What seems obvious

To me at least, is the fact that there are going to be plenty of iPhone users out there who are going to get a very nasty surprise when they get their first bill. This article says how the Australian consumer watchdog is getting involved to keep an eye on the data offerings from our telcos.

 

The article says:

 

Optus, Telstra and Vodafone’s iPhone pricing plans have attracted particularly harsh criticism for being too expensive and not offering a high enough web data quota for comfortable internet browsing.

 

and

 

Some Telstra plans offer 3GB of data but the cheapest is $149 a month and the most expensive is $219 a month. The other carriers’ plans max out at 1GB for Vodafone and 2GB for Optus, which isn’t enough for intensive web browsing.

 

Data charges are the cash cows for telcos today. They stand to make huge profits as more and more people become connected wirelessly and use their mobile device as freely as they use their land based Internet connections. The people who don’t take great care in how much they use the Internet wirelessly are going to pay a very steep price for such convenience.

 

Just remember, the telcos are NOT doing you any favours signing you up to a plan. They will put you on the one that makes the most money for them. Shop around, understand how much you download and how to control what your mobile device downloads. Failing that, turn the device OFF when you don’t need to use it, because a device that is off can’t download anything!

Small Business Specialist Certification

Came across this interesting video interview with Harry Brelsford. In it he says that his business, SMBNation, is packaging up his Small Business Specialist training material and delivering it as a set curriculum that “anyone” can use to obtain their Small Business Specialist Certification. He cites the examples of high school kids as well as community colleges as the intended targets for this material.

 

Like most technology certifications, it is clear that the Small Business Specialist qualification is now far too common and no longer could effectively be used as a differentiation point for your business. Sure, it is good that the qualification perhaps ensures all Small Business Specialists have a minimum level of qualifications but is that really true? I’m pretty sure, like most other technology qualifications, you can still obtain the certification without knowing anything about Small Business Server.

 

Combine this growing legion of Small Business Specialists with the greater simplicity of SBS 2008, now what is your businesses point of differentiation? Most claims along the lines of “we do it better” or “we fix the mess others leave behind” don’t seem to work. Once an owner has been bitten by a bad technology provider they are going to be pretty gun shy of the next one who comes along, no matter how good they are. In many cases you as the new technology provider is going to be lumbered with the residual poor installation implemented by the previous incumbent. Worse than that, chances are the business owner isn’t going to want to spend much more money “fixing” the problem, simply because they have already shelled out a pretty penny for what they already have. So beware, following some previous IT provider into a business, you may simply end up being the whipping “boy” for an owner is looking to take their previous frustrations out on.

 

As a technology provider you are generally selling status quo. That is, today nothing happened on the server just like yesterday and the day before and the day before and so on. Most customers don’t understand the value of this and therefore get lulled into a concern that they are “paying you for nothing”. Its hard to sell the status quo, especially when you look and sound like everyone else claiming to sell it. So what’s your “secret sauce” (as Harry Brelsford would say) that helps you stand out from the crowd to customers and prospects?

 

You need to help prospects and customers understand the VALUE you bring to their business. If you simply “fix” technology then there are others out there who’ll do it cheaper, quicker and against whom you don’t stand a chance if you fight on their terms. Why do people but something like a Mercedes when a Fiesta basically does the same thing? Understand that and you are well on your way to understanding VALUE in the eyes of the prospect or customer.

Snap, Patch, Pop

I was reading Andys Techie Blog about some recent dramas he had when applying Sharepoint patches. Now, I’m no stranger to those problems and a few months back I had a similar issue where a patch creamed all my Sharepoint sites. Since then I’ve taken what I reckon are some pretty simply steps to reduce potential downtime.

 

The first step is simply to virtualize all my servers. Originally, I used Microsoft Virtual PC but I have since migrated all these virtual machines to Hyper V on Windows 2008 64 bit edition. So prior to applying recent patches I simply used the Hyper V manager to take a snapshot of the machine (i.e. image backup). I then applied the patches, made sure everything was working and if so deleted the snap shot backup. In the event of problems, I could easily restore the previous snapshot in a matter of minutes.

 

I also maintain a “clean” virtual Sharepoint server for disaster recovery. All I need to do it fire up the “clean’” server, join it to my domain and restore my stsadm –o backup file and I’m basically up and running again. Because the “clean” machine is virtual I can leave it suspended until I need it.

 

Another great thing about virtualization is that you can tune many of the attributes of the virtual machine. Let’s take memory for starters. If I determine a machine needs 1,012MB of RAM then I can allocated exactly that amount. I know RAM is cheap but I’d rather allocate it so I get the best utilization out of the memory in the host machine. Next, let’s look at hard disks. All virtual hard disks are stored in a compressed format so even though my host machine has 300GB of disk space I can run virtual machines that use over 300GB of disk space. Need to add more hard disk space? Simply allocate another hard disk to the virtual pc and you’re away. No need to open a case, connect wires, etc, just attach and use. Finally, I can have any number of networks on my host machine. I can easily assign any machine to a different network connection without the need for plugging cables at a patch panel. This comes in extremely handy if you want to isolate a machine from the network to work on. Simply change the connected adapter and viola, isolated.

 

Now, I’ve been using virtual machines for a long while but with products like Hyper V and VMServer I think we will start to see virtual machine hits mainstream. If you aren’t using virtual machines then I think you REALLY need to look at them. If you are planning an upgrade of your own infrastructure then you REALLY need to consider Hyper V as an option, simply because it just provides so much flexibility and ease of use.

 

I can see the day when most clients will simply access a remote facility to get access to their data. In most cases, their machine and good deal of other customers, will all be running on a single piece of hardware but thanks to the wonders of virtualization, will appears to be multiple machines. I would also seriously consider selling clients a Hyper V solution to run their next server upgrade in their own offices. Sure, I know its not a perfect solution, but these days in IT what is? In my experience virtualization make infrastructure management much simpler.

 

My message? Go forth and virtualize.

Vista. An abject failure? TOTAL B.S.

Microsoft announced announced revenues for their fiscal year of $60 billion! Yes, $60 billion per annum! Also, in the announcement is something interesting about Vista.

 

Revenue growth was primarily driven by continued customer demand for all products, including Windows Vista, which has sold over 180 million licenses since launch

 

Yes, boys an girls, Microsoft has sold 180 million copies of Vista since launch. They must be going onto PC’s somewhere eh? Seems that even though a “lot” of people are bagging Vista and saying they want XP, Vista is still being installed in a lot of places. Does that sorta tell you that a “lot” isn’t really very many at all? Does it also tell you that perhaps the “lot” may have vested interests or are just “whingers”. There can’t be 180 million downgrades to XP either, if that is what you’re thinking. To the “whingers” I say, just get over it. Vista is here to stay, like or not.

If you have Search Server Express 2008

You are recommended by Microsoft to install KB951297, which also part of the general SharePoint infrastructure upgrade.

 

If you are, as I am, running Windows SharePoint V3 and Microsoft Search Server Express 2008 then Microsoft recommends:

 

“you should install the Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695) first and the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297) second.”

 

which is luckily the way that I did it after discovering that there was a separate update for Search Server Express 2008.

 

Be warned that the update for Search Server Express 2008 is part of the general Infrastructure update for Microsoft Office Servers, so the download is over 200MB (since it contains updates for ALL Office Server products). Also take heed of this from Microsoft:

 

It is strongly recommended that you install Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 1 and Office Servers Service Pack 1 before installing the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297) and the Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695).

 

Otherwise the update went smoothly and I haven’t seen any issues after a reboot. Fingers crossed.

SharePoint recommended update

Microsoft has released an infrastructure update for Windows SharePoint 3.0 (KB951695) and says:

 

It is strongly recommended that you install this update

 

I have applied this to our internal stand alone Sharepoint server, rebooted and everything seems to be OK. So, unless something major pops up shortly, it is probably a very good idea if you schedule to install the update. Obviously, make sure that you have a good backup and can restore Sharepoint if need be because I have had trouble with previous updates “breaking” my Sharepoint installations. So far, so good however.

 

I’d also like to take this opportunity to share with you some feedback I received from one of my Windows Sharepoint Server Operations Guide international subscribers:

 

“We found that using the Windows SharePoint Operations guide has simplified our deployment process for SharePoint WSS 3.0 and has drastically reduced the learning curve for our technical staff. The crew at Saturn alliance understand the product and the needs of small and medium size business. In addition they are always there to help out whenever we have questions” – Andre Vittorio

 

Thanks Andre, always good to hear that the Guide has helped. I believe the biggest benefit of the Guide is simply the time it saves you getting up to speed with the more technical aspects of Sharepoint. You could spend a plenty of time learning and testing this stuff yourself however, that is why I believe the Guide represents great value, since it has already been done for you.

Also, don’t forget the fact that Guide content is updated monthly, ensuring it remains current.

 

If you want more information about the Guide check out the web site:

 

http://wssops.saturnalliance.com.au

 

or just contact me. I’m happy to answer any questions you may have about the Guide.

iPhone to SBS 2003 success!

As expected, had a referral call today begging to get their iPhone connected up to SBS 2003 to receive emails.

 

After some fiddling, some updating and little bit of configuration we have it all working! Yeah.

 

Even though it is working we are doing some further testing to come up with a procedure for all our customers just so we know exactly what needs to be configured. More on those details once we have completed our testing. There appears to be a couple of gotcha’s but we need to verify our facts first.

 

However, for the time being we have one happy iPhone user. So if you are a reseller I suggest you start gearing up, because sooner or later someone is going to ask you to connect an iPhone to Exchange server (and I saw that the local Optus shop was pretty busy today).