“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…
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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….
Upcoming Webcast: How Microsoft IT Deploys Application Virtualization The MDOP team has announced that on May 26th TechNet will host a webcast to discuss how Microsoft uses App-V 4.5 and ConfigMgr 2007 to deploy and manage applications within their environment. if it is anything like the one at MMS2009 it should be an interesting one. Click…
“Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.” – Theodore Logan. In this case it would be at the “Circle M” – strange and cool things. I downloaded and installed XP Mode onto my Windows 7 RC 1 base image on my laptop – a Dell Latitude D820 Core 2 Duo with 4 gigs of…
For those of us using OneNote and Groove, there was an announcement made today that would very much interest you… 1) Groove will becomes SharePoint Workspace 2) OneNote and SharePoint Workspace now a part of Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 More info at: Microsoft Office 2010 Blog
The Office 2010 Teamblog opened to the public a nice and simple “hello world” message. In that message they posted their first insights: … preliminary system requirements for Office 2010. 1. Office 2010 will be available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. 2. Office 2010 will run on Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista,…
Office 2010 is finally coming out for air now – check out the newly released Office 2010 Official Blog site – This announcement prompted me to do a bit of a quick online check as to what’s ahead in the near future. Several new versions of Microsoft software are currently in beta mode, release release…
As always, MMS 2009 is not only a technical conference with lots of good content and “what’s new” on the Microsoft system management tools sets but also a place to catch up with old friends, rekindle some relationships, and make new ones. The business networking that goes on is – I think – highly underestimated. …
One of our esteemed contributors, Jorge Pereira, has the good fortune of being at #MMS09 this year, and has been energized by what he’s heard. He’s probably gearing up for some posts outlining his thoughts on what’s happening in the center of the Microverse.
If you’re a twitaholic, and you like our posts, you may want to follow us on Twitter: Tweets by infraops We’re doing more of the short one-off posts there, and expanding the more interesting bits into articles here. Hope you’ll tune in and tweet with us!
I ran across – actually a good friend send me the link – a very useful tool called EtherPad — An online, real time, multiuser text editing tool. If you have not checked it out – Do so right now! — It will change the way you take notes in meetings! www.etherpad.com
A new version of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) was realsed early April and includes includes MED-V v1.0, a cummulative update to App-V andupdate to AIS. This update has been a much anticipated primarily because of MED-V which is finally available under the Microsoft name. The official posting at the MDOP blog…
Desktop management is now a critical function of IT services within any organization. Historically, standalone computers and small networks did not require much centralization and management. However, rapid technological advancements, network size growth and the proliferation of the Internet have driven the need for advanced desktop management solutions. The Vision: “Power and flexibility of a…
Article by Rob West …was reborn this month. We’ve been traveling, speaking and writing so much that we haven’t had enough time to write to this blog. Well, that’s dumb, and has to stop, so I’m personally committing at least 2 hours of my week to doing the bare minimum: hunting down a few cool…
Article by Rob West Over on the Innovative Technology Weblog, my former colleague Kevin Reejuwijk has posted a great article about one my greatest excitements/disappointments in IT in awhile: the kind of bait n’ switch (IMO) integration of App-V and SCCM. App-V traditionally tells a user-centric story, but when integrated with SCCM, becomes more akin…
This white Paper talks about the new ways in which we can manage device fleets
Microsoft’s Business productivity Online Services (BPOS) is getting ready to officially launch within a few weeks… They have moved all beta users in to release candidate code and are in high gear recruiting partners, as their strategy is 100% partner attachment for these services… ( We are hoping this to be the case for many years…
PDF of a slide deck on Microsoft’s vision for the Optimized Desktop. This sounds very familiar to us old hats. Download details: The Microsoft Optimized Desktop Strategy by Jeff Johnson, Enterprise Technology Specialist, Microsoft Corporation Presentation Deck The Microsoft Optimized Desktop Strategy by Jeff Johnson, Enterprise Technology Specialist, Microsoft Corporation
A stunning piece of news that I would have been incredulous to hear if I hadn’t been there when they said it. I think Microsoft is taking some great steps in a thought-leadership position. Sure, they’re buying their way into markets, but that’s what they excel at, and if you’re watching closely, and ignoring the…
Download details: AppV™ Application Virtualization WWindows Springboard Series: AppV™ Application VirtualizationKarri Alexion-Tiernan, Director in the Windows Client division, unveils the latest version of this technology for virtualizing applications to reduce application-to-application conflicts and improve manageability.
Huzzah! MDOP has been updated! The App-V Blog : MDOP 2008 R2 Releases to Manufacturing! MDOP 2008 R2 Releases to Manufacturing! In case you missed all the fireworks and champagne corks yesterday it was in celebration of Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack 2008 R2 being released to manufacturing. Of course you already know that this version…
Well, we missed posting the scoop on this, as we were all at the Microsoft Virtualization Launch yesterday in Bellevue, rocking out to Live and having a grand time. By the time we all got home, none of us were very fit to post, and then today was a work day. The good news is,…
Microsoft really is getting it when it comes to OS deployment and emphasis on the client side of things. Most of my daily activity deals with this kind of thing, and it’s nice to have a starting place. This is pretty old now, but in case you haven’t seen it: Windows Client TechCenter Home Springboard…
I always visit SMS SCCM Expert in my rotation of must-check-for-update websites. They really develop some excellent addons and enhancements for my favorite systems management platform. One of their products that I had not really heard too much about struck me today. Let me back up: I’ve been wondering more and more about what part…
With Symantec’s purchase of AppStream, the application virtualization story is starting to get more complicated. If you’re a long time SoftGrid/App-V fan, you should read this story. It sounds a lot like the old days. As Microsoft’s product begins to retreat back to the machine-centric model, Symantec’s AppStream duplicates some of classic SoftGrid’s best (IMO)…
