Andy's Techie Blog

You’ve more than likely heard that Microsoft are ending development of EBS with immediate effect. If you browse to the website you’ll see this

(eventually…I got this and the regular product page randomly on each page load)

There is also an an announcement on the official SBS blog

“New IT Trends Bring Change to Mid-Market Product Line”

This didn’t exactly come as a massive surprise. If you work in the SME market hands up who sold lots of EBS?

When the product was initially announced it sounded like an interesting proposition but I had a few problems making it “fit”

Comparisons to SBS are bound to happen so that’s where I’ll start!

SBS works because it fits really well into a couple of scenarios that met a need for small businesses

New company, first network, first server

Obvious really. New company, buying infrastructure to get started. Decides to do it right from the offset and goes for SBS

Existing company, existing network, first server

A company that’s grown and needs to go from that peer to peer network to their first server

Existing Company, existing network, replacement server

You know the type. They’re using a “beefed up" PC as a central storage area for their files or they have been sold sold a more expensive "big daddy” Windows Server for sharing files and have no other functionality

As a side note Windows Foundation with some hosted services thrown in could easily swap out for SBS depending on the size of the company

So where in comparisons does EBS fit?

That was my problem.

Business that were generally large enough to look at EBS don’t really fit any of the above

New companies generally don’t start out needing to support 50+ users straight away

Existing companies that have grown to that size do so for a reason and they’ve usually made their IT mistakes and got something in that fits well. Usually “big daddy” Windows server but they pay enterprise prices because there isn’t a product specifically for them. Hence the introduction of EBS!

Since most existing companies like this generally have decent enough networks running it’s difficult to justify ripping the whole thing out and starting again.

So the other scenario I see is the businesses reaching the upper limits of SBS

I actually have this exact scenario going on at the moment with one of my clients and have agonised over EBS vs the regular server products

One of the issues I had was with the “Security Server”

The client in question had already made investments in protecting themselves at the gateway with a dedicated hardware firewall so had no need for Forefront Threat Management Gateway and were already covered by a message hygiene solution so no need for the Exchange Edge role so what exactly were they going to use this server for?

If you are doing it the traditional way then it’s a whole physical server you just don’t need. Obviously you could virtualise it but it’s still a running server that you need to provide support for, patch management, etc  (* this is based on my understanding being that you have to roll out ALL the servers to make EBS work. If I’m wrong please correct me)

There is also another point made by Andy Trish (UK SBSC PAL), that I saw on an email discussion tonight I hope Andy won’t mind me quoting him

They were trying to sell to a market that didn’t need the resellers knowledge to install and support
We wanted to sell using our knowledge to a market who we wanted to get rid of their support and use ours.

Andy is spot on here. Companies of this size have grown up enough to usually have some sort of IT function in-house. They may lean on a support company for advice or specific project work but they’ll make their own decisions about infrastructure. They’ll already have a happy system ticking over quite nicely. What benefit will they actually gain by ripping it all out and replacing it EBS. Slightly simplified licensing and Remote Web Workplace? Technically there really isn’t anything in EBS they aren’t already doing

Again I have a client where a similar situation occurs. They run about 30 internal staff and some external staff. They are quite a technology smart company and don’t run SBS as they have been running multiple Windows servers before SBS was actually relevant (I’ve known this company a LONG time!)

They improved the system a server at a time and now have pretty much all the servers in the EBS stack

File and Print, Domain Controller, Exchange, SQL, ISA (at one point, that has gone now though)

While EBS looked like a decent fit here it would be at the expense of ripping it all out and starting from scratch. This obviously makes no sense.

We actually had the same discussion around SBS a while back with them but what benefit would they get from ripping the whole thing out to start again with SBS?

The killer SBS/EBS feature they don’t have natively is Remote Web Workplace. There are other options for this though such an SSL VPN device or TS Gateway. Remote Web Workplace would be great here but they’ve done ok without it so far

Obviously this all my opinion and very specific point of view. In some ways though it’s a brave decision for Microsoft to just cut their losses and continue with the stuff that does make money so maybe we should applaud them for that

If you’ve already purchase EBS though Microsoft will be making an limited time offer (June 30th to December 31th) available to transition onto the regular products. Someone will have to actually perform the transition which will have a cost attached so it’s not entirely free

So as Guy Gregory said in tweet earlier

Farewell Essential Business Server, we hardly knew thee.

As always your own opinion more than welcome via comment below or email!

It’s almost nine pm and I only got home about an hour ago after leaving the house at about six thirty this morning. The reason for such a long day was the TCA conference at the Walkers Stadium in Leicester

I was very kindly invited as a guest of the TCA Chief Executive, Adam Harris. As well as the conference itself this also meant I was invited to a reseller forum being run in conjunction with Comptia

This was a breakfast meeting before the main conference itself so registration was at 07:30…nice and early!

The reseller forum was a roundtable style event with lots of different business from around the UK. Some were managed service providers, some were businesses who concentrate on home users as well as some software developers

We had a set agenda and this lead to some great discussions around some of the business issues that we all face such as vendor relationships and becoming that “trusted advisor” to your clients. As it is when I go to AMITPRO it was great to hear how other people do things and see if I can use their experiences to improve my own business.

The final part of the session focussed around best practices. The idea here was that we all had a minute to suggest an idea that has either made or saved money for us. This could be in the form of using a new technology, a business process or even just a business process or policy. We would then all vote on who we thought had the best idea

It was great to hear what everyone had to say. They were all unique and I came away from the meeting with tons of notes full of ideas I can use myself.

After the forum was the actual TCA conference itself.

The conference was opened by the TCA Chairman, Robert French who then handed over to a series of presentations by the sponsors such as Samsung, Kasaya and Synaxon. Of those, one thing that was interesting was the approach Samsung are taking to try in making their external hard disks stand out from the crowd. One thing is to make the packaging unique. They have done this by making it look more like an entertainment package and including a move to watch

Terminator Salvation is one of the movies available. Others included Angels & Demons and the Michael Jackson film that was released shortly after his death with the drive itself having a custom design. They are also looking at similar opportunities for custom designs (Samsung are a Chelsea sponsor for example so they are launching a blue drive with the club badge on)

It’s great to see someone trying something different in a market that isn’t all that exciting

Next up was one of my favourite presentations of the day

It’s the first time I’ve come across Matthew Poyiadgi, who is Vice President at CompTIA. His enthusiasm really comes across and his presentation was fantastic. One of his opening lines was

“I’ve got 84 slides to get through…..

No, really!”

However, this was no death by PowerPoint and I’ll say hand on heart this was one of the most interesting and inspiring thirty minutes I’ve had the pleasure to sit through in some time.

Matthew talked about the current state, of technology, where we’re going and how as businesses we need to be thinking outside the box for marketing and brand awareness and using mediums such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogging (just to start!) to reach out to customers. I’m not really doing it justice here though so if you get the chance to hear Matthew speak make sure you take it up!

After a spot of lunch and chatting with exhibitors the next session was about the impending launch of the TCA Academy

This is all about bringing together training and certifications under a single umbrella to help set standards in the UK IT industry. This is to help make companies more professional, weed our the “cowboys” and give clients (consumer or business) confidence they are choosing a quality supplier (you know anyone who is Corgi registered shouldn’t endanger your family after fixing your boiler for example!)

After this was the “reseller theatre”

People from four different IT business (including AMITPRO’s very own Richard Tubb) had a “pitch and bitch” session where they talked about challenges and triumphs they have encountered over the last year or so including having a bit of moan (see, pitch vs bitch!) over some things that can be frustrating. The format lent itself well to some audience participation and again there were some great ideas and discussion points thrown around

Next there was a presentation from one of the sponsors, Kingston Technology who were there to talk about their solid state drives. I had a chance to speak to the people on the Kingston stand and they have an interesting product line. One of the options is an SSD upgrade kit. This kit comes with a caddie (internal for desktop, external for laptops) cables and a disc that comes pre-loaded with some disk imaging software (the specific technology is Acronis) to transfer your operating system onto the new drive. Once the transfer is done your left with a regular hard disk to use as you see fit (backups anyone!?). If I were planning on buying an external hard drive I’d seriously consider looking at this as an option. I’d still get an external drive but I’d also get the performance enhancements afforded by an SSD. Kingston had two near identical laptops on their stand with different drives so they could demonstrate the performance enhancements by having “boot races” to see which system came up quickest

There were then a couple of presentations by some of the guys at Hiscox and P & A Finance who are helping provide TCA member benefits (comprehensive insurances and financial advice respectively) followed by a roundup of some of the TCA member benefits and an overview of the direction TCA are going by new Chief Executive, Adam Harris

The final two presentations were very interesting

The first was a “PR masterclass” by Dennis Publishing (well known for PC Pro, Micro Mart, Channel Pro, etc)

I didn’t get the persons name who presented this but it was very entertaining and an insight into how you can use PR, specifically leveraging trade publications to promote your business.

To end the conference there was a chat show style interview with David Atherton

David is famous for starting dabs.com and four years ago selling it to BT for a large sum of cash!

He talked about how he went from selling computers via mail order to becoming one of the leading “e-tailers” in the UK

It was a fascinating insight into how David built the business and took advantage of technology to drive his company forward. As you can imagine there were some great stories to hear and David shared his experiences with us and was very open and honest

It was seven thirty by the time I got back to my car so I’d been there over twelve hours and still had the drive home to contend with. While it was a long day I’m glad I was able to stay for the whole event as it’s been a useful day. I’ve come away with tons and tons of notes and ideas which I’ll sleep on tonight and hopefully do something with tomorrow

I’d just like to thank William Linard of Comptia as I haven’t mentioned him above. He did a great job behind the scenes and even delivered a speech of his own as part of the TCA Academy launch even though he only had five minutes notice! Thanks to everyone at TCA and COMPTIA who organised today (and the sponsors of course!)

It was also really good to catch up with some of the guys I know through the small business specialist community. While conferences are great for meeting new people I also enjoy getting together with the people that I do know to kick ideas around and generally enjoy the experience together as friends and colleagues so thanks to Richard Tubb, Chris Timm, James Harbidge and Rob Franklin (who battled through a terrible cold!)

A little off topic……

On the 20th September I posted this as my Facebook status

Turns out I was right

Some five months later I actually found out what I’d done

Anyone who knows me also knows that playing football is one of my biggest passions and it’s taken a couple of days for it to sink in that I may never actually play again. It’s been hard enough the last five months so adding another six months (minimum) has been hard to take

Of course that’s looking on the negative side of things. Susanne wrote a great post about how putting the correct spin on things can help get anything off to a good start so I’ll enter the rehabilitation with the mindset that I WILL be playing again next season

The geek part of me also needed to know as much as possible about everything to do with this, especially with the length of time it’s taken

So I know more about the internal structures of the knee, MRI scans and what’s involved in the operation itself (don’t click that last one if your squeamish….seriously) than I care to think about!

So fingers crossed I’ll make a full recovery. Thanks to everyone who has commented on Facebook and Twitter

This’ll be me again sometime soon!

I’ve come across Paypal on three occasions in a short space of time which raised a question I wanted opinions on

If someone offers PayPal as a payment option, who should pick up the payment charges?

The first time I got thinking about this is because AMITPRO now offers PayPal as a payment option for our subscriptions

Guy and I figured it was a quick and easy way of providing the ability for members to make credit card payments and if it encouraged just one person to pay quicker i would be worth more than the potential time and effort trying to chase payment later down the line

I then had to pay for two sets of services, both of them gave me the option to pay by cheque or PayPal

One of them swallowed the costs, one of them added the charge on top of what I was paying for

I asked the question on Twitter and got the following responses

@AndyParkes – how we see it is that the PayPal charges covers the wages of the credit control / money chaser person we don’t have to employ!

@AndyParkes depends

 

@AndyParkes if its the only method given – then the seller should.

Sometimes I’ll revisit my favourite collections of applications and utilities to make sure I know what the current features are, see if they can solve any current problems I have, make myself aware of anything new or simply just remind me of something I may have missed before

One of my favourite collections of utilities is the Sysinternals suite (I could write in length about LOTS of the utilities there!)

I revisited an application called Desktops last week and the penny dropped for me in how it could be useful for me having previously ignored it

This functionality isn’t new by any stretch of the imagination and is available natively in “other” operating systems but my point is I figured out how it would be useful for me

The utility creates up to four “virtual desktops” they are completely independent from each other and you run different applications on them.It’s a bit like having four PCs under my desk all running from one keyboard mouse and screen

Because I run two monitors as well I’m basically getting the ability to run eight different applications full screen. More importantly it helps me reduce clutter

There are some apps that I always have open regardless of whatever task I’m actually performing.

On a typical day I could have Outlook open, a couple of browser tabs for our SharePoint site, a couple of tabs for gmail and google reader, tabs for Facebook and Twitter (depening on how productive I’m trying to be)

That’s before I actually do anything, depending on the task I could have a couple of Remote Desktop sessions open, maybe a spreadsheet or word document, maybe a PDF plus additional IE tabs related to the task at hand. You get the idea!

My browser becomes the main area for clutter. I could have 10-15 tabs open and even if run multiple instances the the “inactive” tabs get in the way of the two or three I actually need

Desktops helps me create logical areas for specific tasks.

So now on desktop one I have Outlook open on the left and IE open on the right with various parts of our SharePoint site open in a few tabs

Desktop two will be where I open Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Google Reader, BBC news, etc open

Desktop three and four then become dedicated to specifics tasks

The other advantage is it can help me avoid distractions. I’ve lost count on the amount of times I’ve been doing something, flipping through tabs and then been off on tangent because I’ve seen a new article in Google Reader for example. By separating these things out it can help with focus (well it seems to be doing it for me!)

You can get the utility from here (which is also where I got the images..)

There are a only two options to set

Your hot keys if you want them and whether you want the utility to run on start-up or not

As well as using the hot keys to switch between desktops you can click the tray icon and get a nice preview

I prefer the hot keys myself

It’s not without it’s faults – a couple of times I’ve tried to open something on one of the secondary desktops only for it open on desktop one. I’m not sure if this is the application at fault or the utility but it’s not a big deal

Now I just need another monitor and I’ve have twelve possible desktops!

With everything that’s been going on personally and professionally the last few months the newest version of Office sort of skipped by me

Sure I installed the “alpha” when it was released on one of my machines but I wasn’t using it full time

Yesterday I had to do a rebuild of my main office PC so I took the opportunity to install the Beta

This post isn’t about the shiny new features though, it’s about the different suites you’ll be able to purchase

This time around we get four retail versions (from the Office 2010 engineering blog)

Office Home and Student1	Office Home and Business	Office Professional	Office Professional Academic
Word 2010	Word 2010	Word 2010	Word 2010
Excel 2010	Excel 2010	Excel 2010	Excel 2010
PowerPoint 2010	PowerPoint 2010	PowerPoint 2010	PowerPoint 2010
OneNote 2010	OneNote 2010	OneNote 2010	OneNote 2010
	Outlook 2010	Outlook 2010	Outlook 2010
		Publisher 2010	Publisher 2010
		Access 2010	Access 2010

On first glance I’m really pleased

OneNote for everybody!!!

However on second glance I’m a bit gutted as you’ll notice that once again there is no InfoPath unless you buy Office via licensing (Office Professional Plus for most businesses)

I commented before on how I think a lot of smaller businesses are missing out because InfoPath is inaccessible to them

It’s frustrating when we can sell Small Business Server 2008 with one of the key features being the inclusion of SharePoint and then not being able to create some really great solutions because a key piece of software isn’t as easily available. A quick search found Infopath 2007 box product to be somewhere in between £100-£140. Licensing is obviously different but if you’re going down that route you may as well just get Professional Plus

So it’s left to the SBS team to save us! Here’s my idea,

If you ever release SBS 2008 R2 (and I understand that is IF) can we get some InfoPath licenses added to the Premium CALS? 

I know that is unlikely to happen but a guy can wish right?

I’m not sure I’m being unreasonable or unfair here but I was a bit miffed after a telephone conversation I had this week

My youngest daughter is one at the end of the month so we decided to have a family gathering and naming ceremony all on the same day

The plan was that once the ceremony had finished our friends and family would retire to a local pub/restaurant where we could all get something to eat, chat and generally have a good time. The place we had in mind is some where we go to quite often and we’ve seen people reserve tables for these sort of circumstances

I made the call and explained we may have 30 to 40 people coming so we wanted to give as much notice as possible

The person I spoke to said they needed to speak to their manager and disappeared for a few minutes. When she came back I was told that they can’t make table reservations at a weekend, only during the week

I explained again that we have a lot of people coming and we wouldn’t want to turn up only for the place to be full or have all our guests at various different tables across the restaurant

She told me they have a roped off area that they only open when large parties arrived but she wouldn’t be able to reserve it for us.

I asked what would we do if we turned up and area had already been taken?

Her reply was

“You could call about an hour beforehand to see if we’re busy or not”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

We’re arranging a large group of people to arrive which takes a lot logistically anyway as most people aren’t local to us and they expect us to turn up and hope that they can fit us all in.

What if i called an hour beforehand and they were full? Do i just send everyone home?

I like to be a little bit more organised than that so we won’t be visiting their establishment.

I can’t get my head around why we couldn’t make a reservation and they were willing to throw away custom over it.

Maybe if they were worried about us making reservations and not turning up which would have caused problems for seating other guests I can understand but surely the answer there is to ask for a deposit?

Any other thoughts?

It’s come to light recently that some partners are having their SBSC status change without realising

The reason being that the Sales and Marketing Assessment you have to complete when signing up only lasts for two years. On top of this you don’t receive any E-mails or alerts to let you know.

Microsoft are aware of this and looking into it but in the meantime just do the following to check

Logon to the Microsoft partner portal (this link is for the UK)

Click “View Your Membership Account” and then click “Membership Center”

Select “Competency Summary” from the “Requirements & Assets” menu

Scroll down until you find the Small Business Specialist Community section

You’ll notice at the bottom it’s letting me know that I need to complete the assessment so click on the “Training and Assessment” link

This takes you to the assessment page – click start to begin (make sure you allow pop-ups from the site)

The assessment is shouldn’t be too difficult to complete if you’ve already done it once before. Once you pass you should see this

You can then return to the competency summary to check to see if you are compliant once again – this doesn’t appear to update straight away though (it hadn’t when I’d posted this) so check back later

Ok it’s not quite that bad….but Christmas and New Year were a bit of a blur and even though it’s the Wednesday morning I feel like I’ve been back at the office for weeks!

The year ended with Mrs P getting the operation I mentioned previously so the run up to Christmas was filled with visits to the hospital (which was 25 miles away)

Thankfully the operation went to plan and we’re eagerly awaiting January 18th for the "switch on” (full details on Bryony’s blog here) 

New Year came and went and as usual the break gave me plenty of time to reflect on the previous twelve months

As usual the annual Tubblog yearly review kicked me in the ass and reminded me I’ve still got plenty to learn when it comes to goal setting (go read it….seriously)

So looking back on 2009 there were a couple of things that stood out for me to reflect on

Family – My second daughter Evie was born, Even though it happened in January last year it was still far and away the biggest thing that happened to me last year. I’m immensely proud of both of my girls and can’t wait to see them growing during 2010

Blogging – I finally stopped cross posting here and to my Wordpress.com blog this time last year. I’m glad I made the jump and went self hosted but I do sometimes worry if the blog is relevant, interesting, etc. My output wasn’t as high as I’d have liked (I’m partially blaming Twitter!) but I still enjoy writing here and the blog has created a lot of opportunities for me which I’m very grateful for so I’ll be looking to post more frequently this year

AMITPRO – Myself and Guy Gregory took over the running of Midlands SBS User group. This was something I was very proud to be able to do. Getting involved with the group is one of the best things that has happened during my professional career. I’ve met some great people and have learnt so more from both a technical perspective and a business perspective and look I’m looking forward to seeing where 2010 takes us. Our next meeting is on 12th January if your interested

Economy – You may have heard there were one or two problems as far as the economy was concerned! The timing of the problems were a real kick in the teeth for us. Towards the end of 2008 we made plans to grow the business and made some investments. We took on extra staff, got some more office space, brought a van,etc, etc with the idea to spend 2009 growing the business. With the change in the business landscape we spent most of 2009 learning that we suck at sales and marketing which suddenly become a lot harder as people held onto their cash that bit tighter!

That is oversimplifying some but some of the things we wanted to do in 2009 just didn’t happen because someone moved the goal posts!

The downtime at the end of the year gave me time to think about where I want us to be this time next year and how best to achieve that…that probably means I’ll be tapping you up for opinions and ideas so in the vein of this great post on the Ostrich IT blog, I’m sorry

I’ve hit the ground running this year have got an awful lots of things sorted in these first few days of January which is why this post is late!

Whatever you did I hope Christmas and New Year were great and good luck for 2010!

I just wanted to relay a support call I’ve just dealt with as it really had me stumped. For a while I was concerned there was something really bad happening but now that I’ve gotten to the bottom of it I can breathe easy as it wasn’t actually all that serious

Our client called to say that she was expecting an e-mail from their German contractor and it hadn’t arrived. He’d resent it a couple of times to confirm he’d got the email address, etc correct

I logged onto the server and used Exchange message tracking to see if the e-mail had arrived

The message did arrive at the server as expected

My next port of call was to logon to the PC and check Outlook, sometimes I’ve seen similar cases where a filter has been applied by mistake that means the user has “lost” the message. Unfortunately this drew a blank as well

I used the advanced find feature to display all emails that had been delivered today and I even created a search folder to do the same thing but the message was nowhere to be seen

I logged in via Outlook Web Access to see if the message was visible there as I’ve also seen cases where the message is corrupt and Outlook can’t display the message but OWA seems to do ok with it. Again no luck here

So I checked to see if she hadn’t deleted the message by mistake. The message wasn’t in there but when I used the “Recover Deleted Items” feature in Outlook there is was! I thought this would be a simple matter of clicking the message and pressing restore……unfortunately not

After I clicked restore I expected the message to reappear in the Inbox but after waiting a few minutes, nothing

Confused I went back into the dialog in case I’d selected the wrong message. The message was still available for restore so I clicked it again. Once again the message failed to reappear so I went back in again

One of the columns is “Deleted On”, I noticed that time was only a minute ago

I recovered the item again, noted the time, waited a minute and went back in and lo and behold the deleted on time had changed to the time just after I’d recovered the item

Confused I turned to the server, this particular server uses McAfee GroupShield for checking inbound messages for malware so I trawled through the logs to see if it was picking this up as a dodgy message. I wasn’t holding my breath though as this isn’t how GroupShield works (the message is usually quarantined or a part of it replaced and the user alerted). As expected this was a dead end

I was starting to get a little paranoid now so checked the PC over for malware and my initial checks didn’t turn anything up. I even used SysInternals Process Monitor to track what was going on during the recovery to see if there was an outside process doing something but again this didn’t show anything of use

I fired up Outlook in safe mode but didn’t get very far as the recover items feature is an add-in itself!

I decided to keep my attentions on Outlook and created a new profile for the user. This time I disabled Outlook cache mode and recovered the item again

This time the message reappeared as expected!!

As soon as this happened a huge light bulb came on somewhere in the back of my head

There is a feature in Outlook that will ONLY work when cache mode is enabled

Outlook Junk Filter

I went into the options for this it hit me straight in the face!

This is how the junk filter was configured on the PC

Can you see the problem?

Only allow from safe lists and permanently delete suspect messages!!!

I’m surprised she gets any email at all! But if she only receives messages from a group of people that she always emails then they would be on her safe list

The junk filter checks for messages as soon as they arrive in the inbox, irrespective of whether that is because the message is an incoming e-mail or has just appeared there after being restored

I have no idea why this has changed. It must have only have changed recently because as I said earlier the configuration would surely mean she would notice lots of emails going missing.

Once I turned off the junk mail filter I was able to recover the message ok

Ordinarily when a client doesn’t require the Outlook junk filter because they are getting their spam filtered elsewhere I use the Office ADM files and setup group policy to explicitly disable the Outlook filter (Office 2007 version here) so I need to go and set this up I think!

Minor panic over!