Monthly Archives: September 2011
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Syndication
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September 29, 2011
Product Review: visionApp Remote Desktop Connection Manager
By John WilliamsSystems administrators these days have so many systems to access and maintain, it’s almost at times a daunting task. Luckily, there’s one piece of software that can make life a little easier and save you a good chunk of time.
visionApp Remote Desktop (vRD) connection manager is a powerful, secure and centralized tool for system administrators to organize remote connections and store credentials. It consolidates remote connections into one secure database for all approved users. It is highly customizable; Active Directory integration allows you to pull user objects and groups, or setup your own templates based on the security levels and needs of your company. It also allows for the creation of connection groups (client, ISP, branches) as well as the ability to connect to clients running a host of different protocols (HTTP/S, SSH, VNC, etc) and OS’s (Linux, Apple, Windows, etc).
Running on a SQL backbone, one of vRD’s core strengths is credential storage and management. The ability to centralize all credentials into one database is a key component that allows users to regularly change passwords for security. Once a password in the database is changed, it becomes available for all other consultants (after a quick application restart). Built in security gives management the ability to restrict usage of credential groups (or client groups) if necessary, and security logs note every time a consultant logs into any server or makes any changes to the database.
Other features of the software include display customization (multi-display, spanning), ability to take snapshots and videos, quick reconnect, remote rebooting, and the ability to export or import the database at the click of a button.
If your business is looking for a way to save time, consolidate connections and credentials, and want to have the ability to lock down almost any part of the software to user-defined groups, take a look into vRD.
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September 26, 2011
New Signature Recognized on the CRN Fast Growth 50 Up-and-Coming List
By New SignatureNew Signature today announced that it has been recognized by Everything Channel on the CRN Fast Growth 50 Up and Coming list. The list recognizes the fastest growing solution providers in North America. The Fast Growth 50 Up and Coming list is an extension to the Fast Growth 100, recognizing emerging companies that have shown notable growth. Companies on the Fast Growth 100 list average a two-year revenue growth of 130 percent and average annual sales of products and services of $172 million. The ranking is based on two years’ growth of net sales from calendar year 2008 to calendar year 2010.
New Signature’s business model, supported by the firm’s long-term financial model, has enabled the firm to deliver consistently strong earnings and cash flows—even during challenging economic conditions. The firm’s growth has been driven by long-term relationships with clients earned through delivery of responsive customer service, client education, accurate project management, service quality and an ethical approach to business.
“New Signature’s sustained and rapid growth has been driven by our ability to identify and deliver value to customers through innovative technology solutions,” said Christopher Hertz, CEO. “We are experiencing strong momentum thanks to our commitment to research and education. This has enabled New Signature to develop and maintain a broad and deep bench of subject matter experts in emerging technologies, including Microsoft System Center, Microsoft Office 365 and Windows Intune.”
“This year’s Fast Growth 50 Up-and-Coming list reflects the high growth potential for solution providers offering innovative products, solutions and services,” said Kelley Damore, Vice President and Editorial Director for Everything Channel. “These up-and-comers are a subset of our Fast Growth 100 list and represent a very bright future for the channel. We congratulate New Signature on their well-earned success and expect to hear a lot more from them going forward.”
David Geevaratne, New Signature’s President, will be presented the 2011 CRN Fast Growth honor at the CRN Fast Growth annual conference, taking place October 5-6 at the Doral Resort in Miami.
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September 25, 2011
Privacy and Big Data
By Reed WiedowerAs the internet and mobile technologies have grown more prevalent, concerns about privacy and how data is collected and used have come to the forefront. Here at New Signature, we’re always looking to help our clients educate themselves about the risks and opportunities of sharing data in this increasingly connected world.In “Privacy and Big Data” by Terence Craig and Mary E. Ludloff, the authors come at privacy concerns from two different angles, meshed together in a quick, easy to read series of chapters. The overall thrust of the book is summarized in the final chapter with a quote from RFK that we live in “interesting times” with a myriad of concerns and opportunities. To their credit, the authors sketch out succinctly the different players in the privacy debate, from ordinary people to data-driven internet savvy companies, data markets that serve all parties and government entities. By the conclusion of the book, you’ll be well-versed in both the legal ramifications of data collection in Europe, the United States and beyond. Even the fundamental question of whether privacy is a “right” or a “commodity” is fully explored.Although the book is exhaustively researched, it does tend to pose more questions than it answers, frequently devolving into a series of personal privacy preference options, rather than providing proscriptive guidance for individuals looking to protect their privacy. It also often hints at dangers rather than spelling them outright: “privacy” is often setup in opposition to ”safety and security” even though that’s a false dichotomy when it comes to many of the laws in the U.S. It’s also unclear at the conclusion whether there is any link between shared data and government control: the examples given of authoritarian regimes using “big data” seem too heavy-handed and poorly executed (e.g. shutting off the internet to prevent twitter, rather than mining the data to find rebellious citizens) to inspire fear.While use of personal information online is a hot topic and one that deserves study and education, the book ends up spreading more fear, uncertainty and doubt than it clarifies. One of the authors in the appendix notes that she never shares photos online or ever uses a social networking site. It’s a sentiment that many people in the United States would find abnormal, and it marginalized the content in the book for me.
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September 23, 2011
Enterproid Divide Enables Professionals to Consolidate Work and Personal Life On a Single Device
By Jason EdingerIf you need to support an Android device (or more than one) at work, then Enterproid Divide may be just the ticket to make your life easier. The product offers a number of compelling features. With multiple profile support, great productivity apps out of the box and complete personal and IT cloud management, Divide is the next generation solution for enterprise mobility.
Signing up for the beta was easy; just input your email address and wait for the welcome email. Once you receive the email, there is a link to download and install the software. Install, enter your phone number (if the device has voice capability as this can be put on a tablet as well) and enterprise information and activate.
Once activated, you’ll receive an email from Enterproid congratulating you on your activation and giving you some quick things to try. On the phone, you’ll see a permissions screen asking you to set a few options as the default (Launcher, call log) and asking for admin-level privilege so you can remotely wipe the device from the website. You must perform these steps to continue. Divide will then log in and bring you to your new, work, home screen. (more…)
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September 22, 2011
New Signature Featured on Microsoft’s “Windows for your Business Blog” in “New Signature Extends Windows Intune to New Customers” Post
By New SignatureAlex Heaton interviewed Christopher Hertz, founder and CEO of New Signature, about success our customers are having with Windows Intune. An excerpt of the post is below and you can read the full post here.
New Signature focuses on five practice areas: Cloud, Infrastructure Optimization, Unified Communications, Network Security and Managed Services. As part of their cloud practice, they are dedicated to building awareness with customers on how Windows Intune addresses pain points that many companies experience.
“The response to Windows Intune has been outstanding because the value proposition is easy to present and easy for customers to understand. In the week after WPC, we signed eight new Intune customers,” said Christopher Hertz, founder and CEO of New Signature. “Reselling Windows Intune has allowed us to reach a broader spectrum of customers that might not have normally consumed our other services, but need a partner to deploy Windows Intune.”
Hertz identifies software updates, licensing compliance and IT policy deployment as a few reasons customers have turned to Windows Intune to manage their PC environments. The subscription to Windows 7 Enterprise has also been advantageous for New Signature customers looking to improve productivity, control, manageability and security.
“To further enhance security and control, we also recommend that customers purchase the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) add-on to Windows Intune to help resolve critical issues, such as diagnosing and recovering unbootable PCs,” said Hertz.
New Signature is seeing small and midsize business customers deploy Windows Intune across their entire organizations on all desktops, laptops and slates; while larger organizations are using Windows Intune in specific scenarios that have traditionally been more difficult to manage such as travel laptops, home computers and branch offices.
Read the full post here.
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September 21, 2011
Windows Management Framework Updated
By Reed WiedowerMicrosoft has long packaged PowerShell as an automation/management piece of code, relying upon several other componets such as WinRM and WMI to truly become invaluable. The combination of all of these management components are known as the “Windows Management Framework”. With the release of the new Windows Management Framework CTP today, PowerShell 3.0 CTP has now been released to Windows 7 SP1, so eager automation experts can go download the software now and begin exploring the features contained within PowerShell 3.0 without needing a full Windows 8 image.
In addition, we’ve received even more information about the feature changes in the language itself (apart from the Windows 8 components including):
Workflows
Workflows that run long-running activities (in sequence or in parallel) to perform complex, larger management tasks, such as multi-machine application provisioning. Using the Windows Workflow Foundation at the command line, Windows PowerShell workflows are repeatable, parallelizable, interruptible, and recoverable.Robust Sessions
Robust sessions that automatically recover from network failures and interruptions and allow you to disconnect from the session, shut down the computer, and reconnect from a different computer without interrupting the task.Scheduled Jobs
Scheduled jobs that run regularly or in response to an event.Delegated Administration
Commands that can be executed with a delegated set of credentials so users with limited permissions can run critical jobsSimplified Language Syntax
Simplified language syntax that make commands and scripts look a lot less like code and a lot more like natural language.Cmdlet Discovery
Improved cmdlet discovery and automatic module loading that make it easier to find and run any of the cmdlets installed on your computer.Show-Command
Show-Command, a cmdlet and ISE Add-On that helps users find the right cmdlet, view its parameters in a dialog box, and run it.PowerShell 3.0 also now has more resilient connections through the Windows Management Framework; short-term network failures won’t disrupt the client/server connection. A new web service has also been added to allow non-windows clients to issue REST requests via OData to cmdlets.
New Signature will continue to explore the advanced automation capabilities of PowerShell 3.0 and the Windows Management Framework so that by the time Windows 8 client and server are released, we’ll be automation experts on the new systems.
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Using Virtualization and Windows Intune to Run Windows Applications on a Mac
By Peter DayYou may love your Mac but have software that only is available for Microsoft Windows. The good news is that through the use of the virtualization technology and Windows Intune you can be running those Windows applications on your Mac in no time. Because the Mac and Windows operating systems will share your computer’s resources you will need to make sure your Mac has sufficient capacity. Hard disk space should not be a problem on a modern Mac but you also need to have enough RAM memory for both operating systems to have some each to themselves. If you only have 2 GB of RAM in your Mac then an upgrade to 4GB (or more) is a wise investment if you plan on virtualizing Windows.
To get started, we recommend purchasing a copy of Windows 7 Professional, and then purchasing a Microsoft Windows Intune subscription for $11/month to gain access to an upgrade license to Windows 7 Enterprise, always-up-to-date antivirus and a host of other benefits. You will also need to purchase a desktop virtualization software package. I recommend either VMware Fusion or Parallels Desktop for Mac.
If you’re considering running Windows on your Mac but are not sure then give New Signature a call. Our Microsoft and Apple experts will be happy to discuss the options with you and help you design and implement the best solution for your business.
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September 20, 2011
BlackBerry Business Cloud Services for Microsoft Office 365 Now in Open Beta
By New SignatureSome big news just came out from Microsoft! BlackBerry Business Cloud Services for Microsoft Office 365 are now available as part of an open beta program and they have announced that general availability of the service is expected to be in January, 2012. Previously, the beta program had been closed to a select few groups. Now in just a few steps anyone can enable their Microsoft Office service for BlackBerry service through Office365.com with the following steps:
- An administrator must login to Microsoft Online Services and click on connecting email to mobile devices
- Click Enable Hosted BlackBerry® services from Research In Motion®
- Agree to the information sharing agreement
- From the Microsoft Online Services Admin Overview, click Manage under Hosted BlackBerry® services from Research In Motion®
- Once the open beta is live you will be able to configure and activate desired BlackBerry devices
BlackBerry Business Cloud Services provides a secure link between your organization’s Microsoft Office 365 messaging services and BlackBerry smartphones. BlackBerry Business Cloud Services provides mobile access to email, calendaring and organizer data with Exchange Online.
This is big news for those companies that wanted to take advantage of the reliability, flexibility and security of Microsoft Office 365, but couldn’t because enterprise support for their BlackBerry devices wasn’t available.
Want to explore the power of Office 365? New Signature is the perfect partner to help you understand cloud computing, develop strategy and take advantage of the reliability, flexibility and security of the cloud.
New Signature has the experience and expertise to migrate your data safely, securely, and completely to the Microsoft Office 365 cloud environment. Choosing New Signature to migrate you to Office 365 is the smart, safe choice. New Signature has a deep bench of experts who have performed dozens of migrations and have a documented successful track record.
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September 19, 2011
ioby and AAAS MemberCentral Win Top Honors in the Web Marketing Association’s 15th Annual WebAward Competition
By New Signature
ioby (pictured) and AAAS MemberCentral websites have been recognized with the “Outstanding Website” Award in the Web Marketing Association’s 15th Annual WebAward competition. The WebAward program is the premier annual website award competition that names the best Web sites in 96 industries while setting the standard of excellence for all website development.The Web Marketing Association was founded in 1997 to help set a high standard for Internet marketing and development of the best websites on the World Wide Web. Staffed by volunteers, this organization is made up of Internet marketing, online advertising, PR, and top web site design professionals who share an interest in improving the quality of online advertising, Internet marketing, and website promotion.
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Big Win in Windows 8 With Windows PowerShell 3.0
By Reed WiedowerWhile many were gushing (and appropriately so) at Microsoft latest Metro user interface for Windows 8, others were opening up the hood and beginning to tinker with PowerShell 3.0, the latest iteration of Microsoft’s object-based automation scripting shell. For those of us already versed in PowerShell 1.0 and 2.0, the changes will seem more evolutionary than revolutionary, but this doesn’t diminish the amount of evolution that has taken place over the past several years.
Modules, modules, modules! It would be an understatement to say that Microsoft has encouraged its developers to focus on PowerShell as the underlying technology for both clients and servers. In your standard Windows 7 workstation, there were about 250 cmdlets that could be accessed, with most in the default “Core” and “Management” modules, which weren’t even exposed. Out of the box, there were only seven modules in Windows 7. Contrast that with Windows 8 client, where there are 234 modules out of the box. That’s right, 234 in the client version of Windows, let alone the ever expanding group of modules available in the server version. (A Windows 8 server, much like a Windows 7 server, doesn’t enable all modules unless all roles are installed which is definitely not a good security practices).
In terms of overall commands, having more modules leads to an increase from 251 cmdlets up to 402 cmdlets in the Windows 8 default install. With over 150 new cmdlets to explore, we’ve only begun scraping the surface of PowerShell 3.0. Importantly, the overall number is less relevant; by now we expect new modules to open up new functionality, and for each new module to have new commands. We’ll focus on the new areas of management as well as the new language features itself rather than specific commands.
The new management modules include items to manage applocker, dns, network adapters, file shares, iscsi, storage, bitlocker + tpm, bits and the full set of WMI/CMI data points. It’s a huge improvement from Windows 7.
On the language and program itself, we haven’t iterated through every change, but several items have stood out in our early testing. The PowerShell ISE, already the preferred methods of scripting and debugging for experience PowerShell developers, has now added both color-coding, command-listing and look-ahead command completion, three power features that should help all users of the environment to code more quickly. Language-wise, there isn’t a way to ascertain new features easily (the version tag, for instance, only applies to scripts) but we’ve noticed a few items. One new item is that there’s a new $psitem variable that replaces the old $_ variable in scripts. This should make reading iterative scripts much easier to perform. We’ve also noticed a new default parameter dictionary that will allow coders to put in default parameters across an entire scripting session. We’ve also learned that scripts will run up to six times faster on the new platform, which is a welcome change for everyone.
Added speed, new language features and a whole bunch of new modules: PowerShell 3.0 retains its lead as the most powerful automation technology in IT today.