Love helping with IT

It finally arrived just before Christmas, a shiny new example of cutting art tech otherwise known as the Zoostorm SL8. Just to recap, after using one for a couple of days at an exhibition I decided that it hit the spot for a lightweight portable device that it moved from the want to the need list.

My initial impression of the device is still good while abroad the high definition display was great to play movies on the plane. Having less bulk made it less cumbersome packing and looking less like a geek when you had to use it in the airport, bar, restaurant, etc.

Functionally it is very good:

• The touch screen is very responsive and you soon get used to loosing the tactile nature of a traditional keyboard.
• The specification is more than powerful enough to cope with the full Microsoft Office 2010 suite, which also made working off line simple by synchronising SharePoint workspace and Outlook cached mode.
• Native support of VPN protocols allows access to customers systems without having to change their technology stack or processes.
• Support for remote desktop and Citrix XenApp along with the display resolution allows for access to both remote desktops or published applications without having to change technology stack or processes.
• Using the device in portrait mode for reading documents, books or web pages allows for the whole page to be displayed removing the need to zoom or scroll around the screen.
• In meetings the device is quieter and less intrusive when taking notes and using OneNote synchronised with SharePoint allows these to appear on any device you are working with in a secure manor.
• With a good internet connection Lync and Skype calls work very well, although I would not recommend turning the camera on if you are talking on the beach!

While I would advocate the device to anyone looking for a good secondary business device, there are many niggles that would prevent it in its current form from replacing the need to carry my trusty HP TouchSmart TX2.

• The worst problem is battery life. When you are on the hoof for a day full of meetings and workshops you will be lucky to achieve 3 hours usage meaning carrying the power supply and finding a place to charge (which takes around 90 minutes from empty to full). Top up charging may cause unwanted memory effect rendering the device near useless in the longer term.
• The built in accelerometer is sensitive but the Windows 7 screen rotation feature takes some time to catch up. So moving to manually rotating the screen makes life easier.
• Many windows applications have not been designed to for use on a touch screen with small active areas making them hard to select. Some applications such as the Adobe Air installer does not respond to any touch screen input.
• Unfortunately the 3G model was not available for the first release and while the Wi-Fi connectivity is good it does mean having to attached the 3G dongle.

Cloud2 are already using these devices extensively for delivering electronic clinical systems and have a number of articles about the device:

Windows Slate Applications

Windows Slate FAQ

Windows 7 Touch Features

Slate – Hints and tips

I am awaiting the arrival of the docking station then will be looking at how well the device will integrate into an enterprise environment from the provisioning and support perspective

For those of you who are interested in the specification:

Options available later this year

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I wonder how many of my fellow architects have noticed a (welcome) change in conversations with customers since the recession?  For my own experience, the regular conversations I have with customers are now very much focused on the delivery of the project and service, where previous conversations were focused on/around the tools available.

Over the past few years you could almost guarantee that you’d be asked, “How can virtualisation be used?” or “Can we use cloud services?” or “Is there an open source alternative that can save us money?”

Today the conversations have taken a welcome return to ‘this is the problem and how do we tackle it? Can IT help?’

It seems customers now take for granted all the tools are available to be used appropriately and recognize there is no panacea or “one size fits all”

I’d be interested to hear if your own conversations have turned similar corners, and of your own experiences since the recession.

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As well as working independently we work in Partnership with a number of companies. We recently exhibited this relationship at the EHI Live event in November at the NEC with Four of these. It was the start of many conversations and people were very surprised at how well we all worked together. I’d like to tell you a little more about, how and why it works…

The Partnership Village brings together four IT companies to offer complete IT solutions to both the private healthcare sector and NHS throughout the UK.

It is formed of 4 independent companies – waxtie, Bliss Systems, Cloud2, and CMA Associates, who all provide IT services and products to the private sector and NHS. Our partnership recognises that no organisation, of any size, can hope to provide expertise in every technology or service and that it is efficient to specialise, but necessary to offer breadth. The huge amount of expertise in technologies and services that our partnership is able to offer provides end to end technology based services that no individual company could hope to match, without the overhead costs of a large single organisation.

Our customers benefit from the pool of expertise available, deliver best in class solutions.

Here is a quote I recently provided, “The Partnership Village is unique, in providing a whole approach to IT solutions and services we each bring specialist industry sector & technical knowledge along with many years’ experience in our own fields. Working as a Partnership enables each of our companies to collaboratively pool our experience and expertise, allowing us to engage any one of our partners at any stage of a project, and this enables us to deliver the whole IT solution and service. My own company, waxtie, are IT Infrastructure and Service Management specialists. Our customer led approach allows businesses to recognise their IT as a business enabler, bringing their business and IT together and allows us to deliver best in class solutions and services. We believe passionately in making IT simple and fit for purpose. Through listening and understanding our customer’s vision for the future we are able to create a strategic IT plan, deliver unrivalled and innovative framework solutions and services that are timely and flexible enough to grow alongside the business, and enable business growth. We have unearthed a fantastic opportunity to work together in a Partnership, and this has allowed each of our businesses to grow through the recession. Between us we have created over 40 jobs in the last 2 years. We’ve succeeded in competing with and winning business against large corporates and we believe the results, along with what our customers say about us, speak for themselves."

More details of all the companies can be found on the Partner Village website http://www.thepartnershipvillage.com/

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My last mobile provider had the worst possible customer service I have known, yet it is not uncommon to receive this level of service from many companies. All the niggles that you hate, being kept on hold, passed between departments, computer systems always down, constantly being talked at to buy new services, etc. The net result is you end up spending hours trying to get solved the most simplest of things.

But not all mobile companies are created equal. I recently moved all the business mobiles to Orange on a business sharer account. As you can expect the sales people were very helpful, prompt in their reply, knowledgeable in their product offerings and the move went very smoothly, no matter how many obstacles the incumbent placed in the path.

When the paperwork arrived there was a mistake on the account details. And here is the best piece of customer service I have received in some time. From the second I dialled the number to the moment I ended the call, it was resolved within 90 seconds!

No cross selling, no computer system down, no transfer to another department, no being placed on hold! Just simply solving the problem at hand in the most efficient way possible allowing me to get on with my day.

Thank you Orange.

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I love the Apple iPad, it has been on my gadget want list since it was first launched earlier this year. The sleek design, long battery life, light weight and now familiar operating system it shares with the iPhone along with a myriad of applications makes it a very attractive device for those of us on the hoof or simply wanting a quick way to read documents, emails and ebooks on a screen bigger than 3”, let alone watching movies and playing games.

All this as a consumer device is great, but thinking about the business arena it does not let me leave my laptop and for that alone it has failed to move to the need list. It is the simple things such as:

• Not allowing active content from websites which prohibit it being able to interact with a number of my clients systems
• Not capable of being able to use WebEx, Live Meeting or Go To meeting to attend that last minute conference call that is arranged
• You can edit Microsoft office documents but must send it to someone with a PC to ensure the styles and formatting is carried through
• Poor support for Remote Desktop

Over the past year my trusty HP Touchsmart tablet PC running Windows 7 has served me well for these functions along with all the tasks the iPad would provide, except the weight of the device provides arm ache if used for reading as a tablet for more than 30 minutes or so.

At the recent EHI Live event we were fortunate to spend 2 days working with the new ZooStorm SL8  with Windows 7 pre-installed, this devise was a dream to operate and sports many of the benefits of the iPad, the slate has a sleek design, light weight and best of all runs a familiar operating system that will work without me having to compromise.

This hit the need list and I have one on pre-order to arrive at the launch in the beginning of this month. We’ll be putting it through its paces looking at how it handles being encrypted, how well it works with Microsoft Direct Access, interfacing with Web Apps and full fat Office applications along with how it can be supported in an enterprise running System Centre Configuration Manager.

I’ll share our experiences and thoughts on the new ZooStorm SL8 in a future edition of our eNewsletter.

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It has been a very busy few months here at WAXTiE. Alongside delivering quality consultancy and professional services, we have had Helen and Dawn join the business extending our pool of experienced IT Service Managements and Technical Architects experts. 

On 8^th and 9^th November we exhibited at EHI Live at the NEC in the Partner Village with other like minded companies: Bliss Systems, Cloud2, Asckey Data Services and CMA Associates. Our partnership of companies recognizes that no organisation, of any size, can hope to provide expertise in every technology or service.  The huge amount of expertise in technologies and services that our partnership is able to offer, provides an attractive collaboration of companies that customers want to engage and do business with.

For those of you unfamiliar with EHI Live 2010 it is a 2 day conference and exhibition aimed at people who are involved with IT or e-Health throughout the healthcare provision. With a variety of guest speakers and exhibitors it was a great event for picking the brains of people across the industry, walking away with new ideas and contacts to help develop the future of healthcare services.

So how did we get there?

I have worked on information systems technical architecture and service delivery in healthcare for the past 6 years and it is something I am keen to continue in my new venture. This year we have successfully managed and delivered multiple projects that span the breadth of Infrastructure and Service Management services and we’ve tooled our customers up with the skills and experience needed to get the best from their IT operations.  We are fortunate to have provided our services to both private and NHS clients.

By finding trusted partners to work in collaboration with, we all benefit from the wider experiences and pool of expertise available.  We participate in joint ventures so when, for example the business reporting system you want needs to be securely accessible from everywhere, or when the new SharePoint collaboration system you purchased now needs the supporting eco system to keep it running, we are able to leverage the pool of knowledge and resources that our partnership offers, and deliver best in class solutions.

Our partnership, and how we have managed to develop such a cohesive and joined up way of working was the subject of many good conversations amongst delegate and visitors to EHI Live.  It wet appetites and got people thinking around how partnerships can work and the benefits to be derived.  Delegates and visitors shared their thoughts of how their services are being positioned for the future, and how the shape of future services within the NHS bares similarities to how our partnership already works successfully. 

Looking forward to continuing the conversations and delivering more benefit.

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Has anyone else had a really busy March? I will not complain as it has been wonderfully diverse.

As you are probably coming to realise I have been born without a sales or marketing gene, which is quite a handicap when you set out on a new venture. The feedback from Venturefest provided good proof that as a company we have a terribly mixed message and it does not target the audience we intended it for. So we are currently rewriting content and developing a new cleaner look to the website combining some social media elements as well.

Last week I helped setup a new 4 Networking business breakfast group in Wetherby with David Emslie (Get Marketing Advice) and Jo Elsy (TLC) at Le Bon Appetit. The venue was packed with people from all different kinds and sizes of companies, I am sure everyone enjoyed themselves and managed to take something worthwhile away from the meeting. I can say this as everyone who was there and not already a member of 4N joined the group!

Looking forward to the next meeting on the 6th April where David Emslie will be giving everyone some practical advice on Linkedin.

Thursday the 18th proved to be quite a busy day for networking spending the daylight hours at Kristina Grimes Raising the Bar event in Harrogate where my favourite guest speakers of the day were Rob Northfield and Andy Bounds. I even picked up Andy’s book The Jelly Effect (cheaper on Amazon but for £10 I am not complaining) and I am reading it most evenings.

In the evening it was a quick drive down the motorway to the Business Scene event at Thorpe Park with guest speaker Brad Burton.

It has not all been networking and events, we have gathered an amazing set of new clients to work with.

The month started with working on the desktop strategy for a major Northern airport. Currently their Citrix Presentation Server platform is aged and expensive to run in both licenses and man power. So the final decision is to continue to utilise server based computing in the virtualisation strategy but with a move to Microsoft Windows Server R2 Remote Desktop Services hosted on  Microsoft Hyper-V and once compatible with the RDS 64bit application deployment through Microsoft AppV.

Spent a lot of time performing structured diagnostics for Sheffield based organisation using Cisco Secure Desktop as the delivery technology securing the personal identifiable data that is used by it’s 3rd parties.

Performed a little diagnostics and corrective action on an Exchange mail routing problem for a valve manufacturer in Heckmondwike. Patched and the problem was gone.

And finally coming up with an Exchange mail and virtual platform strategy for a group of solicitors with 9 offices looking to improve the availability and resilience of their systems and operations so the 250+ users have a better experience along with easier and secure access to their data. As the majority of their in house IT team are predominantly skilled in Microsoft technology and they already have the skills to manage/support IP networks the systems architecture has been based on virtualising their current server estate onto Microsoft Hyper-V Server, implementing an iSCSI SAN such as the HP Lefthand or Dell Equillogic for the storage, migrate the mail services from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007 (they cannot wait until 2010 is out) with the intention of integrating with the Cisco Call Manager in the future, then manage the estate with System Center Operations manager/Configuration manager/virtual machine manager, the final part will be to ensure replication to their secondary location of all services for resilience and to form part of the Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery plan.

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As technology marches forth with gusto it is easy to get complacent and rest on what you know. Sometimes just taking a time out to write out what you have been working on over the past year, what you have learnt and how you have changed can provide an eye opener.

The modern day working patterns are making the work/life balance harder to maintain in an inflexible environment. The old 9:00 – 17:00 job no longer exists for IT professionals with SMS alerts for system failures available 24 hours a day, the amount of continuous professional development that must be maintained in this ever changing landscape, the mobility of information from email to the mobile phone or connectivity from home and the demands of the equally expectant business community whom without it IT would not exist.

I have a wonderful wife who complains at least weekly that I work too hard and should spend more time playing with the kids, yet she is the first to complain when the DIY task moves from weeks to months.

So what gives? A friend of mine has a very simple philosophy on the subject being “if you work a 50 hour week you get the rewards that brings, likewise if you choose a 40 or 30 hour week.” This goes nicely with his other pearl of wisdom that “if you do the job you are supposed to do rather than chase promotions or money both will come to you.” I have known these for some time and have exercised them in my working life, although I would probably not have summarised them quite as elegantly as he does.

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I am pleased to write that we successfully completed our very first exhibition yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed it. The day was alive with people, each had a good story and there was so many creative ideas that you could not help but be energised by it.

We accomplished our objective of planning an exhibition stand, manning it and gaining more experience of marketing, talking to people about what we do and being engaged in listening to others pain points.

Over 260 toy gliders were given away over the 9 hours, each brought a smile, many roused a memory and most started an engaging conversation. There has been a stream of emails thanking us for the planes with notes about how much they have been enjoyed in the office or with their children (and grandchildren).

Along with thanks to everyone who helped pull this together, we were all thankful to see a number of friendly faces who came to support us throughout the day including old colleagues from ioko, family, friends and many members of 4 Networking in Yorkshire. This was on top of a stream of well wishing messages coming in every media format imaginable.

Also there has been some constructive feedback that we can work with to help shape our marketing in the future. Things such as our message completely missed our target audience and to understand the differences between setting up a shell stand for a regional show compared with a national trade expo.

We were able to spend a little time with Grant Leboff during a round table discussion with 5 other Innovation Showcase companies where he answered questions specific to our situations about sales, the process and changes that are currently occurring that challenge the traditional, well documented methodologies. To summarise extremely briefly you need to get

yourself known so that when someone needs something they will automatically think of you and that is not through pushing advertising onto people but by networking and the creation of good content. He has a new book due out this summer Sticky Marketing, which will explain better than I can this shift and if it is like his first book will be a best seller.

The evening awards ceremony and dinner was very good. During the meal I was engaged in conversation with Dr Morgan Denyer a professor at the University of Bradford who has developed a technique which could detect the possibility of a person developing cancer cells. His story is very entertaining and I hope he achieves his goals of securing funding to be able to continue the work. A quick search of the web provided this brief paper published by Yorkshire concept but he can be contacted on 01274 233569 if you know anyone who may be able to help.

My heart went out to Claire from Chillipeeps when she was announced as the runner-up for the investment competition. Anyone who has had children will instantly realise how useful her product is. I know she will continue to fight to bring it to the mass market and I wish her success.

It must have been a tough decision for the judges to decide the winners from each area as the ideas and presentations were fantastic. I am sure the prizes will be put to good use and we will be seeing some more successful Yorkshire founded companies.

Anyhow, back to reality and if you want an aeroplane or better a discussion about your IT strategy and operations please get in touch.

(Dan, Martin, Sarah & Dan)

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With just over a week to go to the exhibition, the pressure is on to pull everything together into a professional looking exhibit.

For those who missed my previous post, we are taking part in the Innovation show case at Venturefest Yorkshire 2010 taking place on the 10th February at York racecourse. See Innovation Show case Exhibitors @ Venturefest 2010 for more details.

We have a standard exhibition shell stand 2m x 0.5m to provide a virtual shop window into our business alongside 37 fellow Innovation show case exhibitors.

It has to be said that for those not interested in IT the subject is boring and frustrating. So the big challenge is to make sure people can relate to the messages and steer clear of the geek speak.

What have we got so far?

Ken has created a fantastic backdrop in blue that shimmers in the light.

Trevor has sorted out lighting that can attach to the top of the stand without damaging it. We will be using energy efficient bulbs to bathe the stand in 240W of light for only 40W of power.

Pixel Monster has create an intro for the show reel. See the embeded You Tube video.

YSLV have confirmed the hire of the floor mounted stand and ISO mount.

Alison 06Design has created the artwork for the banner.

I have completed writing the fact sheets and tech guides, giving a business view of the subject on one side along with some technical information on the reverse, so everyone can take something from them. The ladies at Brighter Marking have proof read the copies and anglicised them where necessary.

Sarah has created a number of tip cards to hand out to people, giving them an area of their IT to think about.

We’ll be giving away gliders to everyone we can make appointments with.

And lastly we have had business cards printed.

Still outstanding is the design of the fact sheets, printing of the banner, printing of fact sheets, adding the 52 weekly IT tips to the website along with PDF versions of the fact sheets.

It feels like we will be ready in time but there is still plenty to keep us occupied in the coming week. Especially with the day job as well.

So if I have piqued your interest or you are mildly curious to find out how this will come together, come along on the 10th and meet up with Dan, Dan, Sarah, Becky or myself.

Until then I will keep you posted on developments here.

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