Cloudy with a chance of global domination and what to do with your old IT stuff

Cloudy with a chance of global domination

I’m off to Microsoft’s Partner Conference the week after next. It caused me to reflect on last years Partner Conference and I was reminded of the 2 key messages – the launch of Windows 7 (or the sweeping under the rug of Windows Vista) and the shift toward Cloud Computing. It’s amazing that in 12 short months both of those messages have had such an impact on the global IT and business community. Windows 7 has proven to be a good platform and Vista is rarely spoken of – and If we had any doubts about the presence of Cloud Computing and where our data is ultimately headed Microsoft demonstrated by showing us an aerial view of one of their enormous “server farms”or better known as data centres. I can’t find the exact pic they showed us last year but there is an excellent shot here http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/hiner/?p=1834 and a pretty good article too. It’s not just Microsoft in this space either, Google’s entire business model is based on and in the cloud, and Apple aren’t far behind on building these mega complexes.

Is this the end of the server as we know it?

In the long run probably yes. These farms are popping up everywhere all over the US and Europe, some of which hold up to 300,000 servers (!!! yeh i know) in the short term however there are a lot of questions about cloud particularly security and performance as well as cost/benefit. This is a broad topic and one I hope to blog about soon, but some good fundamental questions to ask yourself before heading into the cloud would be “Who has my data?” “what is my long term financial commitment?” “Where is my data? Singapore? Australia? US? Other?” “Will my data shift without my knowledge?” “Can I move from one provider to another?”.. to name a few. Of course if you have any other questions we’re happy to try and answer those for you..

What to do with your old IT stuff

Whether you’re moving into the cloud or just moving on up with a new laptop or server you’ve probably asked yourself once or twice what to do with your old IT stuff. This is a question we’re asked regularly at I Know IT. Sadly, charities won’t generally take old computer equipment because they don’t have the resources or skillsets on board to maintain them and this goes the same for schools. You can try and clean up your machines for a friend or family member or you can dispose of them environmentally. We have 2 methods for this – the first is with HP, HP offer a free pick up program for old HP servers which you can find here: http://h20423.www2.hp.com/program/suppliesrecycling/au/en/hardware/index.asp and if it’s not a HP server or not a server at all we recommend using a company called 1800 ewaste, these guys charge a fee to pick up your old equipment but they dispose of it environmentally www.ewaste.com.au . If you need a hand seperating what kinds of equipment you should keep and what can be sent away to one of these services just let us know and we’ll see what we can do.

Big Patch Tuesday

Last week saw Microsoft’s biggest ever update of their operating systems such as Windows XP, 7 and Windows Server. Our managed clients would have received our first ever update via the Client Notification System we developed. Some experienced a slight degradation in service but systems should be running a lot more smoothly now. Microsoft released these updates due to a number of security problems with their platforms. I Know IT provides a Patch Management service to ensure all of the latest security updates and product enhancements are tested and then installed uniformly across the business. A little more on our website http://iknowit.com.au/index.php?server_packages