BMS Blog: SBS Consulting in the UK

I attended the Microsoft Server Event at Microsoft TVP on Tuesday and I was interested to hear what Microsoft and other partners thought the upcoming marketing and sales opportunities around Microsoft Server are and how they can be exploited.

Sonal Gathani started things off with an introduction and an overview of the server market. This was followed by Sven Gruenitz providing an introduction to the new features in Longhorn, or what I think we can now call Windows Server 2008! WOW,how long must it have taken to come up with that name;-) Sven covered some very interesting features and I was particularly interested in the ability to run what effectively was an RDP session running Microsoft office applications as though they were running on the local machine. It’s difficult to explain but imagine an RDP session running one application in a window with no frame around it!

It was then the turn of the Microsoft Partners to take the stand and answer questions from the audience about how they grew their companies and how they sell and market Server product. There wasn’t really anything new here but it helped re-enforce that what we are doing reflects what our peers are thinking as well. I spoke to one of the partners afterwards and got some interesting insight into how they ensure they maximise referrals from existing clients.

Next up was James McCarthy who was going to give a demonstration of Mobile 6 which unfortunately decided not to play ball so James had to wing it somewhat but in the end it all went rather well. Some of the new features are very welcome and I’m heartened to see that Microsoft finally seem to have got the bit between their teeth and are taking the fight to RIM! It looks like mobility really is going to take off at last.

Finally Emma Cockburn explained about the free marketing offer being provided by Microsoft. Basically Microsoft will run a direct and/or email marketing campaign for you free of charge ! Yup, you heard me right, free of charge! All you have to do is go to the Mr Busy campaign and follow the instructions. The offer will run until the budget for it runs out so get in there now before it’s too late! Dave Overton has more about it on his blog here.

I’m probably going to get flamed for this but I’m going to say it anyway - I hate Blackberries! OK, I’ve said it, and I do feel much better for getting it out in the open.

Before you start heading for the reply button, let me explain. I don’t hate Blackberry devices as such, after all they aren’t really any different to look at these days than a modern mobile/smart phone or PDA. What I DO hate is the marketing hype that surrounds them and the inevitable disappointment that ensues when some poor unsuspecting user has been duped into purchasing one for use with their corporate network when they are already running Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 SP2 or above.

In my opinion, company email sent from a mobile device should be treated the same as if you were sitting at a desk in the office using Outlook or sitting at home using Outlook Web Access (OWA). It should be subject to the same company policies and procedures. For instance, the following basics should all be taken for granted:

• ALL email sent from a mobile device should have the same audit trail to follow as email sent from the company LAN.
• ALL email sent from a mobile device should be stored in Exchange & backed up by a brick level process allowing individual emails to be restored.
• ALL email sent from a mobile device should contain the company’s authorised disclaimer, this is particularly important for companies that are regulated by bodies such as the FSA etc. The disclaimer should be automatically attached to the outgoing email and shouldn’t rely on individual “signature” disclaimers on the device itself.
• I should be able to remotely wipe the device of all email should it be lost or stolen to protect my company data.
• On returning to the office, any email sent, calendar items added or contacts changed should be immediately reflected in Outlook without me having to connect the device to the network/workstation and perform a synchronisation.

Can I do any of this with a Blackberry? No, I most certainly can’t! At least not with the Blackberry Internet Services option that is almost invariably sold to the user by the pimply faced youth in the shop. The reality is to get all of the above advantages from the Blackberry you have to purchase the Blackberry Enterprise Server software. It’s about this point in the process the user breaks out in a cold sweat and realises they may have made a rash purchasing decision.

It is true to say that some mobile providers will give away the Enterprise Server software free with 5 or more Blackberry devices, but someone somewhere is still going to have to pay to have the software installed on the Exchange server. More to the point, why introduce more software to Exchange server when all the functionality the user requires is already built in if only they had bought the right type of mobile device in the first place.

Our support guys get calls from users asking us to set up their shiny new Blackberries so often these days we have decided to redress the balance. We have partnered with a mobile telecoms company and trained their sales team in the advantages of mobile 5/6 devices and smart phones like the Nokia E series when connected to an Exchange server. So now rather than just pushing a Blackberry on the user, they ask questions about the users network to see if they can leverage a better ROI out of their existing Exchange infrastructure. This is a great way to increase sales & service revenue both for us and the telecoms company and of course the real winner is the user who gets what he wanted in the first place without having to spend money on network infrastructure unnecessarily.

One of our largest clients called us yesterday to inform us they were having to evacuate their building due to a gas leak and the power to the building had to be turned off! The gas board told them it could be several days before they were allowed back in so we immediately put their disaster recovery plan in to action.  

This particular client has a contract with Sungard Availability Services which we set up for them several years ago. Within 2 hours they had 10 key members of staff at the Sungard recovery centre in Leicester. During the period between the invocation of the Sungard service and the staff arriving at the recovery centre 10 workstations had been imaged with their default workstation setup, Internet access was available to them and their main telephone numbers had also been transferred.

The next step was to get their line of business database and email up and running from backup tape/Sungards offsite backup service, however this wasn’t necessary as the gas board confirmed that the power to the building could be turned back on later that afternoon so we turned our attention to setting up additional VPNs to allow the staff who had already gone home to remotely access their email and LOB application via the Terminal Server usually reserved for the remote workers only.

Happily the disaster recovery procedure worked very well although there were one or two unexpected issues that we can learn from and update the procedures for. We had previously run testing days but nothing can quite prepare you for the real thing!

P.S.
I just noticed that Susanne has a timely post about disaster recovery here, outlining some frankly scary figures relating to the costs involved etc.