John Westworth

If you’re waiting for the first service pack before moving the Exchange 2010 then great news – It’s now available for download

Many customers have already made the move to Exchange 2010 and are saving money and increasing productivity.

Top 5 Reasons to move to Exchange 2010

If you look at the traditional costs for an IT implementation it looks something like this

The costs for a cloud based implementation look like this

If we compare the 2 then we get this

What this tells us is

• The initial cost of a cloud implementation tends to be lower – More money to spend on other IT Projects.
• The costs are more predictable – Easier to go to finance and ask for what you need rather than what you think you’ll need.
• The overall costs tend to be lower over time – More budget to spend on other projects.

But there’s other benefits

• You now have more time to spend on other projects, rather than spending time just keeping systems up and running.
• You can onboard users much more quickly, without worrying about capacity.
• You can deploy much more quickly – Users can be up and running days rather than months which means a much quicker return on your investment.
• Less time spent on planning, deployment and managing the system – it’s handled by someone else.

· Whitepaper : How to protect Exchange with DPM 2010 which goes along with the DPM 2010 datasheet for Exchange

· Whitepaper : How to protect SQL Server with DPM 2010 which goes along with the DPM 2010 datasheet for SQL Server

· Whitepaper : How to protect SharePoint with DPM 2010 which goes along with the DPM 2010 datasheet for SharePoint

Then the Office Migration Planning Manager (OMPM) 2010 is here to help you assess and migrate your documents

OMPM is a tool targeted at IT Pros assisting them to discover and assess compatibility of existing Office documents for migration from the binary document formats (Office 97-2003: .doc, .xls, etc.) to OpenXML formats (Office 2007 and beyond: .docx, .xlsx, etc.). 

Additionally OMPM 2010 adds features to assess macro compatibility with Office 2010 and 64 bit Office compatibility.  The toolkit also contains the Office File Converter (OFC) which enables bulk document conversions from binary to OpenXML formats.

OMPM 2010 Update Highlights:

–      Bulk Macro Compatibility Scanning – incorporates logic from Office Code Compatibility Inspector (OCCI) tool to produce count of potential number of VBA issues due to changes in object model.  A new option in the offscan.ini file enables activation of this scan.

–      Bulk 64-bit compatibility scanning – incorporates logic from OCCI tool to produce count of potential number of 64-bit (declare) VBA issues due use of 64-bit Office.  A new option in the offscan.ini file enables activation of this scan.

–      Pre-defined date filtering for scans – new configuration options are available in the Offscan.ini file to allow exclusion of files based on last accessed or last modified dates.  Files which are skipped can be logged.

–      SQL 2008/SQL 2008 R2 support – Support for SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 has been enabled, remains compatible with SQL 2005.

You can download OMPM 2010 here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=81d208f0-7ace-499c-8975-728c648b8b43

I’m trying to put together a list of words I commonly hear in Sales and IT pitches, and I need your help

I’m looking for words along with their plain English alternatives.

For example

Collaborate –> Work Together

If you’ve got any of your own, then please add them to the comments section.

Thinking of moving to the cloud? Then here’s a few things to think about when choosing a provider.

Can you get your data out as easily as you put it in?

Can you easily mix on-premise, hosted and cloud? Or is it cloud only?

Does the service support all the locations and languages you need?

If the service is consumer based, does it provide you with all the governance, control and security you need?

Is it Browser only? Or does it work across PC, Phone and Browser?

Are you limited to which mobiles you can use?

Is it a one size fits all, or do you have a choice of which capabilities to give to which users?

Is it available Online or Offline?

Do you get upgrades when the service provider says or when you’re ready?

Why use Microsoft for cloud based services? Because you have more choice.

So you’ve decided to cut costs – the easiest way is to stop spending money on software and virtualize everything, right?

Just before you do that let’s take a quick look at where most IT departments currently spend their money.

Oh Oh – Looks like cutting software costs may not help that much.

And

Virtualization without good management is more dangerous than not using virtualization in the first place

Thomas Bittman – Gartner.

So Virtualizing may actually make things worse.

The biggest costs that most IT departments have is actually managing their infrastructure. IE Keeping the lights on.

Some work we did around Infrastructure Optimisation backs for this up. For example, only around 20% of organisations have any way of automating software deployment – The other 80% basically hand crank it out to their users.

So what to do?

1. Use the Spotlight on cost Information – we worked with 160+ companies and identified over 30 best practices that you can implement today to start saving money.
3. Use the MOF and the Infrastructure Planning and Design Guides to start designing the processes and best practices you want to implement.
5. Take a look at the Systems Center Suite and start automating those processes.
7. Use the time you now have available to start doing more strategic projects.
9. Use Hyper-V instead of VMWare and spend the money on something that might just help get you a pay rise. OCS or SharePoint for example

Before I start, I know we’re all under pressure to cut costs.

However, cutting costs doesn’t help with changing the perception of IT from a Cost Center to a strategic asset – in fact, it makes it worse.

If you’re an IT department you’re probably viewed as a Cost Center. If you’re not, then ignore the rest of this post.

Which probably means your budget is either static or declining. And yet you’re still expected to add new servers and services and increase availability and accessibility.

So cutting costs is the answer, right?

Not necessarily – It may be just about using the budget you have better.

Gartner reckon that 70% of an IT departments time and budget is spent keeping the lights on. Really? Gut feel tells me it can be closer to 90%/10%. Either way, it doesn’t leave you with much time or money to look at the stuff that’s going to make you strategic.

Now lets just say we need to cut costs – where do we start?

Software is an easy target. It’s something tangible. We can measure it. So lets just cut our software costs shall we?

Well, lets not. In my next post you’ll find out why I think it could be dangerous move.

Planning an upgrade, migration or consolidation?

Looking to Virtualize?

Want to know what’s in your IT Estate?

The the MAP tool is the tool for you.

It’s got a number of key scenarios that it can help you with :-

• Windows 7 Enterprise
• Windows Server 2008 R2
• Hyper-V

• SQL Server 2008 R2
• PC Security
• Microsoft Office 2010

• Cost Control
• Software Licensing & Asset Management

It’s free.

It’s agentless (it doesn’t install anything on the client or serer)

It’s cross platform. (It works against Linux boxes too)

What are you waiting for? Get it now.

I stumbled across this great set of resources for Office 2010 today – They’re PowerPoint files with embedded training videos. Great for if you’re making the move from Office 2003 to Office 2010.

Access: http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/9/1/091A8CAA-D365-4E6A-852D-F75CDDD5E57C/Training%20Presentation%20-%20Make%20the%20switch%20to%20Access%202010.pptx.

Excel: http://download.microsoft.com/download/B/5/9/B599864F-8D9F-454D-A688-163BB2226727/Training%20Presentation%20-%20Make%20the%20switch%20to%20Excel%202010.pptx.

OneNote: http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/1/0/5109431E-3C87-4DB4-A471-3DE1A5377C17/Training%20Presentation%20-%20Make%20the%20switch%20to%20OneNote%202010.pptx.

Outlook: http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/0/6/206915B1-D825-4A50-A26F-40CB4BE6B7E7/Training%20Presentation%20-%20Make%20the%20switch%20to%20Outlook%202010.pptx.

PowerPoint: http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/3/2/F32D7087-2C7C-48E3-9C7C-66450B2CD581/Training%20Presentation%20-%20Make%20the%20switch%20to%20PowerPoint%202010.pptx.

Word: http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/F/F/6FF3641E-C58D-4E32-9E7C-8135EE35A804/Training%20Presentation%20-%20Make%20the%20switch%20to%20Word%202010.pptx.

Also for Outlook: Tame your Outlook 2010 inbox: http://download.microsoft.com/download/B/E/B/BEB8225F-5EE6-42FE-9417-FE5A75DA785B/Training%20Presentation%20-%20Tame%20Your%20Outlook%20Inbox.pptx.