Andre Preoteasa

Is Your IT Job Safe in the Cloud?

2011-01-05T12:41:00.002-05:00

This article from PC World outlines the consequences, good and bad, for IT Managers with the ever growing scope of cloud services.

Microsoft nixes SIS in Exchange Server 2010

2010-03-14T17:24:00.002-04:00

Bridget Botelho wrote an article about SIS - rather lack of it - in Exchange Server 2010.

Inc.com: Articles about Andre Preoteasa

2010-02-15T09:04:00.002-05:00

Inc.com conveniently listed articles I have been part of on their site here written by Michelle Rafter, who is an excellent journalist.

Moving from Office -- change is hard

2010-02-12T11:56:00.001-05:00

Bridget Botelho talks about Google Apps again with mentions from me.

Check it out here at TechTarget.com

Smartphone hypervisors -- what's the use?

2010-02-12T11:50:00.002-05:00

Bridget Botelho wrote an article on hypervisors on mobile phones with some comments from me. I think this is a natural step in the right direction with mobile phone architecture, though premature. Abstraction is always good; let's see how it does in the remainder of 2010.

Read it here on TechTarget.com

Enterprises hold onto Microsoft Office despite Google Apps option

2010-02-02T16:49:00.002-05:00

Bridget Botelho of SearchEnterpriseDesktopNews.com wrote an article on enterprises keeping Outlook instead of switching to Google Apps and mentions me.

http://searchenterprisedesktop.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid192_gci1380525,00.html

5 Essential Points About IT Environments

2009-12-23T12:59:00.004-05:00

I have been around long enough to view information systems from a bird's eye view and I have come up with five points that any individual or small to medium size business can use to view their IT systems. The five points are designed to be vague and overlap, but if you approach your business through the lens of each point, you will cover everything.

Point 1 - Data

Data is the bread and butter of most companies. Data includes not only Word and Excel files, but storage of that data, sharing it, collaboration (ie: wiki), retrieval of data, backup and the hardware/software that the data resides on.

An example is a typical small business two server setup: one server is the file server and the other server does various things, such as email. Data sits on the first server, you may use BackupExec to backup data, a free wiki to collaborate, share files using Windows network shares, and the operating system is Windows Server 2007. Whatever data's tentacles touch is included in this point.

Point 2 - Messaging

People like to message each other, whether it is email, instant message, wiki post, you name it. Messaging includes anything that is a message; a communication between two people most like a conversation. This can overlap Data's (point 1) wiki.

Point 3 - Applications

Applications include mainly software installed, such as Microsoft Office, Lotus Notes, custom software, SaaS, etc. It can include hardware that does a specific task that could be done by software (ie: those funny boxes that check for spam). Applications can sit in the cloud or on your server or on your desktop.

Point 4 - Security

Most IT professionals approach security based on the software they are using. For example, Windows Server with Active Directory will be good enough for most people. But what about SaaS? This point also involves audits, how to tackle large issues and even not IT items such as locking server rooms. Your stance on security depends on what is being done.

A small marketing consulting company with three employees probably doesn't need to have secure shares and can get away with having the private information on a specific laptop. That laptop can be taken home by the person. That secures the data. Of course, this only works for that particular environment. As the company grows, reevaluate each point and make changes accordingly. No need to spend time and money setting up a three person company as if they were a 50 million dollar company.

Point 5 - Access

There are so many ways to access data. I am typing this on a computer, though I could type it on my blackberry. Accessing data involves the transit method too, such as using streaming versus local, virtualized desktops versus local desktops, or even printing (local versus remote).

Accessing data is usually taken for granted until a problem occurs. I have seen in my experience an entire information system setup only to find out that you can not access the data from laptops securely without changes to the system (which always cost money).

View your company through these five points and you will have a good bird's eye view of your business. This also works for families at home that share data. Being able to show your Aunt pictures via streaming it on a laptop from your beach house would be better than carrying hundreds of gigs of pictures on portable hard drives, but of course you have to prepare for this. Preparing is always better than fixing it later on.

Friend Management

2009-12-02T12:43:00.003-05:00

Utilizing more and more social networks, I find myself managing far too many friend lists. From the professional relationships on LinkedIn to my closer friends on Facebook. There are too many different friend lists with Venn diagrams of each in my head to remind me who I am speaking to. The term "friend management" came to me, but I assume it has already been discussed by others.

I am an advocate for open systems, but realize that some systems must remain closed for many reasons. I do not think social networks should be bound by an open standards others are pushing around, however I do believe some parts of social networks should allow for more openness. In particular friend lists. You could host your friend list on a different platform than Facebook or LinkedIn and have those social networks tap into your friend list. You could define which friends are to be on each of your social networks, granted they are actually on them. This would allow you to control friend lists better.

For example, you take a cruise in New York Harbor with a bunch of friends and their friends. You discover you would like to keep in touch with your new friends. You add them to Facebook and LinkedIn (perhaps they'll offer you a job one day?!). One year goes by and you haven't thought about them nor care to keep them on Facebook and want to give them limited access on LinkedIn. You could go to your friend management site and change the settings for that friend. Perhaps you want to add them to Bebo now.

Controlling your information and controlling your friends could be a crucial part of social networks in the next few years. If social networks decline to allow this, well then there are so many other social networks. Remember Friendster?

Why I Love Gmail

2009-11-11T10:06:00.004-05:00

Simply, Gmail is great. It's as next generation as it gets and while I try not to boast about Google too much, their services are far superior than anything out there. The next version of Outlook should function like Gmail: grouping emails together, saving each outgoing email recipient in your contacts, instant chat between email users, automatic archiving and all transparent to the user.

Get Gmail. Gmail to Gmail contact is unlike anything else.

More Frustrations with SonicWall

2009-04-27T10:29:00.002-04:00

Sonicwall frustrations continue:

Wi-Fi goes down last week. Sonicwall painfully troubleshoots with me on the phone - Two hours. They send me a replacement SonicPoint (SonicWall's access point).

The new SonicPoint arrives. Three hours of troubleshooting with Sonicwall, they say the SonicPoint is defective. Wi-Fi is still down.

The new new SonicPoint arrives. Three more hours of troubleshooting and they think this SonicPoint is defective! They are not sure if the SonicPoint or SonicWall router is defective. They ship me a replacement router. Great - now I have to spend even more time troubleshooting. Wi-Fi is still down.

I get the replacement SonicWall router (Pro 2040). I call their support, which has changed over the weekend. My ticket was closed. I have been on hold for thirty minutes. I expect a good 2 hours troubleshooting now. Wi-Fi is still down and it has been a full week.

Unless things change soon, SonicWalls will be considered garbage to me. So far I have spend 8.5 hours with this and the wi-fi is still not up. I expect to spend a total of 11 hours with this, not including time to open packages, setup devices, and ship back packages. If I were consulting, at a modest rate of $150.00 per hour, this would have cost my company $1,650.

I am done with SonicWalls. I could buy a Netgear router for a tenth of the price.

Can Oracle make sense of Sun's hardware?

2009-04-21T13:27:00.003-04:00

Tom Sullivan wrote an article at InfoWorld.com about Oracle's purchase of Sun Microsystems and I am mentioned: Can Oracle make sense of Sun's hardware?. It is a good article and Tom writes a lot about technology, so check out his other articles!

Sonicwall: Garbage in, Garbage out

2009-04-21T13:19:00.002-04:00

I have recently been hearing a large number of bad things about Sonicwall products. We use them here - brought in by the previous IT company - and they have always worked great. Yah sure, one did burn out mysteriously, but beyond that we have been pretty lucky.

I have lost five hours of my life that I will never get back. On Monday, our sonicpoint (access point) crashed. I spent two hours troubleshooting it with Sonicwall. Their customer service has also become worse. After two painful hours, they finally agreed to send me another sonicpoint.

Today I got the other sonicpoint and three hours later, I am told I am to expect another sonicpoint. Apparently, this one was bad too.

Unacceptable. I am now looking to get rid of Sonicwalls in our environment. I have seen their customer service degrade and first hand see their products are garbage. Anyone have any suggestions?

Why we love Outlook

2009-03-04T12:33:00.002-05:00

Back in the 1990s, my email client preference was Outlook Express. It was simple, free and fast. I could get all my POP and IMAP accounts without a problem. I could backup the database easily too.

Then Outlook came out and in comparison, I did not like it (in fact I hated it). Then I became an Microsoft Exchange administrator and fell in love with Outlook. Its integration with Exchange (and XP to a lesser degree) makes it a solid email infrastructure. Sure it would slow down the computer, sometimes crash and cost a lot of money, but it worked well for the most part.

Now, after some time of research, I am looking at Google apps. It is all in the cloud, which is the best feature for me. I also like the email grouping feature. There are some features lacking, that is for sure.

People love Outlook and it is challenging to have them switch. I hope Google apps becomes more heavy on the client side, such a rich text editing. At the same time, I truly enjoy everything being in the web browser, but of course I used to love Outlook Express.

7 ways technology saves money

2008-11-07T10:35:00.002-05:00

Jeff Wuorio wrote a great article in Microsoft Small Business Center on 7 ways technology saves money. I'm quoted in it on my experience saving small businesses money.

The article is for small business and large businesses, but smaller businesses will benefit the most since they do not have in-house IT staff or very small ones. When working as a small business consultant in New York City, I found a common theme among small business owners: they're frugal! Not a big surprise of course, but I was surprised at how narrow they would focus on saving money.

For example: paper. Paper is expensive. Fancy paper is more expensive. Rolls of paper for plotters are even more expensive. And printing in color is ridiculously expensive. Print management software works great for businesses like architects who bill their clients for printing, but often overkill for small businesses trying to aggressively control who prints what and when. I've seen paper locked in a cabinet, requiring the business owner to personally unlock and approve of it's use. I've seen companies requiring to print on the other side of used paper.

Another example is software licensing. It is expensive and because it is so easy to illegally install software, many companies do it. I don't know how small business owners sleep at night when 90% of their software is illegal. They could lose their business! I worked for a client that had illegal copies of Adobe Creative Suite 3 (CS3) on 9 of 10 computers. They used it as part of their business, thus profiting from it. This small business owner spent a decent amount of time working out who would get the 1 of 10 legal copies and who would get the illegal copies. The small business owner would spend far too much time on this, focusing on saving money the wrong way.

As you can see, saving money requires time. Your IT services provider should be able to quickly and enthusiastically point out ways to save money.

Good Match: Choosing an IT Services Vendor

2008-11-03T12:18:00.002-05:00

Michelle V. Rafter wrote an excellent article on choosing an IT services vendor: Good Match: Choosing an IT Services Vendor from Inc.com.

Michelle really hit it on the head with this article. Choosing an IT services vendor can be a difficult process. Who do you go with? What recommendations count? Is Google searching viable? What do I really need to know?

I recently picked an IT services vendor to work with me and I started with Google searches. Then I visited their websites. If the website was outdated, too generic or simply bad, I went to another website. To me, a former small time web developer, if your company is a service oriented company and your major form of communication (website in this case) is poorly done, then that shows you either do not care enough to communicate or do not have the resources. Both of which causes me to look elsewhere.

The next step was an email inquiry about services. You'd be surprised how many companies did not reply to my email. This is another indicator of how well a company runs: if they can't manage their emails, how could they manage your IT environment? The final two steps involved telephone interview and a face to face interview.

Choosing an IT services firm can be a very rewarding experience if you follow Michelle's advice. Just like choosing a law firm or plumber, the more thought you put into it, the more you get out of it.

Mention in New York Times

2008-10-27T16:25:00.003-04:00

I have been mentioned in the New York Times in their Technology section: "Is tech in more trouble than we think?" written by Tom Sullivan.

Posh Technology

2008-10-14T12:06:00.002-04:00

While I didn't create the term Posh Technology nor does it have anything to do with the Posh Technology website (which is about maternity items), I'd like to talk about posh technology. The perception of IT professional is changing from the short sleeve white collar shirts with black ties (think Geek Squad) and creepy nocturnal computer programmers. Those people still exist and by no means should we ignore them; they do drive the field and are often some of the smartest people around.

There's a new set of IT professionals out there that are professional in appearance and manner who want fancy IT accessories. It seems the average person needs less accessories these days. For example, your scanner, printer, fax, copier are all one device. You don't need many external hard drives with online backups. I only advise people to have 1 USB drive (and to encrypt it!!!), maybe two if you travel a lot.

So what is posh technology? Superior technology accessories! IOmega makes a leather bound usb hard drive. Pretty much anything Apple makes is posh. An Apple wireless router looks much better than a Netgear. You can use an Apple monitor with Windows as well.

In The Devil Wears Prada, the two secretaries had iMacs with wireless keyboards. They put them away in a drawer upon leaving. Very clean look. I recommend this to offices that want to complement their contemporary style (which is popular in NYC offices).

Of course, this will cost you more money...

Thin Clients and You

2008-10-13T10:36:00.005-04:00

Ashley Vance wrote an interesting article in the NY Time Technology section yesterday: Revived Fervor for Smart Monitors Linked to a Server. She talks about thin clients, servers and all the wonderful things about it. I love thin clients and I was disappointed a number of years ago when the thin client and terminal server model failed to spread.

It just makes sense in a small, medium or large business to implement thin clients at some level. In 2005 when I was a small business consultant, a few of our clients were real estate agencies which many of the employees were not full time or simply contractors/consultants/etc and they had their own laptop. For company data, they would log on to a terminal server session and be granted whatever access they had. Their laptop, in effect, was a thin client. We enjoyed setting up numerous thin clients all over the office, along with monitors and keyboards, for access when you didn't have your laptop.

Now with virtual machines, we can replace terminal servers and have much better security and scalability. And no more having to reboot the entire server when a few terminal sessions were having problems!

One of my favorite features about thin clients is security. Everything the user does is on the server. As a small business consultant, I would face challenges with users feeling they had the right to download whatever they wanted on their company's computer and usually resulted in spyware, viruses and malware. Users thought that the "R drive" was safe and the "C drive" was for personal use. Just because you have a folder called "C:\personal" doesn't mean it can't hold a virus or more embarrassingly, photos from your Mexican vacation that show up in search results. With thin clients, it's pretty obvious you're on the company's computer and you should be doing work.

For companies that want to give their employees some personal space on their computers, I recommend a hybrid version: fat client (regular computer) for personal stuff that isn't maintained by an IT services company. Log into your own virtual machine on the server for business related work. In some years, the boss does not have to upgrade the computers since all business related work is done on the servers. If the boss is nice, she or he will upgrade your computer, though it isn't necessary. This will save the company a lot of money too; not only in hardware upgrades, but with the associated costs of maintaining hardware.

Inc Technology Article

2008-10-12T10:16:00.004-04:00

Michelle V. Rafter has included me in the article "IT Mistakes: Failure is Not an Option" in INC. for small business owners pointing out mistakes that can seriously affect their business.

Michelle writes:

Andre Preoteasa still remembers the business owner who missed a project deadline because his old computer was too slow. As the businessman’s IT consultant, Preoteasa had earlier recommended switching to new, faster machines. But the advice had fallen on deaf ears. “He cried in front of me. There was nothing I could tell him. He didn’t upgrade,” Preoteasa says.

Read the rest here.

Everyone Should Have VOIP

2008-10-06T13:07:00.002-04:00

Voice over IP is something everyone should have. I'm not saying you have to get rid of your old phone system entirely (though you should consider it!). I'm suggesting individuals get some sort of VOIP (ie, Skype) and use it for a while. If it works for you, make that your main phone number. Give that number out to everyone and have it forward to your cell phone, work phone, home phone, etc.

Companies should move to VOIP only if it is a realistic option and actually makes sense. A national or international company, no matter how small, should have it because it will save money and make life easier. Of course, it may cost far too much replacing your existing PBX (as in my case), so there has to be a migration solution. Perhaps in a few years, hosting your own PBX will be very easy and reliable, just like hosting your own DNS. Perhaps not.

VOIP is here to stay and I recommend every business owner to ask their IT Director or consultant what they know, how much it costs, and how to make it work for you.

Is is 2003?

2008-10-02T16:24:00.002-04:00

Sometimes I have to ask myself what year it is, because if I stand back and look around, I realize that I'm doing some things the way I did them 5 years ago. IT changes too quick and I tell everyone to make sure it's not 2003.

Of course I'm using Windows Server 2003, but there's a lot of other areas to look at. Think about remote access: are you still connecting via VPN? Could you use a free remote desktop service like LogMeIn? This isn't a corporate wide strategy, so use it for yourself. What about logon scripts? Still using the same old batch files? Perhaps it's time to take a VB course. Still spending time deleting temp files manually? There are programs that do it for you. What about your SNMP alerts? Or you the way messages flow in and out of your systems. You can bring spam filtering in-house or take it out.

Basically the idea is to look around and make sure things are moving at some speed in the same direction IT is moving. Everyone knows that guy that loves NT servers because, well, it works.

Remote access works great for other reasons

2008-10-01T11:48:00.002-04:00

AMNY had a great article about how a savvy person used his remote login capabilities to monitor the theft who stole his laptop. Eventually the theft went to a site where he entered his name and address and the police soon arrested him.

I use LogMeIn for free and inexpensive remote login access. I also install Team Viewer on my friends' computers for when they need me to help them. I like LogMeIn as a company; their views are consistent with mine and I recommend them to anyone.

Now back to the article mentioned above. What sweet justice! I've had an idea to put some sort of tracking device on the MAC number of the network card. Something built into the hardware on the NIC that would one way or another broadcast itself over the LAN, bypass firewalls, and say hello to a receiving end that could list it on a secure website, where owners would be able to see where their laptop is located. Thefts would then have to remove the NIC then to bypass this added security level.

Companies like DELL can also offer tracking using their serial numbers, so (probably for an added fee) you could alert DELL that your laptop was stolen and when/if the laptop gets DELL updates, you'd be notified. The police could then know the IP address and with some remote access, you can catch the criminal. Or at the least completely shut down the computer. Even if the theft rebuilt it, he can't get rid of the serial number.

Why I love OpenOffice

2008-09-30T17:16:00.002-04:00

I love OpenOffice, the free open source productivity suite. It is basically Microsoft Office for free (let's not forget Microsoft Office was Lotus Notes). I recommend it to small businesses as a way to save money. It does everything Microsoft Office does, but for free. OpenOffice looks a little different, but when saving money, it's not so bad.

For small businesses, I recommend OpenOffice for everyone and then I start applying exceptions. These exceptions are easy: if you live on Microsoft Word (ie, Legal), use Word. If you live on Excel (ie, Finance), use Excel. If you use PowerPoint almost everyday (ie, Marketing), use PowerPoint. For everyone else, especially IT, OpenOffice is the way to go. It's not only free - you're supporting open source.

The importance of documentation

2008-09-29T12:40:00.002-04:00

Far too often I run into IT professionals who, for one reason or another, do not have documentation. During my consulting days for small businesses, time was limited and I could not justify charging a client for documentation. They simply would not understand why it was important and certainly did not find it as comforting as I.

When time is limited, I recommend documenting the system essentials. Forget subnets; you can find that stuff pretty easily. Forget documenting one domain Active Directory environments; you can find that stuff just as easily. Do document VPN tunneling information, flow-charts for complicated processes, which servers are in where physically, emergency contact numbers such as your important software, your messaging environment, and most importantly passwords (in an secure Excel document).

Don't focus on making all documents "final edition" unless required by your boss or government compliance. All documentation should be a work in progress. I use Visio and Excel primarily.

Why you should always backup email to disk with BackupExec

2008-09-27T13:11:00.002-04:00

Far too many technicians simply ignore the advice to check their data backups. Even those forced by Sarbanes-Oxley do it at a minimum. I always advice others to have their junior techs perform backup recovery on their first week.

Using BackupExec 11d (build 7170) with a 65GB Microsoft Exchange store (2003), I performed two tests to recover my personal entire inbox (800KB): from tape (LTO-3) and from external hard drive connected via USB.

The results:

Tape: The entire 65GB store had to be mounted before the messages could be recovered (!), which took 6 hours.

Disk: 1 min and only the 800KB of data was pulled.

I've spoken to Symantec perhaps far too much on this matter and their explanation is that tape's inherent qualities limit the restores performance relative to time. Yes, I agree. At least it works.

What I've done is have two backups for email: tape and hard drive. Since tape goes off-site for at least 1 year, the tape backup job clears the exchange logs. Hard disk backup job afterwards.