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Microsoft has highlighted New Signature in the Wall Street Journal’s “Cloud Innovators: Profiles of Leadership in Cloud-Based Services” Feature.  The article starts by saying,  “Businesses facing technology upgrades or migrations are often faced with complicated choices and challenging decisions. New Signature, a Washington, D.C.-based information technology consulting firm, solves these and other IT challenges that businesses face.”

Last month, Jeff Schertz wrote about the great news that Polycom recently announced native Lync support for a wide variety of standard SIP phone devices which all run on the same Polycom Unified Communications (UC) software release and provided technical guidance on configuration.  As Jeff mentions, “This means that the large ecosystem of SoundPoint IP, SoundStation IP, SpectraLink Wireless, and VVX Business Media Phones can all now natively register directly to Lync Server, adding a variety of choices beyond the purpose-built CX device family, including the first WiFi endpoint supported for Lync 2010 Server.”  This is a big opportunity for organizations that already own Polycom telephony clients to take advantage of Microsoft Lync’s combination of telephony features of a traditional IP PBX with rich presence, instant messaging, and conferencing.

Microsoft Lync is the perfect choice if you are looking for unified communications solution that witll transform your business.  Microsoft Lync provides value and has been deployed at a wide range of firms, from small to midsize to very large (more than 10,000) enterprises, in both centralized and distributed configurations.  Additionally, for the 6th year in a row Microsoft Lync topped the Gartner Unified Communications Magic Quadrant.

Source: Gartner (August 2011)

Advancements in computer file systems in the past decade has seen a wealth of great file system ideas come to fruition. From Hans Reiser’s ReiserFS to Sun Microsystems Zettabyte File System, new technological advancements have pushed the limits of what file systems are capable of including block-level data integrity management, high-performance SSD-aided caching, and efficient B+ Tree–stored metadata.

Now at version v5.1, NTFS has a long and proud history as the primary enterprise file system for the Microsoft Windows operating system. Since its introduction with Windows NT,  it has grown into a reliable, secure, and scalable platform for Windows deployments of all workloads and sizes. New features such as Volume Shadow Services (VSS), transactional writes, and on the fly AES Encryption have continued to provide great return on investment for customers in a variety of industries. Over the years NTFS has faced stiff competition from the likes of ZFS, which have delivered faster performance and enhanced reliability. Microsoft customers and vendors have eagerly awaited the successor of NTFS so that the latest advancements in data storage could be leveraged in the Windows world.

This detailed architectural post was authored by Surendra Verma and is a great introduction to ReFS and Storage Spaces, Microsoft’s latest Server 8 file system and storage pooling technologies.  ReFS and Storage Spaces will incorporate the robustness of NTFS with the increased data integrity, performance, and scalability that customers have been waiting for and his article is a fantastic read.

Also check out this post by Steven Sinofsky where he provides a deep dive on Windows Server 8 Storage Spaces.

New Signature is excited that Microsoft has issued the release candidate of System Center 2012.  Satya Nadella, president of Microsoft’s Server and Tools Business announced some big changes during a video conference, including:

1. Moving forward, all System Center products will be sold as a full suite, rather than as individual products.
2. The suite itself reached release candidate version today for all products.
3. The suite will be released in two versions: a Standard and a Datacenter edition, the latter allowing unlimited virtual machine management, with the former for organizations with smaller virtualization requirements.
4. Forefront Endpoint Protection is now part of System Center as SC Endpoint Protection.

By recoupling all the System Center products, including Configuration Manager, Data Protection Manager, Operations Manager, Virtual Machine Manager, Orchestrator and Service Manager, Microsoft has increased value to organizations looking to standardize and automate both private and public clouds. Adding in Endpoint protection (Forefront Endpoint Protection is now System Center Endpoint Protection) gives a further reason for organizations to standardize on one single management platform.

Microsoft has detailed licensing FAQs (in pdf format) and others have broken down the overall costs versus competitive offerings. There are even videos for training for all the major components.

New Signature has been working with the SC 2012 suite since the first betas were announced, and we love showing off the new features and capabilities.  Give us a call if you would like a demonstration!

We are proud to announce that New Signature has been awarded the Gold Communications Competency from Microsoft.  The Microsoft Gold Communications competency highlights New Signature’s investment and capabilities around instant messaging (IM) and presence, conferencing workloads, and enterprise voice and video using the Microsoft Lync solution.

Microsoft Lync connects users in new ways, regardless of their physical location. The latest release of the Unified Communications platform delivers a fresh, intuitive user experience that is directly accessible from Microsoft Office applications such as Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft SharePoint. Lync brings together the different ways people communicate in a single interface, is deployed as a unified platform, and is administered through a single management infrastructure. The unified nature of the system helps reduce costs and facilitates rapid user adoption. And because Lync is broadly interoperable, it fits into current IT infrastructures for easier deployment and migration.

New Signature holds six gold and eleven silver Microsoft competencies, including: Gold Systems Management, Gold Virtualization, Gold Server Platform, Gold Hosting, Gold Desktop, Gold Communications, Silver Messaging, Silver Identity and Security, Silver Portals and Collaboration, Silver Content Management, Silver Data Platform, Silver Learning, Silver Midmarket Solution Provider, Silver Mobility, Silver Search, Silver Software Asset Management, and Silver Volume Licensing.

I was excited to read Mary Jo Foley post about how, “Microsoft is preparing to launch a new persistent virtual machine feature on its Azure cloud platform, enabling customers to host Linux, SharePoint and SQL Server there,” on her All About Microsoft blog on ZDNet.  Why is this a bid deal?  Mary explains elegantly when she writes, “The new persistent VM support also will allow customers to run SQL Server or SharePoint Server in VMs, as well. And it will enable customers to more easily move existing apps to the Azure platform.”

We are excited to see this new functionality come to Azure and help our customers leverage the platform to provide them with a secure, well-managed, and dynamic IT infrastructure that helps reduce overall IT costs, better use IT resources, and make IT a strategic asset for the business.

Here at New Signature we’re huge fans of System Center Orchestrator (nee Opalis). Creating simple runbooks to fully automate even the most complex of heterogenous environments is easy with Orchestrator.

With PowerShell 3.0, some of the workflow automation previously only available with Orchestrator has now been made possible at a lower entry point. Best of all, the workflow included in PowerShell 3.0 is Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF), the same technology found in many existing products we love such as Forefront Identity Manager and SharePoint 2010. This means that not only can you re-use existing XAML-based workflows, but that you can edit them in Visual Studio, further blurring the developer/administrator divide.

To explore the new workflow capabilities in detail, I fired up the PowerShell 3.0 ISE and used one of the other new classes, invoke-webrequest. For anyone that’s used cURL to download web pages before, invoke-webrequest is even more powerful and allows you to download pages to rich objects to take actions on them.

The hypothetical scenario I was testing was the following: if a new bit of code is going to be uploaded to a web-farm, how can you check to ensure that it’s been properly uploaded to all the servers in the farm? This simple script runs multiple parallel tasks to check the last modification date of the websites in question and if they complete, the job finishes. In a more traditional workflow, I’d be actually connecting to each server in parallel remotely, rather than issuing a series of parallel tasks, but the architecture is the same.

Here’s the sample code:

To execute the workflow, you’ll merely need to type “invoke-parallelwebcheck -asjob” to begin the job execution process. Want to check on the job as it runs? Simply run get-job to get details. If the job itself spawns other jobs, you can see the details from within the get-job cmdlet as well.

Workflows aren’t as full featured as the regular PowerShell syntax, so be sure to read the Windows Management Framework 3.0 – Community Technology Preview #2 for all the caveats. In no time, you’ll be able to kick off jobs on server farms and see the benefits of automation in action.

On Thursday, December 29, 2011, Microsoft released MS11-100 to protect customers against the industry-wide issue described in Security Advisory 2659883. The security update resolves a publicly disclosed, remote unauthenticated Denial of Service issue in ASP.NET versions 1.1 and above, on all supported versions of the .NET Framework. Please note that systems are not vulnerable unless they are running a Web server. Microsoft is currently unaware of any attacks targeting ASP.NET, but New Signature encourages affected customers to test and deploy the update as soon as possible.

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.

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!