Welcome to the personal blog of Keith Bucknall

Technology, Infrastructure and Cloud Focused

Blog Page

Skype for Business

By Leave a Comment

So, a new version of Lync client and server, a new version of Skype all mashed and integrated post the Skype acquisition of 2011.Skype for business  This is a great move from Microsoft to bring their technologies together and I would assume in 2015 that the consumer version of Skype will get a face lift as well.

 

If you are a Lync fan then you will know the move from 2010 to 2013 this brought limited Skype integration with the ability to add Skype accounts (if you had registered with Skype through an email address and not like me had an original Skype account!)  I must say I like the new interface  – see below.

 

This release is scheduled for early 2015 with Lync Server being replaced with Skype for Business Server and updated client.  If you use Lync online or Office365 then this will get updated automatic and I assume the new client will appear within the software section of your Office365 portal.

 

Further details can be found out on the Microsoft Office Blogs here – http://blogs.office.com/2014/11/11/introducing-skype-business/ 

Microsoft’s top priorities for 2014

By Leave a Comment

Recently I have been researching some of Microsoft’s trends and some of Satya Nadella’s strategy and came over this article a few months old from cnet (for the full article click here) which explains where the company’s focus is and the reason for the great Cloud first, Mobile first vision.  Below is a small graphics that illustrates this – where do you think your strategy and your company’s vision fits into this?  Are you looking at any of this technologies:

Microsoft Trends and Priorities for 2014
Microsoft Trends and Priorities for 2014

For me my interested, skills and focus are around the following:

  • Windows 8 Tablets – for me here the focus is around how the hardware market are going to utilise Windows 8 (bring on 8.2 BTW as a menu is back) to remove the laptop & tablet (or fablet!) 2015 will be the focus on looking at Windows 10 and seeing if the Windows 7 Enterprises will make a 7 – 10 jump or Windows 7 ate (“8) 9 to give 10!!  get it..!!
  • Office 365 – The SaSS offering from Microsoft that originated many years ago it BPOS and now O365.  This is a very strong platform for all businesses, large or small (and individuals) and a platform I have very keen this.  I can see this sitting and running on Microsoft Azure at some point in 2015.
  • Enterprise Social – I am starting to run a small pilot at an enterprise to see how the users will adopt this and what the take would be from senior executive members.  For me this is about SharePoint, Yammer and Lync working in harmony together and using it from team collaboration (both business and social) but also about making static intranets more interactive and dynamic.
  • Consumer IT – Well I see BYOD turning into Desktop-As-A-Service and then really it does not matter what technology end users bring in as you have centrally secured your desktop estate, close to your applications.
  • Hyper-V – Hypver V is catching VMware quickly and when you carry out a cost benefit analysis you may be surprised on the VMware support costs alone, let alone the up front license costs.

 

 

Microsoft Surface Pro 2 VS Surface Pro 3 Hands On Review

By Leave a Comment

Surface Pro 3

So the other night I started to configure and setup my Microsoft Surface Pro 3 (i7,512SSD, 8GB) while working on my Microsoft Surface Pro 2 and thought it would be wise to give my opinion 3 days into running with the new 3.  For the people that do not know me I am a Surface fan and have been since the orginal as I do feel the “fablet” (or whatever the media are coining now) concept is the way of the future and of course a big apple fan.

Having said that I have been extremely disappointed with the Pro 3.  I had been expecting high hopes for this, especially as we had a demo unit that worked perfectly.  But recently in an order of 3 of these  1 of them suffered the dreaded heat issues that have been reported all over the net – see here for details (to name a few!).

Microsoft should really have waited for the new core i7’s (core M processors) with lower power voltage to come out before attempting such a high powered CPU to go into a small form factor with limited fan support.

Another issue was how to I get my 50GB OneDrive account migrated without downloading the whole drive again – this will be a future post as I am still working it.  My initial thoughts had been to simply copy or pre-seed the data from the source Surface 2 to the target Surface 3 but that  plan I am still working on.

Having said all this I am still a fan and I would still buy a Pro 3 but only on the following terms:

  1. Decide on a core i5 or i7, here is a great guide to way the two but personally now I would go for an i5.  30% additional performance for 70% additional cost value .
  2. Decide on the storage which was a key factor for me and the 512SSD only comes with the i7 model – so no choice for me.
  3. They keyboard is great, such a nice Type keyboard from the Pro One (but more responsive keys and feedback) with the great track pad as the Pro One – yes they have removed the stupid fabric track pad – a big win here as you do not need to carry a USB or bluetooth mouse around with you.
  4. The screen is such an improvement, higher resolution, more screen real estate and great for working on.  The Pro One and Two I found hard to work for longer than 2-3 hrs but this is a dream on the Pro 3.
  5. Pen – not that I have tested this yet but the ability to use a stronger pen, better handling and designed with OneNote then great – lets hope Evernote can start using this as well.

In short all I need is a Surface for work, Mac for home and gaming PC (but the wife won’t let me!) and at present it would be the Surface Pro 3, roll on the Surface Pro….!!!!

 

Where is storage 3.0 going and some thoughts

By Leave a Comment

I wanted to share a number of thoughts with you all of which came out of an interesting evening session I attended looking at Storage 3.0 and how today’s startups see their technology and infrastructure, which got me thinking….

I have had the please of meeting Ash Ashutosh a number of times now and have to say my hat goes off to him, I would love to spend more time getting some coaching tips.  Ash is the CEO and founder of Actifio (and AppIQ to name a few), a Copy Data Protection company – why is this important you may say?  Really this goes down to his vision many years ago of what would happen to storage = what vmware did to server hardware – aka virtualise it, is where Ash not only saw and predicted Storage 2.0 but also 3.0.

In my opinion (BTW I am not a storage guru so some of this may be factual incorrect!) Storage 2.0 was layering software feature and bolting on modules, even 3rd party hardware that vendors had acquired and integrated.  Where Storage 3.0 is now about virtualising the storage, in some cases on consumer grade disks – wow think of that my £25k additional disk shelf / magazine / stack is now only £3k full of consumer grade (normally high capacity) drives!  Now granted the longevity of these disks is a lot lower but then again weigh that up against the costs, to quote – “cheap and deep storage”.

I have been saying for some time that everything will turn into software at some point, software defined networking, orchestration and now storage.  Can you ever imagine within an IT department where are the costs – Infrastructure, why?  Because it is complex, no one (wants to) understands it!  They think it is easy! For the last 2 years I had thought (and wish I started my own business in it) if companies could make infrastructure simple and I do not mean IaaS or PaaS, provide it in a box pre-packed on a consumed basis – what would this do – firstly you have known reference architecture templates built into the orchestration layer, you deploy the CRM system in 2hrs (rather than 9 months!), ypu have the servers virtualised, you have the instant backup and recovery and then you have (wait for it) any storage you like – be it fast (Flash, FC, in memory), slow (NL-SAS), expensive (no) or cheap.  Then all this is packaged into a OpEx based service – wow.

Chatting to people I was interested in a story from some ex-MIT people that have built start-ups and their views on internal infrastructure and systems  is none (excluding product development etc) because you can just consume cloud based services.  One person commented on all I have is wifi, a firewall and a switch!  Why, to reduce the CapEx – why buy a £5k server and depreciate this over 3-5yrs when you can subscribe to a service.  Just look at how facebook use their own consumer grade servers built on open source and standards – this saved them a staging $1b, Backblaze in the US did the same for their cloud back system.

This is why us as IT departments need to change into the ITaaS model, be a service provider within the company and as I always say the role of IT is changing…

 

The role of IT

IT infrastructure for data protection – post presentation review

By Leave a Comment

Computer Weekly Logo

Around 6 weeks ago I had the pleasure of being invited to a Computer Weekly event that CW500 run for exclusive members, the title of this session was “IT Infrastructure for Data Protection” and presented alongside Mark Skilton from Warwick Business School and Mike Cope, IT Director at University College London.  We were hosted by Bryan Glick, Editor-in-Chief of Computer Weekly – many thanks Bryan and the turn out was very good.

My slide deck was focused around an IT transformation programme I am heading up how we are protecting data not just through application or data migrations but what feature sets and technology are we implementing to address  issues like Dropbox, wireless or BYOD devices.

I must admit I was surprised on how this went, excluding the slight issue with my slide deck and automatic transitioning of them!

Anyway here is the article on me – http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/CW500-IT-infrastructure-for-data-protection

Here is the video – http://www.computerweekly.com/video/CW500-Keith-Bucknall-Head-of-Strategy-Architecture-Infrastructure-Equity-Insurance-Group