Author: directorcia

Google ninjas


I’m on a number of technical email lists. These lists allow people like myself to post technical questions that get read by a whole group of other technical people. The hope is that someone on the list knows the answer or has some experience they can share to help the person making the initial request. It was the sort of thing done before all the Web 2.0 stuff came along, and yes, it is really ‘old world’ stuff but for the technical people who use these lists they are yet to come into the 21st century. As I have said many times, just because you work with technology don’t assume you understand technology. Nothing could be truer than in this case. That issue, however, is not the focus of this post, it is instead around how Google is having a major impact on technical professions.

What recently used to happen on these technical email lists was that someone would post a question and someone else would tell them to use Google before they posted the question. Fair enough in my book. Now I see questions typically start with ‘I have a problem that I can’t solve using Google’. Recently one such question resulted in a reply from another member of the forum that they found the answer on Google as the top result in their search request so why could the original person find it on Google? This exchange raises some very interesting issues.

Firstly, with the vast array of information available on the Internet, in-depth technical information on just about every product and technology is available for free. How can you therefore compete on a technical ability any more? Google allows someone with much less knowledge and experience than you the ability to find a solution in potentially less time than you ever could. So, you may have spent years building up your technology knowledge but guess what? Google has just about made the playing field equal for all players no matter what their technical skill or experience level.

Secondly, no longer is it your technical ability that will distinguish you, it is your ability to find relevant information faster than your competition. However, I ask whether many people actually spend time improving their informational sources? Likewise, I ask whether many people actually spend time improving their searching skills? I know for a fact that most people do neither! Most people don’t know that Google has advanced search options. Most people don’t know that Google allows the use of operators (+, –, AND, OR, etc) in searches. This means when they use Google they get millions of results rather than thousands. Give that order of magnitude difference with results returned how effective do you think learning more about improving your skills with Google is going to pay off? Seems like simply math to me but nobody seems to do it.

So don’t be fooled into believing that all that technical knowledge you have accrued over the years is going to put you in good stead. Your most likely younger and smarter competition are investing their time in improving their informational sources as well as improving their ability to search these sources. Honestly, as the power of search technology improves and the amount of information available on the Internet increases, your ability to compete technically doesn’t stand a chance. So spend time improving your searching skills grasshopper and become a true Google ninja.

Game changer

For those who aren’t aware, the next version of Microsoft Office (Office 2010) will come with a free web version. It will be known as Office Web Apps and will integrate with Microsoft Skydrive for file storage (Yeah!) as this blog post details. Here’s a video demo of Office Web Apps that is well worth a look:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAvBfuaVluI

If you are someone who makes a living selling PC’s then the most common application you sell with every PC is probably a version of Microsoft Office. If you’re a smart cookie then you’ll also make money from installing the software as well as continually patching it. I hate to tell you that the majority of all this is going away when Office Web Apps goes live. Why? Simply because most users are not only stingy with their money (especially at the moment) but they also generally use less than 20% of Microsoft Office functionality. This means that a free online version of their favourite Microsoft Office apps is going to be very appealing. In short, why would they buy a version of Microsoft Office with their workstation when they can get for free online?

 

I think that if Microsoft provided a ‘paid for’ version of Office Web Apps that included more functionality people would pay but as I have said for quite a while now this is the way it is going – to the ‘cloud’. I agree that everyone isn’t going to go ‘virtual’ overnight but the trend is very evident and more importantly the business and economic reasons are also very powerful. As the economy recovers and businesses get back on their feet they are going to look at upgrading their technology. I reckon that many are going to start asking serious questions about whether they should be utilizing more applications from the ‘cloud’.

 

To a large extent by Microsoft moving applications like Office to the ‘cloud’ provides a significant amount of legitimacy in the minds users for this style of technology, making it a self fulfilling prophecy in some ways. Failing to ignore these trends is going to have ramifications down the line no matter what sort of business you are. The great things about Microsoft apps moving to the ‘cloud’ is that they still provide the ability to host the same applications on site if desired (unlike Google). It also allows the implementation of hybrid approach as well (i.e. some offsite and some onsite).

 

Office Web Apps has now gone into limited beta testing and is expected to open up to more soon. Personally, I can’t wait to get my teeth into it because I can see the huge potential it offers around the thing that has always been the most profitable part of technology – assisting users with their implementation. If you are a reseller who doesn’t believe in the potential of ‘cloud’ apps like Office Web Apps I say GREAT because sooner or later customers are going to come looking for someone to help them implement a ‘cloud strategy’ and I’m ready willing and able.

School of SharePoint

I have just completed the free SharePoint webinar – ‘An Introduction to SharePoint on SBS 2008’ which I have uploaded to YouTube in three parts, which are linked below.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YR38TPndDI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5aIuuPE8b4

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c482xsaJg_Y

Alternatively, you can download the whole 30 minute presentation in WAV format from my SkyDrive.

 

I’m now working on a webinar schedule from November 2009. My aim to is do a webinar every 2 to 3 weeks. These webinars will be available in both free and paid versions, with the paid versions running longer and going into much greater depth. However, I will continue to also do as many free webinars as I can. Hopefully, all the webinars will also be available for download as well after the fact making them a good source of information.

 

So I’m currently developing a schedule of upcoming webinars that I’ll be publishing soon. If you have suggestions of what you’d like to see, drop me a line (director@ciaops.com). If you’d like to stay up to date with webinar schedule as it becomes available simply keep reading this blog or send me an email (director@ciaops.com) and I’ll add you to the mailing list.

 

As always, I welcome any feedback you may have on what I have created and keep you eyes posted for information on the upcoming webinar schedule.

Finally available


Microsoft and Telstra have finally made the Microsoft Business Productivity Suite (BPOS) available in Australia. This means that people can now obtain Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, Live Meeting and Office Communicator as hosted applications. It also means that providers like myself can sell the suite to customers and earn some commission. Gotta say this has been a long time coming but I can’t tell you how glad I am that it has finally arrived.

I see BPOS as being the early days of the way things are now heading. Most encouraging is that it allows me to sell solutions to customers without the constraints of geography anymore. In a few recent presentations I’ve given I’ve told other resellers they should be afraid of something like BPOS because it means that I’m coming to their market and their customers. I say this with the full knowledge that exactly the same is possible in my market space because this is what the new world order of cloud computing brings. It means a completely new business model. It means you face a greater number of competitors but it also provides you with greater opportunities to reach new markets as well. The only question is whether you will exploit the opportunities presented or simply react when the competition arrives on your shores.

As I have said before I believe the killer app for BPOS will be Live Meeting, simply because it is something that is going to provide real benefits for most customers who have never had access to technology like this. They will be able to conduct remote meetings, present sales demonstrations and importantly record them for repeat use. How powerful is that going to be to a business to provide a video presentation of their products and allow people to view it on demand?

Of course the other huge potential I see is for SharePoint, given that so few people are aware of the benefits it can provide. Another great opportunity will be the ability of SharePoint to provide templated solutions, that can be developed and then resold many times over. Combine that with something like OneNote and you have a really great collaboration solution as the Pfizer case study demonstrates.

Perhaps another benefit that BPOS provides resellers is environment standardization. This means that every BPOS implementation of SharePoint say is identical. Everything is always in the same place, the software is always at the same version and so on. How many times is this the case between different client sites? Almost never. Having a completely standard environment not only makes it much easier to support but means that I can develop standards and procedures that allow others to easily implement the administration while I can concentrate on the higher return work.

As I have detailed in a previous blog post I am always encouraged when other resellers ignore or are hostile to SharePoint because it simply means more opportunity for my business. It provides me an opening with their clients that I can now exploit no matter where they are in the world. In the end I see BPOS not only providing greater opportunities but also simplifying the ability to deploy and support solutions for customers. Isn’t that what we’re all really after?

To now include MOSS

After many requests and a desired to cover the entire SharePoint product spectrum I have decided to now include information about Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) into my Windows SharePoint Operations Guide offering.

 

At this stage I’m unsure whether I’ll change the name or simply have 2 distinct products but what I will tell you is that from now until January 1 2010 the MOSS information will be in ‘beta’. That simply means I want to get it up to a certain volume before I release it commercially as well a getting feedback from subscribers. I will also tell you that all existing Guide subscribers will automatically receive all this new MOSS information as part of their existing subscription and will continue to do so as long as they continue to subscribe. I have also decided that I will make this offer available to any subscriber until the 31st of December 2009. This means that if you become a subscriber before this date you’ll not only get all the existing Windows SharePoint information but you’ll also get all the MOSS information that I create.

 

Aside from all this don’t forget that SharePoint 2010 is due soon, with a beta expected in October, and that too will all be included in the Guide (for Windows SharePoint and MOSS) as it becomes available. Best of all you’ll still get all this for $299! Chances are that after 31 December 2009 the MOSS offering will require a separate subscription so if you have ever thought that you may need information about SharePoint in the future now is the time to jump on board.

 

The new MOSS guide will include many of the same topics of the existing Guide such as installation, database management, search and so on, however it will also incorporate a whole new range of topics specifically geared to MOSS including portals, advanced document management, Excel services and more. For as much information as I have created for Windows SharePoint (over 1,400 pages now) I reckon I can easily double that for MOSS.

 

For more information about the Guide visit www.wssops.com or send me an email (director@ciaops.com). Don’t forget you have until 1 January 2010 to jump on board to receive all the benefits before the content starts to split.

 

As a further aside, I’m also contemplating (well almost certain now about) creating a guide dedicated to the SharePoint offering in Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). If you think that would be worthwhile please let me know as well (director@ciaops.com).

SharePoint survey results

I have been talking with Harry Brelsford from SMB Nation about the results from his recent SharePoint survey that he was kind enough to share with me. After going through all the results the most encouraging item I found was the following comment:

“We don’t use Sharepoint. We hate it.”

Why would I ever say this is the most encouraging result? Simply it means one less reseller who going to bother with SharePoint. In essence this means there is more opportunity and revenue for me. Along the same lines here is another comment I find encouraging:

“I don’t typically promote SharePoint unless my customer specifically asks for it.”

Excellent I say. Taking this attitude allows someone with SharePoint skills the potential to drive a wedge into the business by helping the customer understand the power that SharePoint can provide. Once another reseller has created a wedge within your customer, chances are it isn’t going to be the only thing they can leverage away from you.

The survey also illustrated to me that nearly everyone using or selling SharePoint still really doesn’t understand where the power of the product lies. Sure it is great at handling documents, knowledge, and structuring ad hoc data but in my mind the key aspect of SharePoint for any business comes down to one word – SEARCH.

Everyone knows that to find something on the Internet they use a search engine like Google or Bing. But what do they use to search their internal information? Wouldn’t you say that most businesses place greater value on their internal information than that found on the Internet? You bet they do, so where are the tools to search it?

SharePoint and Search Server Express allow you to index just about every document on your internal network and make it searchable, in many cases without having to change the location of the data. Now, here’s what separates the successful from the pack. Out of the box Windows SharePoint and Search Server Express don’t automatically index Office 2007 documents, Adobe PDF’s and the like. But guess what they can! Also, with the release of Windows Server 2008 R2 will also be able to index scanned documents.

I can’t see how this is really any different from other technologies, they all need tweaking to extract the most benefit. However most resellers simply throw their hands up and cry that it is all too hard, which as I said before is absolutely fantastic for me.

Another massive over sight by most resellers is the opportunity presented by combining OneNote with SharePoint. Firstly, many probably don’t realize that if you capture documents in OneNote they are automatically indexed (even graphic files). If that OneNote file resides on SharePoint (which has been configured correctly) guess what? That information also gets index by SharePoint. So using OneNote you can get just about any information into SharePoint and make it indexable for the business.

Even better, as a recent Microsoft case study on the combination of SharePoint and OneNote highlights:


“Essentially, we’re using Office OneNote 2007 to provide an intuitive, user-friendly interface to the SharePoint Server 2007 document library,” Gardner explains. All content added to or created in OneNote 2007 is stored in SharePoint Server 2007. Users can continue to work in shared OneNote 2007 notebooks even when they’re offline, and the notebooks synchronize automatically when the users connect to the network. “All of the complexities are managed in the background, so the user experience is seamless,” adds Gardner.

Utilizing OneNote as front end for SharePoint removes a huge amount of the complexity for users. It allows them to be productive much faster by using something that is breeze to understand. I can’t figure out why other people can’t see this as the following survey comment illustrates once again:

“MS examples tend to lean toward the enterprise and that just isn’t the same.”

Because here is a Microsoft example, to my mind, of exactly the benefits SharePoint and OneNote provide to a large business that also apply equally as well to a small business.

The most common response to what I’ve said here is going to be ‘this is all well and good but obtaining all the information about customizing SharePoint is just too difficult’. Again I couldn’t agree more and I thank my stars every day that it is because it means only people who see the opportunity are going to take advantage of it and put in the effort to learn. Only people who see the opportunity are going to subscribe to my SharePoint Guide for only $299. Only people who see the opportunity are going to attend my sessions at SMB Nation 2009. The fewer of these people there are the more opportunity for my business.

The final good bit of news I took from the survey was the following comment:

“Robert Crane’s guides rock”

At least I know someone else out there understands it like I do and to them I say thank you and I look forward to providing you with more way to make money with SharePoint.

Kiva

There are so many worthy charities these days and everyone has their own preferences but for me I can’t go past Kiva.

What I like about Kiva is:

1. You can choose directly an individual you wish to help. You can see their circumstances and why they need the money.

2. The money that you provide is a loan, meaning the individual works to repay this amount over time. As with any loan there is a risk that repayments will not be able to be made but this is extremely small and you get advised of that potential prior to making the loan.

Once the loan has been repaid you can either choose to reloan the money or you can, if you wish, withdraw the amount. Personally, I like to keep reloaning the money because I like the idea of being able to keep helping people all via a single donation.

3. The Kiva web site allows you to easily keep tabs on each loan that you have made and the progress in which it is being repaid. You also get a page that shows you all the loans you have made. Take a look at my loan page as an example.

4. The Kiva site incorporates the concept of ‘social networking’ so you can see all the other people from around the world who have also loaned money to the individual, because any total loan is usually made up of many small donations.

5. Finally, being a entrepreneur myself I enjoy the concept of helping other entrepreneurs get ahead. I know how hard it can be sometime to get started, grow and expand so I feel a closer sense of attachment to people like these who are not simply asking for hand outs, all they are simply asking for is assistance to grow their business to provide themselves, and others, a better life.

I would ask you to have a look at Kiva and see the good that it is facilitating everyday for individuals who are not as lucky as people like me. I think that when you take a look you’ll find that it is a great way to help others help themselves which is really the best help there is.