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Some of you may have read the Washington Post article “Crash of Va. computer network has implications for tech world, state politics” by Rosalind S. Helderman and Anita Kumar published on Thursday, September 2, 2010.  The quick summary is that a redundant data storage unit failed in a warehouse outside of Richmond last week, wreaking havoc in the computer networks of a number of Virginia agencies for more than seven days.  Now, sometimes even if you do everything right, technology just fails.  This is a sad reality and the disaster in VA may simply be a case of very bad luck.

Having said that, I suspect the disaster in VA more likely is an example of an all too common problem in IT: the lack of testing systems after installation and more importantly the lack of regular testing of systems to validate proper function.

I am going to hypothesize that the redundant storage system was installed and everyone just assumed it would work because they bought an expensive system and that no one ever bothered to test the failover process.   You can see this attitude in the quotes in the Washington Post article, “This is surprising — it’s a selling point for them (EMC) when they talk to a major organization, that this stuff never goes down,” said Bill Kreher.  This attitude to trust that a system is going to work and not take the time to test is a common problem in any field (see the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster), but it happens a lot in information technology especially.

The all too often made assumption is that you don’t need to test a product because the vendor says it will work, and because it is hard and complicated to test.  So in-house IT teams and IT consultants take the easy way out and don’t go perform the initial or ongoing quality assurance that they should.  Then when a real world event occurs and lo and behold the system doesn’t work and now the organization is in real trouble.

At New Signature we live by the mantra that you should regularly test information technology systems to validate that they are fully operational and perform as expected.  This is one of the reasons we institute a quarterly maintenance process for our clients.  Part of this maintenance process is to perform real world tests of key critical components with careful planning and during scheduled downtime (e.g., unplug the UPS and make sure it works, take one of the servers offline and make sure the redundancy kicks in, do something unexpected to the system and see how it responds, etc.).  Without this regular quality assurance organizations more easily find themselves in the very bad place that the state of Virginia has been in over the past week.

If you have an IT system that hasn’t been tested or hasn’t been tested lately, please contact us at New Signature.  We can help you develop a plan and execute to ensure that your information technology systems are being regularly tested and that important maintenance is being performed.

One of the concerns that many website administrators managing member-based websites have is losing potential new members during the registration process.  All too often, registration is a tedious and lengthy process for users that is bound to send some percentage of them away from the site, never to sign-up again.  Other times, users get frustrated when they are forced to create a new registration profile for each website they’d like to be a member of.

Enter OpenID.  OpenID is a decentralized and open standard for authenticating users, allowing them to log on to different websites and services using a single login.  As with many 3rd party services, there is a Drupal OpenID module available for use:  http://drupal.org/project/openidurl (more…)

New Signature’s Click-to-Call Jalapeno app for DIA Salsa makes it easy for your supporters to use the power of their voice to advocate for change.  The app connects  your supporters directly to their legislators via phone and the actions stored in Salsa.  We have been excited to have a bunch of organizations already using C2C Jalapeno and recently came across this great blog post by Josh Cohen on Split Atom entitled “Get more supporter action with click2call”.  It provides some great detail on the power of click to call actions and specifically discusses Salsa and C2C Jalapeno.  Excerpt is below and you can read the full post here.

Automate your supporters’ “call your legislator” actions.

Do you work for or with an organization that sends out action alerts for supporters to call their legislators, a company or anyone else to ask for their support for LGBT equality? When you do, how many supporters actually take action? I’m guessing the answer is “not enough.” Do you want to increase that number? Is your organization using Salsa / Democracy In Action? Yes? Read on…

Posted on the “Salsa Scoop” Blog on Sunday Aug 22 2010 @ 12:17:54 EDT.

It’s the “Salsa Weekly Highlight,” your quick hit on what’s new in Salsa to help get the most out of your online program. As always, you can find plenty more news, updates, and conversation throughout the week on SalsaCommons.org.

Ready to bump up the impact of your online actions?

Our friends (and Salsa partners) at New Signature have added an amazing tool to the Salsa Market: Click2Call Actions.  Read the full post here…

As promised, this week we’ll go through the improvements in Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 with respect to “Dynamic Memory”. For the more technically-minded among you, I encourage you to bust out your reading glasses, and head over to read the epic six-part blog miniseries Jeff Woolsey penned recently.

Finished? Good.

Now that your eyeballs have glazed over from the technical wizardry, it’s time to focus on a high-level why Dynamic Memory makes sense for your business, and how it integrates well with RemoteFX and Microsoft’s Virtual Desktop Infrastructure VDI platform. (more…)

Many businesses have, in the past, waited until the first service pack is released before implementing a new client or server operating system. Microsoft’s latest operating systems: Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 have a new service pack that is scheduled to be released shortly.  As a Microsoft Gold Partner New Signature  receives early access to these betas and we enthusiastically take advantage to experiment, learn and gain real world expertise with the improved products.

We have been extremely excited to be using two of the newest features that SP1 enables: dynamic memory and RemoteFX. Both are game-changing software technologies that expand the functionality of Windows Server 2008 R2 in major ways. Both are meaty topics, so today we are going to tackle RemoteFX.

RemoteFX is the Microsoft terminology for a series of technologies they purchased two years ago and have been refining since. To get a feel for what RemoteFX enables, it’s helpful to examine the history of virtualization and how companies are looking to maximize their investment. (more…)

“Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 Plain & Simple“, by Nancy Muir, is a step-by-step walk-through training guide to the latest version of Microsoft’s presentation creation software.

Nancy does an excellent job setting your expectations for the book.  She starts off on the right foot with an introduction as her first chapter, where she sets the roadmap for the book and defines what she is intending to accomplish over the following lessons.  She also clearly defines the prerequisite knowledge she assumes her audience possesses—which is basically that you need to be proficient using a computer.  Nancy extends her clear roadmap by highlighting the goals of each chapter on their respective cover pages. (more…)

“Microsoft Outlook 2010 Plain & Simple,” written by Jim Boyce, provides a comprehensive, colorful, and easy-to-follow guide to Outlook.  The majority of tasks that this book covers could easily be figured out with a bit of trial-and-error or a quick Google search, but this book provides an easy alternative that less tech-savvy people might find comforting.  While I did learn some new things about Outlook 2010 when reading through (particularly about its new features in chapter 2: “What’s new in Outlook 2010?”), I found the steps and pictures to be a bit simplistic.  Then again, this book is likely not aimed at the IT professional; on page 1, it states that “no computerspeak” will be used.  However, the little Tip boxes frequently contained helpful hints and warnings.  Another major strength of the book was the layout of the instructions.  Each task that the book demonstrates is accompanied by carefully labeled screenshots. In addition, Boyce provides multiple methods to accomplish a given task (whenever possible).  Thus, if one approach is not working, this book will probably have another.  Overall, this book provides exactly what it states in the title: a plain and simple guide.  While not particularly suited for IT professionals, it could be a valuable resource in the hands of a small business owner who wants to get the most out of Outlook 2010.

“Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Best Practices” is a guide ‘by Exchange geeks for Exchange geeks’.   The author worked with the Exchange team when writing this book and drew on the experience of Exchange MVP’s (Most Valuable Professionals).

It’s very clear from the beginning that the authors are passionate about the topic and have a firm grasp of the technology involved in Microsoft’s Exchange product as it has developed and matured over the years.

The book is written for people that already have a firm grasp on both Exchange Server and messaging in general.   If you are just getting started with Microsoft Exchange administration then there are better books to start with.    The book is an investigation into the nuts and bolts of the Exchange Server environment and explains how all of the pieces fit together.   Knowing the changes in Hub Transport and Client Access Roles in 2010 and how they were designed go a long way in building and maintaining a proper implementation. (more…)

New Signature launched the Primary Care Progress website today.   New Signature worked with Primary Care Progress to design and build of the website that will help transform America’s healthcare system by providing an online community platform where patients, clinicians and trainees can learn, share, connect, promote, and be inspired.    New Signature utilized the WordPress content management system and other third party services, such as MailChimp, to build this dynamic website that utilizes multimedia content, such as video, to communicate its message.  The website also integrates with social media, including Facebook and Twitter.