Blogs

People ask me what I think of Virtualisation and whether I would virtualise SBS or Cougar or 10 desktops or more. If we are talking about OS virtualisation, rather than application virtualisation then many people miss what virtualisation is - the running of more operating systems on one single piece of hardware. This means that before you had, for example, 3 OSs to manage and now you have 4 (the OS running the virtualisation technology / layer and the 3 OSs that you now virtualise). Now you do have to manage less hardware, but a single hardware failure now will stop 4 OSs rather than 1, so you need to plan around this. Obviously virtualisation gives you benefits in portability and resources management as well as potentially increased hardware specs without the same increase in costs, but you also need to be aware of the issues. I see two major issues outside of those people often think about (as above): Not enough resources. The process of virtualising an OS costs some tax in terms of performance of CPUs, disk...

Just in case you had not seen it - CRM 4.0 is available - http://www.microsoft.com/beta/downloads/Search.aspx?SearchText=crm . Susanne Dansey has also been to one of the CRM days and has some good info at http://www.uksmbgirl.co.uk/blog/archives/320 . Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Ready for Download By Stuart J. Johnston Microsoft announced Monday that it has released to manufacturing the long-awaited update to its Dynamics-branded customer relationship management software (CRM). Previously codenamed "Titan," the latest version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM actually has two names in its final form. For on-premise, customer-hosted, as well as partner-hosted deployments, the product has been dubbed Dynamics CRM 4.0. The company will also be offering the package on-demand in a Microsoft-hosted environment that it has named Dynamics CRM Live. Existing and new customers will be able to download the update when it's released on the Web this week, a Microsoft official told InternetNews.com . The Microsoft-hosted...

This question was asked internally and I was told this is the answer - I've not been able to test it fully, but it appears to be heading in the right direction!! Q. Why can't I play files that are shared by one computer but located on different computer? A. You can use Windows Media Player 11 to share media files that are located on other computers on your home network. However, additional steps are required so that these remote files will play on the devices you are sharing them with. On the remote computer, the media files must be in shared folders. For information about sharing folders, see Windows Help and Support. On the computer that contains the library you are sharing, you must grant users permission to access remote folders, modify registry key values, and monitor the shared folders located on the remote computer. The information in this section covers only granting permissions and modifying registry values. For information about monitoring folders, see What are monitored folders? There are five...

This is a fab tool - for example, the page has: Inside Microsoft Office Excel 2007 Stop the Press -Microsoft Office Excel 2007 - making working with numbers easier than ever! Where minutes are kept and hours are wasted Well-planned and organised meetings can be very useful. However, not all meetings leave attendees feeling like their time has been well spent! ttfn David Technorati Tags: Excel , Tips

Hopefully everyone has seen this, but if not: Windows Small Business Server at risk from critical flaw Microsoft initially omitted Small Business Server from its list of critically affected OSes, but is now offering patches via its automatic update services In an update to its MS08-001 security bulletin, Microsoft said that the latest release of Windows Small Business Server was also critically at risk from a bug in Windows' networking software. The flaw is also considered critical for Windows XP and Vista users. Microsoft did not say why it had initially omitted Small Business Server from its list of critically affected operating systems, but it said that the product's users were being offered patches via Microsoft's various automatic update services. "Customers with Windows Small Business Server 2003 Service Pack 2 should apply the update to remain secure," Microsoft said in its updated bulletin. The bug lies in the way Windows processes networking traffic that uses IGMP (Internet Group...

Microsoft is currently looking for Small Business case studies about how customers use Microsoft products. These case studies include the name of the partner used to install the solution and so are a great way of generating completely free publicity. Case studies are mainly targeted at a customer audience and will be used on our customer website's, in newsletters, in collateral and sometimes in the press. If you would like to nominate any of your customers please go to www.articulatemarketing.com/partner.html and fill in the short form with their details. After you have submitted their details no further work is required from you as we will contact the customer directly for a short interview. Both yourselves and the customer will then be able to review any case studies before they are used. ttfn David Technorati Tags: Microsoft , Small Business , Case Studies

If you don't know about the Heroes Happen Here :: Home campaign then you are very much behind the times. The Launch events for SQL Server 2008 (errrm), Visual Studio 2008 and Windows Server 2008 are fast approaching and so is your customers ability to buy and use them - do you understand what, why and when? If not, go to the website and see how your customers can benefit and why you should learn more about the product and what you can do to improve your business with these products. ttfn David Technorati Tags: Heroes happen here , Heroes happen {here} , Heroes , Windows Server 2008 , SQL Server 2008 , Visual Studio 2008

Hi, Saw this - very much noticed the behaviour, the music and then realised "this is not a stunt... this is what we do". Enjoy ttfn David Technorati Tags: Microsoft , Conference Call , Fun

I saw this and had to share ... just a little too much truth in them I think :-) The Google Strategy Will Backfire We forget that Google is still a very young company. But they just reminded us ... Continue Parsing Yahoo!: What Makes You Think We're Desperate? Given its grim outlook as a stand-alone company, Yahoo! suppresses its glee as it steps into play ... Continue Parsing Google: Don't Trust the Old Bully, Just the New One Parsing Google: Only benevolent giants like us should be able to buys things ... Continue Parsing Microsoft, the New Champion of Choice Protecting the existence of alternatives to a dominant player used to seem like a bad idea in Redmond. Suddenly, Microsoft is using the language it has fought against for so many years ... Continue Spin Blog - Business Spin by Jack Flack - Portfolio.com ttfn David Technorati Tags: Google , Yahoo , Microsoft , Marketing , Spin

I saw these and laughed lots: Pavel Constantin, Romania Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com Enjoy :-) Please do not copy the images as they are (c) the artists and I have paid a royalty to share them. If you like them, please point people to this post ttfn David Technorati Tags: Microsoft , Yahoo , Google

You may remember people who have one awards at the Worldwide Partner Conference before - is it your time now? I saw Steve Morrow (my boss) has put some great information on the UK ISV blog and while he is thinkking about it from a purely ISV point of view, you could apply under any of the categories. Time to Nominate your Applications for the Awards at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference! Time to submit your entry for the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference Awards program! This is a great way to get some free PR. As a finalist or winner you’ll receive promotions that identify your company as part of an elite class of Microsoft partners. Logos will also be displayed in Microsoft Solution Finder. The nomination process is open NOW and closes on 4th April 2008 . Finalists for the 2008 awards will be announced on June 9, 2008. Winners will be announced and recognized at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston, July 7-10, 2008. Go to Award Submission Tool For a full list of the award categories...

My background covers security and I've started reading this blog ( Security Vulnerability Research & Defense ) - it is excellent and definitely worth a read to understand how vulnerabilities work and how to mitigate them!! MS08-001 - The case of the Moderate, Important, and Critical network vulnerabilities Security bulletin MS08-001 addresses vulnerabilities described by two separate CVE numbers, as you can see in the bulletin. This post provides an overview of the two issues, the affected platforms and notes on the severity. We’ll be following this post up with two further entries that look at each issue in more detail. CVE-2007-0066 describes a vulnerability in parsing ICMP router advertisement packets. These packets are not processed by default on any supported version of Windows. If a computer is configured to process router discovery protocol packets and encounters this type of malformed packet, the Windows kernel will bugcheck (blue screen of death) and reboot. A separate blog post goes into more...