Xyfon Blog

Hosted Exchange Server Makes More Sense Than Ever

Author: B.K Winstead 

You’re struggling to get all the work done in your IT department as it is. The usual cycle of patch management never ends; now it’s time to test new versions of applications and updated OSs. You’re working on reduced budgets, possibly with reduced staff. And, oh yeah, your company execs somehow want you to provide more functionality to users so everyone can be more productive.

This situation isn’t unique to the IT department; in a down economy, every business division is dealing with similar pressures to do more with less. However, few departments have such a direct impact on all the others as the IT department. Naturally, something’s got to give—and hopefully not your sanity. Outsourcing tasks to a service provider is an option that might save time, effort, and resources, and one area many businesses are currently examining for outsourcing is messaging. Let’s take a look at what hosted messaging—specifically, hosted Microsoft Exchange—offers, and what you can expect to find if you’re considering outsourcing your messaging needs.

Is Hosted Exchange Ready for Your Business?
Email is the primary means of exchanging business communications both internally with employees and externally with clients and business partners. It’s also your calendar and scheduler. It’s how you stay connected when traveling or working remotely, either through web mail or mobile device support. It serves as a document exchanger and, in many cases, a massive filing cabinet for company memos, presentations, and other important documents. Maybe you’ve implemented unified communications (UC) through Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 so that Exchange also acts as your company PBX and voice mail system.

Exchange Server can be your company’s complete communications hub. An immediate question, then, is can you retain all this functionality if you outsource your messaging infrastructure? A quick scan of the marketplace shows there are many hosting providers, including Microsoft itself, that offer Exchange as a hosted service. Some smaller providers don’t include every feature of Exchange, particularly more advanced features such as UC. But there are plenty of providers that offer the full-featured Exchange package, so if that’s what you need, you’ll be able to find it. Vendors distinguish themselves by the additional services they provide.

Hosted providers offer service level agreements (SLAs) that spell out what sort of uptime the service guarantees as well as what penalty the provider will pay if it fails to meet its uptime commitment. Most large providers offer something in the range of 99.9 percent to 99.999 percent uptime; this number might vary depending on whether you subscribe to the provider’s standard service or if you upgrade to a dedicated server option. 123Together.com began offering a 100 percent uptime guarantee for its dedicated Exchange hosting option two years ago; Apptix recently began offering a 100 percent uptime guarantee for its Apptix OnDemand hosted Exchange service. With the massive data centers that are possible and the improved high-availability story through continuous replication in Exchange 2007, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more service providers begin offering a 100 percent uptime guarantee.

Basic security, antivirus, antispam, and some level of support or Help desk are usually included at no additional fee, and often you can pay extra for premium services in these areas. Most hosted services also give you the option to pay for extra services: email archiving; mobile device support, including Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, iPhone, and others; and fax support through email are common add-ons. Larger Exchange hosting services can provide SharePoint and Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) as well.

Migration services are a big plus, if offered. As Danny Essner, director of marketing for Intermedia said, “I think one of the dirty secrets of hosted services in general, not just email but SaaS [Software as a Service] as a category, is SaaS is great when you’re using a product for the first time. What happens when you’ve been using a legacy product for five, ten, fifteen years and you have all that legacy data that you want to carry forward to the hosted model? A lot of hosted providers don’t handle migration very well.” Intermedia has what it calls the Exchange Concierge team to help users manage migrations, and most of the top players in hosted Exchange now have some form of migration service, either offered free or at an additional charge.

As you take a look at the variety of services offered by Exchange hosters, it should be clear how much you can potentially eliminate from your inhouse infrastructure with a hosted solution. The provider has high availability covered for you, which can save you significantly on hardware and other resources. If you take advantage of something like email archiving, you get storage in the cloud and reduced headaches related to email quotas and e-discovery requests. Each feature you outsource frees up something—or someone—inhouse to be redirected at another task.

And you get all this with predictable monthly costs—which is a key point made by Kirk Averett, director of product for Rackspace. “CFOs like predictable costs. And when you’re hosting email inhouse, it feels very unpredictable,” Averett said. “The hardware can die at any time. You have to go spend 5 or 10 or 20 grand to replace something. Or the software will become broken or incompatible with the backups—you just don’t know what’s going to happen that will change your costs.” Planning your budget, certainly, becomes easier when you host your messaging.

Is Your Business Ready for Hosted Exchange?
Another important question to ask as you look at the hosted Exchange market is if you and your organization are ready to give up some control of your messaging infrastructure. If you go the hosted route to Exchange, it’s not like you can sign a contract and then forget all about your email system; no matter what options you choose, there still needs to be IT oversight of the hosted implementation. Sure, you’re ceding a certain amount of control to your hosting partner for security, message hygiene, availability. But even with inhouse Exchange, can you say that your security never has a lapse, that spam never gets through, or that unforeseen problems don’t cause downtime?

Speaking to this point, Dave R. Taylor, cofounder and chief marketing officer of IT and business solutions provider Sparxent, said, “One of the reasons people stay [with on-premises Exchange installations] is, they’ll call it security, they’ll call it whatever they want, but really it’s familiarity, it’s comfort. ‘It’s the way we’ve been doing it, this is the way we’re going to keep doing it.’” Security typically is the stated sticking point for organizations that say they need to maintain their own messaging systems. With data-protection regulations, this might be a legitimate reason in some cases.

Most organizations don’t have dedicated messaging specialists; managing Exchange is just one of the many tasks on your IT platter. Hosted providers, meanwhile, have the resources for dedicated Exchange specialists, dedicated security specialists, and any number of other specialists to troubleshoot problems before clients are ever affected by them. As vice president of product for Apptix, Rick Rumbarger, said, “A small enterprise really can’t have a dedicated security person. So I would suggest not that we’re doing a good enough job [with security], but that we actually do a much superior job than what they can ever afford to do because, again, we have people that live and breathe email—that’s what they do all day long.”

A good indication of a hosted provider’s commitment to security is whether the service is SAS 70 Type II certified. SAS 70 is an independent assessment of a service organization that looks at the company’s internal controls. This designation has become more important because of legislation such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) and Gramm-Leach-Blighley Act (GLBA), which require the level of auditing that SAS 70 Type II checks for. Yet you’ll find that not all Exchange providers have attained this certification.

What Microsoft Means to the Market
Exchange as a hosted service isn’t a new thing. However, one thing that is fairly new is Microsoft itself selling Exchange as a service. The company originally announced Microsoft Online Services (MOS) in September 2007, then released Exchange Online from beta in November 2008. Microsoft continues to work with its partner resellers who offer hosted Exchange as well—a situation that might look a bit peculiar on the surface.

I spoke to John Betz, director of product management with MOS, about the company’s entry into this space. “There’s clearly a transformation happening in the market to cloud services,” Betz said. “With the advent of the massive data center, there’s an opportunity, and customers are looking for ways to be more efficient with how they spend their IT dollars. In the case of Exchange specifically, we expect the opportunity to be up to 50 percent of the seats sold, say, in five years will be in the cloud as opposed to run on-premises. So that’s a pretty significant shift that we saw happening.” Betz also mentioned that his team had briefed its partners about their plans a couple years before the public announcement.

Nonetheless, I suspect some of those partners might have felt a bit betrayed by Microsoft entering into direct competition with them, selling a product the third-party vendors have to purchase from Microsoft to resell. And yet, after talking with many of these vendors, the general feeling seems to be that Microsoft’s entry into the hosted Exchange market lends credibility to the space. As Essner of Intermedia said, “[Microsoft's] entrance alone will accelerate and expand adoption rates, especially in the SMB community. I think they’ll help dispel some of the unwarranted fears about security, about reliability, certainly about cost. The best part of the Microsoft initiative is the education and awareness that it will bring.” Education leads to acceptance, and as a result, Microsoft has reported some big customer wins for its hosted Exchange service, such as Eddie Bauer, Pitney Bowes, and GlaxoSmithKline.

Microsoft partner resellers have the opportunity to win in this competition by the additional services and support they can provide. For instance, if you want to host Exchange with BlackBerry support, you can pretty much be sure Microsoft isn’t going to have what you need—but many third-party providers will. And if you want a security solution other than Forefront, which is built in to Microsoft’s offering, well, you’ll need to expand your search. Microsoft continues to stress its reliance on its partners as well.

A Radicati Group analysis from August 2009 reports, “The number of deployed Microsoft Hosted Exchange mailboxes is 39 million in 2009, and is expected to reach 77 million by year-end 2013. This represents an average annual growth rate of 19% over the next four years.” That’s nearly double in just four years. How much of that growth can be blamed on—or credited to—Microsoft isn’t clear, but by all predictions, this continues to be a growing market.

Another factor that might influence this growth is the release of Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. Expected to be available by the end of 2009, this is the first version of Exchange developed and tested specifically with hosted deployments in mind. In addition to improved high availability architecture and better performance, Exchange 2010 can be deployed without the need for the Microsoft Solution for Hosted Messaging and Collaboration (HMC) platform for management, which previous versions of Exchange required. A few vendors, such as Intermedia, have developed their own management platform rather than relying on HMC; it’s unclear how they’ll be affected by this change in Exchange 2010.

Money, Money, Money
Wrapped up in all the other reasons for the growth in hosted Exchange is the money. Microsoft and others have been touting cloud computing heavily for the past few years. Add to that an economic cataclysm, and suddenly outsourcing starts looking like a real attractive option. As Microsoft’s Betz said, “You have to decide what you want to spend your time and attention on. Presumably, we can run a pretty standardized version of Exchange or SharePoint faster, better, cheaper than a customer can run it themselves if they’re not going to do anything fancy with the deployment.”

So, businesses are saving money by moving to hosted Exchange, and at the same time hosting providers are in stiff competition, lowering prices, and offering some pretty nice deals. Rumbarger from Apptix said, “As the competitive nature of our industry has driven down prices . . . the ROI of somebody to have an on-premises piece of equipment—servers, infrastructure, staffing, patching, if they want to have any redundancy like we do with clustering, and things like that—there’s no comparison in today’s modern environment between what the cost is for someone to maintain on-premises versus in the cloud.”

To make their services more attractive, most of the hosted providers are offering some form of messaging suite where you get a package of products for a reduced price. Microsoft perhaps has the best-known suite on the market with its Business Productivity Online Suite. BPOS combines Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Live Meeting, and Office Communications Online for a base price of $15 per user per month; individually, these services would cost $24.25 per user per month. Microsoft offers Exchange Online by itself for $10 per user per month, so if you can use those other services, BPOS is quite a deal.

Meanwhile, many of the third-party hosting providers are including SharePoint with their Exchange hosting at no additional charge. Apptix, Intermedia, and SherWeb all currently make this offer. The catch is that you have limited storage; if you need more, you’ll need to upgrade to the company’s full hosted version of SharePoint, and pay accordingly. Another hot point of competition is mailbox size—3GB and 4GB standard mailboxes are readily available. In addition to saving money by switching to a hosted Exchange provider, you might find yourself with those extra features for productivity that the bosses have been clamoring for.

How Does IT Benefit?
Outsourcing definitely has its negative connotations, but you can turn this situation into a positive. Email is vital to business life, but it might not be the IT project that has the greatest impact on your business. Outsourcing messaging frees your IT department to focus on those projects of greater impact—to develop instead of simply maintaining.

Doug Howard, president of USA.NET, spoke to this point when he said, “[Outsourcing] allows the IT expert to kind of move up a notch by being able to now manage the platform and the infrastructure and the outsourcer versus actually having to do the hands-on, every little element—patch management and all those elements that are inherently built in to the infrastructure.” It can be an opportunity for the IT pro to demonstrate versatility, creativity, and leadership—and maybe even have a little fun while you’re at it.

Should I Migrate to Windows 7?

Written by jamesonparker · Filed Under Internet 

Windows 7 OS is scheduled to be available to the public market in just over a month. There are many doubts and apprehensions about the capability of this OS as its earlier version Vista is a failure. It seems Microsoft has given enough weight this time to what the Windows users really wanted – a simpler and friendly OS. Windows 7 has some novel features while improving the older ones. Moreover, some flop features in Vista are removed from Windows 7 to improve the performance.

There are some advantages along with disadvantages of opting to Windows 7. The following information may help you in deciding whether you really need to upgrade to Windows 7-

Reasons to switch to Windows 7
1.    Application compatibility can be achieved by “Windows XP mode” by running virtual windows XP machine.
2.    Windows live essentials: It is a free software that make possible to do more things like instant messaging, e-mail, photo editing, and blogging.
3.    Improved search operation performance, as results will come instantly as categorized in groups. Moreover, key words are highlighted enabling easy file identification.
4.    Supports 64-bit PC that can handle huge amounts of information than a 32-bit system.
5.    Power management can be efficiently done by new features such as, running less number of background activities, automatic screen dimming, unused ports are not run and life indicator to battery.
6.    Multi touch technology allows to use more than one finger while operating the touch screen either at application level or system level.
7.    Protect files with features such as “Use Bit Locker” and “Bit Locker To Go”
8.    Continuous access to corporate resources with a broadband connection. No need to get a VPN (Virtual Private Network) connection.
9.    The feature “Domain Join” allows to connect multiple PCs, with or without a server.
10.    Supports 35 languages. So, you can easily switch among them by logging off, again logging on. Moreover, it supports handwriting recognition.
11.    System startup, shutdown and resumes are faster.
12.    Appearance of the desktop has improved by including fresh wallpapers, retooled task bar and improved gadgets
13.    Easy data sharing between two or more PCs by using “Share with” option.
14.    Windows 7 can read larger than 131 GB hard drive (unfragmented).
15.    Upgrading Vista to Windows7 will get 223% better performance while running IE8.
16.    In Action Center you can find information you need regarding system maintenance, trouble shooting, security issues etc.

Reasons to avoid Windows7
1.    Older PCs doesn’t have hardware compatibility to achieve ‘Windows XP mode’.
2.    Windows7 provides less battery life to the notebooks than Windows XP.
3.    Need to do clean install if you want to upgrade from XP to Windows7.
4.    If you’re an XP user you need to learn a new user interface.
5.    Runs the browser 11.5% slower than Windows XP.
6.    Requires high configuration like Vista.
7.    Very expensive to buy.
The above mentioned details will help you in learning ins and outs of Windows 7. Windows 7 has fixes to the drawbacks in Vista and it is desirable to move to the new OS. For the XP users, you may need to think twice before moving to Windows 7. Ultimately it is you to decide based on your computer usage and requirements.
Power-posts.com believes in creating positive impact in lives of our visitors. We cover a variety of areas including global issues, technology tips, general tips, product reviews and business related information.

New Technology to charge your devices wirelessly

A system that can deliver power to devices without the need for wires has been shown off at a hi-tech conference.

 By Jonathan Fildes Technology reporter, BBC News, Oxford

The technique exploits simple physics and can be used to charge a range of electronic devices.

Eric Giler, chief executive of US firm Witricity, showed mobile phones and televisions charging wirelessly at the TED Global conference in Oxford.

He said the system could replace the miles of expensive power cables and billions of disposable batteries.

“There is something like 40 billion disposable batteries built every year for power that, generally speaking, is used within a few inches or feet of where there is very inexpensive power,” he said.

Trillions of dollars, he said, had also been invested building an infrastructure of wires “to get power form where it is created to where it is used.”

Witricity claims to be able to charge gadgets large and small

“We love this stuff [electricity] so much,” he said.

Mr Giler showed off a Google G1 phone and an Apple iPhone that could be charged using the system.

Witricity, he said, had managed to pack all the necessary components into the body of the G1 phone, but Apple had made that process slightly harder.

“They don’t make it easy at Apple to get inside their phones so we put a little sleeve on the back,” he said.

He also showed off a commercially available television using the system.

“Imagine you get one of these things and you want to hang it on the wall,” he said. “Think about it, you don’t want those ugly cords hanging down.”

Good vibrations

The system is based on work by physicist Marin Soljacic at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

It exploits “resonance”, whereby energy transfer is markedly more efficient when a certain frequency is applied.

When two objects have the same resonant frequency, they exchange energy strongly without having an effect on other, surrounding objects.

For example, it is resonance that can cause a wine glass to explode when a singer hits exactly the right tone.

But instead of using acoustic resonance, Witricity’s approach exploits the resonance of low frequency electromagnetic waves.

 

 

HOW WIRELESS POWER WORKS 1. First magnetic coil (Antenna A) housed in a box and can be set in wall or ceiling 2. Antenna A, powered by mains, resonates at a specific frequency 3. Electromagnetic waves transmitted through the air 4. Second magnetic coil (Antenna B) fitted in laptop/TV etc resonates at same frequency as first coil and absorbs energy 5. Energy charges the device

The system uses two coils – one plugged into the mains and the other embedded or attached to the gadget.

Each coil is carefully engineered with the same resonant frequency. When the main coil is connected to an electricity supply, the magnetic field it produces is resonant with that of with the second coil, allowing “tails” of energy to flow between them.

As each “cycle” of energy arrives at the second coil, a voltage begins to build up that can be used to charge the gadget.

Mr Giler said the main coil could be embedded in the “ceiling, in the floor, or underneath your desktop”.

Devices using the system would automatically begin to charge as soon as they were within range, he said.

“You’d never have to worry about plugging these things in again.”

Safety concerns

Mr Giler was keen to stress the safety of the equipment during the demonstration.

“There’s nothing going on – I’m OK,” he said walking around a television running on wireless power.

The system is able to operate safely because the energy is largely transferred through magnetic fields.

Magnetic fields interact with everyday objects less than electric fields

“Humans and the vast majority of objects around us are non-magnetic in nature,” Professor Soljacic, one of the inventors of the system, told BBC News during a visit to Witricity earlier this year.

It is able to do this by exploiting an effect that occurs in a region known as the “far field”, the region seen at a distance of more than one wavelength from the device.

In this field, a transmitter would emit mixture of magnetic and potentially dangerous electric fields.

But, crucially, at a distance of less than one wavelength – the “near field” – it is almost entirely magnetic.

Hence, Witricity uses low frequency electromagnetic waves, whose waves are about 30m (100ft) long. Shorter wavelengths would not work.

‘Ridiculous technology’

Witricity is not the first jump on the concept of wireless electricity.

For example, the nineteenth century American inventor Thomas Edison and physicist and engineer Nikola Tesla explored the concept.

“In the very early days of electricity before the electric grid was deployed [they] were very interested in developing a scheme to transmit electricity wirelessly over long distances,” explained Professor Soljacic.

Intel showed off its wireless power solution in August 2008

“They couldn’t imagine dragging this vast infrastructure of metallic wires across every continent.”

Tesla even went so far as to build a 29m-high aerial known as Wardenclyffe Tower in New York.

“It ran into some financial troubles and that work was never completed,” said Professor Soljacic.

Today, chip-giant Intel has seized on a similar idea to Witricity’s, whilst other companies work on highly directional mechanisms of energy transfer, such as lasers.

However, unlike Witricity’s work, lasers require an uninterrupted line of sight, and are therefore not good for powering objects around the home.

In contrast, Mr Giler said Witricity’s approach could be used for a range of applications from laptops and phones to implanted medical devices and electric cars.

“Imagine driving in the garage and the car charges itself,” he said.

He even said he had had interest from a company who proposed to use the system for an “electrically-heated dog bowl”.

“You go from the sublime to the ridiculous,” he said.

Ted Global is a conference dedicated to “ideas worth spreading”. It runs from the 21 to 24 July in Oxford, UK.

 

How to setup a proxy server. (windows)

If you’re using Windows, it’s pretty straight forward to setup a proxy and help give access to those in Iran who are being censored. If you’re running Redhat/CentOS, please use the linux instructions posted by Austin Heap.

1) Download Squid for Windows
2) Extract that zip archive, and move the “squid” folder to the root of your drive (probably C:\).
3) After moving the squid folder, open “C:\squid\etc\squid.conf” in your favorite text editor (not Word).
4) Configure the DNS name servers on the line that says “dns_nameservers” to point at your ISPs DNS servers.
5) Now the fun part, locking access down the just the Iranian IP blocks.

Inside the text editor search (Control-W) for the line “http_access deny all” and change it to “http_access allow all”. This will make your proxy open and accessible to the world. If you would like to limit your proxy to certain IP blocks, you want to change “http_access deny all” to read “http_access allow TRUSTED” add a line (BEFORE the http_access line to setup an access control list [ACL]). This ACL line that defines TRUSTED should read:

acl TRUSTED src 62.220.96.0/19 77.36.128.0/17 (ip blocks of what you would like to allow)

6) Setup “visible_hostname” (normally just the public IP address).
7) Turn off logging by adding these two lines:

access_log none
cache_store_log none

7) Setup the Squid cache by issuing the following command: “c:\squid\sbin\squid -D –z” (No quotes).
Setup Squid to run as a service by issuing the following command: “c:\squid\sbin\squid –i”

Please don’t run this on a machine that you’re worried about or is used for production sites; and take basic security precautions, ie: moving ftp off the default port, using a firewall package, etc.

11 SEO tips to improve your web-sites ranking.

 With the proliferation of online companies, the e-sales playing field has truly been leveled. With virtually every company establishing an Internet presence, even the smallest product or service providers are able to compete with Fortune 500 corporations. To maximize your exposure, increase qualified traffic, and boost online revenue, it’s essential to optimize your site to appeal to search engine spiders. Below are some tried-and-true strategies for bridging the great SEO divide:

1.    Keyword Research: When choosing keywords for your site, use a reputable tool to determine the frequency with which they’re being searched. WordTracker is one of the most popular applications for measuring keyword popularity, revenue, and volume for the keywords you’re targeting. It’s a good idea to start with a more general words and phrases and gradually narrowing your focus.

2.    Competitive Analysis: It’s very important to stay attuned to other companies who are serving your target market. Visit their sites and check out their content. Using an analyzer can help you find out where you fall in the ranking among other sites. The decision to analyze your competitors is an easy one, but the key is choosing an effective monitoring solution. When analyzing your competitors, consider the following:

o   How many incoming links are there?

o   Where do your competitors rank in the search engines?

o   Where do they fall on the Alexa traffic ranking?

o   What’s the page rank of their indexed pages?

o   Which keywords are your competitors targeting?

3.    Page Titles: Naming your pages is as important as what goes into them. Clear, effective content helps to sell your product or service, but an optimized Meta title can significantly boost search engine traffic and snag the attention of potential buyers. Meta title tags should be unique for each page so search engines can store and list them.

4.    Meta Tags: Keep your Meta tags under 66 characters. Most search engines truncate content longer than that. Usability studies have shown that online searchers are more likely to choose tags that have complete or easily understandable descriptions rather than those whose tags are long, illogical, or hard to decipher. It’s a good idea to include your target keywords in your tags.

5.    Intelligent Headings: To make your content more easily scannable, use logical headings and sub-headings to organize your information. Don’t go overboard, though—pages crammed full of headings may cause your content to be flagged as spam by search engines.

6.    User & search-engine friendly URLs: By choosing a user-friendly and intuitive URL for your website, you’ll more effectively convey the nature of your product or service to potential buyers, while also enjoying a potential SEO boost. For instance, www.xyfon.com/support is much more clear (and search engine-friendly) than www.xyfon.com/index.php?type=support. There are a variety of tools available that can convert complex URLs to more comprehensible extensions.

8.    Alt Tags: These text descriptions are assigned to images to help ensure that they’ll be spidered by search engines, so be sure to make them as specific as possible and include target keywords.

9.    File Naming: When saving your HTML files and images for your site, it’s a good idea to use your target keywords in the names of those files. Although not the most important SEO strategy, every little bit helps when attempting to boost your site’s ranking.

10.  Site Map: A logical text-based site map is an essential component of any website. This provides potential buyers with a clear hierarchy of your entire site and serves as a secondary navigation tool. You can a generate a site-map on http://www.xml-sitemaps.com  

11.  Robot.txt Files: These files are wonderful tools, even if the name is somewhat confusing! This is essentially a command page that tells spiders and web crawlers to search your entire site. Robots.txt files are easy to set up using WordPad, and can be instantly uploaded to the root directory of your site. You can choose to block irrelevant folders and limit the spider’s access.

12.  External Links: Sometimes competitors will have websites that are extremely similar in content. For instance, two websites may sell the same books, CDs, and DVDs. It can difficult for search engines to determine which should have the higher ranking, and this is where external links can serve as a “tie-breaker.” If you decide to add external links, make sure they’re relevant. Clogging up your site with links that are not related to your product or service can actually hurt your ranking rather than help it.

SEO strategies are continually evolving as online technologies change. Staying current with the latest best practices and continually researching your competitors will help you stay ahead of the game and keep you from lagging behind in the great ranking race.

Speed up your PC with Windows ReadyBoost

Adding system memory (typically referred to as RAM) is often the best way to improve a PC’s performance, since more memory means more applications are ready to run without accessing the hard drive. However, upgrading memory can be difficult and costly, and some machines have limited memory expansion capabilities, making it impossible to add RAM.

According to microsoft Windows Vista introduces Windows ReadyBoost, a new concept in adding memory to a system. You can use non-volatile flash memory, such as that on a universal serial bus (USB) flash drive, to improve performance without having to add additional memory “under the hood.”

The flash memory device serves as an additional memory cache—that is, memory that the computer can access much more quickly than it can access data on the hard drive. Windows ReadyBoost relies on the intelligent memory management of Windows SuperFetch and can significantly improve system responsiveness.

It’s easy to use Windows ReadyBoost. When a removable memory device such as a USB flash drive or a secure digital (SD) memory card is first inserted into a port, Windows Vista checks to see if its performance is fast enough to work with Windows ReadyBoost. If so, you are asked if you want to use this device to speed up system performance. You can choose to allocate part of a USB drive’s memory to speed up performance and use the remainder to store files.

Using ReadyBoost-capable flash memory (NAND memory devices) for caching allows Windows Vista to service random disk reads with performance that is typically 80-100 times faster than random reads from traditional hard drives.

A system with 512 MB of RAM (the bare minimum for Windows Vista) can see significant gains from ReadyBoost. In one test case, ReadyBoost sped up an operation from 11.7 seconds to 2 seconds (increasing physical memory from 512 MB to 1 GB reduced it to 0.8 seconds).

Infrastracture behind the 2010 winter Olympics in Vancouver

Ever ask yourself who handles the IT for the Olympic? How are all the event results collected,stored, maintained, managed and accessed? The company in charge since the Salt Lake City 2002 Olympics is Atos Origin based out of France. Atos Origin has been responsible for the information technology including consulting, systems integration, operations management, information security and software applications development for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.

IT is critical to the delivery of the modern Olympic Games. Atos Origin designs, integrates, manages and secures the Games-time IT providing Core Games Management systems including Transportation, Medical Encounters, Accreditation System and Workforce Management – all needed to stage the Games.

IT is then used to distribute results and background information to the world through the On-Venue Results system, the Commentator Information System and
INFO2010 – the Olympic intranet. The entire system is controlled from a room, comparable to NASA’s Mission Control, called the Technology Operations Centre
(TOC). The TOC monitors the complex systems for security breeches, technical problems and provides advanced-level help for the IT staff and volunteers.

The IT infrastructure of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games includes:

The Games-time IT is made up of 13 systems, working congruently to ensure the smooth operations of the Games while protecting the information from internal and external threats.
800 Servers
6,000 Computers
4,000 Printers
result system terminals, including:
CIS terminals (commentator information systems)
Intranet terminals (INFO2010)
Over 100,000 hours of testing

Currently the size of the Atos Origin IT team in Vancouver is around 15 but the team will grow rapidly over the next couple of years. During the 2010 Winter Games, Atos Origin will manage the technology consortium team estimated at 2,000 staff, including 400 Atos Origin experts, made up of locally hired staff, local volunteers and overseas Olympic Games technology experts.
During the first six months the focus of the Atos Origin team in Vancouver has been to run and staff the technology Help desk for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games and on planning for the next four years.

More information on the Vancouver olympics can be found on vancouver2010.com and vancouverolympicsguide.com
Source: Atos Origin.

Kelowna- best place to build a Data Centre in North America

With the green shift in effect and on-going growth of global connectivity, IBM will be launching the largest, energy-efficient data center infrastructure facility in Kelowna Canada called gigaCENTER. In partnership with Rack Force a 150,000 square foot data center costing $100 million will operate on hydro power from the Columbia River.

Kelowna is considered a safe haven for data-center and according to CBNA Geologic surveys indicate that the Okanagan is at least 150 miles from the nearest earthquake zone. Climate experts also have said that the region’s location in the high desert makes it safe from other disasters such as floods, tornadoes and major storms.

The GigaCENTER will be able to accommodate power loads of up to 700 watts per square foot, according to CIO, which describes Kelowna as “the best place to build a data center in North America”. Rack Force a major player in virtual hosting, uses Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager to streamlines the management of its virtual machines developed through Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.

Backbone magazine goes in details about the environmentally friendly built datacenter. In the article by Danny Bradbury says “The company included a range of innovations in the data centre’s construction, including reducing the length of high voltage cables to increase efficiency, and placing uninterruptible power supplies directly in the rack instead of in more centralized locations.

Those racks of servers were also turned sideways, so that cooling air passed over a shorter distance from side to side rather than from front to back, which made the cooling process more efficient. Variable speed motors were put on all of the air pumps to avoid expending too much energy on pumping when it wasn’t necessary, and the company also relied heavily on cold-aisle containment.

Perhaps one of the most significant parts of the data centre’s operation is the source of that cool air. Instead of relying entirely on energy-intensive air conditioning systems, the facility will use external air as much as possible. Cold air is drawn from the outside of the building and removes heat from inside the facility via heat exchangers. Thanks to Canada’s cooler climate, RackForce believes it can use this technique, known as free-air cooling, for seven or eight months of the year.

Canada’s cooler climate isn’t the only thing that makes it an attractive site for data centres. Fry said its abundant water supply and hydroelectric energy make certain parts of the country much more environmentally friendly sources of energy in terms of carbon emissions.
The first phase of the data centre won’t be completed until December, but IBM has already crunched the numbers to come up with an efficiency rating. It uses the power usage effectiveness (PUE) rating from the Green Grid consortium, which measures the ratio between the energy needed for the data centre and the energy used to run the equipment within it.

The data centre will have a PUE rating of 1.38, meaning that the facility will need 1.38 watts of electricity for every watt used to power the IT equipment. The ideal is a PUE rating of 1.0, although this is impossible to attain in real-world conditions. “

Facebook your business?

 Facebook also offers ads targeted by geographical, demographical and other factors which will allow you to target your audience. In the last 3 weeks we have had 148,000 ad impressions on our target audience with PPC set to $1 a day. Although the clicks are minimal Xyfon certainly doesn’t mind having the free exposure on the target market. It also gives us an effective way to promote our company events.

A recent article in the backbone magazine Facebook your Business  by Ian Harvey covers this topic and gives 61 hints and tips you can use to facebook your business.  I have listed the top 10 here for your reference.

1. Facebook is a soft sell through engagement. Point fans to your company blog or contest.

2. Offer something of value, expect nothing in return. Use Facebook as a brand awareness tool.

3. Ask for referrals: referrals from friends or fans are still the most trusted.

4. Provide interactivity with applications or polls; it’ll drive word of mouth.

5. Build a Facebook page with a widget and Facebook ad. Build the relationship. Keep it edgy with the audience in mind.

6. Use status updates to disseminate information about self/business. “Sarah is in Vancouver for a business meeting. Call me if in town” or “Jim is congratulating Jane on her recent promotion.”

7. Incorporate the tools you’re already using into your profile. Do you blog, Twitter, Pownce or Jaiku? Do you read feeds? There are Facebook apps available for all these services. If you have already used these tools professionally, why not add them to your Facebook profile?

8. Make it personal: focus on the human element of your business and products, and your employees. When consumers can relate personally to a business or product, they are more likely to promote it and feel a stronger connection.

9. Update your business page frequently. The more often you add content, the more customers will return.

10. Choose the right Facebook applications. There are thousands of free applications on Facebook, but that doesn’t mean every one of them should have a place on your business page.

The Future Of IT

One thing’s for certain: the landscape of the IT industry has seen a significant shift in recent years. With more small- to mid-sized businesses looking to cut costs across the board, there’s a greater focus on efficiency, responsibility, and accomplishing more with fewer resources. In this environment of greater technological awareness and eco-sensitivity, there are some core focus areas gaining attention among IT administrators.
• Server virtualization helps companies achieve more with fewer resources through the use of virtual machines.

• Cloud computing uses an interlinked system of software, services, and network connections to parse and analyze large amounts of data.

• Green IT initiatives have been launched by many of the big technology providers, with a focus on eliminating environmental impact and conserving energy.

Virualization

With Virtual Machine (VM) technology, a virtual server is used in place of a physical one, providing greater efficiency, easy administration, and significant cost savings. With virtual technology, you can run multiple hosts and servers on one machine, while a physical server typically runs just one operating system. You’ll expend less energy, will incur fewer operating costs, and will reduce the impact on the environment.

What are the potential benefits of using virtualization technology?

• Streamlining of servers: Virtualization makes it possible to consolidate a large number of physical servers, resulting in a more efficient and easily administrable network environment.

• Disaster recovery capabilities: With virtualization, you can easily keep a replica of your virtual machine with snapshots of VM images, keeping all of your files and applications safely intact in the event of a system failure or catastrophic data loss.

• Dedicated testing environments: With VM technology, you can create a virtual environment with servers, databases, and a domain controller, creating maximum efficiency for Quality Assurance and Development teams.

• Legacy applications: If you need to run an older application that’s not supported by current operating systems, a virtual machine provides an ideal solution.

• Application Virtualization: By virtually installing an application within a physical or virtual server, you’ll have a snapshot of the previous software installation, eliminating the need for repeat installations. This innovative technology provides IT administrators with greater portability and easier management of applications, also removing incompatibility issues.

There are two primary VM technologies widely utilized by today’s IT administrators:

• Microsoft Virtual Server: This cost-effective virtualization software supports the creation and management of virtual machines on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2003 platforms. Its strengths include versatile hardware support, the ability to run multiple operating systems on one OS host, and live backups for disaster recovery. At Xyfon, we’re experts in the requirements and capabilities of the current version, Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1.

• VMware ESX Server: Since its inception in 1998, this highly scalable solution runs smoothly on Windows or Linux platforms. The most widely preferred virtualization software among small- and mid-sized businesses that need to support complex networks, VMware is renowned for its efficiency, ease of management, and stability.

A relatively new technology concept, cloud computing is quickly becoming one of the most talked-about trends in the IT industry. Think of the “cloud” as a system of software, services, and network connections. “Cloud computing” refers to the tasks that are carried out by the cloud. This can include anything from information retrieval to emailing to using a web-based application. Also often referred to as “on-demand computing” or “grid computing,” cloud computing is an effective way to parse and analyze very large amounts of data.

• Google is the consummate example of how the power of cloud computing can effectively manage enormous volumes of information. Their technology model requires the analysis of millions of daily search inquiries and the parsing of terabytes of web pages stored on their servers. Google uses cloud computing to link together hundreds of thousands of servers that process requests and information for all Google applications, including mail and maps.
• The Microsoft Azure Services Platform provides developers with an easily manageable tool for creating and deploying web-based applications. The platform is managed by its designated operating system, Windows Azure, which encompasses Windows Live Services, Microsoft .NET Services, Microsoft SQL Services, Microsoft SharePoint Services, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Services. Using the technology of cloud computing, Windows Azure allows developers to manage all of their Internet apps efficiently and securely. Developers can either create new applications within the cloud or build on existing applications.
• Amazon Web Services (AWS) uses cloud computing to serve all types and sizes of companies with a powerful, scalable Internet solution. AWS leverages the robust computing infrastructure built by Amazon over the last 13 years. Among the many benefits provided by the AWS cloud include budget-friendly value, reduced operational expenses, reliable stability, and flexible scalability. You can pick and choose which services you need, with no contracts or hidden fees.

IT Goes Green

Like all industries, the landscape of the Information Technology field has shifted to accommodate the needs of our environment. All of the major technology players have demonstrated their commitment to the cause.

Dell recently launched their eco-friendly campaign, “ReGeneration,” with a focus on reducing their carbon dioxide output through such initiatives as server virtualization, recycling, and more efficient energy usage. Their “Plant a Tree for Me” and “Plant a Forest for Me” initiatives were launched to promote reforestation efforts. Through the entire life cycle of a product, Dell vigilantly seeks ways to minimize impact on the environment and reduce wastefulness.

Search giant Google has also jumped on the green bandwagon, declaring their dedication to reducing their impact on the environment through more efficient processes and energy-saving strategies. In an effort to reduce their carbon footprint, the company has vowed to use renewable energy sources whenever possible, while working to offset the emission of greenhouse gases. Google has also launched user awareness programs to encourage their users to take steps to live greener lives.