What are your Security Priorities?

Throughout each year, Gartner surveys hundreds of enterprise security end users for its IT Key Metrics benchmarking database, and each year Gartner publishes a high-level view of its findings.

Here's a look at the "Top 10 Security Priorities, Worldwide" from this year's survey, based on respondents' answers:

1. Intrusion Detection and Prevention
2. Patch Management
3. Data Loss Prevention
4. Antivirus
5. User Provisioning or Identity Management
6. Vulnerability Assessment
7. Firewalls
8. Security Information and Event Management
9. Network Access Control
10. Remote-Access or Site-to-Site VPN

Technologies that were mentioned but did not make the "Top 10 include storage/server encryption, email encryption, strong authentication, web filtering, spam filtering, and "integrated security appliance".

For the third year in a row, intrusion prevention tops the list. Patch management moved way up, from #8 to #2.

Doe's this allign with your 2010 Security Strategy?

Or indeed, do you need help formulating your IT Security Strategy? If so call us on 0845 260 5757 and ask to speak to Charles Barratt or email me

Moving to Windows 7? Try it the easy way!

Upgrading a desktop OS isn’t always easy. Typically, users have the OS, integrated with lots of applications, favourites, files, folders and other profile-related goodness. And when we move from Windows XP to Windows 7 – well we have a whole load of issues to consider from the profile. With that in mind, separation is a good thing! Separating the OS from the apps, which technologies like App-V, or XenApp can help with one part of it, and by combining this with capabilities like AppSense User Environment Manager, things improve even further.

For technologies like virtual desktops and specifically, Pooled Virtual Desktops (where users can get a random virtual desktop each day of the week!), the use of separation becomes near-essential.

So with this in mind you really should consider the value that Microsoft and Citrix bring when they are joined together, this video really highlights how easy it is to migrate your desktop, enjoy!

Upgrading to Windows 7, this could be a nice option for you. Contact charles.barratt@Dataplex-systems.com for more information.

What does UC have to do with Collaboration?

Time and time again collaboration and UC are commonly mentioned in the same breath, but why?

Collaboration means "working together," exchanging information, and "communicating" with people and processes in various forms. What UC as a concept is trying to do is make the choice of interaction more flexible for the parties involved.

So, depending on the circumstances, preferences, or whatever, people can communicate and exchange information in real-time or asynchronously. Obviously, it would be nice to do everything in real-time, face-to-face, but that's not the real world and it can be expensive in a global environment. So, with the flexibility of UC, we can try to come as close as possible selectively with real-time interactions such as phone calls, IM, voice/video conferencing, when they are really needed, not all the time!

We all know how inefficient it is to have a face-to-face meeting or conference call with people who have not done their homework and reviewed all the necessary information to discuss ahead of time. UC supports that asynchronous communication requirement as part of collaboration with "UC Messaging" (commonly called "Unified Messaging"), but also facilitates the dynamic transition to real-time interactions  when necessary and "as soon as possible," based on individual availability and accessibility, better known as "presence."

UC is also not just about person-to-person contacts, but also about pro-active process-to-person "notifications" that enable optional interactions with automated business process and service applications and access to live assistance when necessary.  This approach is coming to life under the label of "Communications Enabled Business Processes" or CEBP, and will be particularly effective with the growing market of mobile recipients that carry "smart-phones" for increased accessibility and availability.

So, yes, things are still evolving, but we just need to make sure we understand where we are really heading to when we talk about "Collaboration" and "Business Communications."

Want help on your UC strategy?  Then collaborate with Dataplex, contact us here: charles.barratt@dataplex-systems.com

Microsoft 2010 Products Hit Beta Milestone

This week Microsoft hit a milestone for products being released in 2010, this week Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Project 2010 and Visio 2010 have all reached the Beta milestone and are now available for download.

On Monday 9 November, Microsoft Exchange 2010 became the first product launch in wave of innovation across the Office system. The first half of 2010 will see this launch wave continue with the release of Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Project 2010 and Visio 2010 .

Microsoft Office 2010 provides rich and powerful new ways to deliver work. New features include enhanced tools, customisable templates, photo editing and the ability to work with multiple people from different locations at the exact same time using new co-authoring capabilities. By offering more ways to access files from virtually anywhere, Office 2010 gives users greater control.

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 enables organisations to connect and empower people through an integrated set of rich features. SharePoint 2010 facilitates business collaboration in its broadest sense and helps colleagues, partners and customers to work together in new and effective ways. Learn More

Microsoft Project 2010 provides teams and organisations of all sizes with the right project collaboration tools, and a pathway to step up to more advanced Project and Portfolio Management capabilities as their needs evolve. Learn More

The advanced diagramming tools of Microsoft Visio 2010 help you simplify complexity with intuitive and professional-looking diagrams, dynamic and data-driven visuals and new ways to share these on the Web in real-time.

Got to admit it, Office 2010 with Windows 7 – is better together!!

VMware vCenter CapacityIQ

It seems that over the last few months VMware has covertly developed and delivered plug in modules to vCenter to further enhance vSphere deployments.

One of the products that we are seeing adding great value to your deployments is vCenter CapacityIQ.

vCenter CapacityIQ is a vCenter plug-in for proactively monitoring the capacity of your VMware Infrastructure. vCenter CapacityIQ monitors cpu, memory and disk I/O usage and predicts future demands for resources.

vCenter CapacityIQ allows you to show impacts in capacity as well as forecasted capacity based on changes you predict will happen to the environment.

From the VMware site:

‘VMware vCenter CapacityIQ is a value-add component of the vCenter family of management solutions, providing capacity management capabilities for virtualized datacenter or desktop environments. CapacityIQ integrates seamlessly with VMware vCenter Server, ensuring that your virtualized infrastructure capacity is always predictable and efficiently used.

Eliminate waste by identifying any unused or over-allocated capacity Reduce operational overhead by automating routine capacity monitoring and management tasks Minimize business risk of outages or failures resulting from capacity bottlenecks and shortfalls.

So not only useful if you are adding additional VM’s to your architecture but surely a must for VMware View deployments…..

Office 2010 Beta is here

It's becoming more and more clear that Google is breathing down the neck of Microsoft when it comes to office and document-building software.

Microsoft isn't taking this threat sitting down, though. In July, it announced Office 2010. It hosts an array of new features, with the biggest being a full online version of Docs, PowerPoint, and Excel.

Now Microsoft is taking the next step to bringing Office 2010 to market the release of the Microsoft Office 2010 Beta.

The beta doesn't boast a ton of differences from the Technical Preview that Microsoft released back in July. However, as you might expect, it is more stable and fixes bugs found in the technical preview.

If you're interested in the beta, you can download it here after registering.

If nothing else see how many slide transitions you can put into a deck to turn the audience on its head!  Childish, but fun all the same!

Google Chrome OS Looming?

Its being reported that Google is planning to hold a special Chrome OS event at its headquarters in Mountain View, CA this Thursday morning. The plan is to give some technical background information as well as show off some demos. More notably, they will be giving a "complete overview" of the new OS, which they say will launch next year.

Sundar Pichai, Google's VP of Product Management and Matthew Papakipos, Google Engineering Director for Google Chrome OS will be speaking at the event. And there will be a Q&A session afterwards.

So as they are holding an overview meeting with a clearly defined road map for release it looks like they have made some serious ground on this since the announcement earlier this year.

When we know more, we will let you know more!

Google to Speed up the Internet?

Google is apparently in the early stages of a research project that appears to aim as high as perhaps replacing the HTTP protocol, the fundamental technology that essentially makes the World Wide Web possible.

In a somewhat obscure post on the Chromium blog, the development branch of their Chrome browser, Google reveals they've been working on a new protocol dubbed SPDY for "SPeeDY" for its goal of making the web faster.

While HTTP is an "elegantly simple protocol" that has powered the web since 1996, the tone of Google's post is almost patronizing, as if HTTP were our doddering old uncle that's had his day and needs to be put out to pasture. Then again, Google's hubris is perhaps warranted as one of the only companies with enough clout and resources to indeed spur on the "evolution of websites and browsers" with an entirely new protocol designed to speed up the communication between web servers and clients.

They reveal they've already got a prototype web server and a Chrome client with built-in SPDY support that they've been testing in the lab. With these tools they've reportedly been able to see an up to 55% speed increase in page loading, and feel like the project is now stable enough to warrant soliciting feedback from the web community. The SPDY documentation is now available, as well as the source code. Google encourages feedback on the new protocol in the Chromium Google Group.

Google Wave – Follow Me!

Borrowing a page from the Twitter handbook, Google Wave has just introduced the concept of “following” and “unfollowing.” The feature applies to public Waves, which, as the name suggests, are Waves that anyone can see.

Here’s how it works according to Google: “When you see a public wave that you would like to get updates on, you can chose to follow it by hitting the follow button in the wave panel toolbar. You can remove these waves from your inbox by hitting the "archive" button, but when there is an update they will pop back in. You can switch between following and unfollowing a wave as much and as often as you like.”

Information overload has been one of the early criticisms of Google Wave, so this move makes sense as the team behind it continues to evolve the product. Meanwhile, the potential utility of following Public Waves is intriguing, not completely dissimilar from the idea of following a List on Twitter - find public Waves that you're interested in, follow them, and get updates as they happen.

Google hints that there's more to come with the follow concept. "Following is the first step towards a set of new tools for managing waves in your inbox We're also thinking of expanding the following concept to let you follow people, groups, and searches," they write.

Don’t Make /tmp too Small!

The default GUI install of ESX4 makes the /tmp partition 1GB and even then it is only categorized as optional.  I've been asked several times why you'd want to make /tmp any bigger.  If it fills up you just clear it out, right?

Well here's a good reason.  It seems that VUM (vCenter Update Manager) uses /tmp.  When you stage updates, VUM copies all the patches to the folder /tmp/updatecache.  It does the sensible thing and checks that there is enough space first, but if it can't then it tries to create a ramdisk.  I don't think I'm that keen on my server's ram being tied up with patches.  Sometimes you might want to stage the patches days in advance of an outage.  

Anyway, with ESX3 I know the patches could accumulate to quite a size (a couple of GBs if you left them a few months). I hear ESX4 is better in this regard, however I would suggest keeping at least 2GB for /tmp during the install.

VUM isn't a crucial service.  You can always manually copy patches to a different partition, but VUM (especially the new staging feature) is a real time-saver so I know I'll be making sure there is plenty of space in /tmp.

Bing out of Beta in the UK

Whilst the internet has drastically grown in depth and complexity over the last decade, search engines had not followed the same evolution, leaving users with ten blue links to find their way in this always more complex maze. But in June, Microsoft launched Bing, a faster way to make more informed choices.

On November 12^th, Microsoft Bing moved out of Beta.

Over 60 engineers, based in Soho, have done an in-depth job at localising Bing global experience for British users in just 5 months. Under Jordi Ribas' direction, the team has crunched historical algorithmic results to identify local intents and integrated them into Bing unique categorised search.

Microsoft worked with local partners to enrich the search results with highly relevant information that could address consumer passion points. For instance, thanks to a partnership with TopTable, searching Bing for a restaurant in Hammersmith will provide you with restaurant ratings and one-click booking option.

Into football?

Type your favourite Premiership team and Bing provides you with an Instant Answer with the latest fixtures thanks to SkySports.

Interested in celebrities?

The Twitter integration enables you to keep pace with the latest gossips of your local heroes.

But the engineers did not stop there. They also enriched the index with UK URLs and taught the algorithm how to cope with information such as partial postcodes, local abbreviations and acronyms, common British misspelling and alterations, etc.

This results in a better understanding of the semantic context of queries.

So will you be Binging?

Windows 7 Launch Sales up 234% over Vista

The NPD Group has some figures now from the Windows 7 launch, and are reporting that the new Microsoft operating system is selling well or at least, much better than Vista did at its launch. In the first few days of sales, Windows 7 units in the U.S. moved 234 percent faster than Vista did in its equivalent launch window.

Of course, in many ways the bar wasn't set too high. Still, Microsoft must be feeling relieved at the good sales clip for what is still, after all, its core business.

Unfortunately, thanks to pre-sales discounts and general lack of promotional effort behind the Ultimate version, revenue growth wasn't quite as impressive. Looking strictly at dollar sales, Windows 7 is up 82% over than the equivalent time period for Vista.

The NPD reported the top-selling versions of the software and their average prices for the week ending October 24 as follows:

1. Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade / $76

2. Windows 7 Pro Upgrade / $147

3. Windows 7 Home Premium Family Pack 3 User Upgrade / $149

In a tough economic time for packaged software, Windows 7 appears to be faring fairly well. The PC hardware sales picture wasn't nearly as rosy, however. Although total PC sales were up 49 percent in year-over-year sales and a full 95 percent over the previous week, the overall growth rate was not as high as during the Vista launch window, which saw a 68% jump in year-over-year and 170% gain over the week prior to Vista's launch. Vista had a slight advantage with its January release however, which typically shows a larger PC sales footprint than the month of October.