Latest Gmail Outage Raises Concerns for Small Business

Sometimes, your greatest assets can become costly liabilities. Google's remarkable success and rapid growth over the past few years may have set the bar too high for customer expectations of their applications, particularly Gmail.

A recent outage on the popular email server, which is in a SAAS format (Software as a Service), caused thousands of headaches when users went an entire day without functional Gmail. Google's credibility took a hit from the damaging reports.

Messaging expert Michael Osterman told CIO.com that email outages aren't uncommon, regardless of the format, and Google simply receives more of the media's negative spotlight when it fails to deliver quailty service to its users.

The Google Mail outages are given more attention, and it will give SaaS a black eye. But if you look at Google's records, Gmail is still well over 99 percent available.

Google's unique predicament reminds me of a coach or an executive who surpasses expectations earlier than expected, and as a result, they receive unfair criticism when adversity arrives. A specific example who comes to mind is former New YorK City mayor, Rudy Giuliani. In his book, Leadership, he elaborated on the the daunting challenges for maintaining approval and appeasing 14 million people with different pleas.

To control the chaos during his eight years is mayor, he followed a simple but profound principle: "Under-promise and over-deliver", and he urged his supporting staff to do the same.The logic behind Rudy's mindset was: You can't be all things to all people, all of the time, so don't make any promises you can't keep.

In an ironic twist of fate, Rudy failed to adhere to his own principle during his run in the Republican Presidential Primary. He over-promised and didn't deliver Florida, a state where he devoted the majority of his energy and attention.
The bottom line: Once you've established star power, whether it's in business,politics,sports or entertainment, you'll be held to a higher, and sometimes unrealistic standard.

Via: marketingshift.com

Small Business VOIP - Ensure Business Safety while using Wireless VoIP Signals

For every businessman, there is a necessity of storing data in the office. This data includes information on business policies and confidential information. As the data is very critical to the business organization, it is essential to keep the data safe and protect it from falling into the wrong hands. If the data is leaked, it could cause enormous amount of problems to the company sometimes to the tune of having to lose the business altogether.

For this reason, small businesses need to protect the data they have very safely. Almost everyone uses computers to store data these days. So, there should be a software installed that will protect all information about the business safely. The software that will help you do this includes anti-hacking, anti-spyware, antivirus, etc.

Another commonly used technological tool is the telephone through which you might be sharing information. So, even this mode has to be made secure to avoid anyone from listening in to what you are saying.

VoIP has gained a lot of importance these days due to the newer trends in technology. VoIP is an important tool that helps a business become better, fruitful and competent. VoIP is like any other telephone but has better features. VoIP gives the benefit of making long distance calls at much lower rates in comparison to your regular telephone. It also provides other features that are generally not available on regular telephones and if present, will be quite expensive. You get enjoy additional features such as audio and video conferencing, call waiting, text messaging, three-way calling and much more all free of cost.

For these additional benefits provided, many businesses are now switching over to VoIP from their regular telephones. A question that comes to one’s mind is how it is possible with VoIP. VoIP is through the internet where data exchanging happens free of cost. VoIP makes use of the same principle to allow the movement of audio signals.

As the audio signals are moving through the internet, it is converted into digital format which makes the sound quality in VoIP phones very crisp and crystal clear, a feature you might not enjoy while making long distance calls from your regular telephone.

With improvements in other technology, VoIP has gained importance. Having a Wi-Fi connection has enabled a user to call anybody using a Wireless VoIP phone. For this reason, Wi-Fi phones have now sprung up and are becoming popular by the day. Moreover, it is much easier to handle calls through a phone rather than having to hook up your computer to an internet connection in order to make and receive calls through VoIP.

But, again the doubts about security arises as you are handling calls through wireless technology. You would not desire any unscrupulous elements from listening into your conversations through the phone. For this reason, it is essential to have a program that secures your conversation. With the help of this program, a user who wants to access your signals should be able to get in only if they are providing an approved username and password. Also, there are new Wi-Fi phones now in the market that has integrated privacy software that prevents anyone from eavesdropping into your conversations.

There are encryption devices also available for securing your conversations. You can even find devices compatible for Wi-Fi technology. When you use these devices along with your Wi-Fi connection, it prevents any unauthorized access into your systems. You can even choose to put up a firewall to further strengthen your Wi-Fi network. All these options are easily obtainable and are very proficient in preventing anyone from getting into your network and listening in.

Look for a VoIP Wi-Fi phone that comes with lot of inbuilt features like privacy software and encryption to improve the security of your network. These may come at a higher price in comparison to your regular VoIP phones but it is money well spent.

Source:gather.com

Windows Server 2008 Installation

The installation of Windows Server 2008 has been simplified and it mirrors the Windows Vista installation in ease of use: several screens, about an hour and I was booting into Windows Server 2008. You can view my gallery of the Windows Server 2008 installation if you are curious as well.

Once the installation of Windows Server 2008 is complete, you’ll notice an Initial Configuration Tasks window. In Windows 2003 Server, you had a similar screen that allowed you to download updates, specify an administrator password, and allow inbound traffic to your server.

In Windows Server 2008, this is taken much further. On this window, you can specify an Administrator password, time zone settings, networking, download updates, configuration of your firewall, and server role customization.

In Windows Server 2008, a role is defined as what primary purpose the server is being created for. For example, if you turn on the Domain controller role, this server will be a Domain Controller. You can have multiple roles as well. You could turn on the Domain Controller role as well as the DHCP serve role. It all depends on the requirements of your infrastructure.

Windows Server 2008 offers you a vast amount of roles but you have the flexibility to choose only the roles that apply to your organization. Examples of roles include: Active Directory (AD) Certificate Services, AD Domain Services, Application Server, DHCP server, DNS Server, Fax Server, Web Server, Terminal Server, and a host of others.

By choosing only the applicable roles, you have a slim, streamlined Windows server running which increases security and decreases risk.

Source:techrepublic.com.com/datacenter/?p=122&tag=btxcsim

Dublin Technology Available to Windows Server

In conjunction with the rollout of its next-generation .Net Framework 4.0 release, Microsoft is readying a new distributed application server, code-named “Dublin.”

Dublin — a first Community Technology Preview (CTP) build of which Microsoft will release during its Professional Developers Conference (PDC) — ultimately will be built into an unspecified future release of Windows Server. Before that happens, Microsoft will make the Dublin technology available to Windows Server customers as a separate download.

Steven Martin, Senior Director of Product Management with Microsoft’s Connected Services Division, chatted with me yesterday about Dublin, as well a bit about some of the new related functionality Microsoft is prepping as part of its .Net 4.0 release, on October 1.

“The lines between Web servers and application servers are continuing to blur,” Martin told me. “Web applications are becoming more stateful, and we’re seeing developers build more composite apps.”

Microsoft developers who’ve been working with the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) technologies that are part of the current release of the .Net Framework have expressed a need to have a single, end-to-end view of all of their data, pulled from multiple back-ends,” Martin said. As a result of these trends, Microsoft decided to extend the application server capabilities currently built into Windows Server, he said.

“Developers using WF and WCF today have to build a separate host for their applications. Dublin will eliminate that requirement and give developers more scalabiity and support for long-running transactions,” among other features, Martin said.

Earlier this year, during a presentation at its TechEd conference, consultant David Chappell said he believed Microsoft was building a separate process server that would be a key part of its Oslo modeling strategy. My bet — although I couldn’t get Microsoft officials to say this — is Dublin is that mystery server.

Microsoft’s Dynamics team is going to be the first group at Microsoft to build appliations using Dublin, Martin said. One of the next versions of Dynamics CRM, as well as of Dynamics AX ERP, will run on top of Dublin and leverage the .Net 4.0 technologies, he said. (Martin wouldn’t specify which releases specifically or when they’d ship.) Several third-party software vendors have committed to using Dublin and .Net 4.0, too, including AmberPoint, Epicor and Telerik.

Microsoft officials still won’t provide a ship target for .Net 4.0, Visual Studio 2010 or any of the other elements that comprise its Oslo platform. Microsoft is slated to discuss Oslo in depth at the PDC in late October.

Source:blogs.zdnet.com

Microsoft Philippines Announces Availability of SQL Server 2008

Microsoft Philippines recently announced the release of Microsoft SQL Server 2008, the new version of the company’s acclaimed data management and business intelligence platform. This version of SQL Server provides powerful new capabilities such as support for policy-based management, auditing, large-scale data warehousing, geospatial data, and advanced reporting and analysis services. SQL Server 2008 provides the trusted, productive and intelligent platform necessary for business-critical applications.

“Microsoft developed this release of SQL Server with the customer in mind,” said Liezl Milan, product manager for SQL Server, Microsoft Philippines. “SQL Server 2008 is the only major database and complete solution that allows companies to gain greater insight from their business information and achieve faster results for a competitive advantage.”

With its enhanced functionalities, Microsoft is optimistic that the new database management platform will enable them to expand its roster of enterprise customers.

Recently, Amkor Technology Philippines, one of the top providers of semiconductor assembly and test services, upgraded its system to SQL Server 2008. “We constantly look for ways to augment our company’s operations to improve our services to our customers. The main challenge we had was the storage of large amounts of information that we regularly receive from our factory machines. We needed a solution that could better handle data management and is capable of storing a huge volume of data. One of our biggest reasons for upgrading to SQL Server 2008 is for us to effectively process and store enormous amount of data without compromising performance,” said Hans Cruz, Information & Communications Services Manager, Amkor Technology.

“We selected SQL Server 2008 because we can entrust it with our critical business applications. Compared to our previous system, SQL Server 2008 brought about a very significant effect to our company in terms speed and ease of use. We are now able to process information faster and more accurately,” Cruz added.

TRUSTED, PRODUCTIVE, INTELLIGENT PLATFORM

With customers in mind, SQL Server 2008 was developed to provide businesses and organizations with a trusted, productive and intelligent data platform that enables them to run their most demanding mission critical applications. One of the improved features in the latest version includes Resource Governor, which allows businesses to define limits and priorities for easier management of concurrent workloads.

Source:hardwarezone.com

IBM Soups Up RFID-Ready Server

BM's more sophisticated WebSphere Premises Server offering reflects a shift in attitude toward radio frequency identification technology. Instead of stewing over whether it's even possible to implement RFID at a reasonable cost, companies are now accepting it as a given -- and exploring how they can get the most out of their investments.

IBM Latest News about IBM is unveiling upgrades to its WebSphere Premises Server at Impact, its SOA (service-oriented architecture) event taking place in Las Vegas this week.

The buffed-up SOA software -- Version 6.1 -- and IBM's RFID Information Center will be the two main product spotlights at the event, Scott Burroughs, director of sensors and actuators, told CRM Buyer.

The cumulative effect of the improvements is that users will find it far easier to gather, analyze and act upon data from radio frequency identification tags and other sensors, he explained.

Where's the Value?

Acting upon data has become the key focus among users now that most firms that have implemented the technology have become familiar with its capabilities, Burroughs said.

"Users are shifting their focus," he said, "from the notion of 'Does the technology work?' to 'How do I exploit this technology to generate business value?'"

Getting new data from these technologies is no longer enough for users if it doesn't solve the business problem. "Companies want to know how they can act on this new visibility that they have into their supply chains," noted Burroughs.
Location Awareness, Multiple Sensors

IBM has added a new location awareness feature to the server Rackspace now offers green hosting solutions at the same cost without sacrificing performance. Make the eco-friendly choice. and says the technology in this version is better able to combine data from sensors that have multiple purposes.

In particular, the ability to detect relevant events for a business -- say a shipment of perishables that has been placed in a storage unit that is not temperature controlled -- is much easier with this application, Burroughs said, as such process rules no longer require custom coding.

"We used to have to build SOA integration capabilities. Now we have just made it part of the product through a new set of interfaces," he pointed out.

Changes to the server include the following:

* The ability to manage multiple sensor technologies in one application: passive RFID for object identification; active RFID for location information; and other types of sensors for such condition information as temperature, vibration and humidity;
* Real-time location tracking services that support the use of active RFID technologies to monitor for incidents in refineries, plants and office New HP LaserJet P4014n Printer Starting at $699 after $100 instant savings. buildings; and
* An event-processing engine that can establish business rules that act upon events the sensors report.

Eleven RFID device manufacturers have been validated on WebSphere Premises Server 6.1: Alien Technology, CAEN, Eurotech, FEIG Electronic, Impinj, Intermec, Motorola, Reva, Sirit, Tagsys and Wavetrend.

Source:technewsworld.com/story/62481.html

Windows Small Business Server Support Services

Although the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference held here July 7-10 was the company’s opportunity to introduce the technologies to its partners, Microsoft will officially launch SBS 2008 and EBS 2008 Nov. 12, said Steven VanRoekel, senior director of Windows Server Solutions at Microsoft.

“We’re showcasing the Windows Server Solutions family” here, VanRoekel told eWEEK in a July 9 meeting at the conference. “SBS 2008 and Essential Business Server are tailored for midsized companies and we anticipate we’ll see a lot of companies deploying it, and it will be growing into more opportunity for us to sell into more situations where in the past we only had SBS."

SBS 2008, previously known by the code name Cougar, is ideal for organizations with up to 50 PCs, helping them protect business data, expand business productivity and present a professional image to customers, he said.

EBS 2008 is designed for midsize organizations with up to 250 desktops, Microsoft officials said.

Windows business server combines the technologies of Windows Server 2008, Exchange Server 2007, Forefront Security for Exchange Server, System Center Essentials 2007, the next version of Internet Security and Acceleration Server and, in the Premium Edition, SQL Server 2008 technology, Microsoft officials said.

Windows Essential Business Server enables organizations to scale up, VanRoekel said.

“The theme is about making complex consumer technology more consumable,” he said. “We go from Windows Home Server, which is five questions during install, to SBS, which is a little more sophisticated, to Essential Business Server, which is 600 pages of documentation."

“We’ve been using Small Business Server 2008 in production since December,” said John Endter, president of Microsoft partner E Squared C. “I recently did three Windows Small Business Server 2003 installs and [am] working with ’08 now; it’s no fun to go back and install 2003. Luckily, the owner of these systems plans to upgrade to ’08 when it ships.”

Endter said the “Essential Business Server takes the Small Business Server concept up one level. Some of our customers have asked for the functionality of Small Business Server, and EBS offers that to the midmarket.”

He also said the licensing terms of Small Business Server 2008 make it flexible for small businesses to use and grow their solutions.

“We have some customers who six months into the deal want to expand, and we offer the ability to grow and scale,” Endter said.

“We made it easy to move and made the price more attractive," VanRoekel said.

Meanwhile, Endter said among the things in Essential Business Server 2008 that his customers had been asking for is the remote Web workplaces capability. “Before this they had to build that on their own,” he said.

Another highly desired feature that is now part of EBS 2008 is “centralized management,” he said. In addition, “Small Business Server has been good for us, and seeing that the midmarket is a great opportunity for us, we expect to do well with the Essential Business Server."

Meanwhile, Microsoft will be releasing SDKs (software development kits) for both SBS 2008 and EBS 2008 within the next few weeks, the company said. Both products have been under evaluation as pre-release versions.
Source: www.eweek.com