Tech-ed SBS Preday Sydney

If you want to get up to speed with the latest SBS and EBS information from Microsoft and meet those actually using and testing the product then you really should be attending the SBS Pre-day at Teched Sydney.

Apart from that, for every attendee you also receive a FREE for sale copy of SBS 2008, which you can resell or use yourself. That is over $ 1,000 of value which is MORE than enough to cover the cost of entry into the SBS TechEd preday.

Aside from the free version of SBS 2008 and all the great information you’ll receive you’ll also get to network with the best and brightest SBS talent Australia has to offer. There’ll be MVP’s galore and a few other ‘celebrity’ SBS’ers.

I’ve already signed up, so if you are umming and ahhhing about attending then I can see no reason why you shouldn’t. To register go to:

http://www.microsoft.com.au/teched/pre_days.aspx

and join me in finding out what opportunities SBS 2008 and EBS 2008 will provide.

Countering disinformation

There is plenty of unjustified negative press out there about Windows Vista but the saddest part has been how Microsoft has let these myths perpetuate. Well no more! Take a look at the Mojave Experiment.

The best way to prove what a ‘croc’ most of the anti-Vista propaganda has been is to bring in some people who profess a dislike for Vista (although never having seen it themselves), show them a ‘new’ version of Windows (called Mojave), then tell them they are looking at Vista.

The results speak for themselves.

Romeo Charlie 1

Well, I’ve just finished installing SBS 2008 RC1. Again, it is such a piece of cake I don’t see how anyone is going to make money out of installing the software myself. All you have to do basically is provide a server, domain and login name and everything else is done automatically.

I did however notice that with this version you MUST have at least 4GB of RAM installed to allow the installation to complete. This is a little strange since you don’t really need that amount of RAM to get it running. Because I’m running SBS 2008 RC1 on a Hyper V machine I just allocated 4GB of RAM during the install and then reverted back to 2GB once the installation was complete. Geeze, I love virtualization (as you should know by now).

Apart from the RAM issue the other thing I noticed was that SBS 2008 RC1 wanted to set itself to the highest screen resolution it could. Simple enough to change back after the fact but a bit of a pain during the installation. I had a quick look at Sharepoint and all that looks identical but can’t be 100% sure until I have a more in depth look shortly.

It hasn’t been long between RC0 and RC1 has it now, also factor that SBS 2008 isn’t due for release until November (still 4 months away) and I’ll be interested to see whether any more releases become available. I’m guessing we’ll see RC2 but probably no more. SBS 2008 is going to be the most ready to market version of SBS I reckon we’ve had.

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.

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.

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).

First SBS migration almost complete

I have been testing the SBS 2008 migration process but initially struck some issues during the process. After repeating the process and getting the same results my guess was that it was something to do with ISA 2004 on the source SBS 2003 since I was attempting to migrate SBS 2003 Premium. Don’t ask me why but I reckon that’s what it is.

To remove ISA 2004 out of the loop I decided to attempt the same migration but this time from SBS 2003 Standard. I’ve got to say that it has gone flawlessly.

As you can see from the above screen shot I did have some warnings, but when I looked at these all they were was:

because I was running this on an isolated network on under Hyper V it simply meant that SBS 2008 couldn’t get to the Internet to get some updates. Not a big issue.

As I said before, the whole process so far of attaching the new server to the domain is a snap since it picks up everything from the answer file you create prior to the migration. There is still a little more to do to complete the migration but I am extremely confident that too will be a snap.

I’m documenting Microsoft’s suggested method of companyweb migration after which I’ll also be developing what I reckon is a quick method.

Stay tunes.