With concerns about the economic climate as well as the global climate, companies are taking a hard look at costs and the environmental impact of their business processes. This requires new supply chain and service customers management. It is imperative that virtual teams collaborate with organisations to save money and time.
United communications and a healthy planet go hand in hand. By allowing workers to meet anywhere and anytime, connect, and collaborate without having to be physically in the same place, united communications reduce costs and carbon impact through less business travel, telephony and office space. It gives the workers the flexibility to access people and information they need; whether they're on the other side of town, the country, or the world. The results are positive for the planet.
United communications integrates key business communication solutions into a single easy-to-use interface. This includes: secure, mobile e-mail, calendaring, voice mail, instant messaging, voice communications, web conferencing, presence availability, and document sharing.
It's a new world of work. The nature of the workplace, and of work itself, is fundamentally changing as organisations free their workers to be productive from anywhere, anytime. Those that capitalise on the new world of work build better work environments for their workers, while slashing carbon footprints and the expenses that come with unnecessary resource use.
Reducing the need for fixed office spaces and enabling virtual meetings slash travel overhead and carbon output, as well as expenses for assets and energy for heating and cooling. Telework and flexiwork initiatives reduce the time spent commuting and traveling, making them a key strategy for recruitment and retention as they reduce miles driven on congested roads and the resulting emissions that pollute the quality of our air.
Mark Bower, Director, NextWave.IT Limited, IT Consultancy and Support.
Few organisations currently run virtual desktop PCs within their IT infrastructure, but that is about to change. Virtualised desktops currently represent just 1% of PCs worldwide, with VMware View accounting for an estimated one million and Citrix XenDesktop about 850,000 and Microsoft Application Virtualisation (App-V) now starting to pick up customers as well.
IT departments might choose 2011 to make the move to virtual desktop PCs because it is expected to mark the release of the first service pack for Windows 7, which will prompt many to think about upgrading their hardware and operating systems. Companys have not upgraded their desktop operating systems since 2003/2004, with most running XP rather than Vista.
Many are considering either the traditional upgrade path to Windows 7 or using desktop virtualisation to give them an opportunity to develop their systems in a completely different way which provides more flexibility for end users and the readiness to make more use of cloud computing if and when they need it.
Some councils, universities, and police forces are embarking on an 18-month programme to virtualise the vast majority of its computing infrastructure, including servers, desktop PCs and storage. It is a greenfield implementation, where the existing desktop infrastructure is at end of life and we are not keeping too much of it. They are keen to keep the desktop to an absolutely minimum build and get applications centrally provisioned. The council can stream applications such as Microsoft Office and Corelogic's Framework case management system for adult social care to Citrix thin-client terminals running XenDesktop, which are easier to manage and maintain.
The biggest benefits of desktop virtualisation are faster desktop deployment, device and location flexibility, energy savings, data security and access control. Application testing, rollout, updating and patching is a time consuming task on desktop Pcs. Data storage is centralised on datacentre servers rather than on user desktops, making it easier to manage and backup for disaster recovery purposes. Applications are streamed to local desktops, but a local version of Microsoft Office, Email, and Adobe Reader are kept on the desktop PC just in case the network connection goes down.
Energy savings can be achieved by replacing larger desktop systems with low-power thin-client devices, either to reduce their carbon footprint, or to meet more more stringent power and space requirements in new premises. A thin-client desktop PC uses about 30W's of power compared to 300W's for a desktop PC.
Desktop virtualisation software also offers more flexibilty in allowing access to virtual systems and applications from a variety of mobile devices that provides for flexible and more modern working practises. Users are able to log into any PC or mobile device in any location rather than have their own PC on their desk. It does not necessarily represent a cheaper alternative to running desktop PCs.
Mark Bower
Director
NextWave.IT Limited
IT Consultancy and Support
There is no such thing as a fast track to a fully virtualised infrastructure. Four clear stages of infrastructure virtualisation maturity that indicate readiness for various management and automation technologies, process improvements that must be made, and standardisations that have to be realised to achieve greater gains.
Stage 1: All organisations start with a period of acclimatisation
Most companies start down the path of server virtualisation by learning about the technology and how it works, testing it against simple applications. During the acclimatisation phase, IT typically virtualises applications that are considered easy targets, because they have low business impact, few users and minimal performance requirements.
Stage 2: Experimentation moves to a strategy of consolidation
In stage 2, organisations grow more comfortable with the concept, maturity and stability of their chosen server virtualisation technology and begin to shift to a more strategic implementation. This stage is most easily identified when an organisation shifts its default deployment mindset from server to virtual server, also known as a "virtual first" policy.
Stage 3: Virtualisation empowers process improvement
In Stage 2, the business starts leveraging the unique benefits of the virtualisation infrastructure features, such as live migration, backup services, resource scheduling and virtual machine (VM) templates. In Stage 3, the growing use of these technologies leads to improvements in key processes such as change management, incident management and deployment.
Stage 4: Processes turn into policies and automation takes over
As processes mature and evolve to take advantage of virtualisation technologies, organisations discover that the key to managing VM sprawl is policy-based automation that reduces the manual labour in the virtualised pool, driving up client "self-service". As virtualisation proliferates and automation moves to higher-level tasks, the organisation begins to manage its virtual environment as a pool, which prepares it to treat this pool as an internal "cloud service".
To keep the experiences positive and maturity moving forward organisations can:
1. Start with non-critical workloads for safe learning. As you experiment with new tools, processes and automations, try them out first on workloads that are not critical to the business. Development test labs are the safest places to try these new technologies. If you are in Stage 2 and want to fast track to Stage 3, start with lab management tools such as Surgient or VMware Lab Manager.
2. When refreshing servers, be aware that the most common bottlenecks with server virtualisation are memory - not CPU.
3. Invest in infrastructure and operations virtualisation solutions. Although you are probably more likely to migrate VMs for maintenance purposes than for pool optimisation, it helps if your infrastructure is migration-aware and with the settings of the VMs business ready when you need to migrate them.
Mark Bower
Director
NextWave.IT Limited
IT Consultancy and Support
UK organisations are ditching VMware in favour of lower-cost server virtualisation tools from Microsoft, Citrix and others, complaining that VMware licensing and support is expensive and the software is difficult to maintain. Organisations can save up to 70% on overall running costs by using desktop virtualisation. They can also halve their energy costs and put a substantial reduction in their carbon footprint. Investment in this new IT solution will quickly save time and money and provide better services.
Some universities have changed from VMware servers to Microsoft Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V to support virtual desktops to reduce costs. VMware prices have gone up steadily over the last few years, and what was a very good public sector discount has started to vanish. Unlike Microsoft and other competitors, VMware does not offer campus deals.
Installing Microsoft Systems Center Virtual Machine Manager (MSCVM) was an additional cost but Hyper-V comes free with Windows 2008 Server. The biggest benefit was putting Microsoft Exchange, remote desktop services, and Microsoft Office Communications on it.
Microsoft says that acquisation costs of buying its Hyper-V server virtualisation platform can be as little as one sixth that of an equivalent solution from VMware, a price that makes sense for organisations running up to 50 virtual servers.
VMware says that its server virtualisation platform are equal from a cost perspective with Hyper-V by running more Virtual Machines, providing greater savings on hardware and power. VMware comes out on a par with Microsoft but with more software features and functions.
Mark Bower
Director
NextWave.IT Limited
IT Consultancy and Support
Is spending £1,360 per PC migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7 worth the effort - and how do you keep IT labour costs down? Many IT departments have re-evaluated their desktop upgrade strategies to Windows 7 as the only sensible way to go.
IT specialists argue that although expensive, it is not a question of if, only when, Windows 7 migrations should be implemented ahead of Microsoft's official termination of extended support for Windows XP in April 2014. Any need to upgrade or replace existing Windows XP or Vista PC's should be carefully assessed for cost, complexity and labour resource implications before a decision is made.
Many PC users are happy to stick with Windows XP as it is a stable and mature operating system. It has great hardware and software support and compatibility, and performance is great too. It is expensive, disruptive and unnecessary to upgrade to a new Windows version every time Microsoft upgrades.
Third-party software vendors will start to drop support for XP in 2011/2012, meaning many new versions of software will not run on the older operating system, while hardware drivers for new hardware will not be written for XP either.
The cost of upgrading XP to Windows 7 is significant, and will require many organisations to redirect budget away from other IT projects like Cloud Computing and Virtual PC's. It has been estimated that the per-machine cost of migrating from XP to Windows 7 in an organisation will vary from £840 to £1,360 - up 300% more than migrating Windows Vista, which relatively few organisations installed because of performance concerns.
The exact bill will depend on whether new PC's are purchased or existing ones upgraded, with surprisingly little cost difference between the two taking into account hardware purchasing, software licensing, training, labour and support costs. Ways to reduce the bill include light-touch PC deployment processes, hardware and software inventories, and tools and scripts whereby migrations can be completely or partially automated with minimum intervention of skilled technicians (a big part of the cost).
Apart from the high cost of the migration process itself, legacy applications that do not run on Windows 7 remain the stumbling block for many organisations. Desktop virtualisation tools that run them in virtual windows can help, as can proper testing tools that iron out hardware or application incompatibility issues before wholesale implementation of the new Windows 7 operating system.
Application compatibility is the one thing that stops people from rushing out and starting to upgrade. Internet Explorer 6 and those that use ActiveX controls are the most problematic. This is one reason why IT departments that have not already installed Windows XP SP3 should do so without delay, unless they have already firmed up Windows 7 migration plans.
Cheers Mark Bower, Director
NextWave.IT Ltd
Over time every PC will begin to slow down. With our 25-point PC Inventory Audit and TuneUp (£50 incl VAT) we will get your PC back up to speed. It will save you a day's work. We can offer a more flexible, innovative, and personal level of IT Support service to meet specific customers needs.
Although the price of computers continue to drop, they are still expensive to buy. There is the additional expense of employing people to get them working and keep them running.
PC’s don’t grow old gracefully. After a short time, your once-nippy Windows 2000, XP, or Vista PC can feel as though its hard disk is running in a bath of super-thick custard. And after a few years the problem can get so bad the PC is almost unusable. It can take forever to start up and then promptly stops or slows to a crawl whenever you try to do anything useful with it.
Is your PC slow to start, cluttered hard disk, sluggish performance, virus and spyware free, out-of-date tools, unused programs?
Our 25-point PC Inventory Audit and TuneUp includes:
- Free Consultation with PC Support person
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The benefits include cheaper PC running costs. The first two PC's are FREE on orders over 10 PC'S. This offer only applies to Windows XP SP3, Vista, and 7.
Mark Bower, Director, NextWave.IT Limited
+44(0)7806197987
Coming in the new version of Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) is support for new Web standards including plug-in-free video; better performance with Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 for maps, text, and JavaSript by taking advantage of modern computing hardware; and a new effort at gathering and responding to feedback from those using the prototype IE9 software.
IE9 provides improved HTML5 support, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) 3 support (CSS is a technology that makes it easier for designers to specify how they want their sites to look), and an upgraded JavaScript Engine for better performance of web applications.
Also, IE9 will provide hardware acceleration for rendering graphics and text on a web page, and built-in support for H.264 video playback using HTML5 (such as what YouTube currently provides for some videos).
IE9 is months from release, but already it holds the potential to alter the browser market. Not only could it reinvigorate competition with a host of new rivals, it could help usher in the Cloud Computing era that some of those rivals are eager to embrace.
With IE9, though, Microsoft is trying to rebuild the browser for the Web that's to come through new standards such as HTML5 and CSS3, updates to Hypertext Markup Language for describing Web pages and CSS3 for formatting.
HTML5 will enable a new class of applications. Those applications are going to stress the browser runtime in ways today's Web sites don't. Doing HTML5 right was much more about designing all our browser subsystems around what the new apps will need than it was about a particular feature checklist. It's understanding where the apps are going to go and building the platform that will get them there.
In many ways HTML5 simplifies web pages, taking laborious tasks such as form validation away from web authoring and into the browser. The idea of making the browser do the work probably stems back to IE3, where Microsoft provided the first browser to build in CSS support. HTML5 introduces new tags for page structure and semantics of documents.
Other HTML5 features such as "Drag and Drop" and "ContentEditable" are also currently supported. You can follow the implementation of HTML5 in modern browsers at "HTML5Readiness.com" and "Caniuse.com".
Currently, only beta versions of browsers IE9, Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Opera support advanced HTML5 elements. Work on HTML 5 is rapidly progressing, yet it is still expected to continue for several years.
Cheers Mark Bower
Director, NextWave.IT Ltd
Microsoft is to make a significant portion of the next version of its Office productivity suite available over the web. Cut-down versions of Excel, Onenote, Powerpoint, and Word has been released to more than 400 million Windows Live account users.
Office 2010 and Office Web applications are due to be available in the first half of next year. The major objective is to deliver the best productivity experience across the PC, mobile phone and browser.
New Office features that could appeal to businesses include broadcast and video editing in Powerpoint, new data visualisation capabilities in Excel, and co-authoring in Word. A tool called Office Backstage will give greater control over the behind the scenes options for documents.
The Outlook email client will have a new "conversion view" to thread related conversions to help with the growing volumes of email and other communications such as voice-mails. A conversion Cleanup tool looks across all email threads and reduces duplicated information (SPAM).
There will be also fewer product versions for Office 2010. It will be delivered in 32-bit and 64-bit formats, installable on Windows XP with service pack 3, as well as Vista and Windows 7.
Two of the five versions are for corporate customers - Microsoft Professional Plus 2010 and Microsoft Office Standard 2010 - which look likely to be available only via volume licensing. Both include usage rights for on-premises web applications.
Cheers Mark Bower
Director, NextWave.IT Ltd
Microsoft has shown an early version of Windows 7 - the follow up to Vista. Under the hood the new Windows reports itself as Version 6.1 (Vista is 6.0). The core architecture is the same, and microsoft claims evething that runs on Vista will also run on Windows 7.
There are nevertheless numerous new features. The most obvious is the revamped taskbar, which has larger icons, full-screen preview and a new quick menu for each application, called a jump list, which gives immediate access to commonly used features. The sidebar has now gone and gadgets now appear on the desktop.
Multitouch support, similiar to Apple's iPhone lets you drive Windows PC's with your fingers, moving objects with gestures.
A new sensor programming interface (API) offers standardised support for devices that report location, movement, sound, light and other inputs, paving the way for PC's that respond to their environment. Microsoft has also created a Device Stage window, which allows makers of phones, cameras and other devices to create custom screens that appear automatically on connection.
Home networking has been streamlined, media sharing easier, and Windows is smarter about supporting both work and home networks on a single laptop. Wordpad, Paint , Calculator acquire numerous new statistical and scientific features.
Microsoft has also worked on the system tray, which gets overcrowed. In Window 7 users can cutomise this with a single click and suppress unwanted messages.
The new Windows 7 is meant to deliver better performance on the same hardware. Users are likely to enjoy this release, even though it is low-key in terms of features. The date of release is October 22, 2209, from £49.99.
Minimum PC requirements are: 1GHz 32-bit processor; 1GB RAM; 16GB available for hard drive; Direct X9 graphics card.
It's not possible to upgrade from Windows XP and keep programs and files in place, so these will have to be stored elsewhere while you reformat the computer's hard disk and install Windows 7. Upgrade from Windows Vesta is straight forward.
Find out all you need to know before installing Windows 7. Video workshop training guides to Windows 7. All 16 video's are less than 5 minutes.
www.computeractive.co.uk/windows7
Cheers Mark Bower
Director, NextWave.IT Ltd
That recognition means Motorola is working to sell equipment to provision both WiMax and LTE networks when carriers commit to one or the other.
Currently, WiMax is the technology of choice for the new wireless carriers that predominate in emerging markets mainly outside the U.S. The notable exception is Clearwire Inc., which has financial backing from Sprint Nextel Inc. and others, in the U.S.
Meanwhile, LTE was chosen by Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc. in the U.S. Verizon is expecting to begin deployments of LTE next year with full rollouts in 2012.
Motorola is already provisioning WiMax networks for Clearwire in 18 U.S. markets, with base station equipment, antennas and client equipment, such as laptop USB's and customer premise equipment that can distribute a WiMax signal from outside throughout a home or office.
As part of its WiMax effort, Motorola is already running an interoperability laboratory in Taiwan to test third-party WiMax devices. These devices include USB's, wireless mobiles, smartphones and even machine-to-machine devices that can be used, for example, to monitor thousands of utility meters, replacing the need for meter reader crews.
Motorola wouldn't say which manufacturer's smartphones are being tested for WiMax, but said some are Asia-based device makers and some are more recognizable vendors in the U.S. Samsung is considered the most interested in developing WiMax smartphones, according to several analysts. It's too early for LTE interoperability testing on devices.
Motorola's consumer handsets division is committed to launching many new Android smartphones in the next year, and plans to build handsets in 2010 that will run Windows Mobile 7 when it becomes available.
Cheers Mark Bower
Director, NextWave.IT Limited
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