How to use Symantec products to stop buying (more) storage

A new screencast product review is up today over at Webinformant.tv.

We looked at several products available from Symantec to help provide insight into how to reduce overall enterprise disk storage requirements and cost. The video touches on several strategies that enterprise IT managers can employ to analyze their storage use.

• Symantec NetBackup Pure Disk v6.5
• Veritas Command Central Storage v5.1
• Symantec Enterprise Vault v8.0
• Veritas Storage Foundation v5.0

Using Tricipher’s MyOneLogin to authenticate Web resources

A single-sign on, two-factor authentication portal that is easy to setup and deploy for both internal and external Web and other resources.

Price: $30 per user per year subscription service (or $3/mo/user)
Requirements: Runs on Windows IE v6 and above, Firefox v3 on both Windows and Mac
We tested the service on a variety of browsers on both computers during June 2009.

Pros:
Simple to setup and deploy without any programming or security skills required
Hosted service, no software to install on the desktop
Powerful management controls for business users

Cons:
Reports and event logging somewhat difficult to parse
Doesn’t completely support Safari browsers

See my screencast video here for MyOneLogin.com
Tricipher Corp.
http://www.myonelogin.com/
650.376.8326
750 University Avenue
#260,
Los Gatos, CA 95032

Shrinking your PPT files

If you put a lot of images in your PowerPoints (as you should), you will have the problem of what to do with them when it is time to send them to your conference organizer. Do you email them as attachments? Maybe they are too big. How about Zip’ing them? Then your recipient has to unzip them. Here is a quick solution that seems to work well: use File Minimizer from Balesio AG. The software costs $45 and converts images and other objects in your slide deck (and also works with other Office formats) but keeps it a native Office file, so there is no conversion on the other end. I got a 10 MB PPT down to 2 MB, with no discernible loss of graphic quality. The storage of another slide deck was cut in half. Worth checking out.

Jazinga low-end VOIP PBX system reviewed

I last looked at low-end VOIP PBX systems about two years ago when I reviewed the Linksys SPA9000 for Computerworld here.

This is a small box that connects to your broadband Internet and allows you to hook up four IP telephones and use them as your main telephony system. A new company called Jazinga has recently begun their own version, the MGA120. It also sells for about $1000 but is much easier to setup and operate. The box comes with a customized version of the popular VOIP Asterisk operating system, and all the setup and configuration is Web-based. You plug in your phones, fire up your Web browser, and in about 15 minutes you have a complete working PBX and phone system.

I liked the fact that you can have some of the more advanced features such as voicemail that is converted to email attachments, music on hold and auto attendants without having to get dirty with command-line syntax and Linux-like text editors. The box also includes a Wifi router too, just in case you don’t already have one. The menu screens are fairly straightforward and easy to navigate, and there are setup wizards that walk you through 95% of the configuration too. I didn’t like that the company doesn’t yet have much information on where to buy the box on their Web site, such as VOIP supply.

You still need to purchase your VOIP service from another vendor. Hopefully they will work out their channel strategy soon and make it more of a one-stop shopping experience.

PC World: How to choose an online backup provider

Online backup makes a lot of sense: It gives you off-site peace of mind and the security that comes from knowing that someone else is keeping your data safe and sound. The trouble is that, while there are dozens of individual service providers, there are just a few designed for enterprises and small businesses. 

In my column today for PC World, I review some of the providers. I also keep track of them in this table here.

AT&T USBConnect Mercury laptop broadband adapter card

The idea of going wireless anywhere – not just where you have WiFi – is appealing. And the adapter cards keep getting better. I tried out this 3G card from AT&T on both Windows XP SP2 and SP3 machines – with SP2 you’ll need two reboots to get everything installed. Near the business end of the connector is the SIM card that enables it to work with the AT&T network. The speeds are much better than the 3G connection on my iPhone, with the claims from AT&T of 700-1400 kbps down and 500-1200 kbps uploads about twice what I observed on my 3G iPhone. One oddity – it didn’t like the tracert command in Windows but could do command line FTP transfers just fine. There is also a simplified text messaging application so you can compose texts and send them on the computer keyboard.

If you need on-the-go Web surfing and email, this is a solid product, once you get past the installation. Macs use a different connection manager that comes directly from Sierra Wireless (the makers of the adapter), while Windows uses one that has some added features to help you make free use of AT&T WiFi hot spots. The initial cost of the card is rebated if you get a two-year data plan. If you don’t, the upfront cost is $250. Either way, you still have to pay $60 a month, which includes a 5 GB monthly usage cap before you get charged on additional usage –  so if you are going to be transferring a lot of files, this may not be the solution for you. 

Why you need to outsource your test lab

Corporate IT shops that need to roll out new network, infrastructure and Internet applications or who have to make expensive equipment upgrades are increasingly turning towards independent test labs as part of their decision process. The labs can help identify weak points, application bottlenecks, design flaws, and show-stopping bugs in a non-production environment, and are also useful “bake-offs” to pit potential candidates against each other in controlled scenarios that can mimic their eventual use. And these days there are several outsourced labs that are available from a number of small to large-scale providers.

In this article for CIOUpdate.com, I describe some of the issues of using an outsourced test lab.

Back to the future with Windows NT

To start off the new year right, I decided to go back in time and see what I could learn from running an ancient (by computing standards, anyway) operating system and software combination. To appreciate how far we have come (or not), and to see whether I could actually get real work done. The idea came about from some conversations that Jason Perlow and I had. Jason is a fellow blogger and IT consultant who now works for IBM. He and I at one point in our lives (although not at the same time) lived in Port Washington, N.Y. and spent a lot of time with OS/2, but don’t let that influence you.

I picked NT v4 as my starting place. This operating system is more than ten years old, and was probably the last OS that Microsoft created that had some real simplicity to it. To get an idea of the power of the OS, there are still many corporate servers running it, even though Microsoft has tried to stamp it out and turn off support and push people to upgrade to something more recent. To get around the driver issues and other challenges, I decided to set up a virtual machine running NT, and I am using VMware’s Fusion on my Mac (just to make it interesting).

Jason and I have the hypothesis that the OS doesn’t really matter anymore, and that if you can get beyond some of the issues with running older software and applications, you may find that an older OS is perfect for your needs. We also thought that running an ancient OS was a good way to see how far we have come with newer computers, and perhaps a way to extract some additional performance because the older OSs are smaller and theoretically could run faster on the newer PCs.

To get NT working properly, you need find versions of software either online or in someone’s attic that are not so old as to be useless. First off, I had to install Service Pack 6, and I also needed to install the right version of the SP too for the encryption level of the OS. You then install the VMware tools software, which supplies the drivers to get the most out of your machine. Then you install Microsoft Office 2000 – which is the most recent version of Office that will run on NT. I messed up by installing the tools package after Office, and VMware didn’t like that. Office 2000 has the unfortunate side effect of updating your NT version with an almost-working version of Internet Explorer v5. The reason I say almost-working is that you need another piece of software called the Windows Installer to get other software installed on this machine. I couldn’t get past this point, however.

I also put on Firefox v2.0.0.20 browser on the machine, which is a fairly recent version of the browser, but apparently not recent enough as I had some problems with certain Web sites. I had to update my Adobe Flash plug-in too. Finally, I added AIM v5.9, which is an older version of Instant Messenger software. Skype doesn’t have any version that will run on NT, which is too bad.

So what I found was that the VM version of NT was pretty snappy. It would boot from scratch in under 30 seconds, and faster still from the suspended VM state. I liked the old-fashioned Windows and the lack of glitz and raw simplicity of the controls. No Aero Glass junk for this OS! Another plus with using VMs is that you don’t have to worry about personal firewalls and anti-virus as much – you can set up a protected environment and keep it isolated from your host machine, which is good because most of the AV programs have stopped supporting NT a long time ago.

All of my Office documents – some of which were created on Macs, some on Windows, came up just fine in Office 2000, which is because I am not using the 2007 version that introduced a new file format that isn’t compatible with the older versions. Shame on you Microsoft – and I know from hearing from some of you how vexing that version could be.

The other thing I noticed is how important the browser is to today’s computing world, and if you aren’t willing to stay current with your browser, you quickly get into trouble with many Web sites. The coming of IE v7 is a good case in point, and I know there will be a lot of grief to be had on both ends – the people that adopt the new browser and find sites that don’t work in it, and the sites that want to use its new features and piss off the people that aren’t upgrading yet.

I will have more to report on this experiment as I spend more time back in NT land. And those of you that want to try this on your own, email me privately and I will give you more specific tips.

The Art of Product Management

I’ve known Rich Mironov through several jobs as a product manager and marketeer and he is one of the sharpest guys that I have had the pleasure of working with. Add a soupcon of humor and a delightful daughter and wife to the mix and we have had some fun times outside of work as well. His book called The Art of Product Management is out and if you are in the high tech product business you might want to get yourself a copy. He has lots of practical, succinct advice on how not to repeat the many mistakes of the past, and how to quickly tune up your product marketing and strategies for success. It is well worth the $22.

SecurePC may be too costly for what it delivers

Is $600 for a “netbook” too much to spend these days? Apparently so. I tried out the SecurePC from 01com.com and while a nice package, the price is a bit steep considering the competition.

The idea behind the SecurePC is a nifty one: put together a stripped-down version of Windows XP that just can connect to the Web and do nothing else. You do not have access to any local storage, so your PC can’t get infected from malicious Web sites or emails. You can’t download any programs. If it lives out on the Internet, you can run it – the usual Flash and Java add-ons come with the machine. Otherwise, forget it.

The notebook runs Intel’s Atom processor, so it is quiet, cool, and compact. The screen is bright but isn’t going to win an awards for size – it is a 10 inch diagonal and can run an external video monitor in the odd resolution of 1280×960 because of its form factor, I guess. And it comes with a solid state hard drive so there is one less moving part and heat source to worry about.

I liked the design and feel of the machine’s hard plastic case and they way it boots up almost instantly – it takes longer to find your wireless network than it does to bring up the overall system. The keyboard is a bit cramped for me, particularly the comma and period keys that are somewhat squished together. And it comes with three USB ports, although I am not sure what you would connect to them other than an external mouse. If you try to plug in a thumb drive, you aren’t going to get any files off it. The SecurePC does support USB 3G broadband modems, but I didn’t test any.

You can access network shares via the wired or wireless interfaces, but again, I am not sure what you would do with the files when you see them, unless you could run a auto-executing virtual machine session across the network. To get an idea of how stripped-down this OS is, you open up a rather sparse Control Panel. There isn’t much you can do, which I guess is good if you are getting this PC for grandma.

The disk storage is limited, and I had to play some games adjusting the virtual memory settings that would also allow enough room for temporary files: InTouch could spend some more time tweaking these setings. Another drawback is that you can’t upgrade your OS when Microsoft issues the inevitable patches since you have to wait for InTouch to release a new image of the machine’s innards.

If you are paranoid and can live without any applications – other than IE – than this is worth a look. It could be the perfect kitchen computer, or a second machine to do a lot of Web searching or Webmail on. The only real issue I have is the price. For $350, I can get a Dell, Acer, HP mini (or others here) that has a 10 inch screen and a full version of Windows and larger hard drives, and for the price of the Secure PC I can get a full-strength laptop with a 15 inch screen. And to make things more complicated, Radio Shack is selling netbooks for $99, plus the cost of a 3G broadband wireless plan from AT&T for $60 a month for a two-year contract.