IT consulting is a fast growing sector. this is so because a great number of organizations have been utilizing IT consulting services to give them an edge over their competitors. These companies offer a wide range of IT services which allow all sorts of processes to be managed and developed with greater efficiency. IT consulting companies usually carry out the needs of businesses, of any volume. They are operating at almost every industry in the field of software infrastructure and applications.
An IT consulting company makes organizations aware of
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Microsoft offers many different licensing options, but they can all be classified into 3 programs:
While there are benefits to each program, Volume Licensing is the most valued program in the SMB market (5 – 500 users). There are many advantages to the Volume Licensing Program, the most important are: mobile use rights, downgrade rights, and re-imaging rights.
There are further categories within the Volume Licensing program but before we examine them, here’s a common example of a licensing dilemma.
SMB Volume Licensing Scenario
Company X wants to re-provision a server to make it a 200 user terminal server. They already have the hardware and Windows Operating System license, they just need to buy the Remote Desktop Client Access Licenses (CALs) and application licensing (Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus).
Let’s price this under the Open Business Volume Licensing program, using Microsoft MSRP pricing. Open Business is a very basic and commonly used Volume Licensing Program.
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Scope, Time, and Cost are the three recognized core constraints of any project (known as the “triple constraint” or “PM triangle”). Quality is often included in a discussion of the triple constraint as either a 4th constraint or as a sort of holistic attribute of the product of a project (The typical graphic is of a triangle with each corner being scope, time, and cost, and the middle being quality – food for thought: as a model, wouldn’t it be more useful for scope to be the area of the triangle, with the other constraints being the lines that define it such that if one were to be shortened, the others would have to be lengthened to accommodate the same area/scope? But I digress).
The reason it is difficult to cement quality within a widely agreed upon framework of project management is
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In June, we talked about the different types of clouding computing – the public cloud, the private cloud and the hybrid cloud. This month we’re going to dive into the private cloud.
Did you know that, in most cases, using the traditional one operating system per physical server model only 10% of the systems resources are generally consumed? That’s right, only 10%!
How much did you pay for that single server? How many of them are in your environment? If you need to add another application, what do you do? You go out and buy another server, of course. What if you could get a smaller server environment that can grow on demand, utilize more of the resources you have invested in and have better resiliency? Virtualization provides the platform to accomplish all that and more.
By moving to a virtual environment you can…
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If you are running a Microsoft Exchange environment and have been for a while, you have probably at some point had to run an offline defrag of the Exchange database. This operation is particularly critical with database growth, or with frequent deletion and creation of mailboxes. It is also prescribed by Microsoft to fix certain issues that an Exchange database can experience. However, almost all Exchange databases require this maintenance at some point in their life cycle.
What is an Offline Defrag?
Essentially, an offline defrag creates a new database and copies all records and tables from the old database into the new file. It then deletes the original database file, renames the new database and then copies it into the original database’s location. One of the main reasons for doing this is
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Click here to read “Virtualization Options for SMBs (Part I)”
To virtualize or not to virtualize? That is the question…
I’m always telling potential clients that the primary difference between their company and large corporations is just size. Their demand for performance, uptime and flexibility is the same along with many of the applications in use. So why shouldn’t small businesses use the same tools as the big companies and make IT more efficient and far less complicated?
As we discussed in Part I of “Virtualization Options for SMBs”, vendors are beginning to focus more on the SMB space by providing the tools and programs to organizations responsible for providing the support that small businesses require.
In Part II, I want to focus on the topic from a more broad perspective and not just servers or applications. I’m thinking of virtualizing IT as a whole. This can include…
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To virtualize or not to virtualize? That is the question… Whether it is better in the minds of small businesses to suffer the unending challenges of solo consultants, physical servers and conventional application delivery, or to take control of their IT infrastructures through virtualization and by doing so ending the cycle of rebuilds, installs and complicated business continuity strategies. To be ridged, to be wasteful, no more.
Small businesses today are starting to pick up on this thing known as “virtualization”, however they struggle with the path they should take and the products to use. So much so that they jump in with both feet without the proper planning required to fully benefit or they shy away from it completely due to a lack of understanding. There appears to be no happy medium at this point within the SMB. There is however a light at the end of the tunnel. Vendors are beginning to focus more on the SMB space by providing the tools and programs to organizations responsible for providing the support that small businesses require.
What does Virtualization mean to your Small Business?
Ask five small business owners and you may get five different answers. In Part 1 of “Virtualization Options for Small Businesses”, I will discuss two aspects of IT that are most often associated with virtualization.
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Everyone in IT has a horror story or two when it comes to office moves. From the 5 year old server not booting up at its new location to the missing keyboards/monitors/printers and no Internet access, many interruptions to businesses can be with eliminated with proper planning and a few of these…..
Tips for a Successful Office Move
1) Order your new Internet/phone lines YESTERDAY
The most common delay in moving into new office space are delays in delivery of your Internet and phone lines from your service providers. However, this can be avoided.
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In the IT industry, buzz words and trends come and go with alarming frequency. On occasion, a trend will come along with the staying power to reshape our thinking. It’s difficult today to read any tech industry news without hearing about “clouds” or virtualization. The ambiguous and often interchangeable definition of these terms can often be a source of confusion for IT decision makers in the SMB market.
It seems no one can agree on what the cloud is or isn’t. There are in fact several types of cloud computing models. The three most popular are….
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“Your server is out of warranty…”
“Your server is older than dirt…”
“You need to replace this TODAY!!!”
We have all had these conversations with clients. Unfortunately, we have all been ignored at least a couple of times only to see a massive failure resulting in a costly and time-consuming replacement. Over the past 2-3 years as the economy plummeted, just about every business out there had to take extreme measures to cut spending. Companies have reduced their IT budgets and been forced to “Band-Aid” their existing infrastructures in order to keep their business afloat. It is essentially gambling, but it was the only option they had in the failing economy. What should you do?
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