UCaaS Business Suite Market Share

Here is the ink to the article:

http://www.srgresearch.com/articles/8x8-leading-high-growth-cloud-ucaas-market

 

Working from Home

I have always been a believer in working from the office!  When I started Nortec 23 years ago and it was just me, I rented a small office and did not work from home.  I may be one of few entrepreneurs to do this but I always enjoyed the separation and for me it is stress management as well.  Now I am like everyone else in the information age doing emails from home and carrying my mobile phone pretty much all the time.  I work at home on nights and weekends sometimes but I do try to keep this to a minimum and focus on family and down time. 

So I like to work from my office but does that mean it is the right approach for others.  The approach we take at Nortec is that for the consultants and sales we are flexible once they have been with the organization for a while.  Everyone must come in at the beginning until they are integrated and hitting their metrics.   I encourage everyone to continue to work from the office as often as possible as it does help connect everyone with the occasional impromptu meeting.  Of course these kind of meetings can be time sinks as well so it is a double edged sword.  If someone is delivering top numbers in sales or top consultant in the field there is tremendous latitude.    Overall my philosophy leans toward the showing up at the office.

Related Article:

The New York Sunday Times “Location, Location, Location”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/opinion/sunday/working-from-home-vs-the-office.html

Accelerating Performance Through Flawless Execution - Matt "Whiz" Buckley

I attended “Accelerating Performance Through Flawless Execution” presentation by Matt “Whiz” Buckley with Afterburner, Inc.  Matt was a US Navy Hornet Pilot who quickly acknowledged that you will not attain flawless execution but strive toward this end.  It is easy to see the need for great execution when flying a multimillion dollar supersonic aircraft. 

The planning is probably the most important phase and Matt describes creating three groups.  Each group is tasked to come up with a plan and one of these groups is designated to be the “out of box” group meaning they create a plan with no resource limitations.  This allows the third group to be more creative and may come up with something that is implemented.  The three groups would come together to create the actual plan from the three plans.  Once the plan is vetted a fourth group would “Red Team It” - they would not have been part of the plan but would listen to the plan and criticize it by looking for holes.  In this step it is important for the initial three groups who created the plan to just listen to the feedback and not argue.  They need to just say thanks and record the information.  Once the Red Team has left they would scrutinize the feedback and use it when it makes sense.

The other area I liked that Matt discussed was the de-brief meeting.  The importance of getting everyone together after the mission and reviewing what went right and what went wrong.  This step is all too often skipped.  The ground rules for the de-brief are:

1.      "It's not who is right, it is what is right"
2.      Everyone is an equal in the de-brief meeting
3.      What is said in the room stays in the room – except of course lessons for the future

 Afterburner Website Link:

http://www.afterburnerseminars.com/

Server Market Share

The Server Market is still dominated by IBM, HP and Dell with combined market share of 74%.  However, there are several newer players in the "Other Vendors" category that are designing high density data center specific servers.  The traditional vendors do not always dominate the new space and new vendors often emerge when there is a significant shift in the market.  The shift to the cloud is causing changes everywhere and the big winners still remain to be seen.

Server Market Share

IBM                                      35%
HP                                        25%
Dell                                      14%
Oracle                                   4%
Fujitsu                                   4%
Other Vendors                   18%

Source:  Data Center Knowledge: “Gartner, IDC See Server Sales Turning a Corner” by  Jason Verge

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2013/03/01/gartner-idc/

Installing Office 365 ProPlus for Office 365 pre-upgrade tenants

Office 365 ProPlus, the new version of the Office desktop apps Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, and more, is available today for existing Office 365 customers. A user must have an existing Office Professional Plus license assigned to them in order to use the new Office.

Our demo user here, Bob Kelly, has a check-mark in the Office Professional Plus license. This means he will be able to sign-in with the new Office 365 ProPlus and activate it against his service.
We set up our Office Licensing Service so that any user who has been assigned a subscription license to Office Professional Plus has a license to the new version of Office, Office 365 ProPlus. It doesn’t matter whether your tenant has received the service upgrade or not. This includes Office for Mac 2011 for Office 365.
The second step is installing Office 365 ProPlus. If your tenant hasn’t been upgraded yet, you won’t have access to the installer from the Microsoft Online Portal. Instead, you will need to either install Office 365 ProPlus from a Trial account, either a Midsize Business Trial, or an Enterprise E3 Trial, or use the Office Deployment Tool. If you install from a Trial account, you will sign-in by using your organizational account when you first run Office 365 ProPlus after the installation. This essentially deactivates the trial on the computer and reactivates Office 365 ProPlus in your production tenant.

You have two main options:
Installing Office 365 ProPlus from a trial account:
This is the least technical way to install Office 365 ProPlus but require more steps and clicks, best for a business user or small business without IT help. You will create a throw-away id to sign up for the trial. After the installation, you sign in to Office 365 ProPlus by using your organizational account. Be sure to follow the instructions step by step.
Installing Office 365 ProPlus using downloaded source files:
This way requires working with config.xml in NotePad and command-line tools, but has fewer steps and can also provide more flexibility for an IT professional who wants to have the Office 365 ProPlus source files to install Office on multiple machines through a network share or other software distribution system. See Installing Office 365 ProPlus using downloaded source files.

Source: Microsoft

Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview

I watched “Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview” on Netflix.  It is an interview done in 1995 but not released until 2012 as it was apparently lost.  The interview is very good and insightful to the IT industry and specifically Steve Jobs thoughts at that time.  I found one statement particularly interesting.  Steve Jobs talked about the difference between average and the best in most industries is 20%, 30% or maybe 50% better.  As an example, the best taxi in New York vs average he explains is maybe 30% better.   Steve Jobs believes that the difference between an average IT professional and the best is 50 times greater.  Getting the absolute best technical professionals was significant in the creation of the Mac.  Steve Jobs also points out that top professionals working with other very top professionals creates an interesting dynamic where the team excels even more.  These experts may not have had the opportunity to work with the best in the past.  They really enjoy it and take themselves to the next level.  In the systems integration business, I do not think that the difference between the best and average is 50 times but it would be 2 to 3 times or more and this creates a significant advantage to an organization that is able to attract these top professionals. 

2013 IT Spending Growth

 IDC is projecting U.S. IT spending to grow by 6% and Forrester is projecting 6.5%.  Forrester reduced their projection from 7.5% because of the sequester.  This is modest growth but it is greater than the overall GDP growth and considering the focus on reducing costs this is encouraging for the IT industry.  The priorities of the spending according to a Protiviti survey are:

1.      Mobile Commerce

2.      Management and Classification of Data

3.      Social Media

4.      Business Continuity

5.      Risk Management

6.      IT Infrastructure Planning

7.      IT Asset Management

Mobility is clearly a priority for everyone as mobile devices become so much more powerful.  The cloud is not listed but is often the technology utilized to support these IT priorities.  This is the way it must be as it does not make sense to move to the cloud because it is a trend it needs to be done as a compelling method to deliver business continuity, risk management, mobile commerce etc.

Source:  “IDC says tech spending will grow by 6% this year, the same rate as 2012”  by By Patrick Thibodeau, COMPUTERWORLD UK    http://tinyurl.com/aoce2ds

Source: Protiviti 2013 IT Priorities Survey  http://www.protiviti.com/itsurvey

Gartner's 10 IT Trends for 2013

I read an article in Cloud Times that reported on Gartner's 10 IT Trends for 2013:

1. Onslaught of Mobile Devices
2. Native Mobile Apps and HTML 5
3. Personal Cloud – A place to keep your stuff instead of on your computer's hard drive
4. Corporate Showcase Apps - Private mobile apps to for corporate apps
5. Internet of things - other things will be connected to internet - pictures, clocks, calendars
6. Hybrid Cloud - Internal and Cloud interconnected
7. Strategic Big Data – Companies are navigating diverse data not all in one place
8. Actionable Analytics - Cloud will allow more analytics
9. In Memory Computing - Allows data comparison and analysis exponentially faster
10. Integrated ecosystems - Market is demanding integration of systems  

This is in line with what we are seeing at our clients and at Nortec internally. Primarily we are seeing hybrid cloud and the growth of mobility.

Source:  Cloud Times, "Gartner: Top 10 Key Technology Trends for 2013" By Saroj Kar http://cloudtimes.org/2012/11/06/gartner-top-10-key-technology-trends-for-2013/

 

Importance of Meeting with Customers

Starting the last week of June I have been visiting several customers per week and will continue through the summer into the fall.   I have been visiting with all different customers from large to small and this has been effective for several reasons:

1.      Better understand why customers choose Nortec

2.      Better understand where the opportunities are and where the market is going

3.      Evaluate how the sales and the technical teams are doing

4.      Motivates the sales team to get out and see their customers

5.      Demonstrate to the clients that we are committed and care about them

6.      Opportunity to give feedback and coach the sales professionals one on one

7.      Opportunity to evaluate our overall client strategy and what is working and not working

This list could go on much longer.  Management meeting with customers is fundamental, 101 stuff!   We are in the digital age and often email or phone customers.  Phone calls and emails are not a substitute for meeting with customers! 

To often management becomes very inwardly focused.  It is important for senior leadership to get out to many clients on a regular basis.  One challenge I have had in the past, was trying to figure out what clients I should visit and how to organize the scheduling of the meetings.  The strategy that is working for me now is to target every client in a geographical area.  I have an inside sales person call down and line up the meetings in that area and then move to the next area.  They end up with a random sampling of clients based on who they are able to contact and who is willing to meet that week.  This experience has been very rewarding and gives me energy!   

Shift in IT and Priorities for 2012

I attended Tiffani Bova’s “Reading the Tea Leaves” last week at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference.    The message was on the shift in IT to the cloud and also to more buying of IT outside the IT department.  The statistic is as much as 35%.  Consulting will be more related to data management and process management with a focus on making IT work for the business.  Not that this has changed that much but the move to cloud will allow IT groups to focus more on non-infrastructure issues.  Here are the 2012 IT priorities found through Gartner survey:

2012 Priorities

1. BI

2. Mobility

3. Cloud

4. Collaboration

5. Virtualization

6. Legacy modernization

7. IT Management

8. CRM

9. ERP

10. Social media

11. Web

Source:

Microsoft WPC 2012: “Reading the Tea Leaves” by Tiffani Bova

http://www.gartner.com/AnalystBiography?authorId=27453

Security Lessons from Flame

Flame is a sophisticated software tool originally designed to spy on governments and gather information.  It is essentially like malware and can go undetected.  Kevin Casey in InformationWeek outlines Five Lessons Learned from Flame:

1.       No security plan is foolproof

2.      You might not know if you are infected

3.      Attacks are increasingly sophisticated

4.      Reputation harm can be expensive

5.      Prioritize your most important assets

Source:  InformationWeek Article “5 Flame Lessons For SMBs” by Kevin Casey

http://www.informationweek.com/news/smb/security/240001377

LinkedIn Breach

I read an article in CIO magazine regarding a security breach on LinkedIn.  A reported 6.5 Million passwords were reported to be taken.  That is 6.5% percent of the total 100 Million LinkedIn users.  It is unclear if there are attached User IDs and so far it does not appear as though anything has happened beyond the passwords taken. 

In my LinkedIn account there is not much information if any that is not published for anyone to read already.  The real danger for me would be for someone to take over my account and make changes or access my contacts.   It would probably be a good idea to change my LinkedIn password anyway.

This kind of attack does remind everyone of the vulnerability of your information and the importance of securing your data.  These events may also scar cloud providers and make individuals and businesses think twice about public cloud and hosting. The larger cloud providers may be likely targets for hackers.

CIO Article:  “FAQ: LinkedIn Breach: What Members (and Others) Need to Know”

By Jaikumar Vijayan

http://www.cio.com/article/707933/FAQ_LinkedIn_Breach_What_Members_and_Others_Need_to_Know

IT Spending Growth Slowing

The slow growth economy is affecting IT spending.  JP Morgan has reduced the forecast for IT spending in 2012 from 3.8% growth to 2.2% growth.  I suppose the good news is that they are still predicting growth!

Source:  Reuters Article “JPMorgan cuts IT spending outlook as economy slows” by by Tenzin Pema

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/06/us-technology-research-jpmorgan-idUSBRE8550I620120606

Why to implement Windows 7

Today’s businesses, big or small, face trends that were not mainstream a decade ago – highly mobile and distributed workforce, new compliance regulations, more consumer devices in the workplace, and an increased emphasis on operational efficiency and cost-containment. Window XP has had an amazing run, but technology & business needs have changed. Moving to Windows 7 today can help your organization reap the benefits of a modern PC experience while establishing a path to Windows 8.

There are three main reasons to get onto 7 today:

1. First, migrating to Windows 7, IE9, Office 2010 and MDOP gives the customer immediate value of a modern desktop and prepares their environment to integrate Windows 8 once generally available. By moving to Windows 7 today, organizations can ensure they run  a supported version of Windows and reap the benefits of a modern OS experience to help people stay productive anywhere, enhance data protection and security, and streamline PC management – all of which helps to reduce costs. 

     

     Customers all over the world are getting value from a modern desktop with Windows 7. Bombardier Aerospace saved $160K in third party security licensing with the security enhancements built into Windows 7. A leading financial services firm, Baker Tilly has quantified a $191 (US) per PC savings by moving to Windows 7. By securing and managing 10 year old software with Windows XP you are leaving money on the table

2. Second, extended support for Windows XP will end on 4/8/2014. Customers running an unsupported version of Windows and IE 6 will not be eligible for any of our support options. Gartner predicts that more than 50% of organizations that do not start deploying Windows 7 by early 2012 will not complete their deployments before Windows XP support ends, and will incur increased support costs. Creating a Timeline for Deploying Windows 7 and Eliminating Windows XP, June 2011.

3. Third, migrating to Windows 7 will lay the foundation for Windows 8. The investment made today in planning; testing and application remediation for Windows 7 will prepare the customer to make the transition easier to Windows 8 when generally available. Windows 7 is the path to Windows 8 and in the future we will see enterprise environments running a combination of Windows 8 devices and applications alongside Windows 7 PCs and applications.  Microsoft recommends customers focus on Windows 7 deployment today.  In the future Windows 8 deployment will open up of new scenarios that can support the diverse workstyles across your business.   

The planning, testing and remediation of x86 applications to work with Windows 7 and IE 8/9 , will allow you to take advantage of Windows 8 Hardware platforms that support Windows 7 will be capable of running Windows 8.  Windows 8 will also run on new hardware platforms such as System on a Chip designs from vendors like ARM, Intel and others.

Bottom Line: The investments a customer makes today to migrate to Windows 7 will carry forward into the Windows 8 timeframe

Source: Microsoft

Improving IT Security

Six Steps to Improve IT Security

1.      Gain Situational Awareness
2.      Reduce and Monitor Admin Access
3.      Define and enforce configuration standards
4.      Enforce change management
5.      Create library of trusted builds
6.      Integrate into release management

Source:
Interop 2012
Dwayne Melancon, CTO
Tripwire Inc.

2012 IT Priorities

Tech Target surveyed IT Professionals on what there IT Priorities for 2012 – Here is the list:

1.      Windows 7 Deployment
2.      Server Virtualization
3.      Networked Based Security
4.      Data Protection
5.      Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
6.      Business Intelligence
7.      Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is not at the top but is at the top conversation.  Cloud is such a significant change in how IT is consumed.  While cloud is still a small part of IT spending it is rapidly growing.  This survey is in line with many of the Windows 7 deployment projects we have seen at Nortec.

Source:

Search CIO, Article by Mark Schlack, Vice President, Editorial

 “2012 IT priorities: Windows 7 migration, yes; cloud, not so much”

http://tinyurl.com/brdpcnn

5 Server Virtualization Trends

Gartner Analyst Tom Bittman announced 5 virtualization trends to watch in 2012:

1) Competitive Choices Mature
2) Second Sourcing Grows
3) Pricing Models in Flux
4) Penetration and Saturation
5) Cloud Service Providers Are Placing Bets

What these mean is the market is maturing and businesses as well as cloud providers have more choices. More companies are working with Hyper-V than in the past and Open Source Vitualization is having more success in larger organizations as well as leading in the larger cloud providers such as Amazon and Rackspace. The cloud service providers are needing to make big bets as to if they want to invest more in the mainstream corporate virtualization providers VMWare and Microsoft or does it make more sense to stay with lower cost customized open source virtualization.

Larger corporations are looking to have options so they are not locked in with one virtualization provider and the proliferation and maturing of the virtualization market is adding price pressure as well as creating a changing pricing model.

Virtualization and the cloud are here to stay and will continue to penetrate and saturate. We are living in interesting times.

Source: ZDNet “Gartner lists top 5 server virtualization trends for 2012” by Paula Rooney
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/virtualization/gartner-lists-top-5-server-virtualization-trends-for-2012/4760

Understanding the Best Practices for Disk Imaging and Deployment

Guest Post:
by Matt Obrien, Dell Kace

Sitting through one installation after another is not themost cost-effective activity for the IT department, which is why many organizations are turning to other methods to install operating systems, drivers, and applications on new computers or when restoring an older device. These companies adopt a standardized software deployment system that captures the disk image as an image file where it can be edited, organized, and deployed to new or repurposed computers.

Basic Disk Imaging

A disk image is a file-by-file copy of a computer’s hard drive, which is saved in one or more image files. These files can be saved to a network, burned to a DVD, or sent to another storage device for further use. This image replicates the entire structure and contents of the hard disk, which can then be used to install operating systems on new computers and set up the necessary applications or to restore damaged systems.

This image lets the IT team set up every computer in a department or organization without having to install the individual components on every system. If the company has a large number of departments and devices, though, the number of images can start to get out of hand. In order to avoid some of the impending issues that can arise for this, many companies employ solutions for effective management.

Centralized Imaging

The images created in this process can be used as a baseline installation for a lot of the normal, everyday, technical needs of the company because they have the basic setup and all the associated patches, applications and programs ready to go. The IT team will still need a way to access all the information when necessary and deploy the right disk imaging to the right device.

By uploading everything to a centralized “image library” the team will be able to archive and manage all their images and easily deploy, edit and maintain them. Different departments may require completely different operating systems and applications, and this allows the IT team to provision everything (even to remote users) from a single, centralized console.

Scripted Installations

Installing and configuring all these systems can be very time consuming, and there are more cost-effective things the IT department could be doing. Scripted installs allow the IT team to install operating systems and applications and even configure the settings without having to sit in front of every computer and manually enter the necessary installation values.

When disk images are deployed from a centralized location, it is possible to use an answer file to respond to all the installation questions and completely automate the process. No one needs to sit in front of a computer for extended periods just to click “Yes” or “No” occasionally. The answer file provides the script for running these installations so the IT department can move on to other tasks while still deploying the necessary installations on each system.

Author Matt Obrien.
Matt works with Dell Kace. He enjoys writing about technology, computers and saving money.

Microsoft Windows 8

Microsoft Windows 8 is expected to be available Wednesday February 29th in Beta for Consumer Preview to download. Windows 8 has adopted the tablet style interface similar to Windows Phone 7 to go after the iPad / tablet market. You can still exit out to a traditional style interface. This may be what it takes for Microsoft to penetrate the tablet space and challenge the iPad essentially for the first time!

PC World Article “Microsoft Windows 8 Consumer Preview: What We Know So Far” by Jared Newman:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/250678/microsoft_windows_8_consumer_preview_what_we_know_so_far.html

PCWorld Slide Show, “Windows 8: A Close-Up Look” by Jared Newman: http://www.pcworld.com/article/239896/windows_8_a_closeup_look.html

IT Trends: Cloud Virtualization Growth

1. Increased usage of tablets and smartphones has dramatically changed internet access patterns. The percentage of internet usage by PC’s has dropped by 50% in three years. The proliferation of smartphones and tablets will continue for the foreseeable future.

2. Gartner estimates that 76% of enterprises will be pursuing a private cloud strategy in 2012.

3. Gartner projects that by 2015, business will broadly adopt a “hybrid cloud” infrastructure, and interoperability through virtualization is a key cloud driver.

Gartner Research
http://www.gartner.com