This week saw the official launch of WESS (Windows Essential Server Solutions) from Microsoft this week.

WESS consists of two products:

Small Business Server 2008
Essential Business Server 2008

Small Business Server 2008 essentially costs of the same components as the previous 2003 version (with a couple of security additions).  These include:

Windows Server 2008
Exchange Server 2007
Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0
Windows Server Update Services
Forefront Security for Exchange Server
Windows Live One Care

There is also a premium version.  However this requires a second server to be installed & the additional licences will include a second copy of Windows Server 2008 and a copy of SQL Server 2008 Standard.

The Essential Business Server product is aimed at slightly larger organisations (typically in excess of 25 users) and would be configued on multiple servers.

Server 1 (Management Server)
Windows Server 2008
System Centre Essentials 2007
Windows Sharepoint Service 3.0

Server 2 (Messaging)
Windows Server 2008
Exchange Server 2007
Forefront Security for Exchange

Server 3 (Security)
Windows Server 2008
Exchange Server 2007
Forefront Threat Management Gateway

Server 4 - Premium Version Only (Database)
Windows Server 2008
SQL Server Standard 2008
 

Novotronix are pleased to be deploying Small Business Server 2008 to our clients & we will be releasing more information relating to a client in Birmingham shortly.

It is interesting to see how techology seems to evolve exponentially. The Wright brothers first flight in 1903 only lasted a mere 7 seconds and yet in just about 50 years we made our first manned flight into spac. When ENIAC came into existence in 1943 it was the size of two football fields and had the computational capacity which can easily be rivaled by the simplest of calculators today and yet in a little over 60 years, computers have become extremely powerful and extremely small in size. Software development has come a long way from simple structred programs on the 60s to complex n-tier service oriented enterprise level applications. I was musing the other day as to where our future lay... not just as end users but as developers. What is the major technological advancement that is currently making its way out of laboratories around the world? Ironically, I was sitting in my lawn looking at the clear sky (which in itself is an exception) and looking at the clouds drifting by... clouds.

Cloud computing is no longer some experimental concept which is being prototyped in a remote lab under a rock. Cloud computing is today's reality and it is here to stay. But interestingly enough, cloud computing is not a recent discovery as it might seem. The idea of cloud computing was first theorized by John Mcarthy in 1960, when he suggested that one day computing resources might be supplied to households by centralized distributors like other utilies like gas and electric. In more recent years, Amazon has been backing the cloud computing idea since the early 2000.

According to a 2008 paper published by IEEE Internet Computing "Cloud Computing is a paradigm in which information is permanently stored in servers on the Internet and cached temporarily on clients that include desktops, entertainment centers, table computers, notebooks, wall computers, handhelds, sensors, monitors, etc.

Cloud computing is a general concept that incorporates software as a service (SaaS), Web 2.0 and other recent, well-known technology trends, in which the common theme is reliance on the Internet for satisfying the computing needs of the users. For example, Google Apps provides common business applications online that are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on the servers. Google's Online office applications such as Google Docs and Google Spreadsheet are prime examples of this idea. Considering the ongoing was between Microsoft and Google one would assume Microsoft would not be left far behind in the battle for cloud computing. I did a little searching around and I found something rather interesting: Microsoft intends to make the next version of Office (Office 14) a web based application as well instead of the usual desktop application that its predecessors have been. No doubt google's online apps have helped to shape Microsoft's change in strategy.

I initially assumed that this would undoubtedly be some kind of extension to the existing MOSS. But considering the nature of the apps themselves, to be deployed over the internet will possibly millions of users, this would probably not be the best way to do it. Sharepoint has always been more about web content management than document management. I looked around further and found my answer - Azure

Microsoft's Azure is a cloud computing platform built on top of the .NET 3.5 Framework. The Azure Services Platform uses a specialized version of Windows Server, Windows Azure to run its "fabric layer" — a cluster hosted at Microsoft's datacenters that manages computing and storage resources of the computers and provisions the resources (or a subset of them) to applications running on top of Windows Azure. The platform also includes five services — Live Services, SQL Services, .NET Services, SharePoint Services and Dynamics CRM — which the developers can use to build the applications that will run in the cloud. A client library, in managed code, and associated tools are also provided for developing cloud applications in Visual Studio. Scaling and reliability are controlled by the Azure Fabric Controller so the services and environment don't crash if one of the servers crash within the Microsoft datacenter and provides the management of the user's web application like memory resources and load balancing.

The Azure Services Platform can currently run .NET Framework applications written in C#, while supporting the ASP.NET application framework and associated deployment methods to deploy the applications onto the cloud platform. Two SDKs have been made available for interoperability with the Azure Services Platform: The Java SDK for .NET Services and the Ruby SDK for .NET Services. These enable Java and Ruby developers to integrate with .NET Services.

The good news is that Sharepoint in its current form can be used to consume Azure's Services. This can be done by using out of the box SharePoint functionality like the Data View Web Part or in code using ASMX Web Services or WCF Web Services in a custom web part.

It is quite interesting to see how the future will turn out. Software as a Service is already making breakthroughs and major backers like Amazon, google, Microsoft, IBM , Sun etc are all getting ready to launch their Cloud computing based products in the near future. As sharepoint developers, We should get ourselves acquainted with Azure so that in the furture, we can learn to adapt to this ideology with ease.

 

More Information - http://www.microsoft.com/azure/default.mspx

For those that haven't yet looked at Powershell, please do. Aside from being an extremely powerful means to interact with SharePoint and control items that are not available from the web UI, it is more than likely that as with Exchange, Powershell will be the means of interacting with SharePoint v.next (as opposed to stsadm)

Some links to interesting resources and example scripts....

http://www.u2u.info/Blogs/karine/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=9

http://darrinbishop.com/blog/archive/2007/04/08/54.aspx

http://blogs.flexnetconsult.co.uk/colinbyrne/PermaLink,guid,1665700b-e0de-4b8a-bb1c-014d6fbcf2db.aspx

Powershell download

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/management/powershell/download.mspx

Useful Powershell editor

http://www.powergui.org

 

AS part of our planned expansion and due to the increasing projects, we are looking to hire again.

If you have skills and experience in one (or ideally more) of the following, then we would love to hear from you...

• asp.net web development (not necessarily SharePoint specific but web services, controls, linq, ajax, script etc)
• SQL 2000 - 2008 (Database Administration, Analysis Services, Reporting Services, development)
• InfoPath Forms (Client and Browser based forms, customised programming)
• Windows Workflow Foundation (SharePoint workflows, long running workflows, using the foundation for business logic)
• Design (concept design, html, css, general graphics)
• SharePoint architecture (creating portals, configuration, customisation, configuring web parts)
• PowerShell
• Project Management and Client Management

We offer a realistic package with opportunities to extend your skills - Conferences, MS Certification, User Groups, Networking etc. The roles are based in our Wolerhampton office with occaisional travel to client sites.

If you are interested, then contact us

Despite what seemed like quite an arduous internal justification process it seems like BT are starting to embrace social media or Web2 technology.

The case study on Richard Dennison's blog highlights the lessons learned with the adoption which include:

• Focus on the value social media tools can bring rather than the risks
• Start small, and let the users dictate the direction & speed of adoption
• Engage policy makers as early as possible, and emphasise that the development is an evolution in web usage
• Set realistic achievements about what can be achieved

I like these fundamental basics - we often try to check our client's expectations.  Rather than trying to embark on the goliath of all projects look for quick wins and build iteratively (is that a word?).  That way users don't get overloaded with functionality (and therefore switch off) rather they embrace the benefits the system provides and then left asking for more!

Anyway its good to see a case study of how social media is being adopted.

Managing VMs from PowerShell requires the use of lots of WMI calls but fortunately for us James O'Neill has come to the rescue with a PowerShell script that makes managing HyperV as easy as the rest of PowerShell with straightforward commands like Get-VM. He has produced a PowerShell script much like an include file that you can use to make life easier.

The source is up on codeplex at http://www.codeplex.com/PSHyperv 

And for those who haven't figured out how to do an include in a PowerShell script here you go, you dot source it. Just add the following line to the top of your script.

Personally I have tinkered and removed the directory listing of all the added functions. Once I got used to the structure of the commands it saved me hundreds of lines of WMI handling and calls. The only task I haven't been able to get it to do is create the VM in a specific directory. I have now manged it with direct WMI calls so I'll go back and try with these extensions either to add to them or use them to manipulate what I need, but that will have to wait for a future post.

We have recently rebuilt our entire development envirnonment and put a lot of shiny new PC's and server. Essentially, we are now working in a complete virtual environment, where our personal development servers, desktops, staging servers etc are all Virtual. Our physical PC's now run Server 2008 and Hyper-V

For those that don't know, Hyper-V is the next generation of Virtual Server and in the development environment give us great control over the server - my favourite being able to take a snapshot of a server at a given point in time, have a tree of these snapshots and being able to merge parts of the tree, or indeed all back into a single virtual disk. These snapshots can be taken at any time - an example being, if I was to install software, snapshot just before the install. If the install fails, revert back to the snapshot.

I'm hoping that Iain will blog about this in more detail very soon (not to Iain - publish these soon!  )

As part of our development process, we need to ensure that the staging servers are clean each time we deploy our code and features. To ensure this, we look to get some scripts to automtically turn off the virtual staging servers, scrap the disks and revert to a known good point (those who know the daily build process will be familiar with this). Rather than start from scratch, Taylor from the MS Hyper-V team has some startpoint scripts

OK, this is more an aide memoir than shouting to the world...

Ever wanted to put Vista style icons of people in your presentations? I found the people icons quite a while back, but could not remember where.

Today, Gayashan pointed me in the right direction - the online clipart collection, using the keyword 'head' (I had tried people, person, icon, pawn, engineer... )

Yes you heard it right - Microsoft are paying customers to adopt Sharepoint technology!  Well sort of...

Microsoft have now officially announced their SPDS programme.  See here for further details.

SDPS matches up SharePoint partners with customers who are eligible for deployment planning services as part of their Software Assurance benefits. Microsoft then provide a process for certified SDPS partners to conduct, and be compensated for, 1, 3, 5, 10 or 15-day programmatic planning sessions according to the level of their customers’ Software Assurance benefits.  This enables clients to become more aware of the benefits of Sharepoint in their organisation, the implications of adopting Sharepoint technology and even implement a pilot solution. 

This work is funded by Microsoft as part of the clients software assurance benefits.

Novotronix are pleased to announce that they are one of the initial partners who are qualified for delivering the SPDS service.  So if you would like to take advantage of this 'free' benefit then feel free to contact us (either via the contact form to the left or on 01902 424277).

For those using Sharepoint and perhaps more importantly creating e-Learning content you will be interested to learn that Microsoft have recently announced the release of their Learning Content Develiopment System (LCDS) ... more info on the Microsoft Learning Site.

With the LCDS, you can:

•	Develop and deliver content quickly, while it is timely and relevant.
•	Distribute your content via the Web or in a learning management system.
•	Deliver Web content that conforms to Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) 1.2, and which can be hosted in a learning management system.
•	Upload or attach your existing content. (LCDS supports multiple file formats.)
•	Choose from a wide variety of forms for authoring rich e-learning content.
•	Develop your course structure and easily rearrange it at any time.

Basically it is a simple to use SCORM based e-learning creation tool.  Well worth checking out.