“Most organizations that use Microsoft Exchange as their corporate communication tool have staff that uses a BlackBerry device as well. Our clients are no different. During each deployment that I work on, I ask the question, “How many BlackBerry users do you have?”  Knowing that the high cost for BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server) licensing usually leads to sticker shock, I cringed each time.

I recently learned that Research In Motion (RIM), the company that makes BlackBerry products, now offers BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express for free! Having your own dedicated BES server will allow for seamless integration between your Microsoft Exchange environment and BlackBerry mobile devices. This eliminates any delays, outages, and other limitations that are commonly found with shared scenarios or relying on your mobile provider.

The first question I asked when hearing about this new offering was, “What were the limitations?” Great news, the majority of customers that I would work with can get by with the Express edition without a problem.

I called BlackBerry to get more details and they filled me in on only a couple minor limitations. First, there is no support for BlackBerry Mobile Voice System which I was told is rarely used anyways. Also, you’re limited to only 40 IT policies. And finally, you are limited to 75 users in a shared environment but allows for 200+ users in a dedicated server environment. From our experience, it’s best to deploy a BES server in a dedicated environment for optimal performance. So for the clients LogicalSolutions.net will work with won’t be limited to the amount of users able to access the BES server.

For the small cost of a virtual dedicated server, we can install the free BES Express application and have you up and running in no time!"

When it comes time to start thinking about Virtualization, here are 5 important factors to think about:

1. Platform: Which is the most Suitable Platform?

There really are only three major competitors: VMWare, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Parallels Virtuozzo. Each one of these platforms offers Competitive advantages as well as different pricing models.  For Example, running Microsoft Hyper-V allows you to run unlimited Windows Operating Systems under a single License which would lower the license costs for your organization, but might it may not be the best candidate if you are a Linux based organization. 

2. Number of Containers: How many virtual servers can you fit on each Server?

This really depends on the current CPU/RAM usage of your current environments.  One commonly made mistake is overloading the host server with too many Virtual Instances which will cause poor performance. 

3. Domain Controller Placement

Another thing to take into consideration is failover and proper disaster recovery for your Domain Controllers.  Placing your Primary and Secondary DNS server on Separate Virtual Nodes is best practice as well as having enough failover machines to handle the event of a Virtualization Host Failure. 

4. Migration Strategy

Determine a Migration Strategy and evaluate all your current candidate applications to migrate to your virtual environment.  Note that not all applications should be migrated to virtual environments.  For example, some versions of Microsoft Exchange are not supported on select Virtual Platforms.  Doing your homework  is one of the most important step that needs to be taken before moving to a new environment and/or platform.

5. Failover and Backup Plan

Now that you are running more environments on fewer servers, backup and disaster recovery become even more critical.  Setting up a proper backup strategy for all of your Virtual Environments is crucial.  On the disaster recovery side, even if you run your virtual servers in house, you should secure a failover Virtual environment.  At LogicalSolutions.net, we offer failover Virtual Environments that will run your applications in the event of a failure.

Here at LogicalSolutions.net we recently rolled out an update our own mail server to Microsoft Exchange 2010. Exchange 2010 brings with it many new updates and enhancements, especially for you corporate users who may have skipped 2007 and are still on version 2003. One of the largest leaps forward is enhancements made to the Outlook Web App (OWA) feature.  Outlook Web App, or OWA, allows you to access your Exchange 2010 e-mail features from your browser. This helps eliminate the need to be tied to your personal computer configured with Outlook web client.

One major improvement for OWA is the multiple browser support. Previously an Exchange user of OWA would have to use Internet Explorer. In version 2010, OWA is now supported for not only Internet Explorer, but Firefox, Safari and even Chrome.

 

Click the thumbnail above. You can see that OWA is completely functional in the Google Chrome browser.

Another new feature for OWA is the conversation view. The new conversation view allows you to group multiple threads from a single conversation together. This will make your inbox management far more efficient. If you’re a user of Google’s Gmail email system, you’re very familiar with how this works and probably quite excited to see it come to your corporate email system.

Click the thumbnail above for an example of conversation viewing.

A personal favorite new feature of mine is the shared calendar interface in OWA. In previous versions, you had limited accessibility to viewing calendars. Now with 2010, it’s as if you were on your PC working with the Outlook application. You can even enable sharing with people outside your organization allowing for increased collaboration.

 

Click the thumbnail above for a better view of OWA calendar sharing.

Finally, as more and more enterprise organizations are looking to outsource their IT needs, additional features are becoming available to allow this to become easier every day.  In the past you were restricted to access your Exchange application through OWA or connecting via VPN. Now with Outlook Anywhere, you can use Microsoft Outlook 2010, 2007 or 2003 to connect to your Exchange server outside your corporate network without hassle.   Benefits of using Outlook Anywhere allows your users to have remote access to the Exchange servers from the internet while using the same URL and namespace that you use for OWA and ActiveSync. Also, there’s no need to purchase an additional secure certificate either. You can use the same SSL that you use for OWA and ActiveSync.  For additional information on the long list of benefits configuring and managing Outlook Anywhere and Outlook 2010, contact one of our Sales Engineers today.  

What is SAS 70?

The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) developed a set of guidelines for evaluating service organizations. These guidelines are called the “Statement of Auditing Standards Number 70 (SAS 70)”. An independent service auditor provides a detailed assessment of the service organizations’ control objectives and activities. The auditor also prepares an audit report which is called a “SAS 70” report. A SAS 70 report demonstrates that the service organization has implemented effective control objects and activities that are both beneficial to itself and its clients. The SAS 70 report can also aid the service organizations’ clients in completing their own financial audits. In the hosting and co-location industries, the SAS 70 report is important for companies who rely on outsourced hosting and co-location services. The SAS 70 report allows hosting and co-location companies to complete one report for all of their clients to use. LogicalSolutions.net’s description of controls has also been prepared to enable LogicalSolutions.net customers to gain an understanding of LogicalSolutions.net's control activities for purposes of assisting management in their assessment of internal controls over financial reporting in accordance with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board's (PCAOB) Auditing Standard No. 5 (AS 5). Why is SAS 70 Type II important to our clients? 

There are two levels of a SAS 70 audit.  Type I just states that policies and procedures do exist, although there is no audit to ensure that the organization adheres to these procedures.  When selecting a Data Center, it is important to make sure that their SAS 70 certification is Type II which ensures that they adhere to their procedures.   

Achieving a SAS 70 Type II certification benefits LogicalSolutions.net as well as their co-location and managed services clients. Many of our clients are institutional organizations and publicly traded companies who must comply with security requirements such as “Sarbanex-Oxley”. Those clients can use the audit report for their specific security requirements. If you are interested in obtaining your own SAS 70 Type II certification, call us to discuss the benefits of hosting your servers in our Data Center and the assistance we can offer your organization in becoming SAS 70 certified.

CFO’s, Financial Managers and generally anyone with P&L experience are always looking to understand their true costs to operate a business unit.  IT expenses by design and can be very difficult to understand, plan and budget for when you consider the volatility of technology and the complex group of service requirements that make this department successful to your company operations.

Expenditures on the surface are very black and white but what does it really mean, what’s necessary vs. what’s not?  Why are we managing this when it’s not our expertise?

What are my real options to reduce expenses, and increase profitability in this area or for the business as a whole without negatively impacting my business operations or clients in the process?

Consider the following typical annual expenditures running your business in any IT Department vs. outsourcing those same services or hard costs on an annual basis:

In House	Costs	Outsourcing
Server Hardware	$100,000	$0.00
Router/CSU/DSU	$12,500	$0.00
UPS Backup	$20,000	$0.00
Software Licensing	$25,000	$0.00
Hardware Servicing Fees	$7,000	$0.00
Staffing	$200,000	$0.00
DS-3 Internet Connectivity	$35,000	$0.00
Initial configuration/setup	$10,000	$1,000
Hosting Fees	$0.00	$60,000
Hardware and software support	$0.00	$42,000
Generator backup	$15,000	$0.00
Total expenses for Year One	$424,500	$112,000

In Closing, as a Financial Manager myself it’s easy to see how compelling these numbers appear, certainly compelling enough to investigate the options further.

Have you ever noticed that there are some people that you can send an email to and never get a response.  Not a delayed response, none at all. Ever.  How to they stay organized?  If you have more than a 100 messages in your inbox as you read this, you might be one of those people!

In today’s business world I challenge you to consider your inbox as a great work-flow tool.  People that work with me frequently will often hear me say “Please send me an email reminder and I will see that it gets done”.  It might not get done right away, but you can rest assured that if you email me a request, I will either do it, delegate it AND follow up with whom I delegated it to, or reply telling you that I will not have time to perform the task.  You see – I use my inbox as a work flow tool – I am constantly pushing myself to complete the email thread/task/request etc., so that I can archive the email.  Until such time as the email thread is complete, it does not leave my inbox.  In such a manner, I can assure myself that nothing slips through the cracks.

You can accomplish the same thing by simply creating a way to organize your old emails and then moving them from your inbox when they are complete.  Any email system will allow you to create sub-folders, here is what you might create when you set up your work mailbox:

You should have these by default:
- Inbox
- Drafts
- Sent Items
- Deleted Items
 
I propose you create at least a few additional folders:
- Clients
- Prospects
- Vendors
- Personal
- Staff
- Other

If you want to get HIGHLY organized, add sub-folders:
- Clients
   - Acme Tool
   - Big Time Auto
   - Charlie Cheap Seats
- Prospects
   - Delta Digging
   - Echo Excavating
- Vendors
   - Phone Company
   - Plumber
- Personal
   - Family
   - Hobbies
- Staff
   - Direct Reports
   - co-workers
- Other

While it might take a little bit of time to set up and keep on top of, you will find that you can always find things easily when you need them by opening up the appropriate folders and you will have a great feeling of accomplishment knowing that as your inbox remains clear that you are staying caught up on things.  You can rest assured that not only will your boss notice, but your friends & family will enjoy how you always respond to them and never ‘drop the ball’ on something requested of you.

Lastly, set a reasonable limit to how many messages you will allow to ‘pile up’ in your inbox before you dedicate an evening to dive in and get caught up.  A good rule of thumb is no more than double the average number of emails that you get in one day!

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Jim

One of many great advantages the Internet provides over traditional media like print, TV, radio, etc. is the accountability. On your website you have the ability to track just about everything. You can see exactly how many users come to your site, what they did on your site and even how they got there.

There are many tools out there that you can add to your website to help track your analytics, some paid, some free. One of the most robust and useful tools comes from Google. One advantage of Google Analytics is that it flushes out all the search engine crawlers, spiders and bad data that can distort other traffic tools. This gives you the best representation of the true traffic and activity of your website. And the best part of Google Analytics....it's completely free!

The first step is to get signed up for an account with Google. Go to www.google.com/analytics/ and you'll notice a blue Access Analytics button on the right hand side and the ability to sign up below. If you already have a Google account, just use that and sign in. Next, provide Google with the URL of the site you wish to analyze. Then follow the steps of providing what country your site is in, your contact information, etc. Once you click Create New Account, Google will provide you with a block of code. Copy this code. You will need to insert this on your website.

Placing this code on your site is a straight forward process for most sites out there. You simply copy the analytics code in the footer. If you're not comfortable doing something like this, just give us a call. Our Service & Maintenance team can place this on most websites in under an hour. The benefits will easily exceed the time and small investment it will take to get you up and running.

I have been in the data center services industry for about 10 years now and I never get tired of the question…..”which data center is right for me?”.  Well, as many of you know, the answer can be an endless list of marketing blah.  But the real answer is, “what do you need from a data center?”  If your data is mission critical to your business, then the facility you should be looking for needs to be absolutely bullet-proof.  What I mean is you need to make certain that not only is the data center 100% secure and reliable, but also that you are confident the provider you have chosen has taken the necessary steps to provide true Enterprise Class data center services.  As a guide, here are some questions that you need to ask each provider when choosing a data center: 
• Do you own the building the data center is in? (I’ve seen landlords get in the way of operating efficiently)
• How long have you been in business ?(a long  and positive track record means everything)
• Do you have multiple bandwidth providers? (the more diverse providers, the more redundant)
• Do you have multiple generators? (remember, redundancy is the key)
• What type of fire suppression is installed? (remember, “dry pipe/pre-action” means  water…yikes)
• Do you have 24/7 monitoring? (someone always needs to be proactively monitoring for issues)
• Do you have 24/7 support? (Murphy’s law….make sure someone is there to assist at any time)
• What are your plans for growth? (if they are not planning for their future, do they care about yours?)
• Are you SAS70 Certified? (shouldn’t your provider put forth the extra effort/expense to insure operational excellence?)
• Do you allow 24/7 access to the data center? (it’s your stuff, you should be able to get to it when you want)
• How do you charge for power? (metered power is catching on…..pay only for what you use)
• Do you monitor PUE? (if you’re concerned with energy efficiency, shouldn’t your provider be too?)

When I first started in the Data Center Services Industry, I was with an International provider working out of headquarters in NYC.  Man, I thought that was the place to be…..New York City, the most important metropolitan city in the world with the latest and greatest that technology had to offer. Things were going great.  We had a beautiful data center and NYC was overflowing with companies that needed our services.   Customers were lining up at our door….we couldn’t build cabinets fast enough.  The Data Center industry was on cruise control and I was driving it in New York City.    Then came Sept. 11, 2001.  We were located about 10 blocks from the World Trade Center – not that far when you’re talking about city blocks in Manhattan.  The city stopped, nobody was allowed access to our building for weeks.  Yes, the generators kicked on when the power failed, our multiple access providers allowed us to maintain connectivity and our staff did a great job keeping our customers online.  As we all experienced, everything came to a screeching halt after the attacks.  Without downplaying the tragedies of that day, my focus for this message is that although the data center performed exactly as it was supposed to, our customers quickly changed the way they viewed where their data center is located and their disaster recovery plans.

Well, now it’s 2009 and I’m fortunate to continue my career within the Data Center services industry with LogicalSolutions.net.  I followed the lead of a lot of my clients from NYC and moved away from the metro area and headed north to Upstate, NY.  Most of the customers I had in NYC either moved their primary  infrastructure out of the NYC data center and into one located in this region, or setup a DR site in a data center located in this area.  Either way, they quickly discovered that data center services provided in Upstate, NY are not only as good (if not better), but the price is right too.   One of the many things that Upstate has to offer is the climate.  Our climate lends itself very well for data center cooling and power management.  I’m sure you’ve heard that Yahoo has even recognized this and is building their newest data center in Buffalo.  LogicalSolutions.net has built its newest data center in Pittsford, NY – a suburb of Rochester.  With our data center located in this area, we are able to accomplish many things.  One of those is the ability to reduce power costs by utilizing the latest technologies by taking advantage of the cooler climate.  Combined with the ability to provide metered power, we are able to manage power utilization more efficiently which enables us to pass tremendous cost savings on to our customers.  When you are considering data center services, start to consider the Upstate, NY region for the energy efficient processes, robust backbone options, and skilled engineering support.

                 When you think about online communities you may think of message boards, blogs, Facebook, and other forms of social media – but if you really want to go from good to great, you should also think about ways to encourage your community to connect offline.
                Below are three examples of very different organizations (one political, one in the sports realm, and one in retail), which have each thought outside of the box in order to take their online communities to the next level.

Political: My.BarackObama.com

                When Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign launched its community site, they saw an overnight boom of 1,500 groups formed online. While this is quite remarkable in its own right, this was not when the magic happened.  Of those groups and the thousands that formed later on, many were silly, and only loosely connected people with a thin interest in common (like “Barack Fans in the Colbert Nation”, which united Obama supporters who were also fans of Stephen Colbert, or “Wine Lovers for Obama,” among many others.)
                The magic happened when the campaign encouraged those groups to set up offline in-person meetings.  So, while some of those groups remained as purely online interest groups, others across the country started setting up local meetings, using the tools provided on the website.  These tools were simple: the ability to post an event and invite people; the ability to search for users by ZIP code; the ability to use a listserv to email your group members; and the ability to post to your group’s blog page.  These three tools were enough to allow leaders to emerge from all across the country, and to take some ownership of the campaign in their own communities. They met each other in person, exchanged ideas, and started to recruit more people through carefully planned offline activities. These offline meetings were what turned those early Obama supporters into real communities – communities, which would be ready to do some serious heavy lifting for the campaign when the time came.  And the secret was giving people the online tools they needed to connect offline.
                It should be noted that part of the vibrancy of these groups came from the fact that they did not always march to the beat of the national drummer – in a remarkable show of trust, the Obama campaign gave them the latitude to take some real ownership, and campaign activities in Northern NY farm country were often very different than campaign activities in Chicago, which were in turn different from what was going on in Dallas. This may not have been exactly what the professional staff wanted, but they had the good sense to recognize that you can get a lot more out of people if you allow them real ownership.

Sports: www.syracusecrunch.com

                The Syracuse Crunch Hockey Club is the minor league affiliate for the Columbus Blue Jackets.  Their website includes news, multimedia, blogs and photos. Their “Crunch Alerts” keep fans up-to-date on all the latest news, trades and promotions.   Their Twitter feed (http://twitter.com/SyracuseCrunch) cross promotes information from the website and elsewhere, and their Facebook page has thousands of fans.  These are all a baseline, but what makes their online community building great, is the wonderful attention they pay to engaging and bringing these same people together offline as well.
                Recent examples include very publicly honoring the Jamesville-DeWitt Little League team for their 10U CAN-AM Tournament championship, holding a barbecue for their season ticket holders, and a contest just for their Twitter Followers.  (Incidentially, when some Facebook fans yelped that they were being ignored, someone from the Crunch organization replied right away, and a similar contest was set up for Facebook fans almost immediately.)  Fan forums are held every year, and the organization listens hard to what the fans have to say.
                Even though hockey season is only part of the year, community building season lasts all year round: in summer the Crunch host youth street hockey games open to kids between 5 and 15. A golf outing is held for media and sponsors, and throughout the year various player events, such as celebrity bartending, raise money for charities.
                By putting in the extra effort both online and offline, the Crunch have been able to build a strong local community of supporters, which is good for them, but which also adds value to the larger community around them. 

Retail: Harley Davidson: http://www.harley-davidson.com/wcm/Content/Pages/HOG/HOG.jsp?locale=en_US

                One might not think that a retail business would have the cultural power to form a network of local organizations all across the country, but that is just what Harley Davidson has been able to do.  And, the community pull is so strong that they are actually able to charge people for membership.  The slogan on the owners section of the website is “NO ONE UNDERSTANDS YOU LIKE FAMILY,” and the company culture strongly reinforces this idea in several ways.
                  On the national site, users can create an online profile, where they can plan rides and share them with the online community.  Members are encouraged to share their stories, encourage others, and join a local owners group. 
                Searching on the locator for the Rochester chapter reveals an upcoming “Biketoberfest” event, a Fall Foliage ride and a chapter meeting.  Searching on other cities reveals a patchwork collection of very active local websites with their own community events.
                By using a few online tools, like personalized accounts, the ability to post stories, or map a route, Harley Davidson has been able to cultivate an online community of owners.  But, only by taking it to the next level and actively encouraging people to ride together and form real offline associations and friendships, have they been able to create the strong-as-family sense of community, which adds so much value to their brand, and which adds tangibly to the enjoyment of their owners.

                So, what can your organization do to break out of the box?  Efforts do not have to be nearly as elaborate and labor intensive as the stellar examples above, but consider what sorts of nudges you could provide to your online community to get some of them to meet face-to-face.  Perhaps it would involve hosting a networking event.  Sometimes just planting the suggestion is sufficient – a simple form that allows members of your community to post their own event, along with the encouragement to do so, may produce surprising results.  The important thing is to think beyond the virtual world, and to understand that a true community is not totally directed from the top.  Once you let go and to extend enough trust to your community members to allow them to take some ownership, you might be amazed at what they can do.