The Upcoming Windows 7

Windows 7, Microsoft's newest operating system, is slated for release at the end of this year. Many are looking forward to it as a "healthy" alternative to its predecessor, Windows Vista. Although I don't agree with the majority public opinion on the usefulness or lack of functionality of Vista, like most others I am looking forward to Windows 7.

Our company is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, consequently we received early released of Microsoft's product and we have been very impressed up to this point.

Get your Windows 7 release candidate here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx

Also, check if your system will run Windows 7: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/upgrade-advisor.aspx

By the way, Internet Explorer will not be included (as of right now) with Windows 7.

When its Time to Get Your Small Business a Server

Dear Business Owner,

A server will bring your business network a lot of benefit and a level of functionality that you have never had in the past. Sure, it's an investment, but it's an investment in your company's future.

That said, if you are going to invest in a server - please read the following and agree to them before making that purchase:

a. A server will not cost me less than $2,000. If I am spending less than this amount then I should not be purchasing a server.

b. A server will typically not cost me less than $3,000. If I am spending less than this amount then I should seriously review what it is I am buying.

c. Installing a server into my network is a process that requires much more than plugging it in. This requires time and training but will result in efficiencies I never had before.

d. I will not rely on a Dell/HP/Compaq server "specialist" to help me figure out what I should be buying.

e. Purchase a decent warranty with my server.

f. Know what benefits this server will bring my company. There's no payback on the investment if you don't know what it can do.

If in doubt, talk to someone who knows! Once your business is at the level of needing a server - do it right the first time.

Regards,

A Technology Consultant that tells people this on a daily basis.

Maintain your server, extend its life

Small businesses who can't necessarily afford an on-staff IT admin can still perform those ever so important maintenance functions on their business servers on their own. Best practices typically dictate a server shouldn't be used by users, so technically there isn't all that much to do on a regular basis to make sure your server gets its oil changed.

1. Get it up to date - Manufacturer and Vendor patches and updates. Critical and should be done as often as possible. Be mindful of the big ones like service packs or browser releases - these can often break as much as they fix at first.

2. Ccleaner - A gem of a program. CCleaner (crap cleaner) is a free download that cleans up temp files, junk on your hard drive... etc. Google it.

3. Verify backups - Make sure your backups are not only completing, but try to actually restore something from the backup media to make sure the data is good.

4. Check security software - Antivirus, Antispyware; whatever it is you run to protect your server make sure it is up to date and operating as intended.

5. Check out the data - Have a look at the data your users are accessing and storing on your server. Are they storing word docs? Music? Movies? Are they compliant with your expectations? Auditing what your users are doing on the server can proactively prevent bigger issues from occurring.

5 steps to keeping your server healthy and to extend its life. My company has tools to automate these steps and report on them regularly. Following them doesn't require computer certifications, just a few minutes of your time each week.

Fixing the Cost of IT Support

For some reason, no one seems to realize value in maintenance or support of their technology infrastructure. Most small business try to live on the premise of "when it breaks, we will buy another" in order to keep their cash free. The problem with this approach is overall it will cost the firm more in lost productivity, time, and wasteful purchasing.

Vision Computer Solutions (http://www.vcsolutions.com) provides support and proactive maintenance services of all computers, servers, and networks at a fixed cost allowing for business owners to budget accordingly. The days of time and material services are coming to an end. With the economy in the rough state it currently is in people want to keep their costs as manageable and predictable as possible.

Managed Services is a term that is thrown around all too much in the IT industry now with everyone claiming they are an MSP. A true MSP, such as my firm, has the technology in place to provide full on support and technology services at a reasonable fixed cost without sacrificing quality of service, or subcontracting the client to a phone bank in Mumbai.

Read about fixed-cost IT services here.

To Know IRS Tax Code Section 179

... is really to love it.

Small Businesses should take advantage of such a useful process.

Section 179 (http://www.section179.org/) essentially allows your business to write off a qualifying technology purchase up to a certain limit (typically 250k) instead of writing off a depreciated amount over time each year.

The benefit to your business is obvious. Let's say you needed a new server and network overhaul. For a small business of 25 seats, this could be a process that costs anywhere from $50,000 to $80,000 on average. Section 179 would allow you to take a tax deduction equating to the amount spent on qualifying equipment. Instead of writing off 10k a year for 5 years on a $50,000 purchase, you may deduct the whole thing in year one.

Over the past few months, I have made a point of emailing my clients who have made investments in technology over the past year or are considering doing some year end work so they may take advantage of this section when filing for 2008.

It also has been a great way to drum up so new business!

Hire a Solution, Not a Tech

The other day I was over at a new client's office introducing my team when in walked the most stereotypical computer geek I had seen in a long time. This guy had to have been pushing three bills easy and looked like he "gamed" every Sunday night. It didn't take long to realize that the "IT staff" the owner had just got done explaining we were taking over for had just waddled out of the room.

Insults aside, I was once again dumbfounded at the sincere lack of management of the IT staff (who turned out to be two guys instead of just the one) for that organization. They are in health care which is a big grower in Michigan, they have added 20 employees over the past year and plan on adding another 20-30 in the next 8 months.

There was no antivirus. There were no backups. There was no disaster recovery plan. There was, however, plenty of their fortune 500 clients angry at them because they did not have a functioning email or telephony solution. This was essentially what these two gentlemen were getting paid $60k a year to do. Sit there and watch their technology blow up.

We were called because their email server crashed with no explanation. We spent 14 hours fixing the problem - essentially rebuilding a house of cards. We were the heroes, and now they will be replacing their IT staff with our company.

Don't go hiring an IT guy for your company because its the typical thing to do. Hire a solution, not a person. Have a look at managed IT services. This is a model that is much more cost effective for small and medium sized businesses.

The night that email server crashed, our managed support left the client site with everything fixed at 9pm... 3 hours after their own IT staff left for the evening.

For the win.

Face it, Mac is Perfect

Take a look at:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/AheadoftheCurve/story?id=5617800&page=1

Funny how my fanatical Mac-Empowered friends never hesitate to tell me how inferior Microsoft products are (usually in an email composed within Entourage) however whenever Mac manages to screw things up bad I don't hear a word about it.

This whole iPhone thing distresses me. I could care less about the whole Mac vs. PC deal, I just think the thing looks cool and does fun stuff. With the advent of Exchange integration, it gave me a reason to finally justify the purchase. Mac couldn't seem to hop on to the 3G bandwagon without falling off the other side though so I will be waiting a bit on this purchase.

Hey Mac/iPhone people - quit annoying me. All technology no matter who makes it is flawed. So stop with the "Mac is Perfect" crap - technology in general doesn't work and I work in the business.

My Advice is to Get Yourself Moving

This is going to my engineers this weekend, although they don't have a copy of it yet.

Print this out and read it on the toilet this weekend-

The Power of Completion
I've got a theory that if you give 100 percent all of the time, somehow things will work out in the end.
-Larry Bird

A full day’s work in a day.
A full day of work does not have a time range. Time is a guideline for expectation. Manage yourselves – you know when you are capable of doing more in a day.

Before each of you leave for the day, I want you to ask yourself “Is there something else I can complete today?” It is very easy for us to hit a lull between jobs at 3-3:30pm and look to end the day. Using that last couple of hours effectively during the day, every day, is very important.

When on site, a job is not completed at 5 pm, a job is completed when the customer’s requirements are met and the business purpose is fulfilled. Vision looks out for their customers. If it is 4:30 pm and you see more work that could be accomplished while on site – offer to complete this work to the client – get your full day of work in.

Talk with the customers, it’s ok to small talk with them to give that personal feel to the experience. This is time well spent and not time that we have to include as a billable charge!

How to move yourself… without a U-Haul.
Let's form proactive synergy restructuring teams!

Don’t be afraid to take initiative. Managing yourself while being productive with your time is a much better use of everyone’s time. Take tickets, complete jobs, follow up with customers, manage accounts. Be diligent and take pride in your work.

…and speaking of pride!
The pride of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand."
-Vince Lombardi

You spend as much time at work as you do sleeping. Work and your company should be something you take pride in. We are not McDonalds cook-line workers, we are highly trained IT Professionals and for as many jokes and stereotypes as people have about us – understand that you have much power at your fingertips. You make other businesses money, you have the power to grind that same business to a halt. You can show people how to send and receive information in such ways they have never conceived. You have the power to make people happy by flipping a switch, or make people angry by flipping the switch the other way. You have the power to fix problems caused by the ignorance and innocence of a person who will never understand and joke about it behind their back… all so you can go back and do it again tomorrow.

What we do and how we do it is better than anyone out there, and you all prove it on a daily basis. I know because our clients tell me that. Care about yourselves, your family, and your job – and show all three passion to do well.

Have a good weekend!

The FTP Turn Off

Because I am an avid fan of people who are better technical writers than I - This is an article from a gentleman who has posted something near and dear to my heart.

The insecurity of FTP.

This is going to sound a little weird at first considering what I do for a living, but I want you to stop using FTP.

There are too many aspects of it which have not kept up with modern computing environments. In particular:

Unless tunneled over a secure socket, FTP is 100% insecure. Your password, and the contents of all of your files are sent in the clear, free to be examined or captured by any network hop between you and your server.

The spec defines no way of setting the modification dates/times of files. A number of non-standard extensions have arisen to deal with this shortcoming. Some servers support one but not the others. Some support neither. Some claim to support one method but misinterpret the the arguments, treating the timestamps as local time rather than UTC. I've seen FTP servers simply drop the connection whenever asked to set a timestamp on a file. For such a simple and necessary operation, it's chaos.

The spec defines no reliable way of determining the string encoding used for file names. We are able to get it right some of the time using educated guesses, but it's hardly reliable. The Internet has made the world smaller than ever, and the world simply needs to use protocols that support international character sets.

FTP was designed to be used interactively by a human sitting at a terminal, not by a GUI application working on the human's behalf. The spec doesn't even define the output format that should be used for directory listings. Half of the work in writing a decent FTP client is being able to interpret the hundreds of different types of directory listings you might receive without much hint as to which type the server is sending. This leads to all kinds of subtle glitches. For example, for files more than a year old appearing in Unix style directory listings it's impossible to determine their modification date without using additional (and likely unsupported) non-standard commands. Sending such per-file commands kills performance. It's also impossible to reliably handle unusual cases such as leading/trailing spaces in file names without hints from the user about the type of server on the other end.

The spec defines no way of dealing with file metadata, such as Unix permissions, owners, and groups. Again, various servers have implemented extensions for working with this, but you cannot rely on their presence or interoperability.

FTP requires a minimum of two socket connections to transfer a file: the control connection, which is established first, and then data connections which are created and destroyed every time you transfer a single file, or request a directory listing. This is deadly to your overall throughput, especially on a high-latency Internet connection. And worse, it leads to the next problem:

FTP is not friendly with firewalls. Because it constantly needs to establish new connections, this has led us to "passive mode" which might as well be black magic as far as most people are concerned. Briefly, passive mode means the client initiates data connections to the server, rather than the default where the server makes connections to the client (yes, really). Worse still, data connections occur on varying high port numbers (usually 49152-65335) which means sysadmins would have to open over 16,000 ports in the firewall, almost defeating the purpose of a firewall in the first place. It's a mess, and it's really hard to understand. Firewalls are a necessary evil for today's Internet, and our transfer protocols should be able to deal with them.

So, if not FTP, what should you use instead? Of what's available today, I'd recommend everyone switch to SFTP if you possibly can.

It's secure, it's consistently implemented, and it's machine-readable. That all adds up to a more reliable, future-proof transfer client for you.

I've talked to a lot of people who didn't even realize their host supported SFTP. If your hosting service supports SFTP, you usually don't have to change anything except for switching your client protocol from FTP to SFTP. If it doesn't work, you should ask your host if there's anything else you have to do (such as use a different port number).

If your host doesn't support SFTP, you should find a different host. It's not hard to support, and it's ridiculous to force people into using insecure protocols in the year 2008. Ask them, for example, why they don't support telnet. FTP is no better.

FTP has served us well, but it's time to move on. You wouldn't use a 23 year old computer to do your work, so don't use a protocol from the same vintage. Demand modern transfer protocols from your host.

Update
Several people have taken issue with me calling out the age of the protocol. After all, Ethernet, IP, Unix, HTML, and so on are also quite old, but seem to be holding up OK.

I guess it was a silly point to bring up. I hope it's at least obvious from the article that I'm not suggesting that FTP's age is its primary problem, but rather the issues in the bulleted list.

The difference between FTP and other old-but-still-useful tech is that the others have been updated periodically to keep pace with the rapid evolution of the industry.

Ethernet now has CAT6. IP is (sort of... slowly...) mutating into IPV6. Unix has had so many mutations it would be hard to name them all. HTML is coming up on version 5.

FTP is just FTP, pretty much same as it was when Jon Postel & co. wrote it. We've wrapped it in secure tunnels and thrown countless proprietary extensions at it (that nobody agrees on how to implement). But it's my opinion (and certainly not everybody's) that it's broken at a fundamental level for its intended purpose for today's Internet.

So, yes, the age of the protocol BY ITSELF is a non-argument. It's that it has languished for that long without any cleanup from any standards organization or committee. SFTP seems the best candidate to replace it since it is widely deployed, solves pretty much all the problems I mentioned, and in most cases is an easy substitution for end users to make. Of the realistic solutions to the problem (not "let's write a new protocol!") it's the most accessible.

Folks, I'm a Newton user. You don't have to tell me that age does not necessarily equal irrelevance.

(Note: Technically speaking, I even understated FTP's age. I was going by RFC959, which is the implementation still in use today. However, a reader reminds me that the core FTP functionality dates back to RFC354, drafted in 1972, and was designed for the trusted environment of ARPANET. It predates both TCP/IP and the internet as we know it today.)

Update 2
There is some confusion over what I mean by "SFTP". I'm referring to the SSH File Transfer Protocol, not FTP-over-SSL which is informally known as FTPS. FTPS addresses FTP's lack of encryption, but is otherwise exactly the same protocol as FTP, with exactly the same problems.



Originally at: http://stevenf.com/archive/dont-use-ftp.php

Make Those Proposals Cheaper Without Lowering Your Price

In Michigan, with economic times the way they are it forces us to find more and more ways to provide competitively priced technology solutions. If I am a company to stay in business, and dare I say, grow - then it requires us to seek ways of keeping the quality in the solution, keeping profits in our coffers, and keeping prices competitive. Unfortunately, we do not live in the most conducive environment.

It is quite common for me to consult for a small business and provide 10-30k worth of equipment and labor. That said, even if the client is in desperate need of this proposed solution a lot of the time they have no idea or expectation of cost and I don't think I need to state how difficult it can be sometimes for a small business to write such a large check.

Offering financing options are a must. We have offered financing options for years and many clients of mine have decided to take advantage and exercises these options. There is, however, a new flavor of financing that I am now offering to my small business clients.

We have partnered with a nation-wide telephony and Internet provider to partially or fully subsidize the cost of a client's technology solution - assuming they also sign up with the provider's services. A lot of the time when a business signs up for Internet and phone service, they are also looking in to things like computers, servers, network additions, etc. Doing this work concurrently with the new phone/Internet service and taking advantage of this subsidy program will allow a business owner to purchase all products and services for less than if they bought these items directly from me. In some cases, we have quoted work and our client purchased enough service from the vendor where they paid for the entire project. The client received a server and 10 new computers at no charge because the subsidy amount received from the phone service vendor was equal to the payment for the equipment. At the end of the day, my client ended up paying for the normal Internet and Phone service, and receiving all products and services free of charge.

This type of financing has allowed technology providers like us to remain competitive and also benefits our clients. We all have to live in this harsh economic environment so this type of program helps us all.