Category Archives: Miscellaneous IT

Citrix, Citrix Synergy, Featured, Miscellaneous IT

Key Announcements from Citrix Synergy 2014 – Part 1

By Randy Becker, Enterprise Architect, Solutions

 

Citrix Synergy was held this past week in Anaheim California, and as always it was a great event.  For those of you who could not attend, I will provide a recap of the week’s events in a two part blog series. 

Tuesday morning the event kicked-off with a live band called iBand. Here’s small sample of Livin’ on a Prayer by Bon Jovi using iPads! It was actually pretty amazing!  This was followed by Mark Templeton (CEO) opening the conference. Mark got a standing ovation. Given the public announcement of his intention to retire within the next year, I think most of us realized this will be Marks last Synergy.  Mark seemed very touched and got emotional several times during his key note. He said that they had 10,000 attendees (I believe that included online viewers as well as people attending in person). Citrix is celebrating 25 years this year. They did a quick review of the products that were the foundation of Citrix.  Mark continued with some of last year’s themes including DOS = “Don’t own stuff,” “Don’t own Servers,” and work is not a place, it’s a thing we do. 

They performed a demo using a Chromebook with HTML5 showing access to your applications without any required software. This has been around for a while, but there seems to be a new emphasis, maybe to show the differences with the competition. The new Citrix Receiver “X1” was also announced using HTML 5.  I instantly thought of the Comcast XFINITY X1 commercial with Jimmy Fallon imitating Arnold Schwarzenegger. The new receiver will fully integrate your workspace into a single interface. They showed how businesses can perform their own automations and branding.  WorxNotes was announced, which integrates into XenMobile and seems to be a corporate version of Evernote. There will obviously be some good integration points, and I’m sure that security will be a key push for this.  Organizations generally seem a bit nervous about storing company data, including notes, in the cloud without any real control. 

Several other notable announcements included XenMobile 9, NetScaler 10.5, a View Rescue Program, and Workspace Services. This looks very exciting. Workspace Services will allow for the Design and Build of your XenDesktop/XenApp environment on premises or in Microsoft Azure Cloud. Below is a more detailed breakdown around some of the product announcements that came out of the event. 

XenMobile 9 and Worx Mobile Apps

XenMobile 9 will provide full support for Windows 8 phones and will be able to run WorxMail and the WorxWeb Applications.  Citrix is continuing to lead the Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) market with their application wrapping technologies in the Mobile Application Management (MAM) space and they are continuing to expand their partnership with companies that produce the Worx application.  Capriza was the Mobility Ecossystem Winner this year, with a Citrix Ready Worx verified app that enables the development, distribution and management of lightweight enterprise mobile apps for existing business applications. Citrix is proving to be the visionary in this space. During the keynote, Citrix demonstrated WorxDesktop. This is a way to remotely access your remote desktop.  You can browse as well as access and edit files on the remote computer, and it seems to be OS independent.  At first glance this appears to be better than GoToMyPC. I can see a number of use cases for WorxDesktop!  If you haven’t seen WorxMail you should check-out this quick demo.  Anyone that is on the road a lot will love these built-in features in your calendar invite, Join Meeting, Dial In and, my personal favorite, Running Late (single click emails everyone to let you know you are running late).  If you haven’t seen the YouTube of “A Conference Call in Real Life” you have to check it out (it has over 7 million views).  It’s laugh out loud funny that everyone can relate to and these new announcements from Citrix may help with some of these common issues!

Workspace Suite

Citrix Workspace Suite was announced as well. This is just a license bundle which includes XenDesktop, XenApp, ShareFile, and XenMobile. There are some enticing programs to get customers into this licensing model.  Check out the following link for more info and a nice overview and comparison of features.

Citrix Workspace Services

Citrix Workspace Services is a cloud based Desktop as a Service (DaaS) model that leverages the Citrix Platform.  This is the kind of architecture that I like, as the control and data planes can be split.  Microsoft Azure will host the control plane (deliver controllers, AD, etc.), but the actual desktops can be deployed back to on premise infrastructure or any number of public cloud providers so you’re not 100% locked into using Azure.  More info can be found here. 

Workspace Services allows you to design, deploy and manage Workspace Services (Software Defined Workspaces). This looks amazing and will allow for deployment to on-premises and cloud based infrastructure.  I can see how this will benefit customers directly, and also the partner community, for easier deployments utilizing the back-end fabric provided by Citrix to ensure best practice deployments. 

The second part of this series will cover news and announcements around Intel Iris Pro Graphics, XenServer with 64-Bit, XenDesktop 7.5, XenApp 7.5, and NetScaler 10.5. Stay tuned!

 

Photo credit: www.thevarguy.com

Featured, Miscellaneous IT, Tech News

Tech News Recap for the Week of 4/28/2014

 

Were you busy last week? Here’s a quick recap of news and stories you may have missed!

  • Critical zero-day endangers all versions of Internet Explorer – and XP isn’t getting a fix
  • Anatomy Of A Cloud Migration: Inside the Channel Company’s IT Transformation
  • It’s Crazy What Can Be Hacked Thanks to Heartbleed
  • Organized Crime Group Scams US Companies Out Of Millions
  • Modernizing IT by Killing the Transactional Treadmill
  • Microsoft kicks in $1 billion to help students buy under $300 devices
  • 5 reasons why Google can catch Amazon in the cloud
  • Field Notes: ‘Rogue‘ employees want IT to lighten up already
  • Ready or not, welcome to the integrated cloud
  • Revenge of the CIO: the new chief enabler
  • Google Disables Scanning of Student Email for Advertising Purposes
  • ‘Dark Wallet’ Is About to Make Bitcoin Money Laundering Easier Than Ever
  • The History of Data Storage – Infographic
  • Halo, The Brain-Improving Wearable, Raises $1.5 Million
  • Cloud computing brings the world to Dunedin

Are you interested in learning how you can remove 80% of incidents before your staff even sees them? Join us for our May 8th webinar ‘How to Modernize IT by Killing the Transactional Treadmill’ and be entered to win a GoPro & Fitbit!

 

 

Featured, Miscellaneous IT, Tech News

Tech News Recap for the Week of 4/14/2014

 

Were you busy last week? Here’s a quick recap of news and stories you may have missed!

 

Corporate IT departments have progressed from keepers of technology to providers of complex solutions that businesses truly rely on {ebook}

 

 

Featured, licensing, Microsoft, Miscellaneous IT

Have You Seen this Email? Microsoft Software Asset Management Review

By Rob O’Shaughnessy, Software Licensing Specialist, Pre-Sales Technical Support

 

I’ve been working in the GreenPages licensing department for over 14 years and many readers are probably asking the question, “why?”  Do you honestly like torturing yourself, Rob?  No, not really. I did have a full head of hair when I first started here and with each license change it recedes, so at least I’m saving on shampoo costs. Let’s face it, there are so many rules and regulations with licensing that it’s nearly impossible to keep up with.  Just when you think you understand, it changes.

 

We’ve been seeing an increase with our customers getting emails with the subject line: Microsoft Software Asset Management Review. Have you received this email? If you haven’t yet, there’s a good chance you may see one float in your inbox. This is Microsoft’s asset management team.  Their goal is to help you understand the licensing you currently own and match it up with what you’re running on your network.  Basically, this is an audit.  

Microsoft’s SAM doesn’t discriminate—everyone is a target. You’ll eventually have to deal with them so my recommendation is to not ignore the email. Now, just because you receive an email doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not compliant. Even if you’re 100% sure you’re compliant, it’s still best to work with them.  I can tell you that if their findings suggest that you’re short on licenses, the only real penalty is that you have to buy the licenses.  There are no fines, you’re not going to jail…this isn’t the Orange is the New Black. 

I suggest that if you do receive this email that you reach out to us here at GreenPages.  Like I said, I’ve been doing this a long time and there are some particulars of licensing that IMO the SAM team doesn’t know, especially when it comes to virtualization. Just a quick example: you may have 20 Windows Standard 2008 R2 VMs but only own five licenses.  Are you in compliance? Yes.  If you own Windows Enterprise 2008 R2 it allowed you to run up to 4 VMs with each license.  In this example the SAM team didn’t know the old rule when Windows 2008 R2 was around.   I mean, let’s face it, Microsoft licensing is confusing and the SAM team is human, so it’s always good to get a second set of eyes on it. 

This post’s goal is not to scare you and indict you of any wrong doing.  It’s to inform you.  If you do see this email I wouldn’t ignore it as much as you may be tempted to.  Hopefully it’s a quick and painless process for you, but regardless please let us know how we can assist.  If you already have worked with the SAM team, we’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences! 

 

Here are some FAQs I get from our customers:

Do I need a Windows Cal and RDS Cal?  Yes, Microsoft requires you to stack the CALs.  Same is true if you’re running Exchange, SharePoint, Lync etc.  Both the Windows and the specific application Cal is required.

What’s up with SQL Core licensing?  SQL moved from a per processor licensing model (when you got unlimited Cals) to per Core model when SQL 2012 was released.  So, the deal is, if SQL is running on a physical sever, you have to tally up all the cores on that box.  If SQL is running virtually you have to license all the cores allocated to the VM.  A minimum of four cores are required for each scenario.  This means that in a physical environment, even if the processor only has 2-cores, you’re still required to license four.  Same in the virtual world.  If you plan on only allocating 2 cores to the VM, Microsoft requires that you pay for 4-cores worth.  The reason is the price of the former per processor license is the same as the price of 4 cores today.  Licenses are sold in two-core packs. SQL Enterprise is now only licensed by the core.

What is multiplexing?  This mainly pertains to SQL, but it basically means that if users are hitting an application directly or indirectly a CAL is still required.  For example, your users are hitting a web server that has a back end SQL server.  The users are not touching the SQL app directly, but they are accessing information from it.  You need a CAL.

How do I reimage and downgrade my OEM Windows 8 Pro with a Windows 7 Pro MAK that I don’t have?  First off, yes you can legally downgrade and reimage an OEM copy of Windows.  The problem is getting the key to do it.   If you purchase a PC that has Windows 8 Pro, but you need to load Windows 7 Pro without a key, what you can do is purchase a single volume license of Windows Professional.  The cheapest way to do it is by purchasing an SA Only sku of Windows Pro.  You have 90 days to purchase this license after your PC purchase.  This will give you the ability to log onto the Volume Licensing Services Center (VLSC) site and obtain a MAK Windows 7 and download.  You only need to purchase one license as it will give you multiple activations.  If you need more you can call Microsoft Clearing House to obtain more.

The Outlook that’s included in Office Standard doesn’t allow Personal Archiving or Retention Polices when using the Exchange Enterprise Cal, but standalone Outlook and the Outlook included in Office Pro Plus does?  Isn’t it the same Outlook?   Yes, if you purchase the Exchange Cal you’re likely doing so to use the Personal Archiving or Retention Polices that are included with it. However, for it to work properly, you need to either own standalone Outlook (basically you can purchase Outlook a la carte) or Office Professional Plus.  For whatever reason the Outlook that comes with Office Standard doesn’t work.  Microsoft doesn’t have an answer for this.

 

 

Featured, Miscellaneous IT, Tech News

Tech News Recap for the Week of 4/7/2014

 

Were you busy last week? Here’s a quick recap of news and stories you may have missed!

 

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Featured, Miscellaneous IT, Tech News

Tech News Recap for the Week of 3/31/2014

 

Here’s a quick IT news recap from around the web for the week of 3/31/2014. Enjoy!

Would you like to learn how you can cut costs by transforming your IT Department into a broker of IT services? Download this whitepaper to learn more.

 

Featured, Microsoft, Miscellaneous IT

March Madness Final Four: NCAA Basketball & Microsoft Ending Extended Support

By Rob O’Shaughnessy, Software Licensing Specialist, Pre-Sales Technical Support

It’s the Final Four for the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament, and if you’re like me and your bracket is busted the only thing to root for is a potential happy hour deal at your local watering hole. By midnight on Tuesday morning a victor will be crowed, and there will be fans celebrating their teams win on the court (and winning bets) and fans mourning their loss both on the court and perhaps in their wallet.

On April 8th the season will be over and a new beginning of sorts will occur as teams prepare for the loss of their star players to the draft and or graduation. Some of these players have been loyal to the school and had productive years as players and students. They’ve given it their best to succeed and they should be commended for their efforts, but, as reality sets in, one must understand that it’s time for them to go. Newer, fresher players will replace them because the talent will continue to get better. It’s just the nature of the beast…

Ironically we’re in the Final Four days until Microsoft stops supporting iconic products of Exchange and Office 2003, Windows 2003 Server and Window XP Professional. On April 8th Microsoft will graduate these products and focus their attention on their more current offerings. There are still a lot of customers running these products, and why not, they’ve worked great, but the reality is they are over 10 years old and in four days will no longer be supported. If you’re someone using these products and are looking to make an upgrade, what can you do?

Microsoft has offered, and continues to offer, its products to be purchased through its various license programs. Microsoft technology can still be purchased as a perpetual license and be hosted on premise. In addition, Microsoft also offers some of their products through Office 365, which is their cloud technology sold via a subscription model versus owning a perpetual license. With regards to on-prem/perpetual license vs. cloud/subscription: each customer will have their own preference to choose which licensing model makes sense, but I can tell you this, Microsoft’s investment is in the cloud and they are making Office 365 a very attractive option. Don’t believe me? Let’s look at the numbers.

One of Microsoft’s more popular products is Office Professional Plus. To license Office Pro Plus with 3 years of Software Assurance (SA) in the Open Value program it would retail for $954 a device. After the 3 year SA period is up the renewal price for 3 more years of SA is $444 MSRP. Over a 6 year span the price to license a single desktop of Office Professional Plus is $1,398. By getting Software Assurance you’ll be receiving the latest editions that come out as well as Home Use Rights, which allows employees to purchase Office Professional Plus for personal use at a very cheap price.

Now the very same Office Professional Plus through Office 365 retails for $12 per User per Month, which is $144 a year. Over a 6 year period the price of Office Professional Plus through Office 365 would be $864, which is a $534 savings compared to purchasing through the aforementioned volume license option. Office Professional Plus through Office 365 is licensed per user and each user can run it on up to 5 business devices. So an employee can run a copy on their work computer, their Mac, home PC etc. Now, let’s say you don’t want Software Assurance and wanted to look at just the license cost of Office Professional Plus. Well, that would run you $508 per device. To compare, one could purchase Office 365 for 3 years for roughly the same amount, get the latest technology on 5 devices and true-up or true-down the user count depending on how many users need to run Office.

To take it a step further, Microsoft also offers different Office 365 bundles and one of their more popular bundles is the E3 Plan which includes Office Professional Plus, Exchange, SharePoint and Lync Online Plan-2. This is also licensed per user and runs for $20 per User per Month or $240 a year. When you look at the technology baked into that bundle it’s hard not to see the attractiveness. Plus, since you’re not loading the SW on your own infrastructure, money can be saved on hardware costs.

Lastly if you’re an SMB customer, Microsoft is running a promotion called the SMB Advantage where you can receive subsidy dollars on purchases of Office 365. From now until the end of May, Microsoft will cut a check for 15% on MSRP for Office 365 orders in April and 10% for orders is May. In addition, if the E3 or E4 Plan is purchased, Microsoft will kick in another 10%, so it would be 25% subsidy for April and a 20% for May. To put it in perspective a 100 user purchase of the E3 Plan in April would be a $6,000 subsidy check. This can be used for services, more software or even hardware. Please reach out to your GreenPages Account Executive for more details and to see if you’re eligible.

So as you can see, Microsoft is very cloud centric, and it’s not too late to upgrade that older technology via avenues in place to help you do that. Please reach out (you can fill out this form or send us an email at socialmedia@greenpages.com ) if you would like more details and to see if you’re eligible. GreenPages can also assist you with any migrations needs and questions you may have.

Come Monday night, when Jim Nance is handing over the NCAA trophy and “One Shining Moment” is playing in the background, rest assure that Microsoft won’t be picking up your call to assist with your XP and 2003 support issues. Those products are done, they’ve graduated, but there are some better ones out there…it’s time to move on. It’s just the nature of the beast.

 

Editor’s Note: Rob picked Syracuse to win the tournament (terrible pick). Luckily he knows a lot more about Microsoft licensing than he does about college hoops.

 

 

 

CIO, Featured, Miscellaneous IT

Tech News Recap for the Week of 3/17/2014

 

In case you missed it: Here’s a quick recap of tech news and articles from the week of 3/17/2014!

 

 

Check out this whitepaper: The Business Savvy CIO

 

 

Featured, Miscellaneous IT, Tech News

Tech News Recap for the Week of 3/10/2014

 

In case you missed it: Here’s a quick recap of tech news and articles from the week of 3/10/2014!

 

 

To keep up with tech news and updates throughout the week follow @GreenPagesIT on Twitter! If you’re looking for additional resources here are some whitepapers:

 

 

applications, Internet of Things, Miscellaneous IT

The Internet of Things – There’s no stopping it!

 

This post was written by ConnectEdu CTO Rick Blaisdell and was originally posted on http://www.rickscloud.com/the-internet-of-things-theres-no-stopping-it/ . You can follow Rick on Twitter @RickBlaisdell

 

“The Internet of things is coming, be the disrupter or prepare to be disrupted. There’s no stopping it” said Joe Tucci, CEO of EMC, during this year’ Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

The term “Internet of Things”(IoT) emerged as a buzzword over the last year to describe the phenomenon of network-connected sensors incorporated into devices that in the past were standalone appliances. Basically, the Internet of things is a scenario in which objects, animals or people are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to automatically transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction.

There are many specialists that say just about every business will become an IoT business, and the benefits are so profound that it is inevitable that this will happen. By connecting devices over the Internet and wirelessly over mobile networks, companies can manage a wide range of new services for their customers. This is why Google announced in January that it would pay more than $3 billion for Nest’s smart thermostat and smoke alarm technology.

The numbers being forecasted for the Internet of Things are truly spectacular. BI Intelligence finds that the number of everyday and enterprise devices that will soon be connected to the Internet — from parking meters to home thermostats — will be huge: 1.9 billion devices today, and 9 billion by 2018, roughly equal to the number of smartphones, smart TVs, tablets, wearable computers, and PCs combined.

In the consumer space, many products and services have already crossed over into the IoT, including kitchen and home appliances, lighting and heating products, and insurance company-issued car monitoring devices that allow motorists to pay insurance only for the amount of driving they do.

Here are some of the top business-to-business and government applications for the IoT:

  • Connected advertising and marketing – How would Internet-connected billboards look like? This will sure be one of the top three IoT categories, along with smart factories, and telecommuting support systems.

  • Intelligent traffic management systems – Machina research sees $100 billion in revenue by 2020 for applications such as toll-taking and congestion penalties. A related revenue source will be smart parking-space management, expected to drive $30 billion in revenue.

  • Waste management systems – According to BI’s research, in Cincinnati, residential waste volume fell 17% and recycling volume grew by 49% through use of a “pay as you throw” program that used IoT technology to monitor those who exceed waste limits.

  • Smart electricity grids that adjust rates for peak energy usage – These will represent savings of $200 billion to $500 billion per year by 2025, according to the McKinsey Global Institute.

Finally, what we need to keep in mind is that the Internet of Things is a vision, it is being built today. The stakeholders are known, the debate has yet to start.

Photo credit: www.switchscribe.com