The Sikh Geek

NEW! Online Peer Group Benefit for Small Business Specialist and Windows Small Business Server Partners

Microsoft announces Online Peer Groups for active Small Business Specialist partners that took the Windows SBS 70-282 exam.

What are the Online Peer Groups?

The online Peer Groups are an opportunity for Microsoft partners to learn, share and complete activities designed to improve their business and professional lives. The content will consist of these six topics over a 12-month period:

1.    Vision, Mission, Values
2.    Business Planning
3.    Sales and Marketing
4.    Budgeting and Finance
5.    HR and Metrics
6.    Vendor Engagement and Wrap-up

The online Peer Groups consist of up to 15 members partners per group.  The meetings are scheduled at uniform times.  Each meeting will focus on practical, useful content and tools that help you improve your business over the upcoming month and beyond. Homework and goal assignments are required and will supplement the learning.  Peer group sharing is also a key part of the best practice exchange and overall learning.

• Must be an active Small Business Specialist (SBSC)
• Passed the SBS 70-282 Exam
• Peer Groups will be conducted in English only (English proficiency required)
• Commitment to participate includes attending peer group sessions and completion of homework
• Pay $600 USD for participation

To learn more or to SUBMIT the nomination form, please visit: http://www.htgmembers.com/online_year1.htm. Form needs to be submitted latest by August 31, 2008 for participation in the FY09 Online Peer Groups. Submitting the form does not guarantee selection. Microsoft and Heartland Technology Groups reserve the right to decline a submission. All peer groups will be conducted in English only.

What Peer Group members have to say:

“Life is too short to learn all these things the hard way. Most of us got in to this business because we are technicians and have to learn how to be businessmen and managers. Sessions like this are the closest thing we can get to having a mentor or hiring a professional corporate President to run the company”

“I entered this program with no specific expectations other than to have the opportunity to interact with and learn from and with my peers. The HTG Online Peer Group experience was simply excellent. Our group had a good mix of firms, in terms of geographic location, company size and experience. This was one of the keys to the value I derived from the program. Most importantly, the program afforded me an opportunity to speak with my peers and interact with them in a very open and collaborative manner and I found that it really forced me to take a critical look at my business model. As a result, I will definitely implement changes in my business this year that are the direct result of my participation in this group. It was worthwhile to take time to work through the exercises, meetings and presentations in order to get the full benefit of a thought-provoking program. I highly recommend this program to any firm that works with SMB clients.”

I’ve heard quite a bit about Partners wanting resources for learning SBS 2008, web casts, training courses, etc. Now, whilst these are all valuable things there is really only one way to learn the product and that is to use it. You can download SBS 2008 RC1 and I have a post on getting a very cheap test server running virtualisation, so you really have no excuses!

Get Ready for the Windows Essential Server Solutions Launch with
Technical Training Series <https://partner.microsoft.com/40075344>
The November 12, 2008 launch for Windows Essential Server Solutions is
fast approaching! Prepare by attending Partner Academy Live technical
training sessions for Windows Small Business Server 2008 and Windows
Essential Business Server 2008 starting on August 15, 9am PDT with “The
Small and Midsize Business Server Platform: Which Is Right for Your
Customer? <https://partner.microsoft.com/40075267>”. Topics include
planning and installation, migration, security, management,
virtualization, and more for both Windows SBS 2008 and Windows EBS 2008

Last night was our AMITPRO Meeting and it was a chance to meet up with Emily Lambert, who has taken on the role of SBSC Lead for Microsoft (although that is not her entire role). I also got a chance to meet with Gareth Hall, the Windows Server Product Manager who has taken on SBS/EBS as well. It makes a lot of sense and more importantly Gareth holds the sign-off on the money especially in this launch year. Emily is a good choice for this role, I just hope we get some continuity now. The good thing is that the persistence by Gareth Brown and myself that Microsoft’s Small Business efforts should be through the SBS Groups is starting to pay off. Those that have kept the Community going month in, month out and evangelised the Programme deserve this support from Microsoft at the very least. It’s nice to see this recognition of our efforts and when I say "our", I mean all those SBSC Group Leads and Members who have kept the faith. It’s easy to keep the faith when you understand the value of Peer to Peer interaction. We discussed a lot of things but overall I feel very positive going forward. I liked Gareth’s approach and his honesty and also his willingness to push the Corporate boundaries. You know I like people who are willing to do that!

We had a very interesting presentation from Brightpoint and Orange who have joined with Microsoft to deliver a channel model for IT Resellers to provide Windows Mobile devices/Tariffs to end customers and provide an ongoing revenue stream. Brightpoint are the sole distributor of unbranded HTC devices in the UK. HTC are doing some great things especially with their new Diamond Touch devices running Windows Mobile 6.1. The offer looked very attractive to me as Brightpoint will basically do all the hard work for you and provide you with first line technical support as well. This offer has come about from feedback from some of the SBS Groups which Emily visited and then fed this information back to develop a Programme which I think potentially answers a lot of our needs around providing mobile services.

I saw this on JP’s Blog and what an amazing project NanoCity is in India and what makes it even better for me is that it’s planned to be only 25 km from the State Capital of Punjab, Chandigarh. The project plans to build a version of Silicon Valley the size of Manhattan! It is led by Sabeer Bhatia, him of Hotmail fame in conjuction with the State Government of Haryana. There are not many places in the World that would have this sort of ambition and more importantly the money to back it up. I’m guessing Sabeer chose a location near Chandigarh because he was born there.

I hope this project comes off and I look forward to having an office located there!

You’ve probably seen that SQL Server 2008 has RTM’ed and as it is a key component of SBS 2008 and EBS 2008, then you might want to find out more about what it can do. With the loss of ISA Server in the Premium Edition of SBS 2008, then quite a few people are wondering what the value proposition is going to be to justify the extra cost of the Premium version. Microsoft has included SQL Server 2008 Standard Ed (SQL Server 2005 in SBS 2003 R2 was the Workgroup Ed) and can be installed on the Server 2008 licensed server that also comes with SBS 2008. Even if you use virtualisation, then this is a great LOB platform.

However, knowing SQL Server in any sort of depth is not an easy thing and there is only so much you can know, but now is a great time to learn more about SQL Server 2008. One blog you should definitely follow is Andrew Fryer’s on SQL Server and check out the SQL Server 2008 Unleashed Event on 10th September down at TVP, Reading.

Georgina also has a list of the upcoming Technet Events which include two events focused on SBS 2008 and EBS 2008 in Bristol and London on 22nd and 29th October.

I  saw this article on the online Daily Telegraph, that plans for a Sikh Regiment had been scrapped by the British Army over fears of being considered "racist". It’s actually supported by UK Sikh Community leaders and I can safely say that it would be supported by most Sikhs in the UK. I think this would’ve sent a great signal as to the reality of integration into UK Society. Too often people question the loyalty of those who are from Immigrant families, especially in the post 9/11 and 7/7 era. In the US Sikhs wearing their turbans were mistaken for Taliban and attacked.

This move for a UK Sikh Regiment was reportedly backed by Prince Charles but obviously Political Correctness has won the day but that still doesn’t stop the British Army recruiting from Nepal for the Gurkha Regiment!

At a time when the British Army is struggling to recruit and is over-stretched with deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, then this would help to ease the burden.

The Daily Telegraph (not known for its Left Leaning view) also has an article on Sikh Gallantry and the fact that the British had a Sikh Regiment previously which also fought in the Two World Wars with 10 Victoria Crosses won and the Indian Sikh Regiment is the most decorated Regiment in the Indian Army. But you won’t hear their stories on Armistice Day on the televised broadcasts on Remembrance Sunday. Yet, we’ve had to fight to wear our Karas in State Schools and other religious symbols and that is why I say we’ve earnt our rights.

Whilst discussing potential test servers on the UKSBSG Yahoo Group, someone mentioned the HP ML115 G5 Server. Having looked at this I was amazed to find that it could be purchased for between £90 - 99 + vat. Now you might think, what kind of Server am I going to get for that kind of money? Well, you actually get a very capable machine with a single Dual Core AMD Opteron 214 Pocessor (AMD-V Virtualisation) at 2.2 GHz, 512 MB Memory, a single 160 GB SATA HDD, DVD +/- RW, Gigabit Ethernet, Micro Tower and a 3 Year Warranty. The Server is capable of taking up to 8 GB RAM through 4 DIMM Sockets and has an internal controller capable of RAID 0, 1, 5.

Having bought one, I added 4 GB of RAM from Crucial for about £75 + vat and went about installing Windows Server 2008 (x64) Enterprise Ed on it (full installation rather than Server Core). I then downloaded Hyper-V and configured this (which was very straight forward) and set up a Virtual Machine for Windows Server 2003 R2 (x86) Std Ed on it and allocated 1 GB RAM to it. In order for Hyper-V to run on the Server I had to go into the BIOS and go to the CPU Configuration (under Advanced Menu) and enabled the Secure Virtual Machine Mode. Without this option Hyper-V complains that the Hypervisor isn’t running. Performance is great and the CPU utilisation is barely registering 1-2% with about 1.64 GB RAM used but then the servers aren’t really doing anything at the moment.

I’m pretty impressed with the Hyper-V set up and the Management Interface, all very easy. I will probably put another 4 GB RAM in the server and fully populate the memory to its maximum of 8 GB. This now allows me to build a number of different VMs for testing and to play around with Hyper-V more.

So, for the price this is a great Server to do testing on for things like SBS 2008 and maybe even buy a few and try out EBS 2008? I’m thinking of getting another one to try out VMWare’s Free ESXi bare metal Hypervisor as people have found a way to get ESXi working on the basic ML115, but I’ll post more about that when I’ve done it but in the meantime checkout the TechHead Blog on this particular topic. Also, check out Dave Sobel’s blog for some great real world articles on Virtualisation.

The question I have is where is Microsoft’s bare metal Hyper-V? Anyone know anything?

As they say, the only constant thing in life is change! As of today, iQubed no longer exists as a separate entity in the Microsoft Partner Programme and has been merged with Ardent iSys. This means that Ardent iSys takes on all the assets and qualifications of iQubed and the Small Business Specialist designation. I’ve also asked some of my customers for the required references for the Networking Infrastructure Competency, actually we only need one more (as it had expired). Once the references are in place we’ll pay the fee and take Ardent iSys to Certified Partner status.

We’re busy putting in plans to support our developers in India to become Microsoft Certified Professional Developers (MCPD) and then complete the Custom Development Solutions Competency. I will then be visiting the team later on this year which I’m really looking forward to.

So, iQubed is still a limited company in its own right but the growth is happening around our outsourced software development business Ardent iSys Ltd. The feedback from clients has been very positive because of the emphasis we place on building relationships and being customer focused. The fact Ashish and I are here in the UK where are clients are based puts us in a great position over other Outsourcing Companies from India. But our plans are not to remain just that because if that was all that we did the business would not survive long term.

There will be further changes as I register a new domain name for the blog and start to talk more about Ardent iSys.

Here are details of the upcoming meetings for AMITPRO that Steve Wright has been busy organising as the new Group Leader, so put these in your diary and come along to the Arden Hotel next to Birmingham Airport and we meet at 17.00 for a 17.30 start in the Bar Area before going to the meeting room.

Next meeting is 12^th August

Speakers:

· Emily Lambert, Microsoft SBSC Programme Lead

· Microsoft Windows Mobile Team and Distributor Brightpoint (formerly Hugh Symmons) to discuss a potential mobile offering with Orange.

Emily will be the new point of contact for everything SBSC and is very keen to understand what we want/need/like/dislike about the SBSC programme, so you wont want to miss this meeting. Have your questions/suggestions/wish list to hand and let’s make sure MS understand we are the go to group for providing feedback on SBSC!

Sept 9^th Meeting

Provisional speakers:

· N-Able Technologies. www.n-able.com. IT Automation & Managed Services Solutions. Only 1 speaker this month as this is likely to be a longish presentation.

Oct 14^th Meeting

Provisional speakers:

· VSLnet: http://www.vsl-net.com/ : Managed Internet Solutions – start offering hosted solutions to your customers now or add to your existing portfolio.

Premier Finance and Leasing: Specialists in IT finance & lease. Gain a competitive edge over the competition by offering finance & lease to your customers and easily overcome their objections to cost.