microsoft

HOME LAB RENEWAL - PT 5

Now that my two servers are built, it's time to build the ultimate VM - my daily non-work driver. There's something special about this VM though: This will not do. In fact, it won't do at all. Other than Civilizations, which I've

Home Lab Renewal - Pt 1

About two years ago, I purchased myself a pretty sweet deal on Ebay: Dell RX730xd 2 x 2.5Ghz Xeon Gold 128 GB ECC RAM 28 TB RAW 2 x 1oGB Ethernet and 2x 1GB Ethernet At the time, it was to be may main multi-purpose server for the home:

SharePoint 2013 + PowerPivot/PowerView + Excel Web App

Here’s a funny one for you as identified by my buddy Bryan: What do you get when you cross SharePoint [http://sharepoint.microsoft.com] 2013’s BI Stack (PowerPivot [http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/bi/ff604673.aspx], PowerView, Excel Calc, etc) with the new version of Office Web Apps

SharePoint 2013 Following Sites

Pro-Tip – when you’re setting up your 2013 farm and the ‘follow sites’ features don’t work between web applications…make sure the web app’s app pool account has SPDataAccess rights (that’s one of the new schemas in 2013 in the databases) to the content database in question.

Part 6 - Hyper-V

In Windows 2012, the concept of the private cloud is finally at your fingertips.  Long gone are the half baked, half delivered features of Windows Server that promised ‘virtualization.’  VMWare had Microsoft and the rest of the cloud folks well under control – which explains, at least in part, their very

Tools for 2012

Given that these cloud things all seem to be coming together, I find myself looking at specific scenarios whereby me, myself and my family can live more fruitfully in the cloud.  Here are a few things that I’ve cooked up so far: 1. Google Docs [http://docs.google.com]

2012 - The Year of the Cloud

It may come as no surprise to anyone that I do in fact, heart the cloud.  Having spent the passed few weeks reading the most excellent book ‘The Big Switch’ and generally reveling in my post Proof of Concept week at Microsoft (to be epically blogged about later), I am

More Thoughts on Messaging

So my original impression of iMessage turned out to be incorrect – kind of.  If you have an iPhone, you know by now that iMessage and the SMS app are in fact, built in.  That’s good.  My reaction was based on the fact that I only have an iPad.  So

Making WP7 Gain Faster

WP7 is gaining impressively on the competition.  Microsoft is clearly out for 2nd place in a three way race (Apple, MSFT, Google) for the time being while mopping the floor in the enterprise space with the coming Mango goodness.  However, I find that MSFT has got one thing going for

Where the Cloud Meets the Road

It occurs to me that a lot of gesticulation has been going on about the cloud over the past few quarters: is it good for business, is it secure, will it really reduce costs, etc. ad nauseam.   I myself have pondered these questions, much to the benefit of theoretical mind

The Coming Multi-Cloud

Okay, the name ‘multi-cloud’ probably won’t pass muster with the marketing types, but I am very excited to posit on the near future of what a combined public/private cloud will look like.  It is beyond discussion at this point that the cloud is a fad at this point

SharePoint 2010 and the Site Directory

I’m working with a client right now that has a large SharePoint 2010 deployment (8 web apps, couple hundred site collections (not counting My Sites), a couple thousand sites and about 80,000 users (potential)).  They were in need of a tool to keep site collections and sites categorized

Enterprise Content Management & SP2010 - Ready for the Big Time

It should come as no surprise that I’m a bit of a fan of SharePoint. I’ve practically built my career on the platform and truly enjoy the breadth and depth of solutions that the product offers to enterprises of all sizes. SharePoint has come a VERY long way

What to Expect from Microsoft & BPOS

The previous several days have been quite busy in the cloud collaboration front, in part because the General Services Administration is shopping for a new email system.  The GSA, as detailed by MJF in today’s article [http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/the-federal-cloud-another-microsoft-vs-google-battleground/6933?utm_source=feedburner&utm_

Biggest US cloud deployment - BPOS :)

Was reading this article about the largest BPOS (Live@Edu) rollout.  Then realized it was the largest Cloud Deployment in the country.  Then realized they migrated HALF A MILLION mailboxes from on prem 2003 Exchange to Exchange 2010 in the cloud IN A WEEKEND. Security? Reliability? Scalability?   ….. Check Biggest US

Download details: RDCMan

Just a quick note.  I fell in love today.  Microsoft released a tool that is very similar to its server cousin but better and for client.  It’s called Remote Desktop Connection Manager and it is glorious and it is here: Download details: RDCMan [http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.

User Experience Matters

I didn’t mean for this article to turn into a specific rant, but I failed horribly in that regard.  I was doing some follow up research on my previous post regarding the final two silos and was being constantly reminded about how much productivity is lost in the enterprise

The Final Two Silos

It is interesting to see the Enterprise space, with all the efforts of integration and collaboration, continue to struggle with fundamental technology differences and the lack of willingness to improve. There seem to be two final silos of not just data, but process and infrastructure. The silos are between historically

Abstract: Pivot on This! Excel 2010 x64 Edition and PowerPivot Revolutionize Utilities

How Excel 2010 x64 Can Help an Electric Utility Truly Measure Success Within the walls of the rural electric utility, many situations arise where the need to quickly and accurately depict the current state of the electric grid.  Much like their bigger cousins in urban centers, these data are vital

Abstract: The Challenges of Multi-Tenant Aware CRM Instances

By Derek Martin and Jake Watkins Wherever possible, organizations tend towards centralization of data.  Whether that be from a taxonomy perspective, document management perspective, or a customer data management perspective, these centralizations are critical to information security, awareness, conformity and efficiency.  The need for these commonalities are brought into sharp

Abstract: Collaboration and Integration with SharePoint 2010 in Electric Utilities

The evolution of the modern IT infrastructure in the rural utility space has transformed what is possible in the assessment and understanding of business metrics and objectives.  The key to fully understanding utility and cooperative success, like any other company, lies in the ability to rapidly and accurately articulate the

Visual Studio 2010 Online Templates

I haven’t normally taken a lot of stock for ‘online template’ repositories.  In Office, what promised to be a great feature introduced in the 2007 iteration on Office Online faded into a small collection of meager ‘I could have done that in 5 seconds’ templates and never any fresh

Some Windows Azure Thoughts

I’ve been pondering Windows Azure lately.  I know that a lot of folks are investigating the great potential of the cloud to offer on demand or even throw away computing resources.  Two things come to mind when I consider where this particular technology is going to take us.  I’

The Coming Storm – SharePoint 2010

It comes as no surprise that I’m excited about SP2010.  MOSS 2007 was an amazing product which introduced many great new features.  But like most things Microsoft, it typically takes a version or so to iron out the kinks and get it just right (think Windows Vista to Windows

SharePoint 2010 and Composite Applications

One of my favorite design stories around MOSS was the ability to use the OOB experience to fundamentally enhance a given business process.  In fact, in the seven years I’ve been doing MOSS, I have only found a SINGLE business process that didn’t lend itself almost perfectly to

Follow Up to HealthVault Article

I wrote recently about a new deal in progress with the US Government and Microsoft HealthVault.  It can be found here [http://derekmartin.org/archives/520].  It seems as though MS isn’t sparing any horses and keeping the investment going.  Mary Jo Foley, whom I follow quite closely in

BPOS for Governments

One of the biggest concerns that governments and even some specific industries have with cloud based services is the absence of control.  Physical controls to your data is critical for lots of these guys and the hesitation isn’t unwarranted.  A recent spat of news relating to compromised data (including

Microsoft Health Vault and the Gov?

MS announced today along with the Man that they were going to be in partnership together with HealthVault.  You can read the press announcement here [http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2010pres/02/20100224a.html].  Normally, you wouldn’t find a bigger Microsoft fanboy than myself, but I have to