BMS Blog: SBS Consulting in the UK

Yesterday I spent the day at the London Park Lane Hilton for the Microsoft Servers and Tools pre-launch.

It was an interesting day with demos of Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008. A lot of the talk was around virtualisation, hyper-V technology and how the vision is for virtualisation from the server right down to the desktop. It certainly helped to give a broader overview of the whole Software as a Service/Software+Services challenge. If you sell SBS and will be looking to sell & support Cougar when it launches, you need to get a head start on this stuff now.

The theme of the day was “Heroes happen {here}”, and that theme will carry on through the ramp up to the launch and beyond. You can find more information at the Heroes happen {here} website.

The highlight of the day for me was Bill Gates’ keynote speech and Q&A session with Scott Dodds. I was surprised at how down to earth he is and how much passion he obviously still has for the industry. It will be interesting to see how this transitions over to the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation. Interestingly it sounds as though there will be one or two key roles left for Bill at Microsoft so he won’t be stepping down completely.

I also had a chance to catch up with some of the community including Vijay, Gareth and David Overton who put me right on a few “issues” I have with SaaS. Thanks Dave, I can always rely on you to tell it like it is and add some perspective.

You might even catch some of us on the BBC’s Money program later in the year as a film crew was there recording the event for an upcoming special. Now where did I put my makeup…

For a while now I’ve been looking for a remote desktop application that lets me sort all the servers we look after into an alphabetical list. Unfortunately Microsoft’s Remote Desktops doesn’t do this. When you have over 70 servers listed in the order they were added you can see the problem!

Last week I came across this little gem, Visionapp Remote Desktop. It does everything Remote Desktops does AND it lets me sort alphabetically. It also provides a nice overview tab that lets you instantly see which servers you are connected to as well as the ability to save different sets of authentication credentials which can be “re-used” as you add new connections.

 
click image for larger view

The best thing though is it’s free (although registration is required to download it).  So if you’re fed up searching through your list of servers for the one you want give it a go.

From the “well I never knew that” dept. comes this handy little tip about Excel.

A client asked me the other day if there was any way to share an Excel spreadsheet so that multiple users could edit it at the same time (rather than getting the “this spreadsheet is locked for editing…” message. My immediate answer was no, you can’t do that with Excel.

A colleague who overheard me then pointed out that in fact it can be done and here’s how:

Go to: Tools / Options / General / Service Options / Share Workspace

==Add the user to the “Share Workbook”
On the Tools menu, click Share Workbook, and then click the Editing tab.
Select the Allow changes by more than one user at the same time check box, and then click OK.
When prompted, save the workbook.
On the File menu, click Save As, and then save the workbook on a network location accessible to the intended users. Use a shared network folder, not a Web server

==Other Share Workbook settings
To see who else has the workbook open, click Share Workbook on the Tools menu, and then click the Editing tab.  If you want to get automatic updates of the other users’ changes periodically, with or without saving, click Share Workbook on the Tools menu, click the Advanced tab, and under Update changes, click the options you want.
==To Edit a Shared Workbook
Go to the network location where the shared workbook (shared workbook: A workbook set up to allow multiple users on a network to view and make changes at the same time. Each user who saves the workbook sees the changes made by other users.) is stored, and open the workbook.
Set the user name to identify your work in the shared workbook: on the Tools menu, click Options, click the General tab, and then type your user name in the User name box.
Enter and edit data as usual. You won’t be able to add or change the following: merged cells, conditional formats, data validation, charts, pictures, objects including drawing objects, hyperlinks, scenarios, outlines, subtotals, data tables (data table: A range of cells that shows the results of substituting different values in one or more formulas. There are two types of data tables: one-input tables and two-input tables.), PivotTable reports, workbook and worksheet protection, and macros.
Make any filter (filter: To display only the rows in a list that satisfy the conditions you specify. You use the AutoFilter command to display rows that match one or more specific values, calculated values, or conditions.) and print settings you want for your personal use. Each user’s settings are saved individually by default.
If you want the filter or print settings made by the original author to be in effect whenever you open the workbook, click Share Workbook on the Tools menu, click the Advanced tab, and under Include in personal view, clear the Print settings or Filter settings check box.
To save your changes to the workbook and see the changes other users have saved since your last save, click Save .
If the Resolve Conflicts dialog box appears, resolve the conflicts.

Well I never knew that!

Technorati Tags: Excel, shared workbook, multiple editing

Finally we are now officially supporting Windows Vista Business on our client networks. Why the long wait?

Well, for a start we use Ultra VNC as our preferred method of remote control, either via VPN to the clients router or RDP to their server and then VNC to their desktops. Up until recently Ultra VNC hasn’t supported Vista completely. In particular, when a UAC dialogue box pops up it can’t be seen at the controlling end, so it requires interaction at the client end which isn’t ideal as they will often be working on another machine or gone out to lunch etc.

UltraVNC 1.0.4 RC8 now has greatly improved support for Vista including the ability to see the UAC dialogue. It’s still in beta but we’ve tested it in several scenarios and are happy with the stability and speed it provides.

So is there anything else stopping us pushing Vista as the desktop OS of choice? Well we still have to be careful to ensure that all the apps the client is running will work with Vista but the list of non-compatible products is growing shorter by the day. Looks like Vista may finally be reaching that critical  point where there really are no show stoppers to recommending it. About time too!

I’ve read a couple of blog posts recently about the issues revolving around customers that refuse to legally licence software. What do you do when a customer won’t play the game and refuses to become legally licensed?

I know what we do - we shop them. Either to Microsoft or FAST, or sometimes both. And we tell them that we’re going to shop them. This normally elicits a sharp intake of breath (and sometimes worse) from the person I’m talking to but the point is this: Anyone who knowingly uses Microsoft software that isn’t properly licensed is a thief - pure and simple - and I don’t want to be associated with thieves thank you very much.

This isn’t just about licensing though. This is about the bigger picture. If they are unscrupulous enough to blatantly ignore licensing issues then what are they going to be like when it comes to paying your invoices or worse? They’ve already shown their hand and proved they have no morals. My take is these people aren’t worth dealing with and you should walk away. That’s not an easy decision to make particularly when you are a small business and every customer counts, but it is still a decision that has to be made.

Are there any exceptions? Well, we came across a new customer who was using quite a few unlicensed copies of office and couldn’t afford all the licences in one go, although they wanted to do the right thing. In that instance we asked the customer to sign a letter of intent to purchase a specific number of licenses per month until they were fully licensed. I know the correct thing to do would have been to remove the unlicensed software until the licenses had been purchased but sometimes you can cut your nose off to spite your face as they say.

When we report customers we don’t do it lightly and we are aware of the implications and the possible results of our actions, which can include heavy fines and even imprisonment,  but at the end of the day a clear message needs to be sent to people who think they can get away with it. This is your livelihood they’re messing with and it’s your margin they’re eroding by using unlicensed or illegal software.