IT Management - Gilham Consulting Microsoft Notepad

1/18/2010

Forrester Research Posts on Legal Implications of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is the availability of standard IT resources over the internet in a pay-per use model. Initially this is an attractive proposition. However there are many challenges which CIOs will face when running firm critical applications and data over the internet. The most successful CIOs have built an IT governance strategy to avoid the uncontrolled variety of technologies, meta data and business process evolution in their IT landscape. A good governance strategy ultimately makes the implementation of legal compliance requirements from Basel II or SOX much easier. Without searching first for critical data, an orderly approach is much simpler and the CIO won’t be the only one sleeping better.
So long as everything is in your own company or at local infrastructure, IT governance and compliance should be governed centrally from the CIO office. But what happens when a firm’s cloud computing is effectively deployed? This technology paradigm has its largest cost savings when applications and business processes have extremely high and uneven resource requirements. In most cases these are automatically firm critical applications and confidential data. The responsibility of a CIO then moves from pursuing operational excellence in the datacenter, to the greater responsibility of developing and managing intelligent sourcing concepts in the cloud and bringing its consequences under control. The large cloud computing vendors are nearly without exception international firms and a core basis for their cost-effective deployment lies in their global sourcing strategies. IT governance and legal compliance must also be developed to cloud governance and global provider governance.
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Read the rest @> The Forrester Blog For Vendor Strategy Professionals

Posted at 8:51 AM by John Gilham | Category: IT Management | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

1/8/2010

A CIO Check List for eDiscovery and Litigation

Today’s CIO encounters many challenges handling security and regulatory mandates that extend far beyond the once-simple duties of maintaining firewalls. CIOs are today’s corporate first responders to spot insider theft or illegal activity, recover lost or deleted data, and to ameliorate poor document retention.
Even before 2008's financial meltdown, courts realized that the amount of electronic data in litigation was growing exponentially. As a result, new Federal guidelines were introduced in 2006 http://www.cioupdate.com/article.php/3646801 to address this growing problem. At the core of any litigation today is the concept of understanding electronic data―where it is located, how it is managed, and how it can be accessed.
In the past, the litigation team consisted of inside and outside counsel, the business unit manager and outside suppliers. The legal responsibility for the management of a company’s data in most businesses falls squarely on the shoulders of the CIO. Thus, if a company is ever entrenched in a legal battle, the CIO needs to be part of the team and must be prepared to take the stand. Because of this person’s unique ability to discuss the internal systems that generate the data in question, a CIO will almost inevitably make any trial attorney’s short list.
In preparing to testify, a CIO must create a plan of action to address the data involved in the litigation. The CIO must be able to speak to the company’s internal IT functions as well as the complexity of the company’s data architecture. A CIO must also be prepared to defend the company’s work practices and policies in anticipation of, not just in response to, litigation. Creating a litigation response team that prepares these responses and policies ahead of time is critical.
The following are sample issues and questions that a CIO may need to address on the stand and, as part of the litigation response team, should be prepared to tackle:
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Read the rest @> CIOs on Trial: A Check List for eDiscovery and Litigation — CIOUpdate.com

Posted at 6:49 PM by John Gilham | Category: IT Management | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

12/4/2009

Microsoft Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide Series

The Infrastructure Planning and Design guide series gives you architectural guidance for Microsoft infrastructure products. The IPD guides help clarify and streamline design processes for Microsoft infrastructure technologies, with each guide addressing a unique infrastructure technology or scenario.
Learn more.

IPD guides provide:

Concise planning guidance to design an infrastructure for Microsoft technologies
The critical decisions to be addressed and the available options
A means to validate design decisions with the business to ensure that the solution meets the requirements of both business and infrastructure stakeholders

Updated! Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) Guide for Selecting the Right Virtualization Technology
Updated to include coverage of Windows Server 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), this guide walks the reader through the process of selecting the right virtualization technology for each workload—in five steps or fewer.
New! Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) Guide for Windows Server 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services
Streamline your planning and design process for implementing the Remote Desktop Services infrastructure by using the simple nine-step process presented in this guide. Use this guide to save time and clarify your design and planning process.
New Beta! Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) Guide for Microsoft Forefront Unified Access Gateway
Follow the simple, three-step process in this guide to successfully design Microsoft Forefront Unified Access Gateway infrastructure.
New! Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) Guide for DirectAccess
This guide provides actionable guidance for designing a DirectAccess infrastructure. The guide’s easy-to-follow, four-step process gives a straightforward explanation of the infrastructure required for clients to be connected from the Internet to resources on the corporate network, whether or not the organization has begun deploying IPv6.

Here is a list of all of them:

IPD One-click Downloads

Download the entire IPD series
Download the IPD series intro

IPD Guides for Virtualization

Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization
App-V
Windows Server 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services
Terminal Services
Windows Server Virtualization*
Selecting the Right Virtualization Technology*

IPD Guides for Windows Server

Windows Server Virtualization*
Windows Deployment Services*
Windows Server 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services
Terminal Services
Internet Information Services*
Print Services*
File Services*
Active Directory Domain Services*
DirectAccess

IPD Guides for Security

Forefront Unified Access Gateway (Beta) (Live ID Required)

*updated for Windows Server 2008 R2

IPD Guides for System Center

System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 SP1
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and R2 (updated)
System Center Operations Manager 2007 and R2 (updated)
System Center Configuration Manager 2007

IPD Guides for Optimized Desktop Scenarios

Windows Optimized Desktop Scenarios
DirectAccess

IPD Guides for SQL Server

SQL Server 2008

IPD Guides for Microsoft Online Services

SharePoint Online: Evaluating Software-plus-Services
Exchange Online: Evaluating Software-plus-Services

IPD Guides for Network Access Protection

Selecting the Right NAP Architecture

Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide Series

Posted at 11:03 PM by John Gilham | Category: IT Management | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

11/25/2009

The IT Complexity Crisis: Danger and Opportunity

Roger's new white paper, The IT Complexity Crisis: Danger and Opportunity is now available.

The world economy is losing over six trillion USD per year to IT failures and the problem is getting worse. This 22 page white paper analyzes the scope of the problem, diagnoses the cause of the problem, and describes a cure to the problem. And while the cost of ignoring this problem is frighteningly high, the opportunities that can be realized by addressing this problem are extremely compelling.

The benefits to understanding the causes and cures for out-of-control complexity can have a transformative impact on every sector of our society, from government to private to not-for-profit.

Downloading the White Paper
You can download the white paper, download an accompanying spreadsheet for analyzing architectural complexity, and view various blogs that have discussed this white paper here.

Read the complete article @> Simple Architectures for Complex Enterprises: The IT Complexity Crisis: Danger and Opportunity

Posted at 8:43 AM by John Gilham | Category: IT Management | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

10/12/2009

The Hidden Trap in BI and Analytics

While I mostly post on Microsoft technical topics and ways to help leverage Microsoft products to their full potential…I thought this Gartner article was a great warning for those organizations embarking on BI initiative. BI, while a great tool, does not take future markets or innovations in to account

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The hidden trap with business intelligence occurs when you apply continuous improvement techniques to analytics issues. When this happens, executives based their business model evolution on resolving operational issues in the past. They look for current patterns of business activity and strengthen those patterns. They create the future out of strengthening the past.
This is the essence of driving forward by looking in the rearview mirror.
Your future business model cannot be a corrected version of your current approach. That leads to stagnation and creating core rigidities that will eventually bring the company down. Donald Sully in his bookThe Upside of Turbulencepoints out that the idea of a company lifecycle is all-wrong. Opportunities have a lifecycle and companies can avoid having a lifecycle by moving from opportunity to opportunity rather than refining the current opportunity they are in.
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Posted at 12:09 PM by John Gilham | Category: IT Management | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

9/30/2009

End User Password Reset in Microsoft Forefront Identity Manager (FIM)

Forefront Identity Management provides a cool feature which adds the “Reset Password” to the Windows logon screen. Save money, don’t waste money on support of users passwords. Anthony Ho posts more in his FIM SSPR Part 1:

Nowadays, for most companies, if an employee forgets his password, very likely he would need to call help desk to reset the password for him. FIM helps enterprise reduce help desk cost by providing "Self-Service Password Reset" (SSPR).
Scenario

After deployment, employee will be prompted to answer a list of questions (e.g. "What's the name of your first pet") defined by system admin upon logging on to the machine.
After a nice long Christmas, he goes back to work and has forgotten his password.
He will be stuck at the logon screen and notice there is a new "Reset Password" link.
Upon clicking on the link, he will be prompted for a list of questions he previously registered with in step (1).
If he answers the questions correctly, he will be prompted to input his new password.
He submits his new password (which has to be complied with the corporate policy).
He can then logon to his machine with the new password and continue to work.

Screenshots

Registration
Welcome Screen

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Read the rest @> Anthony Ho : Forefront Identity Manager - Credential Management, Part 1

Posted at 10:11 PM by John Gilham | Category: IT Management | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

9/15/2009

Why ERP Is Still So Hard - CIO.com - Business Technology Leadership

By Thomas Wailgum

Wed, September 09, 2009 — CIO — Steve Berg knows what intense pain feels like: The man has been Tasered, in fact—not because he ran afoul of the law, but as VP of IT at Taser International he's partaken in a corporate rite of passage. "It's the worst five seconds of your life," he says. "You cannot move."
Like other IT execs, he also knows pain and suffering as it relates to traditional ERP deployments—from vendor selection and licensing negotiations, to implementation and change management, followed by upgrades and integration. And as he and many other IT leaders have come to know, ERP-induced pain can last much, much longer than a mere five seconds.
Taser's attempt to wrap an ERP package around its corporate processes sounds eerily similar to most companies' experiences. The "before" picture: A mélange of disparate systems that didn't talk to each other and a good deal of "paper pushing" between the systems, Berg says. "When you don't have a centrally managed technology environment," he says, "things can get overly complicated very quickly."
Executives had sought a unified system so that Taser "could do a complete workflow throughout the company without having to run redundant systems that don't communicate," he says. That was 2004. Microsoft's Dynamics AX was eventually selected. And again, like many companies, Taser decided to customize its chosen ERP package to meet the business processes that it already followed. "So rather than take an ERP system—which supposedly out-of-the-box has, say, an accounts receivable [process], with best practices that are inherent to the system—we decided...to modify AX to work like this other application because users were comfortable with it," he says, "and they didn't want to change."
But a funny thing happened on the next upgrade: Naturally, all of those customizations done to the initial AX rollout—which were "plentiful," Berg says—were going to have to be upgraded in 2009. Taser decided it didn't want to go down that road again. This time, Taser ERP users would change, demonstrating that vendor-purported "flexibility" has been both ERP's blessing and its curse.
"We're going to get rid of these customizations and go back to what the [Microsoft] AX best practices and recommendations out of the box," Berg says. "If we're going to be able to grow the company—we're at $100 million now and if we want to be a half-billion company in four years' time—the current processes are not allowing us to get to that point."
The upgrade took longer than expected: Testing and training issues, as well as certain customizations that were unavoidable, complicated progress along the way, Berg reports. Executive sponsorship and interest never waivered, though. "It seemed like all eyes were on this upgrade and all eyes were on IT to make sure nothing could go wrong," he says. "Everybody understood the long-term benefits, but there will always be some teething pain at the beginning. We went live in May [2009] and now we're in July, and things are running smoothly. But May and June were pretty tough."
Taser's tale probably seems commonplace to IT vets. But the fact that Taser's story is so common, so expected, so universal, after nearly 40 years of all things ERP, makes it all the more significant.
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Read the rest @> Why ERP Is Still So Hard - CIO.com - Business Technology Leadership

Posted at 4:48 PM by John Gilham | Category: IT Management | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

9/7/2009

Why Microsoft Office VBA Still Makes Sense

John Durant posts a great introduction to VBA use in organization.

Why VBA Still Makes Sense

Not infrequently I am asked, “So, should I use VBA? Is it going to be around in Office 2010? Is it supported? Should I migrate away from VBA now? Can I count on this technology?” (Here I go with a response!)
These are fair questions, because customers need to know that the software systems they employ are ones they can count on. There’s no question that the IT landscape in terms of teams, tools, software, networks, and so forth have changed dramatically since 1993, when VBA, or Visual Basic for Applications, made its way into Excel. But, VBA still has a place in this world. It still makes sense, and I’ll explain why.
First, here are some answers: 1) VBA is included in Office 2010 much as it was in Office 2007. 2) It is indeed supported 3) You should continue to use VBA where it fits the needs of our business and migrate only if the need arises.
Let me elaborate on #3 a little more, because it is the locus of most questions and issues.
In contrast to 1993, business productivity solution developers on the Microsoft Office platform have more options in terms of what they use to create, build, deploy, and maintain solutions. For example, many developers now target the .NET Framework, and they are accustomed to using VB.NET, C#, or another .NET-compatible language. Many of these developers use Visual Studio .NET, and they are building a wide variety of solutions that integrate Web, databases, middleware, and client applications. More importantly, the user experience is quite different from 1993. Now, users are working in a highly collaborative, real-time sharing, online/offline, mobile, global world. They are populating documents with data from a wide variety of sources, and they are re-purposing the documents and data in very creative ways.
In 1993, users worked mostly in a monovalent way. Work was done in an exclusive application that didn’t have the broad reach into databases and Web sites like today. Importing CSV files was the primary way of ‘reaching’ into other data. Sharing consisted of saving a spreadsheet up to a file share. Customizing the application was primarily the task of users. Most IT departments had other things on their mind than tinkering with Office customizations. VBA gained huge popularity because of its ability to allow a non-greenscreen programmer to customize her or his application experience. For example, a user could write a VBA ‘script’ or macro that would automate repetitive tasks and save a ton of time. Over the years, many hundreds of millions of documents have been imbued with this kind of code and saved users untold numbers of hours.
The good news: Even though the user context has changed a lot since 1993, 1997 and beyond, using VBA can still help users save time and effort by automating tasks and customizing their Microsoft Office experience. And, as the application features have evolved to adapt to new user needs has also evolved and grown. Gladly, VBA has remained in step with these evolutionary changes. For example: a great little routine I wrote a long time ago is some VBA that I hooked up to a custom button in Outlook. It allows me, with the click of a button, to save off the attachments for any number of selected emails. The code loops through all selected emails, saves the attachments to a central location I have designated with some logic about how they are stored there so I can sort and find them easily. It then optionally deletes the selected emails. It’s a great little routine that saves me lots of time.
So, what’s the VBA authoring experience like? What are the advantages?
1. You can record macros in some of the applications. So, if there is a task you do over and over, just start the macro recorder and the Office application will communicate with the VBA environment for you and write the code for you. You can then re-run this macro any time to run the steps automatically.

2. OK—recording macros is great, but it’s not always enough. And, there are some applications that, while not endowed with full macro-recording capability, still allow you to write the code yourself. VBA really sets itself apart by having such a rich set of built-in tools. First, you have a rich Visual Basic Editor (VBE).

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Read the rest @> John R. Durant's WebLog : Why VBA Still Makes Sense

Posted at 10:43 PM by John Gilham | Category: IT Management | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

8/30/2009

The Class of 2013 Work Expectations

Brain Goth posted a great article reflecting on Mr. Tapscotts book. IT at companies will need to evolve to take advantage of the new technology savvy workforce. I envision quarterly LOB and workstation platforms will become more standard then the existing 2-3 lifecycle typically seen in most enterprises today.

I just ready Grown Up Digital by Don Tapscott and found a few interesting facts about the generation of people who have grown up with technology (Internet, SMS, etc.) and can’t imagine life without it. There are eight things that this generation expects in life and work:

Freedom to work when and where they choose
Customization of the products they buy
Companies need to be open and honest, because hoaxes will be quickly exposed
Companies must show integrity, but honest mistakes are understood
They will collaborate on their work much more than they will work independently
Similar to working when and where they choose, they will be entertained when and where they want, including at work
Communicating, finding answers, and making decisions need to happen quickly
Innovation for new and better products and technologies will continue

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Read the rest of the article @> Brian Groth's Life at Microsoft : Grown Up Digital

Posted at 11:38 PM by John Gilham | Category: IT Management | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

7/15/2009

Microsoft vs. Google: Office Web Will Kill Google Docs - Business Center - PC World

PC World discusses Microsoft’s web based Office products.

As Google positions itself for a future of web-based operating systems and applications, a new reality is about to intervene: Microsoft Office 2010, with both web and stand-alone versions, will kill Google Docs. Long live, Office Web!
Maybe Google will be able to rescue something from its Docs misadventure, but it better do something quick. Microsoft says it can solve big customers' big complaint about Google Docs and will do so at a price Google understands: Free.
Here's the gripe: Corporate IT doesn't think Google Docs are a secure place for important information. Microsoft will deal with this by offering something Google doesn't, the ability to host Office Web on the customer's own servers.
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Microsoft vs. Google: Office Web Will Kill Google Docs - Business Center - PC World

Posted at 11:43 PM by John Gilham | Category: IT Management | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

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