IT edge

If you are like me and record presentation to share internally in my organization and with customers, you know good screen recording software costs a few hundred dollars. Granted, there are free screen recording software packages that you can download and use. But if you have had the same experience I have had with free screen recording software – once a presentation recording is more than 15 minutes or so, the software may lock up, crash and you lose all the time and effort you put into creating the recording.

In PowerPoint 2010 you can now turn your presentation into a video without having to use third party screen recording software! I came across an article that walked me through the process after looking for another free screen recording software package to record a PowerPoint presentation to a .wmv video. Read the article yourself here http://office2010.microsoft.com/en-us/powerpoint-help/turn-your-presentation-into-a-video-HA010336763.aspx.

So for me this was another reason to upgrade to Office 2010. Because it actually saved me the headache of trying to find and use a solid free screen recording package or saved be from having to by something for a few hundred dollars. Of course if you want to record more on your screen than a simple PowerPoint presentation you will still need a third-party screen recording software like Microsoft Expression Encoder Pro which includes screen capture and a whole bunch more.

So you have Office Communications Server setup internally and users want to be able to Instant Message with others on Windows Live Messenger, AIM, and Yahoo! Once your find the instruction to set this up it’s fairly easy to do, the hard part up until now has been locating the instructions.

There are a couple of things you should know before we get started.

• Federation with Windows Live and AOL is Free if:

• You are Licensed for OCS 2007 R2 Standard CALs
• You have active Software Assurance on OCS 2007 or LCS 2005 SP1
• You have a Microsoft Volume License Agreement such as Open, Select, Enterprise

• Your Volume License Agreement Number
• The FQDN of the Access Edge service you will provision
• SIP Domains
• Contact Information

With this knowledge in hand, you are ready to:

• Review the high-level Overview of PIM Connectivity Provisioning.
• Download the OCS PIC Provisioning Guide and begin to walk through it’s instructions.
• Read the FAQs about Provisioning OCS Deployment for Public IM Connectivity.
• Access the OCS PIM Connectivity Provisioning site to begin the provisioning process.

Aug 31, 2010 – Microsoft published in the USA TODAY Newspaper an open letter to VMware customers asking them to rethink signing a new three year contract with VMware. In the letter Brad Anderson argues that, “…signing up for a three-year virtualization commitment may lock you into a vendor that cannot provide you with the breadth of technology, flexibility or scale, that you’ll need to build a complete cloud computing environment."

He goes on to say, "If you’re evaluating a new licensing agreement with VMware, talk to us first. You have nothing to lose and plenty to gain. Not only is Microsoft’s server virtualization solution approximately one-third the cost of a comparable solution from VMware, but also a recent Microsoft study of 150 large companies showed those running Microsoft virtualization spent 24 percent less on IT labor on an ongoing basis.”

Below is an image capture of the open letter:

Read more about it and get Ina Fried’s comments on the open letter on her CNet Blog: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-20015123-56.html?tag=mncol

Microsoft Released Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1 on August 25, 2010. As with all Microsoft Service Packs, it includes the roll up of the security updates since the product RTM in October 2009. There are also some new features and updates for archiving, OWA, and mobile user and management improvements.

Service Pack 1 gives OWA a faster reading experience, and other UI changes that make the user experience better on smaller screens, such as on Netbooks.Now OWA users can enable calendar sharing with anonymous viewers over the Web – if enabled by Exchange Admins and the OWA User.

Download Exchange Server 2010 SP1 from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=50b32685-4356-49cc-8b37-d9c9d4ea3f5b&displaylang=en

If you have Microsoft Exchange Server and Mobile Devices in your Enterprise which support Exchange ActiveSync, surely you want to know what features are supported on a particular Mobile Device. The TechNet Wiki has a Comparison Table that shows what’s supported for Windows Phone, iPhone & iPad, Nokia, Google Android, Palm, and other device plug-ins. 

Check out the current version of the comparison table: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/exchange-activesync-client-comparison-table.aspx

TechRepublic.com is hosting a Live Webcast
”Evaluating Cloud Solutions: Insights from an Early Adopter of Google Apps and Microsoft BPOS”

Join us for this LIVE Event on:
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
1:30 PM ET / 10:30 AM PT / 5:30 PM GMT

http://webcasts.techrepublic.com.com/abstract.aspx?docid=1931015

Overview: Serena Software, a leading software company in the application development and governance market, made headlines in 2008 when it decided to migrate all of their 600 employees from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps. After months of user dissatisfaction, content loss and poor support, the company decided to make a full migration off of Google Apps to Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite. Since then, user confidence has returned, IT has once again become a trusted partner, and the company can increase their focus on their core business.

Join this live TechRepublic Webcast to hear from Ron Brister, Director of IT, Serena Software, as he shares his insights his experiences "Going Google" and how the company made the decision to embrace the cloud and ultimately choose Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite.

In this webcast, you will learn:

• How the company approached the decision to embrace the cloud and the results they are seeing
• Lessons learned from using Google Apps for enterprise messaging
• Why and how Serena made the move from Google Apps to Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite and how they intend to take advantage of new features on the horizon

If you are considering using Cloud based Software-as-a-Service (Cloud Apps), especially Google Apps, I would hope you attend this webcast and get the perspective of this former Google Apps customer.

Ars Technica is reporting that there is a mass series of SQL Injection Attacks occurring over the Internet which links to malware sites. The Injection method uses obfuscation to hide the data to try and bypass basic input checking.

The attack tries to inject iFrames into SQL tables, which will be rendered as web pages that use tables to dynamically creates its HTML. The attack has affected mostly smaller site, but according to the report, but it has also affected some of Apples podcast pages, and some government web pages have also been affected.

While SQL Injection attacks are not specific to a SQL database vendor as the attack has to do with coding, everyone running Microsoft SQL Server as a web backend should be aware that Microsoft offers free security support to it’s customers. The free security support is for any security incidents, and/or hacks including SQL Injection Attacks for those running on the Microsoft Platform.

The Ars Technica Article can be accessed here:

http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2010/08/newly-detected-sql-injection-attack-snags-apple-in-wide-net.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss

CIO Magazine – August 11, 2010 – published an article “The Trouble with Going Google: Four Reasons Why I Got Out”. Apparently “saving money” using Google Apps doesn’t consider the soft costs, user adoption or productivity changes. If you are thinking about going Google take a look at this article on why some companies left Microsoft to Go Google, and then switched back to the Microsoft Platform.

A low price doesn’t always translate into a good investment. Take Yugo for example… you could buy a new Yugo years ago in the US for next to nothing, but it didn’t make sense for many families to trade in a larger, safer, more comfortable and more reliable car (even if was was a few years old), or get rid of the luxury car because you could by a Yugo cheaply.

Check out the article and the user comments.

Last week (August 13, 2010) the press published some articles regarding the State of California going with Microsoft for their revamped E-mail system. Google apparently didn’t like hearing this and has been trying to get the state to change 142 of its requirements for an Email system so they can bid on it. According to the LA Times article the state rejected 115 of the change requests.

One of the requirements mentioned in the LA Times article is of sorting Email in a persons Inbox. The article points out that Google’s capabilities doesn’t allow advanced Email sorting features, but requires users to use Google’s search engine to locate specific messages… an approach that Google believes is “more effective.” I don’t know about other Email users, but I use the sort feature all the time in Outlook to locate messages. Especially messages that have been in my Inbox or another folder for sometime that I may have forgotten to take action on. If I had to search for every message I wanted to find, my search terms would likely be too broad or too narrow to find all the messages I needed easily. It’s much faster for me to use sort, and if I need am looking for something in particular that I filed away in a Outlook folder, I still use the built-in search in Outlook or built-in to Windows 7 to find it. Really both capabilities are important and help you use the right feature to get the job done the quickest.

The goal for the State of California is to update over 100 older Email systems and consolidate them into a single platform and service which will save millions of dollars. With the City of LA and the migration to Google, there has been some scheduling and project management issues due to features promised by Google that they have not delivered on when expected. In addition the security concerns by the LAPD have also prevented them from moving all of their mail to Google.

The ZDNet Blog by Editor Sam Diaz sheds some additional light on the bid process and Google’s response… or, um, lack of response.What’s interesting about both of these articles is there is an assumption made (through comments about energy and carbon emissions savings by Google) that it’s Google’s Cloud offering vs. Microsoft’s on-premise offering. I guess well have to wait and see what the final offering is when the State announces it.

Keep in mind too that anyone can access and review the RFP documents that the State released. So if you are curious about the nearly 200 requirements in the RFP are, you can read them for yourself.

Don’t forget to read the comments on these articles, they are always interesting, or at least entertaining.

LA Times Article: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-google-email-20100813,0,6924885.story

ZDNet Article: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/google-bidding-process-for-californias-e-mail-contract-was-designed-for-microsoft-win/38036

If you are looking for an Office migration tools to assess compatibility of existing Office files and macros for Office 2010 compatibility, it’s here!  Microsoft released Office Migration Planning Manager (OMPM) 2010 to help assess and migrate documents

Download OMPM 2010 here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=81d208f0-7ace-499c-8975-728c648b8b43

OMPM is a tool targeted at IT Pros to assist in the discovery and assessment compatibility of existing Office documents for migration from the binary document formats (Office 97-2003) to OpenXML formats (Office 2007 and 2010). OMPM 2010 has features to assess macro compatibility with Office 2010 and 64 bit Office compatibility. The toolkit also contains the Office File Converter (OFC) which enables bulk document conversions from binary to OpenXML formats.

OMPM 2010 Update Highlights:

• Bulk Macro Compatibility Scanning – incorporates logic from Office Code Compatibility Inspector (OCCI) tool to produce count of potential number of VBA issues due to changes in object model.  A new option in the offscan.ini file enables activation of this scan.
• Bulk 64-bit compatibility scanning – incorporates logic from OCCI tool to produce count of potential number of 64-bit (declare) VBA issues due use of 64-bit Office.  A new option in the offscan.ini file enables activation of this scan.
• Pre-defined date filtering for scans – new configuration options are available in the Offscan.ini file to allow exclusion of files based on last accessed or last modified dates.  Files which are skipped can be logged.
• SQL 2008/SQL 2008 R2 support – Support for SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 has been enabled, remains compatible with SQL 2005.

There are a couple of other good sites from Microsoft for assisting with Office planning an migration:

• Deploy Office
• Compatibility Resource Center
• Office IT Pro