If your home is within close proximity to an earthquake fault line, chances are you have accepted that you will experience an earthquake in your lifetime and have most likely purchased insurance to protect your home and belongings. 

And during these current times of recession, most of us have come to understand how important it is to have some cash reserves in the bank just in case jobs go away and revenue streams dry up.  Whatever the scenario, we all know it's always good to have a back up plan, a "Plan B" just in case. 

Are you taking the same approach to the management of your Active Directory?  In the world of AD, that earthquake or recession takes life in the form of an Active Directory catastrophic failure. 

Close your eyes and imagine the havoc that would ensue if all of the sudden domain controllers could no longer perform directory lookups due to corrupted databases?  How many calls would your service desk start receiving if users cannot log on to their machines?

"AD's central problem today has much to do with its longevity, and the fact that it rarely goes down. In fact, when it does go down, it takes every single part of your computing environment with it. " (Redmond Mag)

Do you have the insurance policy, er Disaster Recovery plans in place which would help you get services quickly restored in the rare, but disastrous occurrence of an AD failure??

No AD DR plans?  First, read this great article to get the ball rolling. 

Then, sign up or request info for our upcoming AD Disaster Recovery and Back Up workshop scheduled for June 25 - 28 in our Dublin Offices.  The course covers how to avoid failures in the first place, but also a wide variety of disaster scenarios that can occur and how to make plans for recovery.

If your home near the earthquake fault line were severely damaged and contents ruined, what would you do if you had no insurance policy to quickly start over?  How long would it take you to restore the lifestyle you and your family had before the disaster?  Now think about this in the context of the AD estate you manage at your organisation.  Can they afford to wait while you rebuild AD from scratch?

Resources:

http://www.packtpub.com/article/how-to-recover-from-an-active-directory-failure

http://redmondmag.com/articles/2010/02/01/avoiding-activedirectory-disasters.aspx

We all know the arrival of Windows 8 is on the horizon and there's some big hoopla coming with it.  And rightfully so--with the promise of a cool new user interface (especially optimised for touch screens), native USB 3.0 support and great new tools for developers to create a  new generation of apps among just a few of the sweet new features coming with Windows 8, it's totally understandable that people are licking their lips in anticipation.

But hold on, wait a minute, most of our Enterprises have only just recently converted over to Windows 7, let alone Windows 8.  Or maybe your company has just begun the migration process to Windows 7, coming off of XP or Vista. You might be one of those questioning the value of investing time and resources to getting your Windows 7 deployments up to scratch, and ensuring your IT staff who support it have the deep admin knowledge on the product, when Windows 8 is approaching over the next year.  It's a fair conclusion at first glance, but to hold off getting the know-how you need on Windows 7 doesn't really make good sense.  From a cost and support perspective for the enterprise customer, Windows 7 doesn't even reach the end of mainstream support until January of 2015.  Yes, 2015.  That's still 3 years away.  Unless there is some unique, compelling reason to leap-frog forward to the future in the OS world, the majority of our companies will be looking to postpone increased investment in OS deployments until it becomes absolutely necessary from a support perspective.  And...Windows 7 is pretty sweet itself:

• Easier to install and less power hungry than Vista
• Less annoying notifications and pop-ups
• Designed with mobile devices in mind so Windows 7 is more energy efficient
• Networking has been made alot easier.  Share a printer and several machines
• Searching for documents and files is even easier
• 32bit and 64bit versions available
• Strong backwards compatibility with Windows XP programmes
• Superb data backup features

“Providers of IT services can no longer afford to focus on technology and their internal organization;
they now have to consider the quality of the services they provide and focus on the relationship with customers.”

Last week Irish customers of Microsoft Premier Support Services gathered at our customer event and had the opportunity to watch demos of some of Microsoft’s latest technology as well as insights on how to better manage the IT services delivered within their own enterprises.  Of particular interest was a great demo on integrating system Center to monitor and manage across the IT service lifecycle. 

System Center’s built-in processes are based on industry best practices such as those found in Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) and the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), so it makes sense to leverage the technology you already have to start driving the IT service management improvement you are looking for within your enterprise.

Want to learn more?  Check out some great demos available to see what you can accomplish with the System Center suite.  Then contact your Service Delivery Manager to see how you can leverage your Premier Support agreement to get started.

Sources:

IT Service Management Forum (2002). van Bon, J.. ed. IT Service Management: An Introduction. Van Haren Publishing. ISBN 9080671347.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager/archive/2010/01/13/system-center-service-manager-demos.aspx

With all the promise of exciting innovation and improved efficiencies that are to come from the IT world’s evolution to the Cloud, there also comes a bit of fear and hesitation with where the journey will take us.  We as human beings are pre-programmed to resist change in certain capacities as a defense- mechanism to protect ourselves from looming threat. For many IT professionals, that perceived threat is that our expertise in the on-premise world will become obsolete, no longer needed.  Often times the fears of job instability and loss of security can draw our attention away from the benefits that our organisation’s move to the Cloud will offer and thus make us resist this coming change.

But what we also know is that when we choose to “look on the bright side” when dealing with these fears, we might realize that we can begin to minimise them by educating ourselves on what the Cloud evolution really means so that we can start involving ourselves in the process.  The more we know, the more we can contribute and the more likely we will be called upon to be a key player in the journey.

 “Companies that instill the knowledge and understanding their IT professionals and developers require in making the transition to

cloud based skills will enable transition to the cloud both more successfully and more profitably."

In that light, the imminent question we must ask ourselves is:

What can we do to prepare?

Microsoft has recently published a white paper, outlining the essential skills IT professionals should consider enhancing as the landscape of the IT world continues to take flight into the Cloud.

Does your career fit into any of the following roles? Read below to get an idea of skill development needed for specific IT management functions:

"Critical Skills by IT Job Role"

The following are job roles and skills the IT professional can invest in:

Business liaison: Move skills up the stack in the decision process. Hone expertise to the business from within IT. Move into design and architecture roles. Determine whether to focus in-house or off-premise, define options whether the organization decides to stay on-premise or moves to the cloud.

Datacenter manager: Reposition datacenter skills toward the hosted datacenter. Enhance automation skills. Work in standardized environments and with standardized applications as an option. Become good at management applications, scripting, and performance optimization. Acquire best practices skills, such as information services technology management.

Security specialist: Help businesses move core business processes and data securely to private, public, or hybrid cloud solutions. Security specialists need to stay abreast of new security models and technologies, such as data protection skills, privacy standards, securing message integrity (encryption, digital signing and malware protection), federated identity management, authentication methods, and auditing. Organizations need to have security- and compliance-certified employees.

Software architect: Serve as a link between the organization’s technical and business staff. Architects are asked to design and build complex distributed systems that exist both outside and
inside an enterprise and the cloud. They need to acquire the new skills required to build infrastructure, platform, and software clouds. They need to understand how to design and construct multi-tenant and virtualized systems that can manage thousands of simultaneous users and isolate higher levels of the stack from physical component failures.

Finally, the move to the Cloud will lead to dramatic transformations in how Business units communicate with the IT Unit at firms. Conversations between the entities will become less and less focused on discrete pieces of technology software and hardware, and more and more about the value-added services that are supported by the behind-the-scenes work of the IT unit.  It won’t be just about technical skill in the very near future.  Make no mistake, we all (regardless of our role in the IT front) must continuously develop our own soft skills as IT professionals will become increasingly called upon to serve as communication ambassadors for IT to other business units.

It would be a worthy investment of time to seek out courses that will help develop the essential soft skills we will need as it becomes more and more about articulating business value in the context of IT management.  For the technical skills outlined above in the role-based descriptors, consider leveraging your Premier Support agreement with Microsoft to get access to affordable, high-quality training by Subject Matter Experts.  Premier Support has access to a pool of world-class engineers who are highly-skilled at sharing their expertise in all areas, including virtualision, security compliance and protection, scripting & automation, as well as process optimisation. 

Ready to get started?  Give Premier Support Ireland a shout, and start finding your own opportunity in the Cloud.

Sources: 

Resistance to Change: 

http://changingminds.org/disciplines/change_management/resistance_change/resistance_change.htm

Microsoft Cloud Whitepaper:

https://partner.microsoft.com/global/40175589?msp_id=rssgloballearnsol156

• The computing ecosystem. Our view of what defines a computer is changing as previously “unintelligent” objects are gaining intelligence, becoming connected, and joining the ecosystem of computing. We are entering the era of an “Internet of things” in which almost any object can be connected to the Internet and collect data that contributes to a global web of knowledge. Virtually every type of product is becoming part of the computing ecosystem—from cars, phones, and houses to scales, cameras, power meters, and televisions. Many of the computers you’ll interact with in the future will be in devices that we don’t think of as computers today. In effect, computing is becoming increasingly invisible. The explosion of data. The
  immense number of digital devices in our world is driving an explosion in data. Deep analysis of this vast amount of data is enabling computers to begin to understand the physical world and to behave in a more human way, anticipating our needs and understanding our intentions.

• Natural interaction. More natural ways to interact with technology are rapidly emerging—multitouch, voice, vision, gestures, and many more. This means that for the first time, computing will adapt to us and demonstrate some degree of “intelligence.” This trend will see computers shift from being tools to being helpers, performing tasks on our behalf based on an awareness of the environments we are in and the context of our actions. Ultimately, this will enable computing interfaces that are far more natural and increasingly simple to use, helping eliminate the learning curve of today’s technology.

• Pervasive displays. New display technologies will give rise to displays that are light, portable, flexible and cheap. We’ll carry a screen around with us as easily as we carry a magazine today, and we’ll take for granted the fact that screens are embedded wherever they might be useful—whether we’re at home, at work, on the move, or in public spaces. And ubiquitous connectivity will automatically link our information to those screens when we want to use them.

• Social computing. Social computing has already changed how we create and maintain our connections with others. But the world of social computing remains highly fragmented. The lack of integration creates frustrating disconnects that are inevitable when we are forced to switch between services and applications to stay up to date. Social computing will undergo a dramatic transformation as technology advances make it possible to weave our social lives more deeply and more seamlessly into every aspect of our digital lives, so that information from our social networks can provide insights to guide us in the real world and online. Social networking itself will also change, becoming far more visual and less text-centric.

• Cloud computing. With its massive data centers, cloud computing delivers virtually infinite resources, providing the storage capacity and processing power to tackle some of the world’s toughest problems in healthcare, the environment, energy, scientific discovery, and many other fields. A hub for all data and information, it will enable us to capture, store, index, parse, and recall as much of our day-to-day lives as we choose to share. It will also provide a platform for orchestrating the flow of information and technology across our lives so that we always have instant access to the tools and information that we need. Fundamental breakthroughs in massively parallel computing will enable us to see patterns in data that can make actionable intelligence more prevalent.

• Ubiquitous connectivity. Increasingly we will be connected at all times to people, information, services and applications without requiring any specific action on our part. This will liberate the information that we have created ourselves and unlock any information from any source that might be relevant to where we are and what we are trying to accomplish, bringing everything we need together seamlessly in the form that is most useful.