The Sikh Geek

I was at a meeting of the newly launched UK IT Association at the Innovation Centre, De Montfort University today and Oracle was there as the first corporate sponsor. Oracle were talking about their SME solutions. At the moment vendors are rushing to supply and support the SME sector and these vendors are beginning to talk about organisations with up to 5 people! This is great news for small businesses because they are being taken seriously because SMEs are the ones which will show aggressive growth over the years to come. Vendors seem to be falling over themselves to occupy this space.

More choice for you as small business owners! Cool!

Bill Gates will end his day to day role at Microsoft by July 2008 but will remain as chairman and the single largest shareholder. Ray Ozzie will take over as Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect. Well, whatever you think of Bill Gates and Microsoft, that was some career! It shows to me that an apparent ‘geek’ without an MBA can suceed in Business against all the odds. Behind that apparent lack of social skills must lie a razor sharp business mind.

The question is, which people always ask at times like these, is Microsoft at the pinnacle or on its way down. Well, if you’re at you’re pinnacle then down is the only way! Remember that bell curve distribution for product lifecycles! Microsoft is entering a new phase and that new phase is Vista! Yes, it’s late and yes, features were dropped, but it will set the standard for operating systems to be judged by. Novell is trying to tout that Vista delays are an ideal opportunity for its SuSE Linux desktop distribution to take advantage. I seriously doubt it, as much as I respect and use SuSE Linux. The reason for this is because of .NET 3.0 and most commentators seem to think that Vista is a ‘pretty version of XP’. That’s because they don’t understand the underlying technology and they write about what they can see in front of them, i.e. the pretty user interfaces and think that’s it. That’s only the beginning!

.NET 3.0 combines the power of the .NET Framework 2.0 with new technologies for building applications that have visually compelling user experiences, seamless communication across technology boundaries, and the ability to support a wide range of business processes. Some aspects of this are available or will be available in the Linux/Open Source world but not in such an integrated way across OS platform and applications.

I’m not sure that Business pinnacle has yet been reached?

Voice over IP (VoIP) is a way of sending voice information over an internet connection and most people would have encountered if they have used Skype or used MSN Messenger’s voice chat, etc. We think of it as being able to make free or very cheap phone calls. That sounds good, doesn’t it!

However, VoIP is much more than that. It is about combining voice calls over the same medium which is used to carry our email traffic, our instant messenger chats and to be able to seamlessly integrate all these services together. This is called “convergence”, which is like the holy grail for network operators both mobile and fixed.

So why can I be so sure that VoIP is going to be everywhere and the de facto way we may phone calls? This is because of BT’s 21CN Project, a massive investment by BT to rip out all those legacy telecomms systems and replace them by nice shiny new IP systems.

*** warning, technical geeky discussion coming up !! ***
The problem with VoIP is the “IP” part of it. The IP or Internet Protocol was never designed to carry voice data effectively or to provide any guarantees as to the quality of it. Voice data is time sensitive and breaking voice in to little tiny data packets, jumbling them all up and reconstructing them correctly at the other end is pretty crucial as to whether we can understand what comes out at the other end! Today’s IP routers (I’m not talking about your poor little wireless ADSL router but those big beasts that sit in some nondescript datacentre carrying the world’s internet traffic between countries and continents) don’t really priortise or provide any QoS (Quality of Service) and the fact that VoIP works currently is a major (not minor) miracle.

BT is changing this, they are introducing a completely new network infrastructure of routers which will use MPLS (Multi-Protcol Layer Switching) to carry this voice data and other services. They will provide QoS and priortise VoIP traffic and it will be managed by software systems that will save BT lots of money.

Forget Skype, it is only a point to point solution and uses a propietrary protocol which doesn’t interoperate with anything else. So, the point is you need to learn about VoIP now as part of your business strategy. Go on, you know it makes sense!

This article on Computerweekly is a very balanced view of whether Linux is ready for the enterprise desktop. The view is that it is getting closer but it’s going to be an incremental rise and probably a slow one at that. It correctly points out that key applications are still missing on Linux. I use desktop Linux in my business, namely OpenSUSE 10.0, but have increasinly started to use Windows XP Pro. There are a couple of things that have been drivers for this and they are Business Contact Manager (BCM) which is integrated in to Outlook 2003, click to dial to my Asterisk@Home VoIP Server fom Outlook, Calendaring in Outlook and the ability to synchronise with my Dell PDA running Windows Mobile, accounts systems such Sage Instant and Quickbooks Regular running on Windows, IE 6 (with ActiveX) so I can do remote management of SBS 2003 servers.

Oh! …and one more thing the introduction by Microsoft of the Visual Studio Express Editions (free) and SQL Server Express (free). These are really easy environments to use and develop applications in. They were only free for 12 months but Microsoft has now decided to keep them free indefinitely. Great for developing bespoke applications for small businesses in.

This image show a sample tutorial that I worked through which allows you to develop a simple customer order database using SQL Server Express and then query the database.

Most of the code is generated automatically by dragging fields that you create and creating the table relationships.

Looks like Windows Genuine Advantage is causing a bit of a stir. For those that don’t know about WGA, it is a bit of software from Microsoft which checks that you are running a legal copy of Windows XP. The WGA has been appearing as an update if you have Automatic Updates enabled. I came across this issue the other day when assessing the IT of a local charity. They had bought a new Dell PC with XP Home on it. When I started it up, it complained that this was not a legal copy of XP! Strange, since XP Home was preinstalled by Dell! Can’t we even trust Dell these days? What’s going on? Looks like Microsoft hasn’t quite thought through this issue and there’s going to have to be some tweaks to this tool. If this becomes a common problem, where valid copies of XP are deemed illegal, then end users are going to get quite upset! I know I would!

ZDNet UK are reporting that Dell is saying that Linux makes up 25% of it’s Enterprise Server Market. This growth is coming from Unix to Linux migrations and not Windows to Linux migrations. My understanding is that worldwide Windows Server shipments have remained pretty steady and Linux has gained ground at the expense of various Unix distributions.

This goes back to the earlier post about Linux in the small business market. It just ain’t happening, well not enough to register on various indicators. Linux is essentially a solid Enterprise offering but is replacing the legacy Unix systems. Obviously, the learning curve is much smaller for staff who have been working using Unix to switch to supporting Linux.

Makes you wonder whether Microsoft should even bother with it’s dubious “Get the Facts” campaign!

I provide my professional services on a pro bono basis to a Business in the Community Initiative called Leicestershire ProHelp. So, I was at a Charity today looking at their IT systems and generally being impressed by the services they provide to Young Homeless People. Many have to run the IT systems themselves or have volunteers support them. Unfortunately, none of these options tend to work particularly well in the long term.

Once Charities/Community Organisations are at a certain size, then they are essentially small businesses with all the things that go with that, filing accounts, human resources, client records, etc. It’s a constant battle to raise money to keep the organisation running and pay the salaries of workers. Just like many other small businesses, IT is not seen as core to the organisation. What I mean by this, is that support of the IT systems are rarely budgeted for in the fund raising. You might say that, money spent on IT/Support, is money not going to front line services. Well, I would contend that an organisation cannot function smoothly without a well managed IT system and cannot deliver its front line services effectively. It’s true, it happens, I’ve seen it. Project Managers/Coordinators loading anti-virus software, constantly restarting their dodgy ADSL router, setting up PCs, maintaining networks. This can’t be the best use of their time?!

I’m half way through reading Michael E. Gerber’s book ‘The E-Myth Revisted‘ - Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It. Eventhough I haven’t finished reading it, I’m recommending it as essential reading for small business owners. There’s nothing earth shattering in it but it gives you a way of analysing how you view your business and most importantly, how to view yourself! It gives you a way of refocusing yourself as an ‘Entrepreneur’, getting back that which first drove you to go it alone. As the back cover puts it “…Gerber draws the vital, often overlooked distinction between working on your business and working in your business.”

It makes a lot of sense to me. They’ll be no stopping me now!

Stop sucking me in to these Linux vs SBS wars! There’s an article on Vlad Mazek’s Blog comparing SBS and Linux. I feel compelled to comment because Vlad does have a point in regard to Linux for Small Businesses. It is the reason that I switched from mainly offering Linux as a Small Business solution to Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003. The main issue for me is the Groupware available for Linux is overall disappointing when trying to integrate with Windows Desktops. Most Small Businesses run Windows Desktops and that is not going to change anytime soon. The closest equivalent to Microsoft Exchange Server that I have seen is Open-XChange. Whilst this is a capabale product, the integration with Outlook using the Outlook Connector is flaky and doesn’t work with roaming profiles. Yes, you can use a web browser but why should a user have to go out of their email client to do some collaboration.

Vendors who support Linux such as Red Hat, IBM and to some extent Novell, have let Microsoft occupy the Small Business market with SBS 2003, which has stolen a march on Linux.

Looks like Cable & Wireless, who own Bulldog, are pulling out of the residential market. They say they are going to continue to support their existing customers. They are focusing Bulldog on providing wholesale broadband to other broadband service providers as part of LLU (Local Loop Unbundling). This is where companies, other than BT, are taking over the line that runs up to properties and being able to potentially provide higher broadband speeds. Now, who do you think is going to be the priority for Bulldog? I think you know the answer!

Choosing a broadband provider for a small business, especially ADSL services, is not an easy thing. It’s not just about cost. You have to consider whether the company you select is going to be around for the long term. That’s not an easy thing to judge for a small business, so it involves a bit of research. But then, even large companies like C&W, do the above out of the blue!

More ISPs are also putting ‘fair usage’ policies in to place (mainly for residential customers), so you might be better going for a ‘business service’. Also, look at getting static IP addresses. Many residential services provide dynamic IP addresses, which means if you want remote access back to the office, then this becomes more difficult to set up. There are ways around this but static IP addresses are so much less hassle for everyone.