ‘get it right’ before launching is too risky
• Because Microsoft can’t afford to let Amazon and other players gain a reputation as being the big players in the hardware game if it eventually has a big impact on the software game
• Because Microsoft doesn’t like to risk being left out of any potential game changers

I expect that much will change in cloud computing over the next few years, and while the big guys quietly evolve, it will be an innovative smaller guy that will provide the leap frog advancement that charts the path to the future (and then will be bought by one of the big guys). Such is the way of the world.

Each vendor builds their version of the cloud from what they know: Microsoft has an operating systems view, Amazon has a storage and transactions view, etc. What is missing is working backwards from what consumers want! We don’t care about operating systems, or transactions. We care about delivery of applications in a compelling, usable, and cheap fashion. Once cloud computing begins to embrace that there is a reason we want all of that hardware hidden somewhere else, the innovators in that space may begin to figure out what we have been saying to them all along – make it usable, make it cost effective, and make it work the way I want to, not the way the technology dictates.

Well, let’s give it some time and just see who gets it right first!

Happy Computing,

Richard Brunke

Office 2010: Pros and Cons

Every time Microsoft develops a new release of Windows and/or Office, the questions begin around upgrading. CIO Online recently put out a great high level summary of the Pros and Cons of Office 2010 for Business. Follow the link and take a read. In a nutshell, if you are an office users, you are likely going to want these upgrades. The increased integration with Sharepoint and simplified ability to share and edit Sharepoint content coupled with a slew of new features, including many that integrate social media sites such as LinkedIn via the Outlook Social Connector make this a really innovative and valuable release.

But don’t forget the challenges! As more and more users switch to 64 bit from 32 there may be real compatibility and integration issues, and you should speak to your IT professional about these issues and how they will impact your business. While integration and upgrade issues will drive complexity, the upgrade to 64 bit enables many things such as much larger Exel workbooks for example.

As always, the choice to upgrade will be divided between the desire to have the newest and coolest, and the need to balance productivity gains with upgrade costs. I think this particular release brings some new innovations and ideas that will begin to change the way we look at productivity suites, and bears some careful thoughts when planning your IT budget for the next year!

Happy Computing

Richard Brunke

Things To Think About as IT Spend Comes Back

Although economies rarely behave in an orderly and predictable fashion, the industry experts are claiming that good times are returning for IT and that IT spending will be increasing in a ‘V’ shaped fashion in 2010. While it is always hard to really know what will happen with IT spend, it does indeed seem likely to me that IT spending will increase, and increase at a strong rate in 2010. This may not be driven by the economy, however, as much as by neglect and natural replacement/upgrade/maintenance cycles.

Let’s face it, 2009 was a scary year. Many companies pulled back on all spending to ensure they had the reserves to survive a downturn that at some points appeared to be an ever deepening pit. As preventative IT spend went down, coupled with holding off on many much needed infrastructure and computing equipment upgrades, a backlog of spend was being created. In IT, that backlog always has to clear at some point. Server upgrades become needed, user machines have begun to breakdown, software upgrades have been skipped – ultimately productivity is impacted.

Yet, despite the significant need, there is lingering fear of hiring in a world with a lot of uncertainty around the recovery, taxes, and health care reform impacts. For SMB’s, there are added questions around keeping IT costs variable to match business cycles.

This becomes a perfect storm for growth in the IT outsourcing world, as businesses scramble to play catch up without having to over commit to long term labor costs. There are countless articles and white papers on how to select IT providers. Many of these provide potentially valuable information on ensuring that your provider can support your business and technical vision.

All this is very educational and interesting. What always seems to be missing from these discussions is what the underlying motivations behind IT support really are. At the simplest level, business owners (and computing users) just want to be productive and feel supported. You want to be happy with your IT provider without having to get distracted from your businesses core mission. These things have less to do with the technical details of how work gets done and more to do with how that support is systemically delivered.  In my experience, many computing users feel annoyed, frustrated and abandoned as they have disruptions, followed by a feeling of desertion as their vendor is delayed in providing the support they need.

Ask any potential vendor how they will help ensure your computing users will be happy, and wait for the blank stare. Ask about how they minimize delay and ensure you’re never deserted. Ask them how they limit disruptions in the first place! At the end of the day, those are the real key questions, and the key to finding a great IT service provider. Any smart IT consultant can explain the specifics on how they remediate an issue, but at the end of the day, that is a transactional approach. Take the conversation up a notch and ask a few key questions about their client support model:

• Do you have the breadth and depth of expertise to ensure you can manage all my needs now and as I grow?
• Do you have the size and scope to ensure you can always respond to my emergencies? What if a local issue causes multiple clients to go down at once, how can you handle that?
• How do you handle inbound client calls and emails? Do you count on a field technician to respond to those when they can, or do you have live dispatch that can triage, prioritize, and assign all issues to the best resource?
• Do you have live local remote staff that can immediately solve my user issues when needed?
• Will I have access to multiple resources, or just one?

These are basic business level questions that will help you gain confidence that your selected partner can fulfill the goal of ensuring your users don’t feel disrupted, delayed and deserted, but instead feel happy, productive and supported. At the end of the day, THAT is the real end goal of all IT support.

Happy Computing!

Richard Brunke

Smart Phones – Blurring the Distinction Between Work and Home

I was reading an article about smart phones and I had a few thoughts perhaps worthy of comment. The first is that consumers want smart phones. People want to be seen using the coolest gadget to update Facebook, check email, and tweet the details of your dinner. The second thought that came to mind was ‘is this making us more efficient, or just more available, and what is the impact of all that real time availability’?

There was a time, not so long ago, that we had to consolidate our thoughts and questions, organize them, and present them over a phone in a conference call, or face to face in a weekly meeting. ‘Oh the humanity, Oh the hard work’ people think. How did we ever crawl out from the primordial slime without our smart phones to keep us in touch with everything and everyone! Well, I for one wonder if we are always better off. There is a certain scattered pattern to communications today, as each thread of thought is tossed out to the world to be digested and replied to. The simple art of organizing ones thoughts and creating some cohesion is getting lost. Then there is the simple concept that your mind blowing revelation may not really need to interrupt me in real time. It is hard to find a half hour of truly uninterrupted work time these days without changing gears a dozen times to answer all sorts of emails, texts, etc.

So, am I against these ubiquitous devices? No, of course not. I do, however, think that we need to learn how to live with these devices in a smarter way. Clearly as an employer, you should buy one for every employee. It has been shown time and again that people will embrace being online all the time when it comes to having these smart devices! Email is no longer  a chore, but something you do in line at the movies, during dinner, and at all sorts of other little pauses in life. It’s like getting 20% more time from your employees!

Maybe…

Smart phones are electronic crack to be sure. You just can’t say no to those little buggers. You bring them to the bathroom with you, you look at them while eating, and they even go on vacation with you. We are addicted to information. We crave it. We crave the sense of connectedness to the world that we get surfing the web while simultaneously checking email, tweeting, and letting our face book friends know that we just saw the greatest movie ever… For all the home time that we seem to spend on work with these devices, we also see more personal time spent at work. On the whole, I don’t know if they add to productivity or detract from it, but they do integrate work and home life more deeply than ever before, and perhaps, given time, the right functionality will continue to push the needle towards productivity enhancement.

There is no slowing momentum on these cool gadgets. They are here to stay. But, perhaps we can at least realize that not every time is the right time for online… and that sometimes always on is not such a good thing. Balance is a key we have not found with these devices. We need to discover the difference betwee ”can’ and ’should’ (texting or tweeting in a public bathroom stall for instance should be grounds for an immediate device time out). Employers will increasingly realize that these devices are as critical of enablers of productivity as desktop computers and will soon find themselves pushing them to all employees. Pagers and cell phones are obsolete methods of communication, and the incremental costs of a smart phone should be minimal compared to the potential return. It is the equivalent to the difference between getting an employee a calculator and a notepad instead of a computer.

A final thought is this: the adoption of smart phones broadly across business will drive new IT issues and challenges. Just like laptops, these devices will have critical data on them. Just like other technology, they will need to be supported and managed. The concept of complex and mission critical business applications being served by a handheld smart phone may not be new, but it is just now becoming a widely adopted reality.

Once again, time to rethink how we do business, how we do leisure, and where the distinctions are between the two.

Other key questions to be asking:

• Do you have a plan for the adoption of high end smart phones or are you sitting on the sidelines?
• Is your IT ready with a plan to support them, keep them secure, and integrate them into your technology plan?
• Do you understand the HR implications (what happens if hourly employees have them?)

Happy ‘handheld’ computing!

Richard Brunke

Seven Features in Windows 7 You Probably Don’t Know About

I’m not even going to try to take credit for this one! There is a great article in CIO.com called, suitably, Seven Features in Windows 7 You Probably Don’t Know About, that gives some fantastic tips on features in Windows 7 that are incredibly useful. As a user, I like the sticky notes, but as the manager of an IT business, I hope you all learn about the Problem Steps Recorder! That is a very handy feature when you have had an issue and are struggling to explain it to your support person!

Take a look and learn a few more reasons to jump on the Windows 7 bandwagon!

Happy Computing!

Richard

My Blackberry has been Bing’ed!

If you are a Verizon Blackberry user, you may have noticed that suddenly, and without warning, your default search options were changed to Bing earlier this week. When you search via your BlackBerry ‘Start’ or ‘Go to’ page is now Bing.

First of all, don’t panic. You have not been the target of malware, or a prank, or any other bit of random reprogramming. All is as Verizon intends it to be.

Clearly, Microsoft and Verizon made a deal of some sort, and clearly not everyone loved the idea. I’ve certainly heard some feedback in the last week about the change, most of it simply related to having the choice taken away. Take note, you can still enter ‘Google’ or any other search engine you want to, but it is an additional step. In the grand scheme of things, while having choices reduced generally does not make anyone happy, this is most likely not the worst thing that will ever happen in the world of technology.

This type of behind the scenes marketing deal makes sense from a dollars and cents standpoint, I am sure. It just feels a bit intrusive. That being said, it is hard to believe that this will reduce the functionality of anyone’s Blackberry in any way, after all, although we all love having more choices, either Google, Bing, or one of several other search engines will serve perfectly well to deliver up the information we are looking for.

I think it is safe to say, that in a world where consumers are subject to marketing in everything from the internet, television, and even their movies, it is not a surprise to see marketing enter into the ubiquitous world of smart phones. As these types of partnerships and marketing programs mature, it seems likely that we will see a lot more sponsored links, preferred vendors, and pre-loaded applications on our smart phones.

From the ‘Technologies to Think About’ File…

With the proliferation of data from multiple sources, hard drives are filling up faster than ever. Frankly, even with reduced costs of storage, content is being created at unprecedented rates, and the cost to store and back up this mountain of data is becoming a real concern to business managers. Stack on this the increasing need to find green IT initiatives, and you have real issues – but at least these issues have real solutions available!

The answer, which is rarely spoken of in small business, but commonly utilized in larger companies, is data deduplication. Data deduplication is, at the simplest level, a process undertaken by software or a hardware device to find duplicate data and replace that data with a marker pointing to the original data. Think about a file or segment of a file that is saved in 30 employees personal file folders. The deduplication process finds the original, then puts a pointer in each of the other locations, cutting the space to 1/30th approximately of what it was on the storage device with no change to how the user experiences their data.

The benefits are significant:

• Has been shown to reduce size of back ups by up to 90% in some environments
• Reduces required disk space thus reducing disk expansion costs
• Reduces energy costs as less hard drives are utilized, less heat produced, etc
• Restore times reduced due to less actual data in data or disaster recovery

If you are interested in data deduplication as part of a cost reduction, a ‘green’ initiative, or just as a sensible way to manage growing data stores, talk to your IT staff or IT consultant about it. There are numerous choices on the market with different costs/benefits to fit your business needs.

Personally, I think that the combination of reduced hard drive requirements coupled with the positive impact on total data being backed up alone would be a motivator to take a hard look at these solutions!

If you would like to learn a bit more, take a look at HP’s data deduplication page for some additional information -

Happy computing!

Richard Brunke

Microsoft’s The Big Easy Offer

The Big Easy Offer is back for a limited time!

Free Money from Microsoft – Now is the time to jump start your long awaited IT projects and receive money from Microsoft to put towards the implementation!

For every qualifying product you purchase, Microsoft pays you subsidy funds you can use with your IT vendor to help with the implementation of your Microsoft solution.

To find out more information, please contact your ISOutsource consultant or IT vendor. For a list of included products, please visit The Big Easy Offer website.

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