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It’s been an interesting week so far as I’ve been in a Beta Teach course at Microsoft.  We have a very interesting cross section of people in the course and, as one usually does at a course, I’ve struck up conversations with various classmates.  One thing that has struck me is the really deep pool …

This post is a bit different from all that have gone before on this blog as it is not a “how to”, a rant or even technology related.  Rather, it is a tiny bit of advice to any young person looking at getting into the IT biz from a grizzled old veteran.  It has been …

Everywhere you look nowadays there is a reference to “The Cloud” yet there is no real clear definition as to WHAT “The Cloud” actually is.  You see references to public Clouds, private Clouds, hybrid Clouds … you name it and there is probably the “Cloud” moniker attached to it.  So just what IS “The Cloud”, …

OK, right up front I have to state that either Ballmer & Co are absolutely brilliant OR the lot of them have been smoking copious amounts of crack somewhere on the Redmond campus.  I have started to noodle about with Windows 8 (the Consumer preview) and I have to say that I’m kind of leaning …

We have lots of customers ask us this question and it is a valid one when you are looking at what is required to connect back to your Exchange backend. If you have Exchange 2007 or 2010 (SBS2008 or SBS2011) in-house the super simple answer is any one of the above EXCEPT BlackBerry (more on …

We’ve been having a lot of “fun” lately.  The addition of a couple of new larger customers presented a series of challenges to us and, in the process, we learned a few things.  Most of us in the tech world look at the big shiny tech toys out there and, if we’re lucky, get to …

I’ve had very mixed results with Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) installs over the years.  At its best, BES is a pain in the ass to install and manage; at its worst it is a cast-iron nightmare.  We (itgroove) abandoned Blackberry and BES a few years ago and moved to a mixture of iPhones, Androids and …

There are times when those of us that work in IT Consulting have the same kinds of experiences that customers have when it all goes horribly pear shaped.  So, this is a cautionary tale that proves even the “gods of IT” (hmmm, maybe I’ll trademark that) are mere mortals. I shouldn’t have to explain the …

VMware makes a great virtualization bundle available for any size organization but it really hits the “sweet spot” for SMB’s.  VMware vSphere Essentials is a license bundle that gives licensing for up to 3 physical servers, up to 6 CPU’s (think CPU sockets) and up to 192GB of RAM across those servers (32GB per CPU).  …

Yup, weird title, but then this is a bit of a weird topic.  The whole IT industry is running hell bent for leather towards the “Cloud” yet many organizations are also madly building out their own infrastructure.  Who’s right?  What’s the best thing to do if you are planning out your next 3 – 5 …