Technically Speaking

On Monday May 4th Kevin Remde will again be hosting a web chat for IT Managers.  This one looking at Business Process Automation through products like BizTalk as well as Service Oriented Architecture concepts and topics.

The discussion should be similar to the last couple chats we have had.  I have a few questions put together and am quite eager to learn about the technology myself.

Please register for the event here and I look forward to seeing you Monday.

Let’s face it, we have all had bad days or bad experiences getting (and even giving) support.  I am not one that likes to admit defeat and call in reinforcement on an issue too quickly, but have come to realize that those on the other end of the call are just trying to help.  Much like I will do with my coworkers.

I have learned in recent experience to step away from an issue for a minute before calling in the cavalry and getting more frustrated trying to get help.

An example, when calling for help on an issue that has me frustrated, I will make notes of the things I have tried and take a brief walk around the office to “cool off” before I call.  This way I do not start out with the completely wrong attitude toward someone who is just trying to help.

Just being able to think more clearly, and objectively, about a topic or problem will help the person on the other end of the call get up to speed more quickly.  This can reduce the time spent on support and get the issue corrected more quickly.

Beware the caller

When trying to change your own view of support and the way you deal with them, be careful not to expect this immediate change of pace to work with coworkers.  You will need to change somethings there as well to get the incoming calls handled in the same professional manner.  I am not saying it can’t be done, just realize you will need to work through this just like any other challenge.

Best way to deal with support calls?

I am not sure there is a best way.  When talking to your internal cusomters (co-workers) remember that they are calling for help, just like your Mom or Grandparents might do.  Keep this in mind when working with them.

When dealing with external customers, (support companies and vendors) explain the issue as succintly as possible this will help those working on your call to understand the issue much faster.  Take notes.  Do not expect everything to be provided for notes to eliminate a future call, but make notes about the call to come back to incase the problem persists past the first call.

Simple as it may sound, dealing with people is much harder in many cases than dealing with Server or computer issues.

Remember that the customer is a priority.  They do not need to be right, they just need to be helped to continue performaing their tasks, if you see it this way on both sides of the support coin, you will gain more from each experience and your customers, internal and external will thank you for it.

On Monday April 20 2009, Kevin Remde (of MS Technet and IT evangelism fame) hosted another Town Hall style live meeting covering how Microsoft does BI.

The topic of discussion was varied discussing how BI is used with data in a SQL Server and how other platforms, such as Oracle, DB2, Excel, and Sharepoint information could be gathered into one place for analysis.

I will update this post with the link to the on demand session as soon as it is available.

Be sure to register for the next Chat with Kevin, scheduled for Monday May 4 at 11 AM PDT, covering Service Oriented Architecture and Business Process Management.

Hope you can make it to the next session.

Attitude is everything, even if the phrase is cliche.  Recently I began a project at the office to upgrade our CRM application to the latest version.  The actual software upgrade went off without a hitch, but the database upgrade behind the scenes has been quite the challenge.

I have involved MS support to assist with some of the issues, which has been helpful.  I ended up on SQL Server 2005 and the majority of the work is completed, however there is a bit of work to do yet.

We have remote sales staff that also uses the application and updates to information are pushed to the home office (and to the remote users) via FTP.  I am working on the last two of these this week.

Upgrades gone bad, or going outside the original plan, are a frustration that will likely be around as long as software.  The problem is that many times more time is required to get the upgrade done as needed.  And the employees within the organization who use the application may or may not understand what the issues with the upgrade are.

Keeping a positive attitude during times like these is definitely a challenge.  However, remember what you love about IT and working with computers.  This will help when things unravel, but you may need to step away for a bit to realize that things are not always going to go as they should, but they are not the end of the world.

During an upgrade or project of any size, remember to take some time for yourself.  See a movie on the weekend or during off hours, spend time with family, just keep in mind that the upgrade will come out eventually.  Hopefully this post will remind you that, while stressful at times, software upgrades can be handled and your sanity can remain in tact.

The first live chat, covering virtualization is in the books.  Overall it went quite well and was a great experience for me.  I hope that the chats continue and that the attendees were able to take something valuable away from the session.

For those of you who were not able to attend the session, the replay is available by clicking the link below:

IT Manager Community Chat with Kevin – Virtualization – 4/9/2009

I participated in a round table discussion about Virtualization this afternoon with Kevin Remde and others from Microsoft.  The goal was to discuss virtualization and look at how Microsoft technologies can help IT departments make the move to virtualization.

Virtualization is on of the hottest buzz-words around right now but for very good reason.  Reducing physical servers in your data center will redcue power consumtion costs and resource usage overall.  This leads to better performance on the backend, lower maintenance costs (in both time and tools needed), and greater server availability (more on that in a bit).

One of the tools that was discussed today was the Microsoft Assessment and Planning toolkit or MAP for short.  This tool can be run by any IT staff member (with appropriate permissions) and will examine your environment and determine where your servers are under utilized and how much you could benefit from using virtual servers.

The tool produces a report that will outline for IT Management and C-Level management the findings and benefits of taking your organization away from physical servers and into the virtual world.

The tool can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/map

It may be the best thing available to aid in determining just how your company will benefit from Hyper-V and Virtualization.

One more tidbit of useful information, the MAP utility is a free download.

Working on meetings and ensuring all of the parties and details are captured can be very tedious process.  Just arranging a time that works for everyone and getting into Outlook can be a hassle.

There are ways to take these meetings online, Microsoft’s Live Meeting, Citrix Goto Meeting, or Webex are three that spring to mind.

Note: Because these applications can be quite pricey, it is not my goal with this post to sell software for any of the vendors listed.

I wanted to look at the Microsoft solution, Live Meeting, not to try and get more shops to adopt the technology, although it is a great tool, but to suggest that IT staff take the time to attend some webinars sorry Live Meetings and get to know the application.

Meeting with vendors, customers, co-workers, and other groups or individuals via the web can save time for all involved.  It might even allow for IT Managers to send their staff to seminars, using web technology, to help them grow their skills.

If you go so far as to demo the technology to co-workers and management outside of IT, you may find savings in all kinds of places that might justify the cost of the application.

Note: I do not plan to review Live Meeting in this post, though I am considering doing so in the future. I wanted to get you thinking about meetings and how web technologies might remove the need for meetings or enable better use of meetings and the time spent in them.

Microsoft has tons of Live Meeting events, some public, some not, but they host tons of Live Meetings.  I would recommend looking around TechNet for a live meeting that might cover a topic that you or your staff struggle with or have questions about.  Or attend one of the IT Manager chats coming up as those will be done with Live Meeting.

Live Meeting has helped me tremendously in allowing travel to be reduced while keeping PowerPoint on the table.  It will not always replace a face to face meeting for many organizations, but in some it could as web cams can provide a visual experience.

From where I sit, Live Meeting makes conference calls more robust and more useful.  Making them a true alternative to face to face meetings.

So I encourage you to participate in the web chats for IT Managers or at least look into what Live Meeting might be able to offer your company, you might be surprised at the adoption and possibilities it brings.  I know I do.

I read an interesting post the other day about just being a Microsoft shop and that got me thinking. Thinking about where we, the IT community might be without companies like Microsoft.

Sure there are other technologies, phones, mainframes, UNIX, and others that would likely be around somehow, but I have had the benefit of being able to learn Microsoft products and technologies and use them to do my job or get my job and all of that. There have been times when I wasn’t sure that Microsoft was the right path for me to learn down but try as I might it seems Microsoft and related products keep me the most interested. And then came twitter, but that is another issue altogether.

The technology available from Microsoft has been steadily getting better, even Windows Vista has its strengths. I am glad for all of the experiences I have had and opportunities I have been given because of Microsoft. This seems to keep me coming back down the Microsoft path.

I am sure most shops, even Microsoft itself, have other technologies running on the network and this is a good thing because it keeps us as IT managers and Systems Administrators fresh. There is no way to know all of the technology that is out there, and likely no way to know all of the Microsoft stuff or the Sun stuff or the Apple stuff, but choosing the things that are most interesting to you will likely lead you a certain way.

Continually building skills that can help your taste for technology grow and at the same time aid your company in accomplishing its goals will be a popular path for a long time to come. In our currently tough economy technology might be pressed by management to show rapid ROI and have budgets reviewed and downsized, but taking the initiative on yourself (or with your team) to learn and keep growing will help you in the long run. Just keep somethings that are truly interesting on the front of your desk, this might help motivate you to keep pushing when the reading gets dry and the fun runs short.

Hopefully those of you that feel you just work in a Microsoft shop will step back and look at the technologies you do use. I wonder what the world would be like today if Microsoft had decided to produce seat cushions instead of software.

Similar to a FireSide chat, Microsoft is hosting a series of Webcasts to engage IT Managers and help them get questions answered. Kevin Remde and Evren Toktas from Microsoft will be hosting the chats discussing the following topics:

• Virtualization
• Business Intelligence
• Service Oriented Architecture and Business Process Management
• Security

I have been invited to participate as well.  Hopefully we all get the chance to learn something.

More information has been posted on Kevin’s Blog.

Hope you can make it.  The first Live Meeting is this Thursday April 9th at 11 PST

Given the state of the global economy in 2009 and the budgets of organizations frozen or sliding, many technical conferences may see attendance drop this year. In a post on Tech Republic, Jason Hiner has looked at conference attendance and put up a poll.

Personally, I will not be attending conferences this year on the company dime, however I am going to attend Tech Ed. Because I have found learning and interacting with those also in IT, these conferences are important, but they are expensive and organizations looking to stretch budgets might be wise to cut back on sending employees there.