Monthly Archives: December 2011

  • December 29, 2011

    Microsoft Case Study: Nonprofit IT Team Relies on Cloud Services to Reduce Costs With Help From New Signature

    By New Signature
    Cloud Computing \ IT Consulting and Support \ Microsoft

    The Center for American Progress (CAP) has a workforce of policy makers who travel the world promoting the principles of progressive thinking through advocacy and field projects. They rely on their portable computers whether they are monitoring elections in Sudan or gathering information about workplace demographics in California.

    Working with partner New Signature, CAP subscribed to the Windows Intune cloud-based solution for PC management and security. With built-in PC management and endpoint protection services available through a simple, web-based console, IT staff can more easily manage updates and distribute software, as well as provide remote assistance and proactive support so that CAP staff can work productively.

    “Using Windows Intune, even our junior help-desk staffers look like seasoned IT pros. As far as IT support, we have turned things around 180 degrees,” George Estrada, Vice President of Technology, Center for American Progress

    By using Windows Intune, CAP can keep IT costs down to allocate as much funding as possible toward its core mission.  You can read the full 4-page Microsoft Case Study here.

    Windows Intune simplifies how businesses manage and secure PCs using Microsoft cloud services and Windows 7, so your computers and users can operate at peak performance from almost anywhere. You can provide a better experience for your workforce that’s easier to manage by standardizing your PCs on Windows 7 Enterprise or on an earlier version of Windows—it’s your choice. Windows Intune fits your business by providing a comprehensive desktop solution that gives you big tech results with a small tech investment.

     

  • December 28, 2011

    Microsoft Answer Desk – For Every Techie Who Wants a Break This Holiday From Their Family’s Computer Problems

    By Jim Banach
    Microsoft

    Microsoft Answer Desk is a new 24/7/365 service from Microsoft that provides free home Windows PC support by a Microsoft Answer Tech from the comfort of your own home.   For every techie that has supports friends and family when their home PC stops functioning properly, this service may be able to offer you a much needed break this holiday season (or any time for that matter).

    Answer Techs are available by phone to you on demand, 24/7 and will attempt to diagnose and resolve your PC questions during a complimentary troubleshooting session. If the Answer Tech cannot resolve your problem during that time, and one of our service offers is appropriate for you, the Answer Tech will detail an offer and provide explanation of the service and the cost.

    I was skeptical at first so I tried it out over the weekend.   The first time I disabled flash in IE and then told them YouTube wasn’t working.   The tech did a remote connect, confirmed Flash was installed and then went and found that the plugin was disabled, fixed the error and back I went to looking at Nyan Cat videos.   The second time I went in with a little more tricky question asking them how I can sync my OneNote notebook to my Windows phone.   The tech walked me through the process of moving my OneNote notebook to my SkyDrive and then connecting both my phone and OneNote up to that.

    I didn’t have anything world ending, but in both instances, I got a remote connect session and was not charged for support.  However, the prices are very reasonable even if you do need to pay for support.  Check it out and if you are a techie looking for a break this holiday season, maybe point your family and friends to it as a line of first defense!

  • Interesting Post on “Nesting Hyper-V with VMware Workstation 8 and ESXi 5″ from the Veeam Blog

    By David Trejo
    Cloud Computing \ IT Consulting and Support \ Microsoft

    Ricky El-Qasem posted a very interesting post on the Veeam Blog that functions as a how-to guide and provides a step-by-step process to run Hyper-V virtual machines on either VMware Workstation 8 or ESXi 5.  Great for someone, like Ricky, who is looking to introduce Microsoft Hyper-V in his lab environment and gain experience with it.  I thought the idea of nesting Hyper-V with VMware Workstation 8 and ESXi 5 was a nifty one and wanted to share his post.

    Veeam is one of many companies that moved quickly to fully support Microsoft’s Hyper-V virtualization platform starting back in 2009.  Veeam recognizes Hyper-V as a leading platform for virtual datacenter environments that provides a robust and competitive set of capabilities and enterprise-grade stability.  This analysis has led them to now focus on the top two virtualization platforms–Hyper-V and VMware.  For example, with their Veeam Backup & Replication solution, which provides support for Microsoft Hyper-V.

  • December 23, 2011

    Microsoft Lync Just Keeps on Getting Better – Technical Reading for the Holiday Weekend

    By David Trejo
    IT Consulting and Support \ Microsoft

    Microsoft Lync 2010 – the next generation of Communications Server from Microsoft unites voice communications, IM, and audio, video and Web conferencing in software.  It is a transformational product that has substantial capabilities, which Microsoft continues to expand at a rapid pace (e.g., release of Lync clients for mobile devices).  Here are a few articles that I recommend adding to your holiday weekend reading list if you are technically minded and interested in exploring some great Lync capabilities in-depth:

    Hope you enjoy and happy holidays from everyone at New Signature!

  • December 21, 2011

    Using Lync Mobile with Office 365 and Lync Online

    By Christopher Hertz
    Cloud Computing \ IT Consulting and Support \ Microsoft

    Ståle Hansen at msunified.net has a good post titled “Using Lync Mobile with Office 365 and Lync Online” on how to enable your Office 365 Lync Online domain to support the new Lync clients for Windows Phone, Android and iOS devices.  Not to be outdone,  Nick Beaugeard over at HubOne (a great Microsoft partner located in Australia) has posted the “The Definitive Answer on getting the Lync Mobile Client to Work with Office 365” on the HubOne blog.  Recommended reading if you are looking to get started with Lync on your mobile device.  I have personally been running the Lync app on my Windows 7 phone and it is great to be able to have instant access anywhere I have a signal to IM and presence of my colleagues and federated partners.

  • Designing for the Metro Interface (Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8)

    By Christopher Hertz
    Branding, Website and Database \ Cloud Computing \ IT Consulting and Support \ Microsoft

    Smashing Magazine’s “Introduction To Designing For Windows Phone 7 And Metro” post is a great read if you are interested in learning about the fresh approach to content organization and a different UX, based on the Metro design language and principles that will be incorporated into Windows 8.

    As Smashing Magazine explains, Microsoft’s new mobile operating system, Windows Phone 7 (WP7), introduces a fresh approach to content organization and a different UX, based on the Metro design language and principles that are also incorporated into Windows 8. It also targets a different market than its predecessor: instead of being designed mainly for business and technology workers, WP7 is targeted at active people with a busy life, both offline and online, and who use social networks every day, whatever their background.

    In addition to this great resources, I also recommend watching the “Designing Metro style: principles and personality” video embedded below the fold and recorded on September 14, 2011 at the BUILD conference. (more…)

  • Office 365 Migration Tip: How to Find Email Messages Larger than 25MB Across All Mailboxes

    By Jim Banach
    Cloud Computing \ IT Consulting and Support \ Microsoft

    Office 365 is a fantastic product and allows organizations of almost any size take full advantage of the cloud and the redundancy, scalability, and lower administration costs. The most recognizable feature of Office 365 is Exchange Online as it is the cloud version of Microsoft’s Exchange Server 2010.

    Unfortunately, as with most solutions that need to be designed for the masses, you have to make some architectural decisions that will ensure that the system stays up and running. One of those limits is that the max message size allowed in Office 365 is 25MB. This is a hard limit and cannot be overridden.

    For the most part, this really isn’t a problem as you see most commercial email vendors or spam services limit their max message size to <25MB. However, internally between your own users you probably did not have a limits set and potentially have multiple 300MB videos of the company holiday party in everyone’s inbox.

    So now that we want to move to Office 365 how do we identify ahead of time those users who have very large messages in their mailboxes and then after we do that help them actually identify and remove the messages?

    Enter EX Folders.

    ExFolders is a tool built by the exchange team that was originally designed to help perform mass permissions changes or other edits on public folders and was originally known as PFDAVAdmin. However as time progressed, the program became able to work on more than just public folders and with the removal of WebDAV in Exchange 2010, the name just didn’t fit anymore. It has a good number of features, but the one we are going to focus on is getting item and size counts of the various folders and items in a mailbox database. In today’s blog post, we’ll go over how to do that. I’m going to focus on the process for Exchange 2010, however the process is almost identical for 2003 and 2007 servers as well. (more…)

  • Microsoft Lync 2010 for iPhone Available!

    By David Trejo
    Cloud Computing \ IT Consulting and Support \ Microsoft

    Microsoft Lync 2010 for iPhone app has been released by Microsoft and is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. The app requires iOS 4.3 or later on these devices.  New Signature is excited to see iOS support added for Lync, which also support Windows and Android powered phones.  As a quick reminder, the use of this app does require a Lync Server or Office365/Lync Online account and will not work without it.

  • December 15, 2011

    Office 365 Becomes First and Only Major Cloud Productivity Service to Comply With Leading EU and U.S. Standards for Data Protection and Security

    By Jim Banach
    Cloud Computing \ IT Consulting and Support \ Microsoft

    I was excited to read yesterday’s announcement that Microsoft Office 365, the company’s next-generation cloud productivity service, is the first and only major cloud-based platform to offer leading information privacy and security standards for customers operating in the European Union and United States.  This importantly means that now as  part of Microsoft’s contractual commitment to customers they will facilitate full compliance with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requirements. Additionally, Microsoft will now sign the EU’s model clauses, which will help customers certify compliance with the European Commission’s stringent Data Protection Directive.

    Microsoft also announced the availability of the Office 365 Trust Center. The site provides in-depth information about the privacy and security practices for Office 365 and was recently redesigned to be more accessible and easy to understand.

    If you aren’t familiar with Office 365 it is Microsoft’s cloud based solution that brings together Microsoft Office, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Exchange Online and Microsoft Lync Online in an always-up-to-date cloud service.  New Signature is a national leader in Microsoft private and public cloud solutions, including Office 365.  Contact us today if you are interested in learning more about how adopting Office 365 can benefit your firm!

  • December 14, 2011

    Microsoft Lync 2010 for Android Available in Android Market

    By Jason Edinger
    IT Consulting and Support \ Microsoft

    I was excited to see that the Microsoft Lync 2010 for Android client was released earlier today in the Android Market.  As a quick reminder, the use of this app does require a Lync Server or Office365/Lync Online account and will not work without it.  I am excited that Lync 2010 for Android will extend the power of Lync to my favorite Android mobile device – including rich presence, instant messaging, audio conferencing, and calling features from a single, easy-to-use interface.  Looking forward to installing this new app tomorrow and starting to use it to collaborate with my colleagues here at New Signature!