Bill's space

Well it's finally here!

Ray is stepping up and will be taking over operations @ L2TC so look out!

There's a ton of great announcements already from Microsoft, from new Partner Logo to product and visions there is a real Buzz around #NOLA!!!

Follow my tweets @ http://twitter.com/bwattersor on Facebook or more here.

http://www.kablink.org/teaming/

Lest you think we are a 1 trick pony...kablink 2.0 just released. This is a very good alternative to SharePoint. It can be hosted on a Windows+MySQL+Tomcat engine or a Linux+MySQL+Tomcat engine.

Few Small Businesses actually put a lot of thought into their desktops and laptop deployments. Most, in fact, turn to Dell or Best Buy to purchase a new PC and hope that it's the right thing. Some turn to a local OEM instead, who builds them a more customized machine, but it's still a one or two off purchase.

At L2TC, we try to help clients understand their IT investment and how to maximize their purchase. Traditionally one of the first ways Small Businesses can improve their ROI and lower their TCO is to separate their Hardware and Software assets. Which is to say purchase hardware and software on a schedule independent of release dates, rather on their own schedule. This way they can more easily standardize their computing environment and lower their management and training costs. They are in control of their infrastructure rather than being at the mercy of the hardware and software vendors to buy and/or upgrade. There is a much larger discussion to this, but for the purposes of this, I will limit my rant to our Deployment Services.

We specialize in deploying large, and small, numbers of PCs to organizations. One of the key elements of this is the ability to push a desktop image onto a desktop or laptop from a centralized location. From a base image and using native tools we can manage and maintain the client computing environment, and teach onsite administrators how to do the same. While the tools were primarily developed to manage large scale deployments, the beauty is that it can be scaled down to meet the demands of practically any size organization. As part of our larger discussion of management we tend to match deployments of users and PCs along rolls based needs. Accountants, CSRs, Execs, Administrative Types, Sales, etc…this way as a user is added, removed, or replaced there is a role for them to fit into. After the initial roll is filled it can be customized to fit the individual. Using this approach we can lower the Total Cost of Ownership of a PC by as much as 50%. A properly managed network environment will make it more agile and able to properly fill the needs of the users.

With the onset of Windows 7 and the retirement of Windows XP, small businesses need to have a clear understanding of how to migrate to the new client platform and be ready to do it on their own terms, rather than being dictated to by hardware manufacturers… At L2TC we can help you setup an infrastructure ready for Windows 7 and Office 2010!

For more information feel free to contact

Ray Watters @ (773) 634-9369

I spent a good deal of time today examining some of the things that SharePoint is and is not. Several people have taken the time to detail some of these, some on camera, others in audio, and still more in written form. I'll try to add my cents for the discussion.

I see SharePoint as a platform for the next generation enterprise computing environment. Wow, that's a mouthful. It can be so much more or so much less than that, and therein lays the beauty of SharePoint. At its core it's a web portal interface for file, document and knowledge sharing. I have had the pleasure of working with companies and teams that had deployed SharePoint only to #FAIL, because they did not understand what it is, and what it can be. At one place their computer guy installed it, and said 'Have fun' with no direction or training. A couple people tried, but it never took off :: #FAIL. At another place, it was installed, and the company jumped head first into its web access to file sharing, but never went beyond that. By the time they thought about it, they had several hundred gigabytes worth of files stored up there, but they could not back it up, much less optimize it. They had anywhere access to their files, but the service had deteriorated to the point users hated it. Again :: #FAIL.

So where does that leave us? First off SharePoint is so much, and so diverse that how one organization uses it may be completely and diametrically different to how another organization uses it. One company may only use it for wikis another may use it for Document Sharing. Even within a single company, one department may automate with Workflows while another shares calendars. The best feature of SharePoint is that it can do so much, modularly. And while we can modularly grow feature offerings to end users, we must build our portal platform from the ground up with a plan and a goal in sight. Like we have done with networks, preaching about having plans and goals that match the business goals, so must a SharePoint reflect the organization and its goals.

In a time when organizations are looking to become more efficient and get the most out of every dollar, SharePoint is poised as the portal platform upon which to build those efficiencies and align an organization in the right direction.