My last post (and yes, it's been a loooooong time between updates) noted the problem of the device-level encryption support differences in the various models of the iPhone hardware and OS updates. I had started writing an updated post on this, but it got lost in the ether, and I then got to a point where I haven't been doing much updating on this blog, and quite frankly I forgot about it.
That changed yesterday when I implemented a service to auto-tweet blog posts from my various blogs and, not being entirely familiar with how the service worked, it posted the most recent post on each blog that I selected. As a result, it looks like I tweeted about the old post on this topic yesterday, and that tweet got retweeted by several folks, who apparently thought this was new news.
OK, my bad for implementing a solution without fully understanding how it worked. 
So while there is not a *fix* for this issue coming from Apple (according to the information I've been able to uncover), the problem is actually not as prevalent as initially surmised, at least in terms of the numbers of users who will actually be affected.
Here's the issue: In Exchange 2007, there is an option to require users who connect through Exchange ActiveSync to have a device that support device-level encryption. This is a good thing form a security point of view, especially if you have users who will be accessing sensitive e-mail from the corporate Exchange server from their iPhone (I'm ignoring the entire tangent of whether you can really assume that anything in e-mail can be truly secure), having device-level encryption adds another layer of protection on that data should the device get compromised in some way. This setting is a mailbox-level setting and not a server-level setting, meaning that the decision to enable this requirement can be done on an individual level.
The initial concern I heard in the SMB space when this news first came out (and all the facts weren't fully available when I made my initial post) was how this would impact iPhone users connecting to SBS servers. Well, there was good news, as it turns out:
- The issue didn't impact Exchange 2003 at all, and since the vast majority of iPhone users connecting to SBS servers are connecting to SBS 2003, no problem.
- The default settings for Exchange 2007 in SBS 2008 does NOT require device-level encryption for mobile device connections.
So, every one of the customers I had with iPhones and SBS servers were fine. And the vast majority of iPhone and SBS users were also not impacted.
Does that mean that this isn't an issue? No, it doesn't. For companies who have enacted corporate security policies to require device-level encryption for Exchange connectivity, the users who have iPhones will either have to stick with iPhone OS 3.0 (which "faked out" the Exchange server by reporting that device-level encryption was actually in place) , get an iPhone 3Gs with iPhone OS 3.1 which does fully support the device-level encryption standard, or work with the corporate security folks to negotiate an exception for that user/device and have the IT admin change the device security policy for that user's mailbox in Exchange 2007 (which can be done without impacting the security requirements for any other mailboxes on the system).
Hopefully that will clear the air a little from the confusion I inadvertently caused yesterday. And get me back to updating this particular blog on a more regular basis. 
CIO.com broke a story last week about issues relating to Exchange connectivity with the iPhone 3.1 OS update. Essentially, older iPhone models will lose their ability to connect with Exchange 2007 when they install the iPhone OS 3.1 update, the current iPhone models will work fine. According to the Apple KB on this issue, the iPhone 3GS supports device encryption, while the earlier iPhone models do not, and their recommendation is to have the Exchange administrator change the mailbox security policy to stop requiring device encryption.
Right now, there is no good solution other than not updating to iPhone OS 3.1 on older phones if Exchange 2007 (i.e., SBS 2008) is in the mix. While I'm hoping that Apple will do the right thing and figure out how to support device encryption on the older iPhone OS models, the other options of disabling device encryption (*shudder*) or updating the iPhone hardware to the 3GS model (*cough*) aren't necessarily viable.
If you have customers who are running older iPhones against Exchange 2007, please get the word out that they need to hold off on the iPhone OS 3.1 update until there is a better solution for the Exchange connectivity issue.
Over on the official SBS blog is a recent post about why small business owners choose to run Microsoft's Small Business Server. The surprisingly brief post (I was expecting something a little more in-depth, even if it is essentially a marketing piece) does have some good points about how SBS does provide value to small businesses for a reasonable cost. If nothing else, it should be somewhat thought-provoking for those IT Professionals who sell and support SBS for their SMB customers.
At the bottom of the post are links to OEM sites for Dell and HP who are running specials in September to significantly lower the entry cost to get a Small Business Server box into a customer site. I think it's great that both Dell and HP are working wtih MS to address some of the cost concerns that there have been surrounding the SBS 2008 product. On the Dell link (and I can speak more directly to the Dell line as my business is a Dell reseller) there are two servers listed, and with the OEM SBS 2008 Standard included as part of the package, the pricing does look really attractive. I have deployed SBS 2008 on a T300 for a client, and it has worked well.
I do have some concerns about the packages as listed, and since MS has linked directly to that site, there seems to be an implicit endoresement of the configurations listed. That also concerns me. In practice, many of us who have been working with SBS 2008 since before its release have realized that while SBS 2008 will install into a box with 4GB of RAM, the performance of the server is generally horrible until you put at least 6GB of RAM in, and my own personal preference is to put a minimum of 8GB, and that's only if you have very few users. The T100 (the lower priced of the two options on the page) also does not have any fault tolerance for the disks in the server at all in the listed configuration. Sure, you can add RAM to the configuration, and reconfigure the drives, but it adds to the cost and you have to really know what you're wanting to do with the box to know how to configure it. I personally don't like the T100 for an SBS server because it's limited to 2 drives, and I personally like to have a hot spare in my servers (great extra protection for relatively little cost) and have found that SBS 2008 really performs a lot better if the Exchange and Sharepoint databases are on separate spindles from the main OS, which means a pair of mirrored drives, which is also not possible in the T100.
The configuration of the T300 is somewhat better, in that a mirrored drive configuration is present and it has a faster quad-core CPU over the slower dual-core CPU of the T100, but it's still listed with only 4GB (although the T300 can expand up to 24GB whereas the T100 is limited to 8GB max). I like the T300 as an entry-level server, but I'm putting quite a bit more into it for even basic installations to guarantee some reasonable level of performance out of the box.
I'm afraid that this push to the low-cost entry-level SBS server by Dell and HP is ultimately going to lead to the same problems we saw when the same type of promotions were done with SBS 2003. Over the last 6 years, I've run into so many "servers" that were entry-level Dells that did not have the correct hardware configuration to really run the server well, and a lot of unhappy customers as a result. I'm afraid that if someone picks up the T100 SBS configuration listed on the Dell page, they will be: 1. unhappy with the performance of the box; 2. unprotected by backups (the configuration includes an RD1000 drive in the box, but that drive cannot be used by the built-in SBS backup software); and 3. in a dangerous data protection configuration with the lack of fault-tolerance on the drives by default.
I'm afraid that with this continued push to position SBS 2008 as a DIY system (folks, it's not - if you've spent time supporting SBS 2008 for others, you know what I'm talking about) and implied endorsements about the Dell configurations listed that ultimately MS is going to get a huge black eye over this product. I hear from a LOT of IT Professionals how much harder SBS 2008 is to sell as a solution to customers. While I haven't had real trouble selling SBS 2008 into places where it makes sense and has significant value for the customer, I'm also not selling configurations like what Dell has listed on the page. And ultimately I think pushing that kind of configuration is a bad idea.
I still think that SBS 2008 is a good product. But only if it's configured correctly. I am running SBS 2008 in production in my office on 3.5-year-old hardware that falls just below the specs listed for the T100 (save the RAM, I've updated to 8GB there) and it's incredibly sluggish. I have a client that's a 15-employee operation running a T300 with two quad-core 2.5GHz CPUs and 12GB of RAM, and their system is running well for now, but they haven't really started using Sharepoint or e-mail to the degree that they will, so we'll be updating the RAM in that system when they do start ramping up those operations.
But the way the Microsoft blog post is worded is going to drive non-technical people over to the Dell or HP web sites and they'll look and say "dang! I can get an SBS 2008 server for under $1300? where's my credit card?" and order a server that is completely inappropriate for their environment. This is not good for the target market for this product, it's not good for IT consultants in this space, and ultimately I think it's not good for Microsoft. SBS 2008 is NOT a DIY product, and I really wish Microsoft would stop trying to push that message. Instead, push the message that SBS 2008 is a great product, but work with an IT consultant to make sure you have the proper equipment to run SBS 2008 so you have a benefit for deploying the solution instead of a nightmare. Otherwise we will continue to see underpowered hardware making a good OS look bad and undermining a solution that otherwise makes great sense for the market.
Think the "cloud" is the end-all and be-all of computing? It's got a long way to go, baby, and I've had a front-row seat for just how bad things can get. A certain vendor (who will remain nameless so don't bother asking) that we work with through my primary business has had an on-line order processing system that went live a couple of years ago and seriously streamlined not only the ordering process but really enhanced our entire relationship with them. Absolutely godsend, actually. Well, two years into this system, the vendor decided to update their partner portal, and it's been hell ever since. First, the portal was updated and locked me out before I got an e-mail saying that an updated portal was even in the works, much less going live. Second, after getting access to the new portal, the ordering system (which is apparently still running the old code) started glitching and some orders were lost and others couldn't be generated. The time involved in going from quote to order to delivery is now longer than it was before the on-line portal solution was implemented, because I'm having to see if the portal is working for a particular order to know if I can still use the portal (frustratingly, it does work occasionally, meaning I can't just give up on it totally) and then contact the vendor to go through the process manually.
Guess what... people can still write bad code, even if its in the cloud.
Now I'm not pooh-poohing the notion that cloud services are here to stay. I regularly use and even host several cloud services. But I also understand that just because its in the cloud doesn't make it infallible. If someone uses a desktop application and hears that the update to that application has problems, they have the option of not updating until the application is fixed. For cloud-based services, that luxury is gone.
Know what you're getting yourself into and be prepared for the good AND the bad. Life isn't all rosy on premise, but there's not always a silver lining in the cloud, either.
The May 21 episodes of eOnCall feature spam prevention as a topic again, but this time Eriq is joined by Scott Barlow of Reflexion Networks, a hosted spam prevention vendor, to talk about the continuing battle to fight spam and what the industry is doing to provide the best solutions possible. In Thursday's pair of episodes, Eriq and Scott talk about the ways spam filters work to weed out unwanted messages, the benefits and drawbacks of using a spam solution, and the benefits and drawbacks of using a hosted spam solution.
Check out the episodes at 10am and 1pm Central time at the AirTunz Rock station on the 21st, or if you can't catch them "live," you can listen to them over the holiday weekend at the eOnCall web site.
Amy and I will be joining Karl Palachuk on today's SMB Conference Call to talk about Third Tier. The call starts at 9am Pacific time sharp. Register for the call at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/632770144. We hope you'll join us today!
We use and recommend the use of LogMeIn for some of our clients who need the ability to remotely access their workstations while away from the office. True, in some situations that type of remote access tool presents potential security concerns, but in those cases where it makes sense, LogMeIn has been a solid tool. Today I was reminded of one other reason I use it.
It won't come as a shock to anyone who reads my blogs that I'm primarily a Mac user. My main workstation is a Mac Pro (running several Windows "workstations" in Parallels and Fusion). It should also come as no surprise to know that every once in a while, a Mac will have some kind of problem and need a swift kick in the pants. Or at least a timely reboot (and I'm not talking about rebooting when updates come out). It doesn't happen very often, but today was one of those days.
I was testing something for a customer and I lost the video display on my Mac. Completely. Both monitors, gone. Apps were still responding (I could tell, because I tried to switch around within apps and certain keystrokes would generate an alert sound) and I could access the few file shares I have open on the Mac. But I couldn't see a thing, so I was driving blind, literally.
I didn't want to just do the hard reset, because I had a large number of apps open in my main Vista VM. I also had my Windows 7 VM open, as well as a 2008 Terminal Server with a number of apps running. I had a few Mac apps open, but nothing that wouldn't close down successfully with a normal shutdown.
I have LogMeIn installed on the Mac, so I first tried to access the Mac that way, in case it was a video card problem. Nope, when I opened the LogMeIn remote session, the screen was black and nonresponsive there, too.
I used RDP to connect into my Vista workstation, the Windows 7 machine, and the terminal server, and shut each of them down remotely. Then, just as I was about to go push the big power button on the front of the Mac, I saw the Options link in LogMeIn. Sure enough, in there was a button to initiate a restart of the machine, so I clicked it. And the Mac started a normal reboot process and came right back up.
I'm not sure what caused the display to go funky, but I was able to recover fairly easily. And I thought it was a tidbit worth sharing, since I hadn't used that feature before.
A pair of security-related activities happening tomorrow, April 16. Just in time for CPAs across the US to start breathing normally again, there are a pair of webcasts that you may well be interested in. First, the April 2009 edition of the Third Tier Third Thursday webcast focuses on SSL Certificates in SBS 2008. I will be presenting a live demo of how SSL certificates work in SBS 2008 (surprise, it's different from SBS 2003) and discuss the pros and cons of using third-party SSL certs versus the self-generated cert that SBS 2008 provides. Following that, Dana Epp is hosting a security round-table discussion on selling security in the SMB space. Amy Babinchak, Susan Bradley, and Ben Yarbrough join Dana for the round-table discussion.
But if just knowing about those two events wasn't enough, let me entice you a little more. Dana is offering to give away a copy of the SBS 2008 Unleashed book to one person who attends both sessions. If you don't have your very own copy of the book yet, here's one way you could possibly end up with a free copy.
Register for both events as follows:
Third Thursday Webinar: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mvp/meetingICS?id=F2FGNW&role=attend&pw=w%242S%3BM%60Wx&i=i.ics
Selling Security to the SMB Space: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/733132802
See you there tomorrow!
Last Thursday, I posted that the ISA 2006 with SBS 2008 whitepaper had been published by Microsoft. Tonight, the paper will get a very small refresh and be linked from the SBS: MVP and Community Corner at TechNet. There have been a lot of questions in the community about how to configure ISA 2006 to work in front of SBS 2008, and this whitepaper should answer the vast majority of the questions on that topic.
Looking for a copy of SBS 2008 Unleashed in PDF format? You can purchase it directly from the publisher. Unfortunately Sams does not include electronic copies of their books when the actual books are purchased, but we did not have a PDF version of SBS 2003 Unleashed available at all, so this is a definite improvement.
Over the last few months I've been working with Microsoft to publish a whitepaper on how to install and configure ISA 2006 in front of an SBS 2008 network. That whitepaper is finally available for download. If you got ISA 2006 as part of the SBS 2003 Premium Software Assurance make good offer, or if you're looking to acquire and configure ISA 2006 on your own, the document will walk you through the process of installing and configuring ISA 2006 to publish and protect your SBS 2008 network.
There's been a lot of scuttlebutt over the last year or so regarding Microsoft's position with their partner community. Most of that has resulted in a general consensus in the SMB community that Microsoft is trying to cut their partner relationships and go direct to your clients. Several people have blogged their opinions about this, but I'm not going to dispute or confirm any of those other posts. The intelligent human being will take in a wide variety of information and make up their own mind about how they're going to deal with any actions they may see in their own sphere of influence.
But one thing I've found out that many Microsoft partners in the SMB space did not know was that there is a group within Microsoft that is actively trying to hook up with Microsoft partners and help promote their businesses in their local communities. No, this is not part of the SBSC program and the TPAMs that may or may not be helpful, this is an entirely different and independent group - the Local Engagement Team.
There are two public facing sites for this team. The first is the MSLocalBiz site (http://www.mslocalbiz.com) which is aimed at consumers. The other is MSLocalPartner (http://www.mslocalpartner.com) which is aimed at MS partners. The goal of this organization is to connect local partners with other local organizations to help promote Microsoft products to help solve issues faced in the small business community.
For more information about what the Local Engagement Team is all about, listen to eOnCall this Thursday, April 9, at 10am and 1pm Central time at the AirTunZ Rock station. I interview one of the Local Engagement reps, Michael Murphy, about the Local Engagement Team and what they're trying to accomplish with the local community. Each episode is only 15 minutes, so it's not a huge time commitment on your part, and you may find out that the Local Engagement Team could be a big boost to you in your local community. [The show in podcast format will be posted next week, and I'll update this blog with the URLs for the shows if you can't listen during the broadcast on Thursday.]
Listen to the show, then check out the MSLocalPartner and MSLocalBiz sites and see how working with the Local Engagement Team could help your business.
Disclaimer: The Local Engagement Team is sponsoring the eOnCall program and has been since March 1. However, my working relationship with Michael Murphy started well over 6 months ago, and the sponsorship of the program grew out of our efforts to help EON Consulting get more involved in the Denton area. But, by sharing information about the Local Engagement Team with other partners, I'm actually reducing the cut of their budget I could be getting to help grow that business locally, so I'm certainly not gaining anything by sharing this information with the rest of you. :)
This change in our economic climate is generating different reactions from different people, no huge surprise. Over the last few months, I've seen several different approaches from customers, peers, and other contacts. Some have chosen cut back their marketing and advertising spending as a way to save cash flow. Others have started spending more in marketing and advertising to generate more customer leads and referrals. Some have cut staff, others have added sales staff. Some are taking the same approach to business that they have for years, others are looking over their business models and seeing if change makes sense to them.
I'm not here to tell you that there's any right or wrong way to approach your business. What works for me may not work for you, and vice versa. The same tactics that work in a large metropolitan area may not work in a smaller, more rural, closed community. The same approaches that are working well in Texas may fall flat in Michigan.
But one thing is constant - technology is constantly changing. Microsoft released SBS 2008 last year, and in case you haven't figured it out yet, it's not the same as SBS 2003. IT Professionals who make their living supporting customers who run SBS are having to learn the differences in Server 2008 from Server 2003, Exchange 2007 from Exchange 2003, etc., etc., etc. Windows Server 2008 Foundation was announced last week, and while it's based on Server 2008, it's got some key differences that will make it more of a niche solution than an across-the-board solution for many consultants.
So what are you doing to keep up with the changing technology? What are you doing to learn about new solutions or opportunities for your business? One thing I'm fairly certain of is that if you're not open to change, you're going to get left behind at best. So how do you keep up?
My background is in education. I started my career in the higher education arena, and I've always approached every job or business opportunity as an educational opportunity. Either as a way to learn for myself and grow as a person, or as an opportunity to help another learn and grow. In business, it's often referred to as continuing education. Many industries require people holding certain certifications to take a number of continuing education classes each year to maintain their certification. That's not the case in the IT industry, and while I'm not advocating any sort of formal continuing education system for IT service providers, I know that the good ones are always pushing themselves, keeping up with the latest trends, tools, technologies, etc.
Many of us will take the approach of trying to learn things on our own. That's my own primary method for education. I sit down in front of a new tool or a problem or a challenge and I work my way through it until I get to the other side. Others are book learners and gain their perspectives from reading anything and everything about a topic that they can get their hands on. Still others are visual learners and choose to watch others do things to pick up skills and techniques. And still others learn almost by osmosis, by being around others who are well-versed in an area and learn from interactions with them.
As you look to the challenge of growing your business or your personal skill set, let me offer two events that may help you learn in the short term so you can make decisions to help you in the long term. The month of May has two events geared towards helping IT professionals and their organizations grow by offering discussions and presentations on growing your business, learning about new technologies, and interacting with your peers. These are the SMB Nation Spring event in Montclair, New Jersey May 1-3, and the SMB Summit in Dallas, Texas, May 15-17. Both of these events have a number of speakers chosen specifically for their expertise in certain areas that are of interest to the IT Professional community these days. The SMB Nation Spring event is set more as a regional event, but the SMB Summit is intending to draw a national audience. If you're not already considering attending one of these two events in May, I would certainly give it another thought.
Why?
Check out the web sites for both events and see who the speakers are and the topics they are presenting. If there are not multiple sessions that apply to you or your business, I'll be very surprised. Think about the opportunities you will have to interact with the speakers outside of their presentations. Think about the opportunities you'll have to interact with your peers outside of the sessions and event activities. I will be speaking at both events, but that's not the primary reason I'm going to each - I'm looking forward to seeing the other sessions that are being offered; I'm looking forward to interacting with a number of the other speakers; I'm looking forward to the hallway conversations I'll be able to have with the other attendees. I expect to gain a great deal of insight into my own business and other ventures by interacting with the other people who will be at these events.
If your interest is piqued but you're still not sure, check out what other speakers for the SMB Nation event are saying: Harry Brelsford talks about the shift to becoming a trusted advisor in this blog post. Dana Epp of AuthAnvil fame talks about his presentation for the SMB Nation event in this blog post.
Of course, if conferences are not your thing (although if you haven't been to one of these events, you really don't know what you're missing) or if your travel budget won't allow you to attend these events, you still have a number of options open to you for continuing education. Check out the 5W/50 webcasts. Check out Karl Palachuk's SMB Conference Calls. And, of course, I have to mention the Third Thursday webcasts at Third Tier.
Bottom line, there are LOTS of opportunities for you to learn about new technologies, new business opportunities, new ways to market to customers, etc., etc., etc. If you're not taking the opportunity to update (or upgrade) your skills or your business approach, know that someone else out there is taking advantage of that opportunity. What's your plan? How are you going to keep up with, or better yet, stay ahead of your competition?
On April 1 (maybe not the best move), Microsoft introduced Windows Server 2008 Foundation, or at least that's the name of the product on the official product page. Sure, it won't be long before we're referring to it as "Foundation" or "Foundation Server" but I digress. The two important items I want to cover in this post are:
- This product is not an April Fool's joke.
- There is already a great deal of confusion about this product.
The first point is fairly self-explanatory. As to the second, yes, the official pages at Microsoft are a bit vague about the limitations of the product, and you do need to be aware that there are some specific EULA and product limitations for this system. Those details will be getting hashed out over time in cyberspace, and at least initially I don't think it's critical for the small business IT pro to get in a panic about knowing or not knowing what all of the limitations are. It's still going to be a bit before you can actually get the product from the OEMs (one of the restrictions), so you've got time to get the skinny on the details of the limitations. What is important to know up front, I think, is where this product really fits into the grand scheme of small business computing.
One common theme I've already seen hashed out in a number of forums is that Foundation is a direct competitor to Small Business Server and Windows Home Server. It isn't. In fact, it can be used to augment networks where Home Server or Small Business Server are already in place. One place where Microsoft does see a need to be filled is in the micro business space (if I can use that term, referring to the less than 5 user business or home business) where cash flow just doesn't allow for a business to implement Small Business Server. The micro business may not need all of the bells and whistles of SBS (perhaps they've already got hosted e-mail and/or SharePoint somewhere) but they do want or need a small server to handle a specific task, such as a central file server or print server, or even a LOB app server (especially if the app is not SQL based) or a small Terminal Server. While we haven't seen specific pricing on the software that the OEMs will be charging (as of the moment of this post), the idea is to have a small scale server available for a small business at a low price point. And in some cases, it makes sense. If a business is looking to purchase a small server in the $500 range, are they all that interested in purchasing an operating system that costs more than the hardware? Not according to the research that Microsoft has done.
So how can Foundation be used in a small business? Well, let's hit a few of the product specs and limitations up front to give you some background for this discussion.
- Foundation is Windows Server 2008.
- Foundation is limited to a single physical processor. That processor can have as many cores as possible, but Foundation will only be sold on single-processor systems.
- Foundation is limited to a max of 8GB of RAM.
- Foundation is 64-bit only.
- Foundation is limited to a maximum of 15 users.
- Foundation is only available through the major OEMs (Dell, HP, IBM, etc.) and not through the System Builder channel.
- Foundation has no support for virtualization - it cannot be used as a Hyper-V host or guest.
- Foundation can be a Domain Controller or a Member Server.
There are many other items not included in this list, but this gives us enough of a basis to discuss what roles Foundation could play as a solution for your clients. I'm going to limit the scope of the rest of this post using examples where the business has no more than 15 users.
If you already have an SBS server in place at a customer site, but you're needing to add a line of business application that you know isn't going to play well with IIS on the SBS server, Foundation might be a good fit. Since it's Windows Server 2008, it supports IIS (along with the other Server 2008 tools) and can be a member server in an SBS network. If the LOB application requires a SQL back end, it might not be a good fit for Foundation, thanks to the 8GB limit (SQL can be very memory-demanding).
Suppose you need to add a Terminal Server that will only be used by a couple of users in the business, and the applications they will be using on the Terminal Server are not memory-intensive. Foundation may make sense as a solution here. You will still need to purchase Terminal Server CALs and configure Foundation with the Terminal Services roles, but it will work.
Suppose you have a customer that has 4 computers in a peer-to-peer network looking for a server to centralize their shared data. They are happy with their current e-mail situation, and they're working on a tight budget. Foundation might make a good solution for them, as they can use it as a DC to use Active Directory for central authentication and file share security on the server.
These are just a few examples of how Foundation could be used to be a first server in a small organization or to augment services in an existing small network. In the new few weeks as the stories become clearer, I'll post some additional scenarios where Foundation could be used. In addition, I'm preparing for a presentation on Foundation server for the upcoming SMB Summit in Dallas in May.
Bottom line, Foundation can be a valuable addition to the small business IT professional's solutions catalog. In cases where the cost of putting in an additional 2008 server into the network has been financially prohibitive for the smaller customer, Foundation may now make that type of solution more fiscally reasonable. Stay tuned for more information.
This past week, I went through the process to get the SBS 2003 Software Assurance fulfillment for a couple of my customers who are finally needing to activate those SA rights. The process was a little more cumbersome than I had hoped, and I could not find a location that documented the process in a single location. So, to hopefully help someone else who may be needing to get this done, and to make you aware of a couple of hiccups in the process, here's the scoop.
First, you have to place an order for the SBS 2008 media from MS Fulfillment. Unlike many other products where you can download the installation media through the eOpen site, SBS has the installation key printed and attached to the media set, so you have to get a media order placed. This is done through the VLSC Fulfillment line at 800-336-0098, You will need the Open License number and Authorization code to confirm the license, then you will confirm other details of the order. So long as you have the media shipped to the license holder, there is no additional shipping charge. Piece of cake, once you know the right number to call.
Second, you need to call a different group if you are activating SA for SBS 2003 Premium, because that comes with additional media (Server 2003, ISA 2006, Outlook, Sharepoint Designer). The number to call for that fulfillment is 866-326-7110. The first order I called in for had no problems. We provided the License Number and verified the customer details, and the order was placed. The second time I called in I reached an agent who had no idea what I was talking about. After going round and round with the agent, he checked with his supervisor and got a laundry list of things they wanted us to provide to be able to process the order. I opted not to continue down that road (since I didn't when we placed the first order and by all accounts I shouldn't have had any issues). I called in again later hoping to reach a different agent who knew what I was talking about, and when he also had no idea what the SBS 2003 SA Fulfillment entailed, I bailed and will wait to try again later to get someone who is able to figure out what's going on.
I've heard other anecdotal evidence of issues with getting the SBS 2003 Premium Make Good materials, so it's clear that this is not a common process that this group is dealing with. However, if you need to get the SA media for either, hopefully you won't run into the same type of trouble that I am.
UPDATE:
Just to make sure I hadn't got my wires crossed, I called back into the 866-326-7110 number and asked to confirm that the order we placed a couple of days ago had actually shipped. This wasn't a bogus call, as we did not get a shipping confirmation e-mail with the tracking number like we were told. The agent who answered the phone was able to pull up the order and provide the shipping confirmation (they hadn't entered the e-mail address after all, which is why no shipping notification was received). So I know I'm talking to the right people after all. After getting the confirmation, I asked if she could place the smae order for a different customer, and she got the order completed without any issues, just like the first order we placed.
I'm not sure yet what the "magic words" are to get the agents at the second line to look in the right place in the script to get the SBS 2003 Premium SA order done, but I don't have many more of these to do, so I'll wing it should I have any trouble in the future. And if I do figure out the "magic words" I'll post back here.
What kind of customer are you? If you have an interaction with a vendor that doesn't meet your expectations, how do you approach it?
I had two very different interactions with customers today, both involving invoices. I called a customer of ours this morning to check on the status of a support incident he had open, and after discussing the issue, he said "Hey, I've got a question about your last invoice." He brought two items on the invoice to my attention, I acknowledged that a mistake had been made, thanked him for bringing it to my attention, corrected the invoice, and resent it to him. Took all of about 10 minutes to go over the items in question, find the issue, and correct it. Both parties walked away happy.
I also got an e-mail from a new customer who had just received his first invoice from us. In the message, he pointed out how "outrageous" it was for us to have billed him the amount we did. His tone was condescending throughout, and his claims about the time spent working with him differ significantly from what was documented about his support issue.
Personally, I'm in the "honey" camp of the honey/vinegar approach. Having spent 20+ years in support management, I've heard all kinds of complaints (and yes, you get far fewer compliments than complaints) for all kinds of reasons. People who approach me in a calm and collected manner will get my full attention. People who approach me ranting and raving generally get blown off, depending on what the issue is (someone who's in a panic because they're server is down and they're losing business gets more of a pass than the person who is outraged because of a difference of $50 on an invoice).
Don't get me wrong - I am concerned when someone is not satisfied with the services we have provided. I do want to make sure that we are at our best at all times, whether trying to save a dying server or get a printer connected to a workstation. All of our staff have ingrained in them that we maintain a professional attitude at all times. In return, we'd like a little of the same.
I have always advised my staff that in whatever the situation, so long as they follow procedure and document everything they do, I have their back when it comes to a customer complaint. When I can go back to a customer and explain what was done, when it was done, by whom, and why, generally they come to agree with the actions and results. Not always, because you cannot please everyone, but most people can be dealt with logically. If my staff haven't followed procedure or fully documented their actions, however, and I'm right there on the customer's side, again, generally.
I understand frustration. I'm a small business owner in a region with challenging economics. I get stress. I get trying to "do more with less." Really, I do. But I also get that in many situations you don't have to resort to attitude, yelling, screaming, or obscenities to raise a concern with someone. Most of the time you can approach a party with reason and work towards a mutually satisfying solution.
So, if you're wanting to continue working with my organization as a provider of services, check the attitude at the door. Life is too short to deal with rude customers, so we don't.
I've been collecting data and experiences for this post for a little over three months now, so I can speak with some level of certainty on the topic. This is one of those long ones, so either grab some coffee and a comfy chair or bookmark for later review.
I've posted several times over the last couple of years about my experiences with VMWare Fusion and Parallels on my Mac. A quick historical recap: I acquired an Intel-based Mac Mini as soon as they came out and immediately purchased Parallels so that I could run Windows XP and Office 2003 on the system (Fusion wasn't available at the time). This combination worked really well for me for a long time. I was able to use Outlook for my e-mail (Entourage, while a nice e-mail client in its own right, hasn't had the level of Exchange integration that I needed for my business) and Internet Explorer for those sites that forced me to use IE instead of Safari or Firefox. I ran the occasional Windows tool in Parallels as well (GoToMeeting, LogMeIn Rescue, etc.) but as the bulk of work that I do is in e-mail or hosted solutions, I spent about half my time in Outlook and the other half in a Mac-based web browser.
When Fusion became available, I played with it, and the choice of the word "played" is deliberate - I never did any serious work with Fusion because of a couple of issues I ran across that basically made it useless for me. I've become so used to working with the Coherence mode in Parallels, where my Windows and Mac apps present their own application windows seamlessly on my desktop, including the Windows Task Bar across the bottom of my screen just above the Mac Dock, that I insisted on trying to use Unity mode in Fusion, but that either required me to turn off the Windows task bar (not an option since I access tools in the system tray on a regular basis) or to move the task bar to a different area of the screen (yes, I could have moved the Mac dock, too, but the point is I didn't have to do either with Parallels). So, Fusion never got a serious look.
The second factor in my aborted look at Fusion was that I was trying to see if I could get Vista to run well inside Fusion. That's at the point where I started to realize the limitations of the Mac Mini hardware. It just didn't have the horsepower to run Vista in Fusion or Parallels plus the Mac OS.
I also had issues updating to later versions of Parallels on the Mac Mini because of screen display issues in Coherence mode, and since the version of Parallels I was resigned to using to avoid those issues would not run at all on Mac OS 10.5, I really was running on "old" stuff.
Late last year, after updating to Office 2007, XP SP3, and IE 7 in my Parallels virtual machine, the overall performance of the system began to seriously deteriorate. I was waiting on applcations to load data, waiting on screen updates, and my efficiency began to suffer significantly. It was time to do something about it. So, in December, I welcomed my new Mac Pro into the fold. I overpurchased on the hardware, getting an 8-core 2.8GHz sytem with 1.5TB of disk and 10GB of RAM, but I knew I wanted to be able to run multiple virtual machines on the box for testing, including possibly sticking a virtual SBS 2008 on there for a standard platform.
That's when the first law of virtualization really hit home: Virtualization only works well when you've got appropriate hardware underneath. That ultimately was the issue with my Mac Mini. It was a great little machine for virtualizing a fairly basic XP system with Office 2003, but trying to load newer software and OS updates on it pushed the boundaries of what it could do in 2GB of RAM and a dual-core 1.6GHz processor.
Currently, my production PC is running Vista Ultimate under Parallels in Coherence mode (Fusion still doesn't have Unity working the way I wanted, but I did run Vista Ultimate for a week as a production system under Fusion before I just gave up on having the Windows taskbar anywhere on the screen except just above the Dock, somethign that Fusion surprisingly still isn't able to do). I've turned off the Vista Gadgets due to an odd screen artifacting issue in Parallels, but quite frankly I haven't found a Vista gadget worth having present anyway, so it's not a huge loss. I'm running Office 2007, IE8, Chrome, and a couple of support tools quite nicely in this configuration. Speed and performance are very nice, and I have 2 CPUs "dedicated" to that Vista system.
I should note that I'm runnign the 32-bit version of Vista Ultimate. I did load up the 64-bit install of Vista Ultimate under Parallels, but ironically it ran slower than the 32-bit version, so I moved back to 32. Plus I didn't have to fight any printer driver issues that I know I'll have to deal with ultimately.
I am also running Fusion, but in a different way. Currently, I have a Windows 2008 Terminal Server box running in windowed mode under Fusion, and I also have a Windows 7 64-bit box running in a Fusion window as well. One lesson I learned quickly was trying to run more than one virtual machine in Coherence or Unity mode caused great confusion to the operator. Also, Parallels has this annoying habit that when something happens in one of its virtual machines, it brings that machine to the forefront, and if you have multiple virtual machines running, the "alerted" machine jumps to the foreground, no matter what mode its in (windowed or Coherence) and no matter what you were doing in the other VMs. That got to be really annoying, really quickly. I had hoped to have my main production Vista running in Coherence along with another Parallels VM running in windowed mode, but that quickly proved impossible.
Interestingly enough, when I initailly built the 2008 Terminal Server that's now running on my Mac, I had created it as a VM under VMWare Workstation on a 2003 server I have as a test platform. Performance on that platform was pathetic, so I shut down the VM, copied the files from the 2003 server over to my Mac, and loaded up the VM in Fusion. It loaded right up, did a couple of platform conversions, requested a re-registration of the OS with Microsoft, but otherwise ran exactly as it had done under VMWare Workstation, save for being a WHOLE LOT faster. [Note: I ended up rebuilding the box in a new VM on the Mac for unrelated reasons. Had I not inadvertantly nuked something in the config, I'd still be running the same VM that I pulled over from VMWare workstation.]
Bottom line, I have a working system that is doing what I need it to do and more. I have a Vista environment that is very stable and runs very quickly. I have a Leopard environment that is very stable and runs very quickly. I've got a 2008 Terminal Server that runs faster now than it did before, and I'm spending some serious time with Windows 7. I will be testing a load of SBS 2008 on here at some point in the (hopefully) not-too-distant future, and fully recognize that I'll probably have to scale back some of the other stuff that I'm doing on this thing, but as my overall processor utilization is still under 10% across the board, I might not have to scale back too far. And I've learned a couple of good lessons about virtualizing on the Mac. It's certainly doable, and I'd say that you wouldn't even have to go as far as a super-decked-out Mac Pro to do it. My wife's iMac 20" has more than enough horsepower to run all the photo and video stuff she's doing plus running a Windows environment of some sort. And the new Mac Mini should be able to do virtualization nicely, but you'll have to probably go to the full 4GB to make it work. For me, though, Parallels is still the better solution, simply for the way it handles the full-screen integration with the Mac OS. If Fusion would ever figure out how to display the Windows task bar on top of the Dock like Parallels does, I'll be more than happy to give it another go, as in general I feel a bit better about recent developments from VMWare than I do from Parallels. But I'm running and not having any issues, so I'm not complaining.
OK, so no sooner than I get my previous post online, I receive notice that Amazon has released a Kindle app [iTunes link] for the iPhone. So if you want to read SBS 2008 Unleashed in Kindle format on your iPhone, well, now you can!
i've been getting quite a few queries about electronic formats for the SBS 2008 Unleashed book, and I have good news to report. The book is available in a purchasable electronic format!
Kindle format: http://www.amazon.com/Windows-Small-Business-Server-Unleashed/dp/B001QBPME6/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236148900&sr=8-2
PDF format: http://www.informit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=076868692X
Amazon is supposed to have the PDF version available as well, but that format hasn't been showing up. As soon as I get word that Amazon has the PDF version, I'll post an update back here.
I'm working with Sams to see about a hard copy/PDF bundle so that you can get both versions in a single purchase. Again, I'll update here when I have more info.
Over the last 18 months, I've been dealing with a problem with my shoulder that has been getting increasingly worse. In December, I went to see a specialist on the recommendation of an associate of mine. I was completely surprised by the efficiency of the large orthopedic practice that he belongs to. I did not wait past the start of my appointment time, did not wait to see the doctor, did not wait when I was walked down the hall to get X-Rays done, did not wait to speak with the doctor after he reviewed the X-Rays, and did not wait when I was dismissed and checked out and paid the bill. I cannot recall another time that I've had as complete a trip to a medical facility that was that efficient.
Today, I went back to do a follow up discussion after having an MRI done on the same shoulder. I arrived only a couple of minutes before my appointment (thank you, Dallas traffic), but my name was called right on time. The girl who took me back to the exam room was the same girl who took me to the exam room on my first trip over a month ago. I only recognized her (to be perfectly honest) because she reminded me of one of my wife's cousins, who is also training to be in the medical field. Anyway, on our very short trip to the exam room (I was in the first room of the suite), she asked how my shoulder was doing. Now, rationally, I know that when she picked up my chart to come into the lobby to call me back, she reviewed the reason for my visit, and she made a specific point to ask about my chief complaint as I know she does for every patient. There is no reason to believe that she remembered who I was or what my ailment was after a 30-second encounter in a single office visit over a month ago. But the emotional side of me was comforted by the encounter and helped set me at ease, not just about the appointment, but about the entire operation. And that sense of seemingly genuine concern about me as a patient was echoed by all of the office personnel I encountered, from the staff nurses to the surgeon to the scheduling assistant.
The encounter got me thinking not only about the way my staff interact with our customers, but the state of the IT business in general. Did I make special note about this particular encounter because it was so out of the ordinary for what I deal with in my interactions with other vendors on a day to day basis? When I call into a company to get support, am I treated like an inconvenience, or do they at least try to pretend that they care? In most cases, it's the former and not the latter, unfortunately. But it's good to have a reminder about how we really should be treating our customers every now and again to make sure that we're not becoming complacent ourselves in the way we treat those who come to use for assistance.
I was genuinely touched by this very small incident this morning. The act of reviewing my chart and asking after my condition took very little effort on her part, but it had a significant positive impact on my impression of the entire organization. And knowing that she very likely does the exact same thing for every patient she sees doesn't take away from the way it made me feel. That, as I was reminded today, is at the core of what customer service is all about. Thank you very much for the reminder!
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