SharePoint conference–Day 1

If you want an idea of just how BIG this conference is check out the dining hall or the keynote address attendance.

There are over 7,500 attendees here for 4 days of SharePoint.

The day started early with breakfast followed by the keynote. No major reveals but some nice additions coming along the track.

From there it was into a number of sessions including information about SharePoint Online, Business Intelligence Dashboards and improved productivity. All extremely worthwhile.

An even bigger day tomorrow with a full day of session followed by a party in Disneyland. Obviously Mickey must be a big SharePoint user to throw open his park (free) to all attendees!

SMBNation Fall 2011-Day 3

Well today was the final day for SMB Nation Fall 2011. It started out with an excellent SharePoint presentation by Amy Babinchuk. She spoke about all the ways that you can connect to SharePoint without necessarily having to go through the web interface. He main point? SharePoint is more than just and web site. She couldn’t be more correct.

Next came my session, with Harry Brelsford on Office 365. The session was well attended and those that attended got value for their time. I would have liked to go into more detail but time unfortunately did not permit.

After the lunch break came my session with Wayne Small on SBS Essentials (I was doing the cloud integration piece). Again, a well attended session.

Immediately after this I had to dash to catch a flight to LA to attend the SharePoint conference in Anaheim. On the way from the airport I heard that there is more than 7,000 attendees which is even bigger than the recent Build conference that unveiled Windows 8.

Roll on SharePoint. More details soon.

My overall impressions of SMB Nation 2011 Fall? Well from a conference point of view, the Rio Hotel was probably the best since I have been attending these events in Las Vegas. It was large, comfortable and easy to get to all locations. The only downside of the venue was perhaps the fact that it is located a little ways from the strip, however in some ways that is good as it encourages people to stay in the one spot.

For me the major value of these events is the hall way networking. Meeting up with old friends and making new ones is always the biggest benefit of attending. I will also say that I got value out of just about every session I attended, some more than other obviously, but overall I believe there is plenty of content in there I can take away.

So all in all, another successful conference. Well done to Harry and his team. Roll on 2012.

SMBNation Fall 2011–Day 2

Today started off again with breakfast in the keynote room. Luckily it was a later started compared to yesterday. The first session by Paul Morimoto on Security best practices was excellent. He spoke about the need to secure remote devices and how many of the products already in place (e.g. Windows) already contain substantial security features. All they need to be is simply enabled.

The next session was around building a cloud “practice’ and contained a nice overview of the areas that people should consider as they start implementing cloud products.

Later in the day was the technology panel, basically where attendees could ask questions of MVP’s and subject matter experts. These sessions are always well attended and probably something SMBNation should have more of.

The day finished with Security MVP Dana Epp talking about, and demonstrating, how to break the credential of many of the standard technologies that people use today including, Word, Excel, Windows and so on. He help the audience understand how to better protect themselves and their customers from attacks.

So, only one more day to go and I have 2 presentations to give on Office 365. They are:

GS12 – All Aboard Office 365 E3

and

GS11 – Office 365 + SBS 2011 Essentials

wish me luck.

CIAOPS SharePoint bootcamp comes to Melbourne

I am proud to announce that the next full day CIAOPS SharePoint bootcamp will be held in Melbourne, VIC. Here are the details:

Date: Thursday 27th of October 2011

Time: 8.30am – 5.30pm

Location: St Kilda Road Parkview Hotel, 562 St Kilda Rd Melbourne VIC 3004

Registration and details: http://www.ciaops.com/bootcampmel

There will be a limit on the number of attendees and demand is expected to be high. Don’t forget that all attendees also get a 12 months subscription to my SharePoint Guide (www.wssops.com) as well an external USB3 hard disk full of information, files and virtual machine images used during the course.

I look forward to seeing you there.

On stage at SMBNation Fall 2011

If you are planning on attending SMBNation Fall 2011 then I’ll see you there. I also hope that you’ll come to the sessions that I’m presenting on Office 365. They are:

GS12 – All Aboard Office 365 E3 (Sunday October 2, 10:20 –11:35)

Robert Crane and Harry Brelsford

Enjoy hands-on tactile takeaways from this combine 100-level and 300-level into Office 365 E3 version. In the first half, Harry will share the step-by-step for becoming a Cloud Essentials Partner and implementing Office 365 E3 in a production environment. Robert will tackle your toughest questions and present advanced topics such as Active Directory integration, federation services, and much more. A can’t miss session!

and

GS11 – Office 365+SBS 2011 Essentials… (Sunday October 2, 13:00 – 14:15)

Wayne Small and Robert Crane

The combination of SBS 2011 Essentials and Office 365 presents resellers with some unique challenges and opportunities in integrating both onsite and cloud solutions to meet the clients business requirements. Come hear how to integrate both of these for your clients business requirements and learn the tips and tricks from those in the field.

If you are attending and would like to catch up please drop me an email (director@ciaops.com) and we’ll make a time to chat.

A tale of two outages

Let me tell you something you already know and is bleedingly obvious anyway – Computers fails, IT systems go down. With this in mind I’d like to compare two recent examples.

Example 1.

Office 365 recent had an outage of a few hours (technically it was DNS not the Office 365 service but unavailable is as good as down). During that time let’s have a look at the impact. I certainly couldn’t receive any emails, I also couldn’t send any emails but I could still compose them and have them queued in my mailbox. I couldn’t have gotten to my SharePoint data and Lync would have also been offline.

So it was certainly preventing me from potentially doing some work but I could still access my calendar, contacts and previous emails.

Example 2.

The server on which this blog runs blew a power supply. So again system down but this time no access to any information on that box. Tools down time.

Wanna known the difference? In example 2 with my blog server, I had to pack up the machine. I had to drive it to repair shop. I had to wait until the power supply was changed. I had to drive the machine back. I had to connect it all back up and make sure it was working. I lost over 3 hours from start to finish getting the server back online.

In example 1, I kept an eye on Twitter to see when the system was back online for others and until then I went on with OTHER WORK.

So in which scenario was I more productive? For me personally it was example 1 as I could get on with other things because I knew someone (a.k.a. Microsoft) was working on the problem. I could still use some of my systems that had local copies (i.e Outlook) and could have with SharePoint if I had chosen to use SharePoint Workspace.

With example 2, nothing was going to get fixed until I fixed it.

Moral of the story? Computer systems go down, whether they are in the cloud or whether they are machines at the end of your fingers. It therefore follows that no matter where the computer are you use, you need to have some plans for when they fail (just like you need a plan to backup them up).

So Office 365 was unavailable. In this case I was more productive than when my own site server failed. I also content that would be a similar experience for most businesses.

Computers fail, deal with it. Develop a contingency plan to stay productive. What would I have done if the electricity failed? With Office 365 I would have worked off my laptop battery and wireless Internet connection until the battery ran out and then I would have relocated elsewhere to where the power was working. If I had all on site equipment I’d have no choice but to wait in the dark until the power came on.

It would be nice to see people actually discussing solutions to contingency problems rather than playing chicken little and blaming the sky falling on the evils of cloud computing. Come and see me when you are ready to have a BUSINESS conversation rather than a hysterical rant.

Computers fail, deal with it. A smart business would.

Opportunity

A good business person is always on the look up for opportunities and lately I’ve notice one I believe that I’ll share with you.

I’ve seen a few studies recently that say a large amount of small businesses still don’t have a web site. This article cites study that says a staggering 46% of small businesses don’t have a web site. Impossible I used to think.

However, travelling the roads I can’t help noticing how many vehicles are adorned with email addresses that are provided by Internet Service Provider (ISP) or generic email provider (i.e. joe643@isp.com.au or marys_dog_salon@gmail.com). Amazing, that in this day and age that businesses haven’t registered a domain and used that to point to their ISP or generic email account. Chances are if they haven’t even done that then they probably don’t have a web site.

You would have to think that if you offered them a package to set up their own domain, with email and simple web site, they’d be interested. If they could also use it to say display a calendar, develop, take orders, connect to a smart phone, etc they’d be even more interested.

Typically these businesses would be small and initially have no call for a server. That means that a cloud based solution like Office 365 would be very appealing, simply because it would give them access to enterprise applications for a small monthly fee. Even just providing an external facing web site via SharePoint Online would be highly appealing I would think because it is simply enough that they could make some changes themselves. Importantly, that would allow them to feel in control.

Even more importantly they could start out quite cheaply with an Office 365 Professional and Small Business plan (P Plan) that would give them what they needed for less than $10 a month (even though I think the Enterprise plans are better). That should be well within their budget.

So, I think that creating a ‘start up’ package around Office 365 that includes, domain registration, Office 365 setup and training for a fixed price would be very appealing would it not? All you would then need to do is email the people you see out on the road who don’t yet appear to have their own business domain. The easiest way to remember their email address is probably to use your smart phone to take a picture of their email address. I’d also be confidently say that you’d be well placed when this business grows to pick up additional work, not to mention the referrals on offer if you did a good job.

The moral here probably is to have a look around and challenge your beliefs, because in many cases they are probably not correct, especially when it comes to the average business and technology.

Microsoft Community Contributor Award

Received an email from Microsoft today:

Congratulations! We’re pleased to inform you that your contributions to Microsoft online technical communities have been recognized with the Microsoft Community Contributor Award.

The Microsoft Community Contributor Award is reserved for participants who have made notable contributions in Microsoft online community forums such as TechNet, MSDN and Answers. The value of these resources is greatly enhanced by participants like you, who voluntarily contribute your time and energy to improve the online community experience for others.

Firstly, I’d like to say to Microsoft for the recognition and secondly I’d like to tell you why I personally do this sort of thing.

Many years ago, over 15 to be exact, when I started my business I was pretty much alone trying to not only solve customers technical issues but also run my business. I can tell you there were plenty of times when I struggled and I mean really struggled.

Perhaps in some ways I thought I could do it all but more so I think I just didn’t know where to turn for help. These days, with easy access to the Internet, most people think that answers are just a search engine away. Yes they are BUT someone out there actually needs to spend the time documenting solutions and sharing their experiences.

I do it because I know the feeling of not being able to find the information and having the feeling that you are all alone in trying to resolve something. However, there are still times when I ask whether it is worth all the effort. A little recognition now and then goes a long way in supporting the people that actually create all the content that others search everyday.

So I do thank Microsoft for the recognition and suggest that if you do find someone out there that has helped you, make contact and let them know that their voluntary work has been worthwhile in at least one case. I have learnt that “community” is a very important concept, even in the digital age.