Anticipating market shifts and their severe impact on IT careers and their evolution are a definite passion of mine. This stems from my days as a college teacher as I always wanted to make sure my students were best prepared for the industry today and for the longer term. You don't want to be in a situation where BOOM! - no job or you are experiencing unsettling career uncertainty; sweating the changes...

I just finished putting my son down for the night and while I was waiting to make sure he was asleep, I took advantage of the time to tale a look at other MS blogs. I'm always on the look for good productivity tips that help me day to day and I thought that I'd share what I found at John Howard blog. He shows us how to display multiple timezones in your Outlook Calendar. For me this is really useful...

Have you checked out the Microsoft IT Showcase? I think it pretty cool and shows how we use and test our technology in our IT enviroment. It gives IT professionals a unique, insider view into Microsoft's process of developing, deploying, and managing its own enterprise solutions. Here you will find technical case studies, white papers, presentations and more, direct from Microsoft IT, that highlight...

I had a wonderful conversation with Dr. Maria Klawe . She is a World Renowned Computer Scientist, past Dean of Science at UBC and current Dean of Engineering at Princeton. Talk about a prominent Canadian; her ideas are so important that this summer Maria was the moderator at the world computer science faculty summit where she fielded questions with Bill Gates. In fact we talked about this important...

This forum is about connecting and engaging with you as IT Managers and I thought it would be great to bring that to another level. I have a passion about doing interviews with the top experts in IT from business, industry, education, and government and I’m going to bring this connection to you, in this forum. Let us work together in creating an environment where they can share their work, views...

Last night I had the honour to be included a panel about blogging at the Canadian public relations society. The enthusiastic feedback and questions from the attendees really highlighted the growing interest in blogging. Michael O Connor Clarke lead a great conversation with Rick Segal , Mark Evans , Jack Kapica , Geoffrey Rockwell , and myself fielding some wonderful and challenging questions. You...

I noticed this article in Monday’s Globe and Mail ( Tech Shortfall stalls Canadian productivity ) and thought it worthwhile to share. Productivity is really becoming of importance especially in Canada when companies look to compete globally. The company example in article highlights the challenge. Up until now it seems that it has been more of a leap of faith vs. a known outcome that technology dramatically...

John, thank you for providing an introduction to the IT manager community in this unique and very special forum you have initiated. Your extensive background, considerable experience, and accumulated wisdom in working and collaborating with IT Managers are an invaluable resource to the IT Pro community. In addition, you and Barnaby, bring a wealth of talent, demonstrated long history of successes...

I have been thinking quite a bit about your recent feedback on how and in what fashion we can better connect Canadian IT Managers with this forum. I know that we need a dynamic conversation and as such, I've realized that having other experienced perspectives adds to this dialogue. Bringing in these other perspectives can enhance the current approach by addressing the four key areas that I'm hearing...

I thought that this information would be of interest to everyone either to use or pass on to your architects. I have read a few of the inital publications and they seem to be a pretty comprehensive and insightful. Authors, both from inside Microsoft and from the community at large share their stories, lessons and ideas to the discussion. The Journal highlights whats new, drives thought leadership...

I know I mentioned it on a previous post, yet I really had to call this out indivdually as it is an important landmark and really shows our commitment to 64 bit. We will be shipping one of the most important applicaiton to microsoft and the industry as email is the core of electroic communications in 64-bit mode only. As Stuart J. Johnston states in his article at redmondmag.com "this is fairly significant...

Microsoft's new Chief Technology Officer Ray Ozzie has started blogging. In his first post he outlines how he's going go approach this new blog. It's great to hear that the focus is to "reply and converse with you in a manner that scales." Check it out @ http://spaces.msn.com/members/rayozzie/PersonalSpace.aspx

A lot of you have been asking when it was going to happen and now it has! Windows Desktop Search is now enabled for the enterprise. The latest version of Windows Desktop Search (WDS) is optimized with features that help the enterprise IT manager easily customize, deploy and manage the installation of desktop search across all users and computers in their organization. You can get more info @...

If you haven’t been thinking about 64 bit computing and virtualization and how it will fit into your environment then now is the time to do it. I know from my experiences that there are so many 32 bit servers on the datacenter floors and with industry reports showing server utilization rates as low as 5% to 15%, the practice of server virtualization and consolidation has to be a core part of any organizations...

Recognition is another way to highlight what your teams have done and help managers with IT Pro retention ! Not every organization is doing this and I've learned that recognition is a key way to keep people jazzed about their role and show them how they are appriciated. To help raise awareness we've created a National program to bring attention to what innovative solutions you are delivering. We feel...

If you've come to one of my team's events I'm sure that you've heard about our resource guide. This quick reference guide was created to help Canadian IT Pros evaluate, deploy and maintain Microsoft products and technologies. It may be of some benefit to you from an managerial perspective, yet from our feedback I think that it will be really helpful for your team and techies. Check it out and pass...

I've gotten a question regarding one of my previous posts on SQL in the enterprise. It seems that I really wasn't to the point. To ensure clarity, my comment "this is not your basic database and with great capability comes the need to ensure you properly architect a solution that fits your needs." was more about solution approach vs. product architecture. If you are looking to replace any mission...

As i ndemnification and licensing is a concern to almost every IT manager I thought it worthwhile to share information on the availability of three new template Shared Source licenses. Taking this approach, all of Microsoft source code releases will be under consistent terms, and should be more easy to use and to understand. The licenses are each 1 page or shorter. They seem to be very straight forward...

Last week we announced some significant licensing changes with regards to virtualization and Windows Server 2003. As with how we addressed mulit-core processers it seems we are taking another simular industry step. Starting with Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition - customers can run up to 4 virtual instances of Windows Server 2003 (any edition) with no additional licensing costs. Zero...

I was talking to an IT manager for a large financial bank in Canada about the pending SQL 2005 product launch. He was looking forward to the product as it has been a while since we’ve updated the product version. Today he uses SQL 2000 in a departmental fashion and while he was excited to see the new product he asked the obvious question about whether SQL Server can handle heavy-duty requirements....

Time to time our executives, of the likes of Steve Ballmer will pass on and share some insights about our vision and strategy for various industry areas. Attached below is the email that anyone signed up to the executive forum received last Friday. I thought it applicable as it is focused on our midsize business strategy. My goal in this post is to expose you to these types of communications and give...

I want to give you a heads up that Dave Helmer, MS Canada’s president, is going to kick off the Canadian Ready Launch tour in Toronto, Nov 8. I have had a chance to hear Dave speak numerous times internally and the topic is always current and applicable to today’s industry challenges. His past experiences and industry perspective bring some great insights into the exciting new possibilities with...

As I looked deeper into the training opportunities, I was sort of embarrassed to be shown the Microsoft e-learning site https://www.microsoftelearning.com/ . I was introduced to it by a Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) after my last post. I knew that we had the online seminars/webcasts ( http://www.microsoft.com/canada/technet/events/default.aspx ) and our virtual labs ( http://www.microsoft...

Talking to some IT managers around the Toronto area, I found them generally in agreement that their training opportunities seem limited and broad in nature. As well, their training dollars are primarily directed towards helping the teams be successful in role by project. What this usually means is their teams are learning as they go. Sometimes, on a project by project basis and generally self taught...

I've heard of many ways to try and set a world record and well I shouldn’t' be surprised that technology is now a chapter in the Guinness world record book... this record made me smile. It definitely is a different and quite cool way of using an Unisys ES7000 32-CPU / 32GB RAM Server with Windows. You can check it out at: http://blogs.technet.com/michand/archive/2005/08/16/409246.aspx The...