Tuesday, April 24th, 2012
I found out today via some MVP buddies, that Microsoft have released a free 25GB upgrade for users of SkyDrive. You can find out more about it here.
I’ve used SkyDrive in the past but have more recently moved everything over to TrendMicro SafeSync for Business which suits me just fine. I did that because I could not get more than the 7GB with SkyDrive and with Trend I could purchase as much as I needed. I’m currently using around 14GB which I sync across a number of computers. One of the new features of SkyDrive is integration with iPad’s – this is a feature I’m keen to trial myself.
So today I got my free upgrade to 25GB. I suggest you get yours and start to play with it some more. Windows 8 promises to use SkyDrive even more than Win7 did, so I’m keen to start playing with it myself.
Tags: Cloud Computing, Microsoft, SkyDrive, Software I use, Windows 8
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Saturday, April 21st, 2012
Fellow SBS MVP Tim Barrett has a good post here about how Microsoft believe that 58% of our SMB clients want to move to the cloud as it will make them more competitive. He goes on to say that many clients are moving to the cloud simply so they won’t get left behind. Personally I think that there are much better things that customers can do to make themselves more competitive than to simply move to the cloud. I mean, the cloud is there to service their business needs for IT. When was the last time that JUST investing in your IT systems alone made you more competitive? Surely there are other things that clients can do aside from moving to the cloud to make them more competitive? A client of ours was a world class Rally car company… would moving to the cloud alone make them more competitive?
Be careful people – statistics can be made to say anything you want them to say. I’m not saying DON’T move to the cloud. I’m saying (as I have said all along) is to evaluate ALL your business requirements including Cloud solutions, and if it works in the cloud for your business model and I’m not just talking about costs here, I’m talking about the entire business risk analysis, then use the cloud. If upon reflection of your business options, the cloud poses more risk for you than return, then don’t use the cloud. But at a very minimum, at least DO A RISK ANALYSIS before deciding to move that business process (email or whatever) to the cloud is the best thing for you.
Tags: Cloud Computing, Microsoft
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Wednesday, April 11th, 2012
Microsoft have made a few revisions to the licenses provided under the TechNet subscription over the past few years, and have just indicated they will make yet another change which reduces your licenses to 3 per OS and application. Ed Bott reports here about the changes being made. They say that they’ve done this in order to “protect your value in the subscription”. Apparently people are pirating the keys which is of course totally not cool at all. I’ve got to wonder though, how Microsoft can protect the value of the subscription when they reduce the benefits without reducing the price. It sounds kind of contradictory doesn’t it? As a technet subscriber, I actually rely on the number of licenses I get so that I can do testing and playing with things. This is going to hamper my ability to do such testing in future and will actually mean I won’t be able to be as effective as I have in the past. I’m pushed to see how this is helping me in my desire to support Microsoft.
Sometimes I wonder where Microsoft get these ideas, that they are helping protect our investment then the continue to reduce the benefits they give us. <shakes head in disbelief>
Tags: Microsoft
Posted in Blog | 1 Comment »
Sunday, October 2nd, 2011
Wow… It’s that time of the year again when Microsoft announce the MVP awards. I just received email from them indicating that I’ve been nominated for another year of service to the community. Thank you. Below is what Steve Ballmer says of the MVP community. In particular the thing I value the most is being an independent voice to Microsoft of the views of the community. In that respect I’ve always tried to “beat them up” when it’s needed and at the same time, give them positive feedback when they’ve done well.
As the independent voice of users worldwide, your influence on technical communities is felt in many ways—enhancing people’s lives and contributing to our industry’s success. We’re deeply grateful to you for sharing your feedback, comments, answers, and expertise with technical communities. In recognition of your commitment, Microsoft is pleased to honor you with the Most Valuable Professional Award. Thank you for empowering the community with your outstanding leadership!
Steven A. Ballmer
Chief Executive Officer
Microsoft Corporation
Tags: Community, Microsoft, MVP Program, Personal
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Friday, September 30th, 2011
Yes – it’s Friday and here’s an interesting spoof video that Microsoft have done that seriously does show what Gmail do with your mail… quite scary for most that don’t realise what is going on.
Tags: Cloud Computing, Humour, Microsoft, Office 365
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Friday, September 23rd, 2011
Ok – this is a cool send up video from Microsoft relating to Cloud Technology, but could easily also be of your average SMB IT reseller out there (not the SMB IT Professionals though). You know – the guy operating out of the boot of his car, offering the lowest cost for services that barely exist… yeah – those guys.
Anyway – take a look and have a laugh
Tags: Cloud Computing, Microsoft, Virtualisation
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Tuesday, September 13th, 2011
I was running low on disk space on my desktop today and was searching for things I could move or delete just to get me out of a trouble for the rest of the day. I found that Windows automatically created this as part of my power settings even though I don’t use Hibernate. Some further digging found this Microsoft KB article that showed me how to disable it.
I ran the fix to disable it and the hiberfil.sys file was gone. Love it Microsoft – nice and simple for sure.
Tags: Microsoft, Windows 7
Posted in FAQs | 1 Comment »
Saturday, September 10th, 2011
Yesterday, Microsoft suffered a global outage of not only Office 365, but also other services such as Hotmail and SkyDrive. This outage went on for around 3 hours during which users with their applications and data stored in the cloud could not access it at all. During the outage, Microsoft continued to relay information via their Office365 twitter account and seemed to suggest that the issue was linked to DNS problems. The resolved the issue and it then took time for things to sort themselves out as many DNS servers cache the records for varying periods of time (despite the fact that they are supposed to listen to the values the record holder puts in place).
What is concerning to me is that so far, I’ve not seen any further official explanation of how the problem occurred, and what they are doing to prevent it happening again. It makes me a wonder why there is no official statement from them as yet. Were they hacked? Were they the victim of a Denial of Service attack? Was it some user error that took them off the air for so long? Why is there nothing forthcoming from Microsoft on the topic?
Make no mistake, the cloud is here to stay, but that does not mean we should all move to the cloud without due diligence and without questioning if it’s right for your business. An outage like yesterdays could cause a massive loss in productivity for any business – the fact that it occurred mostly outside business hours in the USA was likely a blessing for Microsoft. The only problem was that it was still business hours in other parts of the world and people were inconvenienced. As we look to move our business more to the cloud, we want to know that we won’t be without access to our data and applications for long periods of time. In committing to the cloud, we are also committing to putting our data and applications in the hands of someone we don’t have a direct relationship with. We know that in the small business space, having a direct relationship with the customer is paramount.
Having said all this – had an issue such as this (whatever the cause) happened to a smaller cloud provider, would the resolution be so swift or would it take longer? If it was in fact some DOS or hack of the DNS around Microsoft’s assets, then the other side of the coin is that is it safer to be with a smaller cloud provider that is not as high profile and therefore hackers are not so likely to try to take them down? Many questions for sure – and all points to be considered in your search for a cloud solutions for your business.
I believe Microsoft owe their users and resellers a clear explanation of what went wrong and what they are doing to ensure it won’t happen again. They need to be transparent to their users to ensure that the users confidence is maintained.
Tags: Cloud Computing, Disaster Recovery, Microsoft, Office 365
Posted in Blog | 4 Comments »
Thursday, August 25th, 2011
Wow – this just in that Steve Jobs has resigned as Apples CEO. No it’s not April 1st, it is in fact real – either that or Yahoo are playing tricks on us.
I wonder just how much an impact this will really make on Apple though. Thinking back to when Bill Gates announced he was stepping down from his CEO role @ Microsoft, it was a challenging time for sure. Some might say that when Bill did that, that Microsoft really become “just another software company” and some have suggested that Bill’s departure has left Microsoft wandering on it’s path for Windows everywhere.
One can only wonder if the same might happen with Apple. Without Jobs who was seen as the visionary that resurrected Apple to what it is today, will Apple really be the same in 5 years time? With the launch of the iPhone 5 coming soon, and the iPad 3 and rumours of new iMac about to be released, it’s certainly a good point for Jobs to stand down. At least the sales of those new toys won’t tank due to the new leader and the new leader will get a few months to really settle into the job before having the focus of the world turned upon him.
Good luck Mr Jobs – I hope that retirement helps your help recover.
Tags: Apple, Microsoft
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Thursday, August 25th, 2011
Wow – this just in that Steve Jobs has resigned as Apples CEO. No it’s not April 1st, it is in fact real – either that or Yahoo are playing tricks on us.
I wonder just how much an impact this will really make on Apple though. Thinking back to when Bill Gates announced he was stepping down from his CEO role @ Microsoft, it was a challenging time for sure. Some might say that when Bill did that, that Microsoft really become “just another software company” and some have suggested that Bill’s departure has left Microsoft wandering on it’s path for Windows everywhere.
One can only wonder if the same might happen with Apple. Without Jobs who was seen as the visionary that resurrected Apple to what it is today, will Apple really be the same in 5 years time? With the launch of the iPhone 5 coming soon, and the iPad 3 and rumours of new iMac about to be released, it’s certainly a good point for Jobs to stand down. At least the sales of those new toys won’t tank due to the new leader and the new leader will get a few months to really settle into the job before having the focus of the world turned upon him.
Good luck Mr Jobs – I hope that retirement helps your help recover.
Tags: Apple, Microsoft
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