As discussed previously, there is a noticeable trend in casual IT these days – cut spending on IT infrastructure management as much as possible. Companies are using all chances to eliminate the “human factor” from systems administration, and while it’s scary for incompetent administrators, it adds to the innovation factor of modern IT management offering.

So it’s quite controversial trend. But trends of that kind are very natural for innovation. Let’s see what it’s all about. More...

As promised earlier, I’ve created a small utility which updates currency exchange rates for currencies used by Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 server. It’s fast, reliable and can be run in unattended mode, so you can set it once and forget about it.

A bit about Microsoft Dynamics CRM first

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is the most advanced CRM system created so far. It allows you to keep track on your customers, partners and rivals and monitor relations in real time. So you can create marketing campaign for all your customers in Denmark with turnover higher than 200 000 euro and who’s main industry is Finance. And send them personalized proposal. And each of that customers will reply to manager, assigned to that customer. And you will track the success of that action in real time, being able to test your genius as CEO. Well, not only that. More...

As I finished the series of presentations for Quality Assurance specialists on Team Foundation Server 2010 Test Manager, it was obvious to continue with TFS and now do it for the biggest audience of it’s users – for .NET developers.

Microsoft Visual Studio is the most advanced RAD platform made so far. We could argue about the languages and platforms, like .NET vs. J2EE or ASP.NET vs. Ruby, but one thing is for sure – when you are software developer, no matter what language you are using, the Visual Studio is the most advanced and friendly platform  for any level.

Saying that, Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 (that’s the official name of the product) is a very advanced and sophisticated part of Visual Studio, arguably the most advanced product Microsoft created, apart from operating systems.

Systems administrators having hard hours installing it, developers spend hours learning it’s concepts, but then it starts working and software development becomes a pleasant and highly productive process.

Once you’ve started working with TFS, you can’t imagine working without it on any more or less complex team project. It takes the burden of source and version control, the whole agile workflow, sophisticated automated testing, control over policies and a lot more.  That’s definitely a product which costs every penny of it’s price.

All right, enough praises. You should make your own conclusions and for that you should see it in action. While the previous demonstration for QA specialists was convincing enough to use TFS as the platform for automated testing and main environment for testers, now we are going to talk about the main, biggest and greatest part of Team Foundation Server 2010 – the one meant for software developers.

In this first demonstration we are exploring the source control, but as everything is linked in TFS, we also touch working with code and some best practices. In the next part we will explore the source control deeper, before moving further to more complex and wonderful parts of Team Foundation Server 2010.

According to Microsoft, you are not able to change your base currency in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, the same as it wasn’t possible in version CRM 4.

However, that’s not true.

Imagine, that during the installation of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 server, you’ve set your currency to EEK (Estonian Krona). However, then your country adopted Euro and there is no EEK anymore. According to Microsoft, you have to delete your organization and export it’s data to new one.

It is considered a big no-no to hack into the CRM database, yet in order to change the base currency you will have to do it. Here is how:
More...

Another aspect of corporate systems administration is ability to deploy anything and everything at once without even leaving your chair. In Windows world, we had that ability from Windows 2000 and it evolves with every new version of operating system.

One of the key tools to install the operating system itself is Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK). Windows is using so called “answer file” to not ask you for things with known answers. And it’s not only serial number, user and computer name, but also partitions, drivers and other things that could take hours to install and configure otherwise.

As a potential scenario of deployment, imagine that you’ve just received a 100 new computers from hardware vendor. 100 brand new machines with no operating system installed, as you will use Windows 7 corporate – version which you can’t buy at local store. Your task is to install it as soon as possible – it’s Friday evening and you don’t want to waste your weekend on it.

So you prepare the image of one machine and deploy it on all other machines using local network. Very simple thing to do when you know what you are doing.

The following walkthrough lab is from the Microsoft Official Curriculum 6294A: Planning and Managing Windows 7 Desktop Deployments and Environments. It shows you how to create bootable media with image of your reference workstation and deploy it on other machines. Enjoy!

One of the most sophisticated and complicated products made by Microsoft, System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) is absolutely irreplaceable thing for corporate systems administration. It requires a lot of resources, a lot of knowledge and a lot of care to install and manage, and theory alone is insufficient to become proficient with it.

So here it goes – the first lab in a series. It will show you SCCM in action in controlled set up environment and will explain some of product’s complexities.

Special note for those who wants to study SCCM 2012 – there is no difference between two when you are training. Course on SCCM 2007 perfectly fits and will explain most about 2012 functionality.

Additionally, you may look at TechNet Labs for interactive labs.

As additional material I would recommend a book from Unleashed series which is among the best of a kind.

Today I was walking by the city and suddenly seen the car of one of our local IT companies. The motto on the side of the car said – “we see further”. Yeah, right.

For years it was a dream of each and every CEO to look one step further than others. To be what they call “visionary” or even “strategist”. To keep the hand on the pulse of technology, you know. To use possibilities before others react.

However, funny thing is that most of them don’t see the forest behind the trees. They fail not only to predict, which is more or less ok, as sales guy is not necessarily an analyst. They fail to see the trend in their own niche, living processes inside their own organization. So what you can read in LinkedIn and similar resources is mostly chewing out the same “enlightening” gum .

The biggest and most consumed chewing gum these days is the cloud. Cloud computing that is. Without understanding of what cloud is, usually CEOs think about the same features of it:

• No more server room, we can place everything in the cloud, so this will save us money.
• All of our clients will use our solution which is placed in the cloud, so we won’t funk up with servers and this will save us money.
• We will save money on IT staff – less nerds in staff is always good.

Et cetera.

Recently I met a solution plan which was designed with pink glasses of SAAS (Software As A Service). That is a currently successful corporate application which is about to “go cloud” so all customers will use one web site and won’t need to install the application locally. The (rather hidden) problem is – this application will require administrative privileges on customer’s Active Directory, which means – all computers of the company. And all customers will use the same instance of that application. And there are nuclear power plant operators among the customers.

I would say – “one ring to rule them all”, but you remember the story, right?

Corporate PR specialists run into social networks without insight. They don’t understand the consequences, they are just playing poker. They don’t understand, for instance, that what they are doing is less effective than using a computer program to do the same thing. And when they are starting to use that program, they themselves become useless, as creativity (the only genuine thing that computers don’t have, but can imitate) can be borrowed through outsourcing or simply dismissed.

The same is with HR and some other specialties – it becomes more automated, then it will become a “cloud” application and then it will become part of someone else’s responsibilities to operate that application. Which will always be more effective than most human specialists.

These days, creativity, speed and precision alone are not enough. You need the knowledge, which is always neglected and seems like always will be. ‘Enlightened CEO’ was the core of the dot-com bubble problem and is the same with any technology-related  hype. Because technology is based on knowledge and decision-makers just lack it.

Look at the top players in IT business. The most successful ones are the ones founded and led by scientists, not by entrepreneurs. Talking about software companies, Apple and Google were found by scientists. Microsoft as well. When CEOs were not scientists, like in Google, they didn’t make any technological decisions, like what their product will look like and how it will work.

However, most other IT companies are led by entrepreneurs, sometimes with insignificant experience in IT, who make key decisions. And fail.

So, the morale of the story. You can’t just use someone else’s knowledge and experience, mainly because you won’t have complete access to it, but only to public portion of it. You must have your own. And prove to yourself that you have it.

The devil, as you know, is in details. There was a  time when you could just copy what others did and chances are – you would be fine (remember IBM PC?). These days, with the cloud and SAAS and other buzz terms that may come to your mind, the frontier is much wider and you should be a great analyst in order to understand why someone else’s solution works this way with such success – because there are many details which are hidden from view, hiding somewhere in the cloud and won’t apply to your case.

Think what you’re doing, don’t look at others.