April, 2008

Our 3rd annual EnergizeIT event is less than a month away. For those of you who have joined us on this day in years past, I hope we'll see you again this year as this promises to be the best ever. For those of you not quite sure what it's all about, it's a full day with keynotes in the morning and breakout sessions in the afternoon. There are sessions for everyone: developers, infrastructure specialists...

Today at the Microsoft Management Summit , the beta release of the System Center Operations Manager cross-platform extensions was announced. These extensions allow the native management of both Windows and non-Windows environments from the same console. As well System Center Virtual Machine Manager will have the capability to manage both Hyper-V and other virtualization platforms, such as VMWare ESX...

If you're in the Toronto area May 3rd and 4th and work with Small Business Server, you'll want to be sure to attend the SMB Nation Toronto Conference that's happening at that time. The 2 day event includes talks on VoIP, Response Point, virtualization, and SharePoint Services 3.0 as well as on business topics such as "Creating Stickiness on the Web" and how to "Automate and Optimize...

Graham Jones (Surrey, BC - IT Professional and President of VANTUG ) The Opportunity to Spread the Word Last week Stephen Ibaraki (blogger extraordinaire – congrats on being named one of the top 10 in Canada ) and I attended the "Global" MVP Summit and a "World" UG Management Summit in Redmond. Most of you may have heard of the MVP Summit but the UG Management Summit was a new event organized...

Stuart R. Crawford (Calgary, AB - Business Development Manager of IT Matters) How many blogs do you read over the course of the business day? There are many blogs on the Internet today. Businesses are adopting blogging as a way to keep in touch with their client base more frequently, they are using internal blogs to share information throughout a corporation, and many IT professionals use blogging...

Well, we always knew he was good, but it was a real bonus to see Stephen Ibaraki's name on the list compiled by Shane Schick from ComputerWorld Canada of the top 10 Canadian Technology Bloggers. Shane prefaces his list in the following manner: Let’s make this absolutely clear: this list is subjective. But isn’t that what an IT manager would want — someone who’s already browsed...

Each month I post the upcoming IT manager focused webcasts for the following month. But don't forget that if you miss the live webcast dates or, if you're like me and don't like to commit to a specific time for a webcast, you can download these after they've aired or download other past webcasts on demand at http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=5172762 . IT Manager Webcast: How Microsoft IT Does Patch Management...

I thought you might be interested in some quick facts about the MVP Summit, the program and the impact the MVP community has on diverse communities worldwide. With the summit quickly approaching, here are data points on the significant role MVPs play. Worldwide there are more than 100 million participants in technical communities. Of these participants there are only 4,000 MVPs located across...

The Canadian Strategic Architect Forum is happening right now in Vancouver and if you're reading this blog post, you're probably not attending. However, you can still benefit from the sessions and speakers as all of yesterday's presentations (with the exception of the roundtable track) have been recorded and posted online: Keynote - Norm Judah Keynote - Richard Cleaver Keynote - Stephen Ibaraki Windows...

Stuart R. Crawford (Calgary, AB - Business Development Manager of IT Matters) We have all heard the saying that we must have the right employees on our business bus, but have you ever thought that you need to have the right clients on the bus as well? Just like having the wrong employees on your team, the wrong clients can hurt your business and create a lifestyle that you do not enjoy. Many of us...

This is the next blog in the continuing series of interviews with top-echelon and renowned professionals. In this blog, I interview Dr. Yan Xu , a world-renowned researcher and educational leader. Enjoy! Stephen Ibaraki, FCIPS , I.S.P. , MVP View Interview Time Index and Topics Listen to the Interview (MP3) About Dr. Yan Xu Yan Xu, Ph.D., is a Research Program Manager in External Research & Programs...

Last July , we talked on the IT Manager Podcast series about how high performance computing (HPC) is moving from the exclusive realm of academic and large company research and becoming accessible for mid-sized companies. We're seeing all sorts of commercial uses for this technology and its use is impacting many disciplines, including movie animation. In this podcast, I have the opportunity to talk...