The Building Blocks of Online Collaboration, Content Management, Business Intelligence, and More

Gartner, Inc. predicts that 80 percent of organizations will be using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) by 2010, but only 40 percent will use it effectively. This is because MOSS, the most successful Microsoft server product ever launched, can be a bit unwieldy. There are subtleties within the product that require a certain level of familiarity and expertise. This means that while MOSS is a great way for many companies to deliver web-based content and collaboration tools to customers and employees, implementing the solution without the benefit of experience may be ill-advised.

What Is MOSS?
MOSS 2007 a collection of web-based applications designed to facilitate collaboration, provide content management, implement business processes, and supply access to information that’s essential to organizational goals and processes. 2007 brings the fourth iteration of this product from Microsoft, which originated in 1999. Plante & Moran’s web development team has implemented several competing products, and we’ve found that MOSS 2007 is an unusually good fit for many of our clients.

What Are Its Capabilities?
MOSS includes the following capabilities:
• Collaboration. This includes wikis, blogs, calendars, e-mail integration, discussion boards, surveys, document collaboration, and real-time presence indication, among other features.
• Portal. Although this includes a variety of technical features such as content syndication and audience targeting, it also provides privacy and security, a site directory, and “my site” capabilities, which give users the ability to personalize information “for me,” “by me,” and “about me.”
• Search. This simple, easy-to-use tool includes a people search, knowledge network, and business data search. Search algorithms ensure relevant searches and search results are rendered more clearly—all while meeting the security your organization demands.
• Content Management. This allows businesses to manage documents, e-mail messages, videos, web pages, and more. Businesses can administer this diverse content, streamline business processes, and efficiently manage multiple websites.
• Business Process and Forms. MOSS contains built-in workflow templates to automate approval, review, and archiving processes. You can also create, maintain, and analyze custom workflows, which streamline collaborative processes.
• Business Intelligence. This infrastructure makes it easy to access the necessary information to make the best business decisions.

And that’s just the beginning. Broadly speaking, MOSS has an offering for most web-based applications a business may need, with the exception of e-commerce.

How Does MOSS Help Businesses?
If organizations had to build all of this functionality from scratch, it would expensive, perhaps prohibitively so. MOSS compiles all of these tools into one product, making this functionality accessible for organizations that may otherwise be unable to afford it.

We recently helped Airfoil Public Relations, a public relations firm headquartered in Southfield, Mich., rebuild their intranet using MOSS. “We were using a very basic folder system, which had gotten large and out of control,” says Aaron Petras, Operations Manager with Airfoil. “MOSS has allowed us to separate our team sites based on practice area and delineate down by client. This has been helpful because each team now has its own site to share documents and post announcements and discussions.
In addition, the business intelligence component is very useful; it’s helped us better present data to our senior managers.”

Don’t Go It Alone
While it’s true that much of MOSS is an “out-of-the-box” solution, it’s easy for organizations to get into difficulty when they try to implement it themselves. There are nuances in the product that require more sophisticated knowledge and capabilities. For example, it’s challenging to secure the privacy correctly, multiple “my sites” may result in lack of proper management, and the search function may not reach as broadly as it should.

Plante & Moran’s Web Development team has significant experience guiding organizations through the MOSS implementation process. For more information on how MOSS can benefit your organization, feel free to give us a call.

John Bissa
Partner
Technology Consulting & Solutions
248.223.3684
john.bissa@plantemoran.com

Amy Moore
Associate
Technology Consulting & Solutions
248.223.3421
amy.moore@plantemoran.com

Filed under: Business Articles, Technical Articles on August 4th, 2008 | No Comments »

In this article I want to focus on the decision criteria for hosting a dedicated server versus hosting in a shared environment. As the power and security of the shared environment has improved the lines have become somewhat blurred as to when to make this transition.

With ever more powerful servers and server operating systems it is now possible to host many complex web applications in a shared hosting environment. There may also be beneficial licensing advantages to a shared environment. For example there are applications such as email servers that are purposely priced to be used in a shared environment to spread the costs over a large number of users. Microsoft SPLA pricing may also make software more affordable in a shared environment.

Unfortunately, many shared hosting firms are more interested in offering a low price to attract customers and leave server performance as an afterthought. They will price a shared service based on attracting hundreds or even thousands of users. Depending on the program merely going from four to eight customers could mean the difference between a well responding application and one that responds sluggishly. We also see doubling up applications on the same server, for example, running an email server on the application server – a sure fire way to run into problems.

So why go dedicated?

A good analogy may be to think of it as taking the bus or owning your own car. Yes they both get you to your destination but the car gives you greater flexibility to adjust your schedule. You can also customize your car to make it go faster and handle better.

A dedicated server provides the following benefits:

• More security. The dedicated server provides isolation from other customers and their applications.
• It’s dedicated to your application. You are in control which applications run on your server. This can be especially important when it comes to upgrading software levels that might impact your application.
• Configured server components. You determine items such as disk space and redundant configuration such as disk RAID standard, processor type and memory.

Rules of thumb for using a dedicated server:

• Websites using large databases for serving dynamic content.
• Forums or BBS sites that process a lot of data in a short time.
• Ecommerce web sites running online shopping cart systems.
• Corporate websites that can’t afford any downtime.
• Websites that requires custom server configurations such as clustering or special firewall considerations.

Of course, you must also pay close attention to the hosting service you use. Your hosting provider must have enough bandwidth capacity and an appropriately redundant facility to make sure your server is optimized. On a final note, make sure you can upgrade your server after your initial contract term to take advantage of the latest technology.

Filed under: Business Articles on December 9th, 2007 | No Comments »

I was watching the evening news the other night as one of the local channels began the countdown to the shutdown of our state government over budget issues. Interestingly, they finished the broadcast with blog responses from a number of voters/residents. Not only did they read the blogs on the air, they also showed the text in large letters on the screen.

And you’re wondering if your company should blog?

This  example involved state government but in this day and age could just as easily have been your company. We will take a look at the impact of commercial blogs and why they are important to your company and your relationship with your customers.

First Some History

BLOG comes from the evolution of the term “weblog” that became “we blog” and eventually the noun/verb BLOG.

BLOGs are seen as very open or frank comments, taking on a validity that may or may not be truly deserved. However, the fact remains that they are now a part of mainstream communication and can have either a positive or negative impact on your company’s reputation depending on how you manage them.

Commercial BLOGs

A corporate BLOG should be published as part of a company’s marketing strategy and will typically fall into one of three types.

• Internal blogs, for addressing employees, close vendors or customers.
• External blogs, for general communication to the open market or express a political or public statement.
• The CEO blog, (which could be for any top executive in an organization) that provides a more personal face to the ramblings of a company’s officers.

It’s estimated that 5% of the Fortune 500 have external blogs and as many as 70% of large companies have either established or plan to start a blog. The importance in coordinating with a marketing plan is that the ultimate goal is to create interest in new products or manage the corporation’s reputation. Unmanaged blogs can have the opposite effect as evidenced by executives that have expressed personal opinions outside the corporate party line and then faced serious repercussions in the market.

So here we go with the countdown.

1. Blogs can create buzz or interest in new products or services. Because of their candid nature, a blog creates an interesting way to break through the clutter and get potential customers to pay attention to your offer.
2. Blogs can help position you or your company as an industry expert. This is a great way for your company to discuss a topic in depth (for example – blogs!) and at least create the perception that you know what you are talking about. Hopefully this leads to credibility on future topics too.
3. Search engines love blogs. A good ranking on a search engine is worth its weight in gold. Blogs are included in search engine rankings as the engines review your content. As part of your overall plan to grow organic search rankings, a good blog should be a cornerstone of your SEO efforts. As an example, we recently posted a blog about a new collaboration product (COLLANOS). The CEO of COLLANOS picked it up and wrote a return blog. Before you knew it we had been found at multiple levels by numerous search engines. Trackbacks are part of this scenario but I’ll leave this topic for a future blog.
4. Blogs enhance reputation management. A competitor is preparing to unleash a new product or an officer of your company has done something very bad! (I hate it when that happens). What do you do? Having a well read blog in place can be your quickest way to address negative publicity or preempt some other type of event. The operative term is “well read”. You can’t wait until the last minute to start a corporate blog and expect everyone to be reading it.
5. Blogs help you COMMUNICATE with many customers and prospects simultaneously! In my mind (and that’s a very scary place) this is one of the greatest reasons for a blog. Blogs are viewed as more personable and combined with the ability to receive comments you get immediate feedback from your customers or prospects. Keep in mind however, that it may not necessarily be positive feedback but at least you’ll have feedback. You will need a thick skin to deal with some of the eventualities but managed properly this can be a great way to gauge interest in new services or changes to existing products.

Well there you have it, a blog blog. Matt will discuss some of your options for running your own corporate blog. Love them or hate them, they’re here to stay.

Resources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog Wikepdia - blog definitions and history.
http://www.flyte.biz/resources/newsletters/05/05-blogs-vs-email.php Miscellaneous blog article.
http://www.dmnews.com/cms/dm-news/catalog-retail/39432.html Kevin Hillstrom’s reasons to blog.

Filed under: Business Articles on October 8th, 2007 | No Comments »

Everyone running a computer nowadays is probably used to running a software update mechanism of some sort. Windows users, Mac users, even Linux users are consistently bombarded with new features, bug fixes and software updates. This is all well and good except when the updates can cause network bandwidth utilization issues, or even system crashes. Take for example the two day outage Skype users suffered last month. It was reportedly caused by company personnel doing windows updates, which then required reboots, which then required users to re-connect to the network, and then crash! Obviously I would have concerns about a network being brought down by a simple update, but the fact that they say this is how it happened led me to our topic today. For all of you running Microsoft Windows networks I am happy to introduce you to a simple way to avoid this issue: Windows Server Update Service or WSUS. (Sorry Mac and Linux users).

What is WSUS?

So, what is WSUS you may ask.. Well simply put, it is a software application that allows companies granular control over the downloading, distribution and installation of Microsoft Windows patches. Or as far as Skype is concerned, it is the service that could have prevented their system from crashing.

Let me explain a little bit. The WSUS service plays two critical roles in the Windows updating process. First it becomes the central repository for all of those windows patches that need downloading almost every day. WSUS server initiates contact with Microsoft and downloads patches so your internal computers no longer need to strangle your precious Internet connection. This single fact in a company of 100 windows computers will provide a 100x bandwidth usage reduction. Second, and just as important for our friends at Skype, WSUS allows the integration of policy based patch deployment. Let’s take a look at that a little closer. WSUS allows administrators to deploy updates and patches based on corporate security and business rules. For example, again for our friends at Skype, a good deployment rule would be to create sub sections of computer users and deploy the patches in stages as opposed to all at once. Another possible rule, only deploy patches during low usage times, either of which could have minimized the risk occurred by updating, and potentially eliminating unnecessary outages.

Technical Preparedness

Obviously there are some technical considerations when evaluating and deploying a solution like this, and our own Jesse Woodruff has taken a deeper look into the technical world of WSUS in his post here.

Ultimately there are a number of reasons networks and systems can crash without any help from us, hopefully this tool gives you the ability to take one item off that list.

Good Luck!

Additional Resources

Skype Crash
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/breaking/skype-blames-microsoft-windows-update-for-network-crash-291202.php

WSUS Homepage
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/wsus/default.aspx

WSUS Overview
http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/en/library/632f98ac-9d45-480b-b801-996b714cebd01033.mspx?mfr=true

Filed under: Business Articles on September 20th, 2007 | No Comments »

When I told my wife I was writing a story about stamping out spam she was pretty excited because she never could understand how I could eat that stuff. (Personally I love it!) I know it’s an old joke. What I really want to talk about is email spam, how it is evolving and the steps you can take to reduce it in your organization.

Is my anti-spam solution working?

If you’ve noticed an increase in spam you’re right! There are actually two things occurring. First, the volume of spam has grown by over 15% in the last six months. In fact, it is estimated that over 85% of all e-mail traffic is now spam. Second, spam firms are always looking for and finding new ways to get around spam filters. Until recently you probably saw a lot of emails where the message was actually an image rather than text. However anti-spam technology has evolved rapidly to identify and stop image spam. Within a mere six months image spam has almost stopped.

What’s the latest spam ploy?

Now it’s fake greeting cards or “attachment” spam. You receive an innocent looking message that asks you to open an attachment. In many cases it looks like a greeting card. When you open the attachment, your PC can be hijacked and turned into a “zombie” that can be used to forward more spam without your knowledge. Who knew The Night of the Living Dead was more truth than fiction.

A spammer’s main goal is to get you to go click on a web link or URL. Often it’s to get you to look at a product, call a phone number, buy a stock or order some form of medication (as if any of us really need to be any bigger!) So pay attention. It’s easy to fall prey to an innocent looking e-mail that says “Hey John - click here to see pictures from our vacation!”

Now my filter is blocking good messages!

Yep - here’s the flip side to the issue. As anti-spam filters become increasingly sophisticated, the prospect of a false positive has grown. So what to do? Quite often administrators will “white list” the domain of the sender. However, remember our earlier statement about zombie machines? Who’s to say that the server you trust today won’t be infected tomorrow? Obviously sometimes you will need to white list a domain, just don’t be indiscriminate. Better to white list an individual e-mail instead.

I also see people do things like enter the subject in all capital letters or give a short “Guess what ?????” subject with a string of punctuation. Anti-spam filters use content to identify spam. If your e-mails look like spam, they get treated like spam.

We’ve also noticed that AOL accounts seem to bounce e-mails more than other services. I think they are trying to provide protection to their customers but sometimes it goes a little overboard.

Is there anything else to worry about?

Yes, stopping spam is an ongoing process but the good news is that technology is moving fast to keep up. The best defense is a dedicated anti-spam appliance that sits in front of your email server. You don’t want your email server spending all its time monitoring for spam and slowing down. The anti-spam device we employ at Awecomm monitors for all of the following items:

• Anti-spam
• Anti-virus - Might was well check for viruses at the same time. Don’t let emails get through with viruses that a user might open.
• Anti-phish - protects from schemes often used to gather confidential information about an organization or its users.
• Anti-spy (attachments) - scans attachments for spyware executables and delete.
• Anti-spoof - prevents the use of forged or “spoofed” sender addresses on unsolicited emails.
• Denial of Service protection - use rules to prevent denial of service attacks.

There are also anti-spam services and anti-spam software you can run locally, but a hardware solution is going to be faster. Take a look at your budget and overall requirements. With any solution make sure there is a competent subscription service in place to update the rules and scanning mechanisms on a regular basis.

Here are some additional tips:

1. Never reply to spam messages even if you are given a “remove” option. Instead use your Outlook or anti-spam service to block the message. (Most systems have a plug-in that lets you tell the service whether to mark or unmark a message as spam). The only time you may want to respond is if you know the e-mail is from a reliable source.
2. Do not open attachments from a source you are unfamiliar with. If necessary call the individual to confirm first.
3. Don’t send your email address through chat rooms or instant message services.
4. Don’t put direct e-mail links on your web site. This one is far too easy to pickup. Instead, for example, use a hyperlink from your name. Even better is to use a form that uses a processing script to resolve the email address. It helps to even keep email addresses out of the site HTML.
5. Make sure you “opt out” of receiving free or additional information from a web site. A lot of sites have a flag that defaults to “Send me more information”. Make sure to uncheck it.
6. If you are just checking out a site and aren’t sure if you will go back you can always enter a fake e-mail address if one is required.

There are obviously a lot of issues to deal with when it comes to spam. Complicating this scenario is the fact that the nature of spam is changing all the time. Spam identification and elimination solutions will constantly evolve. However the cost on the organization in terms of wasted time or possible outright damage to your network is too substantial to ignore. You will need to be proactive and don’t be surprised to see spikes in activity. But if you have a good solution in place you should see it adapt to the challenge.

Sources:

Barracuda networks white papers. http://www.barracudanetworks.com/ns/support/white_papers.php

Personal experience fighting the fight!

MSNBC articles on spam

Filed under: Business Articles on September 5th, 2007 | Comments Off

For a while now we have been performing application stress testing for our customers. We basically setup our drone machines and network to throw a bunch of traffic towards an online application, use our customized scripts to simulate users, and tediously measure the results. From there we can produce reports projecting application performance over varying loads and situations. So why is this an important thing for businesses to evaluate… Read on!

Why you need it.

Stress testing can provide invaluable insight into the scalability and performance of your application. It gives you the ability to anticipate load times witnessed by your users, gives you the ability to forecast problems, helps identify application and hardware limitations, allows you to properly plan and deploy infrastructure, and in most cases can locate areas in which your applications can be optimized for better performance. What does this mean.. well simply put, a proper stress test can help you avoid downtime when your web site or application is needed the absolute most, during heavy usage. I have experienced far to many sites going down or slowing to a crawl when they get too much traffic, not only is the web site losing my interest, but they are probably loosing my business too. This is unacceptable today given the fact that most time it can be easily avoided.

What is stress testing?

Basically stress testing an application is generating a pre-defined amount of traffic to accomplish a pre-defined set of tasks on an application, then collecting data and interpreting the results. The amount of traffic and which actions are performed depend on what you are testing but usually simulates normal user activity factoring for anticipated growth. Anything from visiting multiple web pages within a site, to engaging in actual application usage like logging in, purchasing items, taking tests, running reports, filling out forms, etc.. During the testing process very specific measurements are recorded and this data is used to produce specific reports on the performance and limitations of your web application.

What should the reports show?

Another common question is what information should your test reveal. Well of course like everything else that depends. At a minimum I would suggest at least getting a good idea of how many simultaneous users your application can handle with the current infrastructure. That will give you a loose idea of when to anticipate issues based on too many users and potentially avoid them. I would also check for hardware bottlenecks, or potential software issues. Our own Jesse Woodruff does a good job describing them technically in his post here. Ultimately you’re looking for enough information to build a roadmap for growing your application based on actual usage. You should know how many users your web application can handle, what is the longest acceptable load time you can deliver to those users, when you need to scale your infrastructure, what components of the infrastructure you will need to scale first, and potentially what modifications can be made to your application to utilize less resources and therefore extend the life of your current infrastructure. Having this information readily available will not only help you save money by planning correctly for your application, but can also help you avoid unacceptable downtime that would loose business.

Filed under: Business Articles on August 17th, 2007 | No Comments »

Well I finally got a product that didn’t start with a “V” but they managed to sneak one in the middle! This month I want to share my thoughts on AVG, an anti-virus and malware product suite offered by Grisoft. Initially a European company, Grisoft has enjoyed significant growth and now also has a US headquarters.

I’ve personally been using AVG for a number of years on both my home PCs and in corporate environments. It was interesting to look at other reviews before writing this blog as they were all over the board on whether they liked it or had problems. In general I’ve been very happy with AVG although I do have a few pet peeves that I’ll share later on.

I was actually using some of the bigger names like Symantec and McAfee (why do they insist on pronouncing it MacAfee?) which drove me to look for alternative products. Symantec seemed to cause a number of problems, particularly when upgrading. McAfee was always losing track of the fact that you had a current license making it necessary to constantly validate licenses or worse causing me to mistakenly order a new copy.

At AVG’s core is it’s anti-virus product. The software is extremely easy to install and offers an aggressive update service. It is even compatible with all my existing software. My biggest issue has been the update pop-ups that open up in the middle of the screen and sometimes override the program I’m working with. I’m sure AVG would like us to know its working but hey, how about a small message balloon from the toolbar instead?

AVG also offers a full suite of additional services such as firewalls, anti-spam, and anti-spyware. These additional products are where most of the other reviews found fault. I have not had a lot of experience with them except for the firewall product. It seemed to work well until we upgraded to release 7.5 where we found it to interfere with a VPN and Exchange server. It took a bit of detective work and trial & error testing to finally straighten it all out.

As for anti-spam and anti-spyware, we have typically relied on other products for this protection. However, AVG offers a complete bundle for the individual, SMB or enterprise environment. Their licensing model is in two year increments making the per-seat pricing very attractive. On average about $7/year per PC for anti-virus and $20 to $25 for the full suite at 100 computers. I wasn’t sure why the Server Suite for the SMB was higher than the same enterprise product though.

The only other gripe I have, if you want to call it that, is with the scheduled scanner. The default is 8:00 am or when the user first turns on their PC. On older machines this can really slow things down so we typically found that changing the time to the user’s lunch hour helped considerably, though I didn’t notice much of a slowdown on my new duo-core.

Want to try it at home? AVG offers a free version. Especially great if you have kids in school and are tired of paying a fee for some of the other programs out there. This bit of advice is likely worth every penny you are paying for this blog!

The other anti-virus product that I consider in this same class is Trend Micro but I have never actively purchased it. It usually came pre-packaged on new PCs. It appears to have a decent following but a remote network support company I worked with flip flopped back and forth on the products until eventually settling on AVG as its bundled anti-virus product. Not sure of the exact reasoning but they had to run a number of additional clients on the desktop for their service and I believe the AVG ran a little smoother.

What’s your experience been? Please let us know. We look forward to your comments.

Mark

Resources

www.grisoft.com  - AVG home site.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2060862,00.asp               AVG review on PC Magazine

http://bizsecurity.about.com/od/securityproductreviews/fr/avgreview.htm      About.com AVG review

Filed under: Business Articles on July 30th, 2007 | No Comments »

For this week’s newsletter we take a look into the exciting world of collaboration via a new product called Collanos Workplace. Personally I was excited to test this product because I feel workplace communication and collaboration is weak in most companies. I know we have had trouble here in the past making important information about projects readily available and easy to work with, and finding a product to help the process without adding extra work has been a challenge, until now..

Basically Collanos Workplace is a software application that runs on users’ local machines and offers an easy way to create projects and collaborate with regards to documents, files, discussions, tasks notes and websites. It needs to be installed locally on users’ computers and therefore cannot be accessed via a browser, but honestly I found the interoperability via a client much better than most online collaboration tools I have used. Creating new workspaces (projects) is extremely easy, and adding, changing and deleting files is simple.  As well, I found the overall interface well thought out and enjoyable to use.

Some Testing

To get a better understanding of the maturity of the product (keeping in mind it is a 1.1 release), I created a number of sample workplaces and invited a few different groups here at AWH to join in. You do need to register online to create a user and all members of your team or company will have to do the same, which overall is understandable and fairly painless. It would be nice however, if Collanos released a server side to the environment allowing for this process to remain internal for more sensitive clients. They are good at pointing out all communications are encrypted though which is good enough for now.

The first project I created was for sales and marketing collateral materials. I created the basic workplace structure to mirror a few sample sales initiatives and grouped the collateral material and working documents into my newly created structure. At this point I invited the sales team to join my workplace and had the team interact with the material through a series of real-world tasks. Generally uploading and maintaining files and documents was extremely easy though initially it took me a few minutes to figure out how the updating process worked. Basically, when you open an existing document through Collanos it opens it in a temporary location, so just make any changes you want, hit save (not save as) and close the document. When you go back to your workplace it (Collanos) will notice the changes and ask you if you would like to update the document - just say yes. An easy process once you do it. Overall the team liked the application in regards to both the usability and the functionality.

Second, I wanted to test the Collanos system with a little bit of sensitive data. I created a technical project for my engineers and added my structure and a sample network topology diagram. Obviously if you don’t want a particular user to see the data don’t invite them to the workspace, but if you want them to see data there are a few permission levels you can set. After trying this part of the system though it appears to me it needs a little work before it is ready for corporate use. For example the initial team members I invited to the project were invited as managers with full access. I would have liked the ability to set this as I was making the invitation, especially seeing that there is a lag in the effective permissions taking hold once you change them, due to the Collanos server being hosted externally. Another issue during the testing of permissions-changing, booted the user from the project leaving no easily identifiable way to find it again.

Throughout the testing process I noticed a few things I really liked, for example:

• You can move your project data folder to your network drive so items will be backed up (assuming your server is backed up).
• It only takes a few minutes for new users and new workspaces to become available via the Collanos servers.
• The user interface was well thought out and easy to use.
• New files, objects and changes are marked well and easily identified.
• The messaging component works well via static messages and instant messages.
• The fact that everything is encrypted is a must and well accepted.
• The concept of discussions as files stored in the shared workspace is great, especially for remote users and long running projects that aren’t necessarily rush jobs.
• A conflict bin that stores items that have been changed or deleted by other users is a great way to help recover from mistakes.

For all of the pros of the software I still think it has a little bit of maturing to do to be accepted in the enterprise, for example: 

• The permission’s system is very basic, when working.
• You cannot set different permissions on a document/folder basis so you need to create multiple projects (workspaces) to limp around this.
• Administrators should be able to set access while inviting users instead of after they have been created, especially seeing as though there seems to be a lag in the propagation of the permissions once they are set.
• One of our users running Vista could not get the application to install after many attempts which will become more and more of a problem as users continue to move to the new windows operating system.
• It would also be nice in future revisions to have a preview pane system to view documents before opening them.

Overall I say the application is great for small companies and small workgroups but it has a little work to get to the enterprise level.  But considering this is revision 1.1 I would keep a close watch on it!

Online Resources

Jesse’s technical view of Collanos
http://www.awecommwebhosting.com/blog/?p=38 

Collanos’s Website
http://www.collanos.com

Collanos Workplace 1.1 Download
http://www.collanos.com/m1/en/downloads/index

Collanos User Foum
http://community.collanos.com/index.php/board,21.0.html

Filed under: Business Articles on July 17th, 2007 | 5 Comments »

Hmmmm. We seem to revisit topics that start with the letter V once a month, whether we need it or not. Last month is was Vista, this month we investigate virtual servers, specifically VMware. VMware Inc. is an EMC company, the makers of high-end storage devices.

Virtual servers are pretty much what they sound like. You begin with one physical server and then by loading the virtual server software you can have multiple “virtual” servers running on that same machine. Your limitations of course will be a function of memory, CPU and disk.

So what would a business use this technology for?

Run various test environments. This is one of the most common applications. You could have an application you want to test under Windows 2000, XP and Vista. VMware would allow you to set up all three environments simultaneously on the same machine. You can even create checkpoints or Snapshots at various stages of testing that you can easily roll back to in the event of an error. If the virtual server becomes corrupted, simply wipe it out and reload without rebuilding the whole machine.

Re-host legacy applications. You may have an old application that won’t run on the latest hardware and software. VMware can let you run legacy operating systems on newer hardware.

Provide redundant servers for more robust application continuity. Run additional copies of mission critical software on a virtual server to take over if the main copy goes down for some reason.

Consolidate servers. With the right hardware and high-end VMware applications you can control server sprawl by running multiple applications on fewer, highly-scaled servers.

What does this all cost?

Costs range from free to several thousands of dollars depending on how robust of an environment you are trying to create and the range of features you need. VMware Server is available free of charge for simple, small testing environments. At the high end is VMware ESX Server, designed for data center management and optimization and it is – well – not free.

Microsoft offers a similar product simply known as Virtual Server but VMware seems to be more popular, although the Microsoft product should certainly be part of your review.

You can also find virtual desktop environments from both companies but we’ll leave these for a future blog. Unless of course we select another “V” topic next month.

Links:

http://www.vmware.com/overview/

VMware home site. Lots of good product information, white papers and you can order here too.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtualserver/

Microsoft’s virtual server home page.

Filed under: Business Articles on July 3rd, 2007 | No Comments »

Every couple of weeks the AWH team meets to discuss newsletter article subjects.  The process is pretty straight forward; we all come up with ideas and then discuss briefly the pros and cons to ultimately decide on a topic.  This week we settled on a powerful website portal environment called DotNetNuke.  At first glance it may be a little difficult to see how it’ll work for your business, but after digging a little deeper it becomes pretty apparent how powerful this application actually is.

So, what is DotNetNuke (DNN), or what is a portal for that matter?  Basically it is an environment that allows easily updatable and expandable content and functionality – without a developer standing over your shoulder guiding you through the process.   Portal systems usually have a number of plug-ins or modules to allow for additional functionality like document management, real-time search, streaming video, RSS feeds, blogs, etc…  DNN is no different; it offers hundreds and hundreds of easily installable components that can help your website grow from a basic brochure-ware site to a functional part of your business.

With DNN, it’s extremely easy for organizations to decentralize the updating of their websites, allowing department heads to be responsible for the information they present to web visitors and the way in which it is presented.  Enhancing that functionality by adding custom modules can increase workflow, simplify day to day activities, and ultimately save valuable time and reduce frustration.

To top it off, DNN comes with a number of pre-built designs (or skins) to make the portal look professionally designed.  Already have a custom designed site? No problem, there are a number of shops out there that will take an existing look and feel and build you a custom template for your DNN installation.  You have the flexibility to make your site look how you want, and still have the power to update and change items and information instantly!

Sample Skins

Intrigued yet?  If not, consider the following, the DNN software including the base set of modules is FREE!  Yes, FREE!  All you need is a DNN hosting provider to run the setup and application (along with a little time to get the content into your site).  All being told you can expect to pay less than $100 / month for an extremely dynamic and flexible website.

Overall, the DotNetNuke portal environment is a fast, flexible and powerful system that can help companies better utilize the web by streamlining the process in which they update and interact with their online material.

Additional References

DotNetNuke Official Site
http://www.dotnetnuke.com/

Great Example of DNN Sites
http://www.q107.com
http://shop.volleyball.com/
http://www.reachoutside.com/

Popular DNN Modules
http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Resources/Modules/tabid/794/Default.aspx

DNN Discussion Forum
http://www.dotnetnuke.com/tabid/795/Default.aspx

DNN Wikipedia Definition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DotNetNuke

DNN Encyclopedia (Wiki Site)
http://www.dnnwiki.net/

Filed under: Business Articles on June 19th, 2007 | No Comments »