AS a follow-up to my Windows 7 End of Mainstream Support posting, several questions came in regarding the Windows 10 availability dates… ( This is based on multiple publicly available news stories and sources.. ) Regarding Windows 10 availability: September 2014 — Windows Technical Preview (WTP) for laptops and desktops Microsoft’s Windows Insider Program opened…
I have been asked a couple of times about end of Mainstream support for Windows 7 Regarding Windows 7: January 12, 2015 – Microsoft will stop mainstream support for Windows 7 January 14, 2020 – Windows 7 extended support ends http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/search/default.aspx?alpha=windows+7 What does end of mainstream support mean? You still get the monthly updates and…
I am not surprised: Google+ officially splits into Photos and Streams. Hangouts separates as well. http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/2/8131639/google-officially-splits-into-photos-and-streams 2015-03-03T10:25:49-06:00
Have you noticed everything in called a Service these days? To mentioned a few, there is: Software as a Service, Platform as a Service, Infrastructure as a Service, Desktop as Service, Security as Service, Hardware as a Service and the one I just heard last week: Game as a Service! “Everything as a Service” is…
A quick reference guide to show the differences between the two editions of Windows 8 follows. Hope it helps! Windows 8 Professional Windows 8 Enterprise Bitlocker and Bitlocker to Go Yes Yes Boot to VHD Yes Yes Client Hyper-V Yes Yes Domain Join Yes Yes Group Policy Yes Yes Encrypted File System…
This is good news! Having used Google Fiber, it is a game changer… We continue to be hopefull that other carrie Current Cities: Kansas City, Austin, Texas and Provo, Utah. Cities: to be announced, according to the report: Atlanta,GA Charlotte, N.C. Raleigh-Durham, N.C. Nashville, Tenn. Other cities under consideration: Salt Lake City, San Antonio, Phoenix,…
My professional live has revolved, in great percentage, around Microsoft and Microsoft technologies. It has been a good life, but over the few years it has felt it like swiming against the current because of the major trends out there.. With so much of the market going cloud-services, device independent application delivery, bring-your-own-device,…
I have been involved in Technology Management for much of my professional life. I have helped people in many type of organizations (small, medium, large and global) manage their technology improvements, migrations and transformations including PCs, Internet, virtualization, and as of late, cloud-based infrastructures… I have seen what it takes organizations adopt, transform and shift…
For several years now, I have been a customer of Amazon Web Services (AWS) using S3 (Storage) and a couple development / test servers. Because of this, I thought I knew what it was all about. A few weeks back I attended a training session on the AWS platform, and I must say: The more I saw, the…
This weekend I upgraded several of my Windows 8 machines to Windows 8.1 which I got from my MSDN subscription… Here are a few notes on the experience… First, you will need new Keys for the Windows 8.1 installation. The old ones will not work, and the installation ask for it early in the process,…
Directly from The Next Web (TNW) the latest market share data based on — July 2013 Net Applications data (which uses data captured from 160 million unique visitors each month by monitoring some 40,000 websites for its clients). A couple of highlights: Microsoft Windows and Microsoft IE are clearly “in control” Windows 8 now up…
Wow! – It has been about a year since I’ve written about this… It was in my article back in April 2012, Google Drive: Have Cloud Drives Lost Their Way? I stated what I thought was needed and the challenges with the existing services (back then) were… Well – a lot of the issues have…
The trend for Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) has been the cause of a range of issues for companies and employees alike. A recent survey uncovered some startling facts about BYOD and the approaches people are using with regards to managing, or not managing, personal devices in the workplace. Although more than 70% of people…
Thought this might be of interest… An Microsoft Surface review was published by http://anandtech.com in early February… Anand was interviewed in a recent Tekzilla Episode (forward to timestamp 15:40) to talk about the pros and cons of the device… Check it out… Comparison of versions against the iPad follow: See also their: Microsoft Surface Pro…
Back in December Microsoft released System Center 2012 SP1 (Service Pack 1) to manufacturing. Much has been written about it since… The good news is that it was officially released (general availability) yesterday. With System Center 2012 SP1, you get the most cost effective and flexible platform for managing your traditional datacenters, private and…
I was skeptical at first, but I must say – I am very impressed. My house is 40+ years old and has not been retrofitted to allow for the modern Internet wiring. Like most folks out there, I have ran wires thru the ceiling, drilled new holes in the walls and still have one or…
If you are in this business, you are well aware of the great work Brian Madden and his team have done in producing fantastic content and guidelines on the topic of Virtualization… A recent blog article, Brian Madden makes some excellent points regarding the current state of Mobility Management, IT Consumerization and Desktop Virtualization. Mobility Device…
In a July 2012 published report by Osterman Research (available via InfoWorld), where they survey of 760 individuals with regard to the BYOD issues they face in their organizations. The research found widespread use of third party, cloud-based storage and file synchronization, which are not often supported by the IT organizations… Their report includes benefits…
BYOD also known as Bring Your Own Device has been a latest buzzword in the IT landscape. However, prior to implementing it is essential to understand the reason behind supporting it. Most common BYOD business objectives revolve around minimizing mobile expenses or enhance the overall organization productivity or perhaps both. In the recent times, many…
Just received note that a new course was published to get tech-folks ready for enterprise-level deployments of Windows 8, specifically on how to go about Windows 8 upgrades. The course, now available at the Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA), is under the heading Planning and Preparing for Windows 8 and consist of the following modules: Assessing Compatibility of…
From a development point of view it is interesting to see the difference between the Android and iOS versions needed to be supported… While researching, I ran into an October 2012 article on dazeinfo.coma which mentions that while iOS 6 Adoption Rate is about 60% iPhones Updated To iOS 6 vs. about 2% of Android…
In one of my previous postings, I talked about the amazing growth of digital content fueled, as of late, by tablet devices. One industry that is being forced to change leaps and bounds is the publishing industry. Just last week, it was leaked that two major player in this space, Random House and Penguin, were…
“The dream of going paperless has been a pervasive part of our discourse for years but has yet to materialize.” I bet there are at least 50 articles, right now that you can search for in your browser that start that same way. I bet also that each of these articles offers some revolutionary approach,…
I really like the concept of Chrome OS – with so many places now where WiFi is enabled and mobile phones becoming wifi routers it is beginning to make sense… I have been considering a Chrome OS based machine for a while, but frankly, I think the prices have been a bit too high… I…
The influx of new communication devices and solutions in the corporate environment resulted in the workforce becoming increasingly mobile. Take for instance, remote desktop access and SSL VPNs, which has made it possible for the workforce to make the choice with respect to location and time. Similarly, very many technological innovations have made the concept…
For those working in business IT there is one term that is sure to be cropping up on your radar more and more frequently; for those who work outside of IT departments you’ll be familiar with the ideas behind it – in fact you may be responsible for its prominence – even though you may…
On Monday, I was trying to place a presentation on a USB drive on my Windows 8 machine, and after a several attempts (different ports and drives) I discover that the USB drivers in Device Manager all had issues. I had no idea what had happened, as no matter what I did, they would not…
I have been using Windows 8 RTM (and Office 2013 Preview) on my primary laptop for about 30 days now, and have been very pleased with the experience. I am a semi-typical knowledge worker / technology consultant who travels a lot. My office is wherever I can find a small desk area and an internet…
Cloud computing (or cloud services) is the new buzz in the world of IT services. The term, which is still pretty nebulous for many users, refers to a model in which computing resources are hosted and delivered via the Internet than can dynamically grow and shrink depending on its demand and you pay only for…
I have spent so much time trying to figure out my new theme… I was fine with the theme I had at WordPress.com but when I moved to my own hosted instance, found out that the theme was not longer available for download.
I have been using Windows 8 on my primary laptop for about 30 days now, and have been very pleased with the experience. I am a semi-typical knowledge worker / technology consultant who travels a lot. My office is wherever I can find a small desk area and an internet connection. My laptop is configure…
When an office starts to consider going paperless – going paperless at the office – one of the first benefits sited is that they will be able to reduce the cost of purchasing paper to supply their office. What many businesses may not realize is that the true benefits of going paperless in an office…
Whether you run a business in your home or you’re a home maker trying to get rid of all those stacks of bills and papers, going to a paperless at home can not only help you keep better track of your personal files better but can increase the security of your private information and documents….
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) has been a latest buzzword in the IT landscape. BYOD has been the cause of a range of issues for companies and employees alike. A recent survey uncovered some startling facts about BYOD and the approaches people are using with regards to managing, or not managing, personal devices in the…
In the article, “Going Paperless” we sited the definition of Paperless, and the fact that with today’s available technology and tools the goal of going paperless has never been more achievable by so many. Let’s discuss now what it may mean to you to you go paperless, and consider considering the two major areas in…
There are many benefits to going paperless. Bottom line it will save you time and money.
Since the creation of the computer and data storage, people have been making every attempt to transition from their cluttered offices full of paper and rooms (or attics) full of file cabinets into a paperless, streamlined and easy to search environment. As technology has evolved, so has our ability to make the transition into paperless.Whether…
Microsoft teams have been doing a fantastic job keeping the webcast events on System Center available for playback if you were not able to make it when live. I think this series is a must for all of us working with System Center TechNet Webcast: How Microsoft Does IT: Deploying Windows 7 Using System Center…
Microsoft is doing a great job at letting folks that could not attend TechEd 2012 access the great content that was presented. There is a ton that is changing… exciting times for sure!! They have made most sessions available on their MSDN Channel9 site which you can browse, search, download the video and the…
Blog post: Post install steps Ubuntu 12.04
Kudos to DebianHelp team for a fantastic post on what to do after installation of Ubuntu 12.04…
Wow! So much information — Most definitely worth the read…
As mentioned in an earlier post, Microsoft is doing a great job at letting folks that could not attend TechEd 2012, access the great content that was presented.. There is a ton that is changing… exciting times for sure!! Now they have made most session available on their MSDN Channel9 site which you can…
Article Written by: Rob West If you are a Lync system administrator or IT Pro, you’ve probably heard about Lync Mobility clients being released. Such a cool thing. One-click conference joining, mobile presence, etc. Why wouldn’t you just roll it out, organization wide to everyone with a mobile phone or tablet? Well, just slow down…
Article written by Rob West If you’ve got Lync, or another Voice over IP and collaboration solution in your organization, you’ve likely also got another video conferencing solution. Or, let’s say that you only have one, but your clients and partners have another one or two or three. What happens when you want to bridge…
Could not attend MMS2012 in Vegas this year? Not to worry! Microsoft has posted all of the PowerPoint and videos for free at http://www.mms-2012.com/digitalmms regardless if you attended or not. You can register and browse through the sessions… Thank you Microsoft!! For those of you that want to download the content for offline viewing: Videos:…
Not to worry! Microsoft has posted all of the PowerPoint and videos at http://www.mms-2012.com/digitalmms regardless if you attended or not, you can register and browse through the sessions… Thank you Microsoft!! For those of you that want to download the content for offline viewing: Videos: Stefan Roth has created a PowerShell script that will…
I am asked often to about this topic, having written a number of individual posts in the past, I thought, why not put it all together? So here it is… Let me know if you find it useful or have any comments! – Cheers. Cloud computing (or cloud services) is the new buzz in the…
The Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) guides series have been updated to reflect the version upgrades and changes to the Microsoft product line in the past few months. Definitely worth the review: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc196387.aspx As a reminder: The series is a collection of documents that leads the reader through a sequence of core decision points to…
With just the right amount of hype, Microsoft releases Windows 8 Consumer Preview. It is far better than the developer’s release back in September 11, 2011 and you can tell they have been working fast and furious, keeping to a tight schedule. Definitely good stuff. I installed it on one of my virtual machines,…
When considering VMware to address the Server Virtualization environment, take a moment to consider another more cost effective alternative: Microsoft Virtual Server. Although Virtual Server does not currently offer VMware features such as VMotion, Site Recovery, Converter, etc. Microsoft is spending a lot of development dollars making sure that the Virtual Server environment is in…
This is a common topic of conversation and it comes up every time I start a project… Best advice I have found follows: As the Project Manager you need to know what to, who should do what, when it should be done, why it should be done, the cost for it and a variety…
Cloud computing (or cloud services) is the new buzz in the world of IT services. The term, which is still pretty nebulous for many users, refers to a model in which computing resources are hosted and delivered via the Internet than can dynamically grow and shrink depending on its demand and you pay only for…
Just in case you missed it, Microsoft released the Microsoft Office 2010 Deployment Kit for App-V which will is required for sequencing and deploying Office 2010 client products with Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V). The toolkit must be installed on the App-V sequencing station prior to monitoring the Office 2010 client installation, and on the…
Originally published for Averro.com blog. One of the major technical dilemmas that many small or medium sized companies face, is to have enough storage space for all the data its employees work with every day. Storage space can be pretty expensive; servers, hosting fees and support costs, can eat up a significant portion of the…
Originally published for Averro.com blog. In Cloud Services 101- Video 1 presentation we covered the basics (Definition, types, and deployment models) of what is refered to as cloud services. In this part-2 presentation we cover the key advantages that small and medium businesses can benefit from the use of these technologies. We have a few…
Originally published for Averro.com blog. Cloud computing is quickly altering the way small businesses work. Hardware procurement, setup and software licensing in order to support the applications for all users in the organization is a significant effort and constant concern for the management team in any small business. With the development of cloud based services,…
Originally published for Averro.com blog. As we discussed in our initial article of the series, Cloud Services 101: The Basics, the cloud services can be categorized into three areas, Infrastructure, Platform or Application related. In part 2 of the series (Cloud Services 101: Big Players in the Field) we touched up on some of the…
I have long been talking to clients (especially small businesses) about the fact that they do not need to keep servers on-premise to do their work. In a press release dated 1/13/10 where Gartner lists its key predictions for IT in 2010 and beyond (read here), the first highlight is a prediction that by 2012,…
Originally published for Averro.com blog. Thanks to the convergence of multiple technology trends, including virtualization, data center consolidation, web-services, browser and commercialization of hardware advancements, there is simply no way of ignoring or denying the impact that cloud services are having within the industry. Placing files, email and applications on the cloud has its significant…
Originally created for Averro.com blog and posted on their blog. Following our April 17th posting, we have posted webcast — first of a series — explaining how can cloud services can help the Small Business. Each video is small and to the point, and intended for a business audience, and not a technical one. This…
The beta version of Windows Intune, formerly known as System Center Online Desktop Management, it is now officially part of the Microsoft Online Services. is now in full beta. Windows Intune simplifies how businesses manage and secure PCs using Windows cloud services and Windows 7—so your computers and users can operate at peak performance. Windows…
If you have been using the Beta versions of the Office 2010 WebApps as of yesterday – you are in the company of 400 million friends! Yes – in a very unexpected announcement, Microsoft and Facebook made available http://docs.com – which allows Facebook users to collaborate using Office 2010 Web Apps. Now you can discover,…
The beta version of Windows Intune is now in full beta. Windows Intune simplifies how businesses manage and secure PCs using Windows cloud services and Windows 7—so your computers and users can operate at peak performance. Windows Intune delivers cloud-based management and security capabilities that can be administered through a single Web-based console, enabling your…
Originally published for Averro.com blog and posted on their blog. Cloud computing (or cloud services) is the new buzz in the world of IT services. The term, which is still pretty nebulous for many users, refers to a model in which computing resources are hosted and delivered via the Internet than can dynamically grow and…
We are often asked what is Windows Azure, and how does it help the business. Explaining what an application hosting platform is, and how it can help it is not as simple as it sounds… Microsoft Azure is an application hosting environment rather than a server-based like Amazon’s AWS environment. Azure is a service that…
There seems to be a lot of market noise about this and it is an interesting topic. What does VDI stand for? VDI = Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Is VDI new? The virtual machine on the desktop is not new. Microsoft’s Remote Desktop, Citrix, VMware Workstation, Parallel, Virtual PC and several others have been around for…
Two years after being acquired, the Calista team and product set are finally coming out for air! The upcoming version of Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 will incorporate the RemoteFX – a set of RDP technologies which will vastly improve the user experience when accessing remote sessions – most prominently graphics virtualization. The…
Traditionally, companies have deployed desktop or laptop computers to their end users. The operating system, applications have been individually installed on every desktop or laptop via imaging software or remote installation, and application configuration settings and most user data is stored locally on the computer. While this may have worked when the company started small,…
One of the most common questions I get asked is what tool to I use to manage projects while working with virtual teams. The answer I give, is typically, “it depends a lot on the size of the project, and what you want to manage” Collaboration, Project Management, Project Portfolio Management (PPM), Online Project Management,…
According to a CNN report today, “More than 100 people, many of them dressed in black, were expected to gather around a coffin Thursday night to say goodbye to an old friend. The deceased? Internet Explorer 6.” March 1st marks the official death of the IE6 browser – http://ie6funeral.com/ Internet Explorer Six, resident of the…
I just got the much anticipated WebOS 1.4 which, amongst many others features, enables video capture and which supports Adobe’s Flash Player. I just did a couple of quick tests. Pretty good video quality and Flash works nicely. Can wait to check the rest of the list. A silly quick test follows: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOEWbfZswJM&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]
A qiick post, with something I learned today…. I am not sure if you have noticed or not, but on Technet and the VLSC download site, you will notice a downloaded titled “Windows 7 N” The N version represents a version of Windows 7 that does not have Windows Media Player included and is intended…
via TechCrunch Spiceworks, a startup that develops Web-connected social IT management software, has raised $16 million in Series C funding round led by Institutional Venture Partners with Austin Ventures and Shasta Venturesparticipating. This brings the startup’s total funding to $29 million. Spiceworks develops a desktop software suite that helps a company’s IT staff collaborate with…
Article written by Rob West This is a thought-provoking article from LORI MACVITTIE on SOAWorld Magazine that poses an interesting point-of-view: …the US postal service doesn’t determine whether postage may be due or not until the package arrives at its destination. If the addressee isn’t willing/able to pay that postage due, the package is of course…
One of our colleagues sent us a highly bookmarkable list of Win7 resources that’s definitely worth checking out. There’s great stuff on Deployment, USMT 4.0, etc. http://blogs.technet.com/askcore/archive/2009/12/08/windows-7-useful-links.aspx Let us know of any others –
Article by Danny Knox It must have been “feast induced drowsiness” that cause me to miss this. Had to be. I was trolling for technology webcasts and found one from thanksgiving week (2009) for SCCM – Technical Overview: System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP2 and R3 (Level 200) that among other things covers these gems:…
Article by Danny Knox Ya, right. Part of my proof of concept work aside from MDOP delivery, SCCM/MDT and desktop I/O is to demo up and coming products like Office 2010. A lot of our clients want to know how well it works with Vista and Windows 7 and what kind of interaction it might…
Been busy this week with a lot work, so I have not had the chance to post much lately . However this does not mean, I have forgotten about my blog 🙂 It is interesting… When I made a personal commitment to actually write something often, everything I look at becomes a candidate for the…
Article by Danny Knox Microsoft – why did you kill the radio star? The application virtualization product formerly known as SoftGrid prior to Microsoft’s purchase had a fledgling web based self-service application provisioning tool called Zero Touch. Sure, it sounds like the image deployment methodology from Microsoft called “zero touch” but why kill it? Re-brand…
If you were at any of the Microsoft partner events in the last couple of years, you would know that Microsoft has been in the process of revamping the Microsoft Partner Program and its ecosystem. The changes officially started this past July when they renamed the Microsoft Partner Program to Microsoft Partner Network (MPN), partly…
We are often asked what is Windows Azure, and how does it help the business. Explaining what an application hosting platform is, and how it can help it is not as simple as it sounds… Microsoft Azure is an application hosting environment rather than a server-based like Amazon’s AWS environment. Azure is a service that…
Several years ago, as a result of many issues with my then service provider, I switched and standardized my default DNS settings to point to a free DNS service called OpenDNS. I’ve been very satisfied with, and has provided great reliable and save service. My old service provided went our of business, and many…
As many of you already know, we have been strong proponent of cloud-based services for a very long time… The idea of maintaining an expensive and complex in-house infrastructure to support basic IT services is steadily shifting away from mainstream business. Adoption of cloud-based services continues to climb steadily. However, a recent article on the…
A very interesting video on the hardware architecture behind cloud computing was posted yesterday on Microsoft’s Channel9 site… The walk-though is presented by Patrick Yantz, a Cloud Architect with Microsoft’s Data Center Services Team at PDC09. Self contained 40-foot containers (yes the kind you see on the road) are used to store 1000’s of motherboards and…
Article by Rob West As my esteemed colleague Jorge points out, it has been a busy summer (and now autumn) for us on this team, and as such, our posting frequency has not been, shall we say, “optimized.” I’ve been on the road a bit, and speaking at a number of Windows 7 Launch events,…
Microsoft announced that is cutting the price of its BPOS services today Exchange Online from $10 per user per month to $5 per user per month. BPOS bundle — Online: Exchange, SharePoint, Communications and Live Meeting — from $15 per user per month, to $10 per user per month This is a 30% price drop and is fantastic…
No this will not be a full comparasion or anything like that, just a quick rambling in myblog regardind my observations between the two platforms, after using both for about a couple of months now. Although I secretly wanted for the Pre to be the one to write about, I have to say that iPod…
As we have mentioned in the past, many organizations are now moving from on-premises to a hosted solution (cloud computing). One of the greatest values out there (for what it contains) is Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Services (BPOS) — We expect to have many, many customers to continue to migrate into this platform. With a set of…
As part of the Run IT on a Virtual Hard Disk – Test Drive Program, a pre-configured VHD that enables you evaluate Microsoft Windows 7 for 90-days was released yesterday. What is notable is that this VHD requires Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008, or the R2 to use this virtual machine, because…
If you remember my post a couple of weeks ago, I talked about what I liked and disliked about my newly purchased Palm Pre. At the time, I mentioned the biggest challenge for me was the lack of available applications, and asked Palm, to open up the store to developers! I ran across the article…
Wow – It is hard to believe how fast the summer came and went. As you can probably gather from the frequency of posts, it was a very busy time for all of us at the InfraOps team. Busy working with clients and getting to know updated technologies. Lots of activity, including some much needed…
Some of us have been using it already, but just in case you did not know, MAP 4.0 is now officially released. As you would expect,most of the changes are around Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V, but there is much more. Definitelly a good upgrade! According to the official release, key new features…
Like many of us, crazy technologists, I’ve had at least 3 (if not 4+) computers on my desk for years now… Aside from your day-to-day one, you must have the computer with the music library, then there is the laptop, and then the test sandbox one, where everything new goes into… I thought virtualization was…
We thought you might be interested in the latest webcast produced by our colleagues at CompuCom and in close cooperation with Microsoft. It took place online on June 2, 2009, and it was about Microsoft’s latest release of Data Protection Manager. It covered a lot of ground and there was a number of interesting questions…
The IT industry is all about change. Change to make thing better, most efficient, response faster, while still reducing cost… At least in theory. In the past couple of years, there has been a significant transformation occurring. The move to Cloud Computing has been slowly transforming everything – and I mean *everything*. from the way we look at hardware…
We have typically focused our articles on Microsoft and related technologies. This one will change that trend a bit, as what we heard and saw is – in our view – significant announcement from Google. Yesterday, during the keynote on day 2of the Google I/O Conference , Google demonstrated (literally) the vision they are heading towards, and they…
Look me up on https://connect.digitalwpc.com/ if you’d like to meet up! Or, tweet me: http://twitter.com/infraops/
Article by Rob West As Windows 7 relieves a lot of the pent-up demand for a new OS from Microsoft and unblocks the anti-Vista sentiment that has been one of the major impediments to widespread enterprise adoption of what was (in our opinion) a great OS in its later iterations, we are seeing greater demand…
Microsoft TechNet’s site has changed the way in which they present the solution accelerators. You can now sort according MOF Service life cycle and by discipline – A very good move we think! Also we just heard that the upgrade to MAP (4.0) is right around the corner! More info on this can be…
Microsoft’ Ron Markezich, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Online, made available a basic but interesting video on his views on cloud computing adoption which he expressed at the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium in Boston, MA For one thing, chief information officers are uncertain how to fashion a roadmap that brings “cloud services” into their IT architecture….
