2008 technology resolutions
By Simon Bisson & Mary Branscombe in Editorial
Posted in Windows Mobile, Storage, Networking, Server on
We try out a lot of technology - so much different technology that sometimes we don’t take the time to sort out the technology we really need ourselves. Instead of resolving to work out more and work less, we decided to work out our own technology in 2008. It’s time for some upgrades, some changes and some less is more.
1. Exchange Server 2007
I want HTML email on my smartphone. I can already file messages but I want to be able to flag emails on my phone so I don’t have to leave half of them to deal with when I get back to the office. That means we need to upgrade the Exchange server - and that means we need a 64-bit server, which is why we haven’t upgraded already. Any new server will have Intel AMT support so we can remote in to fix any problems when we’re traveling.
2. And Windows Server 2008
While we’re at it, we’ll make sure the box can run Windows Server 2008 when it comes out at the end of February. This means we’re switching away from SBS at last; not because SBS isn’t a good idea, but because it’s just too long a wait to get the new versions. We’re not expecting Server 2008 features until SBS 2009 and that’s too long to wait for PowerShell and the better Vista support. After all, nearly all our PCs run Vista now.
3. SP1 everywhere
We didn’t install Vista SP1 in beta on our production machines because while it was mostly a good update there were problems with it - that’s fair enough for a beta. RC1 is stable and worth having, so we’ll upgrade all the Vista machines.
4. More memory everywhere
Vista needs memory. Memory is cheap these days and it doesn’t make sense to have less than 1GB in a machine - 2GB for Vista - so we’ll do a little shopping. I’ll get a faster hard drive for my Toshiba R400 too; the 4200rpm drive just doesn’t cut it.
5. Sort out the media centre
The late, lamented Elonex produced a completely integrated Media Center PC, in an LCD screen. It works really well, but we want to add more memory so we can take it to Vista, and add an HD-DVD drive. What we really want is to take the Dremel to the case to cut out the SCART socket and wire up the SCART connector on the motherboard so we can use our Sky+ box with the same screen, but we haven’t found a firmware upgrade that allows that. If we can’t do all the upgrades we want, we’ll probably get a flat screen and a separate Media Center in a Shuttle case or similar. We’ll just have to make sure it gets enough ventilation sitting inside the TV bench.
6. Save some money, save some power
The fan on the switch has been going beserk recently; lifting it off the carpet on a metal rack helped with that. Most summers the office gets uncomfortably warm, so we’ll be looking for a new server that runs cool and for switches and routers that reduce the power they use when there’s no Ethernet traffic. Rigging the surge protectors that the various phone and media player and camera chargers are plugged in to so we can turn them off when we’re not actually charging could be a money saver; some estimates say 75% of the electricity used in the US is driving devices that aren’t actually plugged in. In an ideal world the charger would detect when there’s no current draw and stop taking power itself, of course. Greening the data centre is going to go from a warm cuddly feeling and advertising slogan to a hard look at the bottom line; in business, IT is going to have to pay its development, installation and running costs - including power - and generate profit besides. Smaller businesses need to do the sums as well.
7. Personal navigation
When we have a GPS phone like the O2 XDA Stellar on test, we get to meetings on time and without going to the wrong tube stop. When we drive around the US, CoPilot gets us to the oddest places, down the most obscure back roads. This year I’m going to add navigation to my own phone, the HTC Excalibur. Either I’ll run CoPilot and use a Bluetooth GPS, or I’ll use Google Maps with the cellular location feature to do it without GPS, which will save on battery.
8. Better BES
We both use Windows Mobile, but we both use a BlackBerry quite often too. You need a separate server to run BlackBerry Enterprise Server on, so we usually just get email over the air and connect by USB to sync addresses and calendars. It’s not worth running another server for so few users but a hosted BES service would make sense.
9. Make our VPN less virtual
Most home DSL routers don’t do VPNs properly, so we end up using Remote Desktop or Hamachi to retrieve files when we’re on the road. Getting a Soho or business router will give us real VPN, which is faster and one less step to deal with when we want to get a file in a hurry.
10. Into the cloud
Of course it would be easier not to have to get the file over DSL at all. As laptop hard drives haven’t yet got large enough to take every file we have on the server (and offline files remains delightful in theory and impossible to use on our network in practice), the best solution is to be backing those files up into the cloud somewhere we can retrieve them from as well; encrypted and password protected of course. We’ll always have servers and hardware locally, for speed and control; software as a service doesn’t really fit our business. But to steal a phrase from Microsoft, software plus services makes what you already have better.
If we can get all that done by the end of the year, the IT department will reward itself with a really good Christmas do…
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Loading ...Comment by Jason Slater - January 4, 2008 on 4:13 pm
Good luck with number 1. I’ve been battling with Exchange Server 2007 and Mobile Phone certificates for some time now, see: http://www.jasonslater.co.uk/index.php/2008/01/04/mobile-activesync-and-microsoft-exchange-2007/
It’s a shame because working together they would be a real boon to our business.
Comment by Simon Bisson & Mary Branscombe - January 21, 2008 on 7:36 am
I wondered at first if that was an issue with the Sony Ericsson device. I know that the Nokia E series phones have the hardware to do encryption/decryption and certificate services and Nokia N series devices do not, so you have to switch device security off on Exchange to get ActiveSync to work on them - if the same is true of other phones sync wouldn’t work. But reading the details it’s what I think of as the cname issue - if the certificate is issued to one ‘machine’ at the domain versus the whole domain. It’s pretty rare for www.domain.com and metoo.domain.com and trythis.domain.com to actually be different physical machines any more, but that’s what certificate security assumptions go back to. Glad it’s working better for you now!
M
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