Many IT professionals are, quite reasonably, asking question such as: "What does my job look like as the tech industry and my company move toward cloud computing?"

Of course, IT managers know that their roles never stop evolving. New technologies and business demands arise every day.  Business leaders and employees always want more from IT.  And yes, cloud computing will accelerate that evolution.  As Bob Muglia, president of Server and Tools Business says in this video, the cloud is "a world-class, dramatic shift."

The good news, as Muglia points out, is that the shift presents great opportunities for IT to contribute more to their organization's bottom line.  The cloud will help IT more quickly deploy new capabilities - applications, services, access - that will enable business to happen more efficiently and effectively.

You can watch the video here: http://www.microsoft.com:80/presspass/silverlightApps/videoplayer3/standalone.aspx?contentID=cloud_MMS2010_day1KeynoteClip3&src=/presspass/presskits/cloud/channel.xml

Simply put, the cloud can help IT do more and be more important than ever.  With the cloud, IT managers can help the business bring a new service to market faster than the competition.  Or, it can help IT take advantage of extra computing horsepower to meet seasonal demand without acquiring new hardware and software.  And IT can use the cloud to offload the management and delivery of traditional applications, such as email, in order to devote more time and resources to implementing new, strategic solutions.

For example, Siemens IT Solutions and Services uses the Microsoft Windows Azure platform to distribute software to thousands of Siemens devices around the world - enhancing services and avoiding significant new capital investment. In another example,  Kelley Blue Book runs its high-traffic automotive Web site on the Windows Azure platform, saving $100,000 annually and freeing up IT sources for other projects.

It's an exciting time to be in IT, with cloud computing providing much more efficient hardware, much faster application deployment, and lower operational costs.  And at Microsoft we're focused on helping IT managers "mind the gap," as Muglia says, to use their existing expertise and systems to bridge the current, on-premises world of IT with the cloud.
 
This article was written by Patrick O'Rourke, and first appeared on The Official Microsoft Blog on June 2, 2010.

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Oh, it is ON between Google and Microsoft. A Google security engineer in Switzerland warned Microsoft of a vulnerability in Windows XP, but after they didn't fix it within five days, he went public.

Tavis Ormandy was the Google engineer who discovered the XP hole in the Help and Support Center of Windows, which normally allows people to download help documents from the internet if needed. The hole though (if you know what you're doing), actually lets you download more than just the help files-you could actually "execute arbitrary commands with the privileges of the current user," according to the engineer, with PCs running Windows XP SP2 and SP3, and IE7 or IE8.

While going public before the flaw was fixed might not have been the smartest move, Ormandy believes it was the only way to make Microsoft sit up and pay attention, rather than shelve the problem for a later day: "If I had reported the...issue without a working exploit, I would have been ignored," he wrote in the Full Disclosure email newsletter. Microsoft understandably hit back, with Jeff Bryant, the group manager at the Microsoft Security Response Center writing of his concern "about the public disclosure of this issue given we were only notified about it by this researcher on the 5th of June."

Security experts are now calling for a public hanging (well, dismissal) of Ormandy, with the CEO of SecTheory, Robert Hansen, wading in and saying that he should be fired. I think that's a little harsh personally, but what do you feel about Google publicly admonishing Microsoft about their security flaws-especially in light of ditching Windows as their HQ OS of choice?

This article was written by Kat Hannaford, and first appeared on www.gizmodo.com.

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We all know how awesome Windows Vista was/is.  Can you detect our sarcasm? Since a majority of businesses skipped Vista all together, and because XP will eventually disappear, Windows 7 is currently one of the best software upgrade options for businesses.  We recently talked about upgrading your office's computer network to Windows 7, but what happens when you want to run XP-style apps with Windows 7?

Luckily there are products out there that can help with this problem, and ensure that the transition to Windows 7 will be as painless as possible.

Microsoft recently created its new Windows XP Mode, a free application that lets you run XP apps on Windows 7.  It's designed primarily for small- to medium-sized businesses.  Windows XP Mode comes as a separate download and works only with Windows 7 Professional, Ultimate, and Enterprise.  To use it, you must use virtualization software like Windows Virtual PC.  Luckily, both are available for download. 

Here's the link:  http://bit.ly/2mYqoJ 

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Windows, Linux, Unix, Mac, Java, Web; we knows the importance of these operating systems working in sync with each other.  And when they don’t, it can seem like the world is ending.

We recently wrote a post about the 40 most popular tools for your system admin. bag.  Well, we feel like we should add to that list.  Centrify helps companies strengthen security, enhance compliance efforts and reduce operational costs by centrally managing their heterogeneous systems.  It recently published a white paper that discusses its Active Directory and Centrify Suite software that allows users to seamlessly integrate multiple OS platforms.  Here’s the low-down:

Centralized Identity and Access Management of Cross-Platform Systems and Applications with Active Directory and the Centrify Suite

Learn how to seamlessly integrate your Unix, Linux, Mac, Java and Web platforms with Active Directory's identity, access and policy management services in order to:
•    Reduce infrastructure costs by moving to a central directory with a single point administration.
•    Strengthen security by eliminating orphan and dormant accounts and enforcing consistent security and configuration policies across heterogeneous systems.
•    Simplify compliance with regulatory requirements.
Below is the link to download the white paper. Check it out, it’s pretty sweet. http://www.centrify.com/request.asp?o=1&c=4&f=57

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Microsoft recently announced that they are sticking to the cutoff date for Windows XP of June 30^th. They tried this in January, but everyone complained and it was extended to June. But so far, it looks like June 30^th will be the date. It is pretty amazing to think of how long Windows XP has lasted. For example, when it was released in October of 2001, the minimum processor to run it was a 233 MHZ processor, with 300 MHZ the recommended speed. Amazingly, they claimed you could run it on 64 MB of Ram, and that you only needed 1.5 GB to install it. As an interesting comparison, here are the system requirements for Vista:  1 GHz Processor, 1 GB memory, 15 GB of available hard drive space, and a 128 GB graphics card. Maybe that is why 99% of the computers we have sold in the past two years have still had XP on them. On identical hardware, Windows Vista is slower than Windows XP. Functionally, our users don’t see any improvements that justify the required extra expenses to get a machine fast enough to tolerably run Vista.  Windows XP still accounts for about 63 percent of all Internet-connected computers, according to March 2009 statistics from Hitslink, while Windows Vista makes up about 24 percent.

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In the world of IT, there are a number of maintenance activities that need to be performed regularly in order to keep a network running smoothly. Much like changing the oil or rotating the tires on a car, system updates, backups, hard drive defragmentations and other processes are important for maintaining the overall health of a network or server. Many of these processes require system resources or even system down time, so a certain amount of planning and organization is required in order to minimize impact on end users or overall system performance. In addition, running too many of these tasks at the same time can cause these processes to slow down or even conflict with each other, further complicating the issues associated with system maintenance.

 For these reasons, we have strived to maintain a proper schedule when it comes to system maintenance tasks. Most of these services happen during off hours when end users will be impacted least. In addition, they are set up to run at specific times in order to minimize conflicts, such as updates causing the system to reboot while a backup is in progress. It also allows for greater troubleshooting. For instance, if we know all system updates occur on a specific night, it makes it easier to assess whether or not those patches are related to a specific issue that a system may be having. This kind of organization not only allows us to provide better service, but is also essential to ensuring proper system health while minimizing system down time.

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“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” - Albert Einstein 

For those of you that are following the blog, you may be interested to know that I am writing this post from my new Latitude E4300. Overall, I am fairly impressed with the combination of speed and portability. Usually you have to sacrifice one for the other. But I will leave that review for a different post. For anyone who has purchased a computer from I.T.NOW in the past year, you will truly be amazed by my next confession. I am running Vista on my new laptop. I also must confess that this is my third attempt at converting to Vista. Rumor has it that there is currently a pool going on at I.T.NOW betting on when I will switch back to XP (email Jason if you want in on it).  So why do I run Vista when I tell all of my customers to steer clear of it? I guess it is just one of the things I have to know. I can walk anyone through pretty much all functions of XP without having a computer in front of me, so it is time to achieve that same level of familiarity with Vista. That and when I try to install XP on my laptop, the solid state disk appears to cause a blue screen, in spite of how many things I have tried (and I have sadly tried several times).

So, what am I doing differently this time to ensure that I get a different result and don’t go insane? Here are a few tips for those of you who for one reason or another are on the Vista bus.

·         Don’t complain about it in front of your Mac friends. They will just talk to you about the latest “I’m a Mac” commercial and make you regret your decision.

·         Feed the beast. If you don’t have 4GB of memory, upgrade. If you don’t have a video card, consider adding one. If you can use a faster hard drive (10,000 RPM Raptor or a Solid State Disk), you won’t regret the price.

·         Unvistafy Vista. Part of what makes Vista more secure than XP is all of the extra layers of security, which means you have to click a lot more than you would have to on an XP machine. The technician in me has to warn you that this will make Vista less secure. But you wish you had XP, so this isn’t that big of a deal. Wired Magazine has a great Wiki on some steps you can take to clean up Vista.

·         Relax. In less than two years, you will get to do it all over again with Windows 7

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