IT Expert Voice

Ubuntu Linux is best known as the most popular desktop Linux distribution, but it’s developing a reputation as the easiest Linux for enterprises to deploy on the cloud.

Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux, has always had many enthusiastic user and developer fans. It’s a different story within the enterprise. Canonical has been trying to improve its business reputation though in both the server and cloud spaces. In particular, according to Neil Levine, Canonical’s VP of Commercial Services, Canonical has been working hard to bring Ubuntu’s well-known ease of use on the desktop to cloud deployments. READ MORE

Microsoft has essentially extended Windows XP’s sales life, and many observers expect that Windows XP’s support life will also last longer than expected. So should your enterprise stick with Windows XP or continue on to Windows 7?

It seemed so clear. Like it or lump it, the top brass realized, your company would move its enterprise desktops to Windows 7 as Windows XP came to the end of its sales and service life. Then, Microsoft changed the rules. At the same time that Microsoft announced the beta program for Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 SP1s, the company “decided to extend downgrade rights to Windows XP Professional beyond the previously planned end date at Windows 7 SP1.” This means you’ll still be able to “downgrade” PCs from Windows 7 Professional or Windows 7 Ultimate to Windows XP Pro until early 2015. READ MORE

The official word from Microsoft is you can’t upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7; you need a clean install. But in fact you can upgrade, including moving your data, applications, and settings. Here are some tips to help.

With Microsoft having abandoned Windows XP SP2, late-adopting companies still using XP are being pushed to make the upgrade to Windows 7. Windows XP is a dying breed.  It’s time to upgrade. Microsoft says only Windows Vista systems are eligible to upgrade, while Windows XP users need to make a clean install of the new operating system:

You can’t directly upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7, says Microsoft.

Thankfully, you can avoid the need to wipe the disk of each PC and clean-install Windows 7 manually.  Some tricks are more effective than others. Let’s look at some of these upgrade options, the DO’s and DON’Ts, and pick the slickest (and cheapest) and method.
READ MORE

Although some believe Google Apps has just now sounded the battle cry for desktop applications, Microsoft may already have won round one.

Whatever happened to the next wave in enterprise knowledge management, the one that was destined to disrupt old business models and leave behind a new world of collaboration-based tools? It shouldn’t be any surprise that when the tide subsided, Microsoft Office remained standing right where it was.

In the evolution of every class of tool in human history — the washboard, the six-pounder cannon, the oil lamp, the flint knife — there is one common element: It was rendered obsolete by the sudden and welcome appearance of something better, more efficient, more adaptable, more relevant, more practical. Marginal improvements to a tool — anti-lock brakes, Touch-Tone dialing, the “mute” button — typically take longer to phase in. Despite all efforts devoted toward evangelistic offensives, markets have more difficulty embracing something that’s slightly better than something that’s obviously better.

Case in point: Microsoft Word. You may not recall that Word spent the first ten years of its existence languishing behind WordPerfect, whose place in the workforce throughout the 1980s (at least among smaller businesses that had adopted PCs and the first LANs) appeared unshakable. This despite the fact that with Word, you could actually see italic text as italic (albeit with a special switch), and make swift corrections using on-screen menus that guided your keystrokes. Most every businessperson to whom I demonstrated Word versus WordPerfect during the ‘80s declared Word easier to use. READ MORE

For organizations waffling about migrating to Windows 7, especially those still running Windows XP, the clock is ticking.

According to analysts at Gartner, it takes 12–18 months to prep for a client operating system change. That’s a year to a year and a half of application testing, dealing with issues the tests reveal, and overall planning. Then there’s the actual migration which, as administrators know only too well, can take a significant chunk of time in itself.

Plus, since support for Windows Vista RTM (the original release with no service packs applied) has ceased, Windows XP SP2 support will stop in July 2010, and even extended support for Windows XP SP3 will end in April of 2014, the experts agree that the time to move is sooner rather than later.

Mark Tauschek, research director at Info-Tech Research, thinks that Windows XP shops are most at risk. For organizations running Windows Vista (admittedly, he says, a very small percentage) with Service Pack 2, there’s no pressing need to move, and a Windows 7 upgrade could get expensive for them unless they have Enterprise Agreements or Software Assurance that allow them to upgrade for free. However, he says, for Windows XP shops, “While formal end of life (for XP) is April 2014, by 2012 they will run into situations where they can’t find drivers or application updates. They have to think about migrating to Windows 7.” READ MORE

Software inventory is one of the most important steps in migrating desktops to Windows 7. This video shows you the promise — and limitations — of Microsoft’s Software Inventory Analyzer.

One of the benefits of the Software Inventory Analyzer, as you’ll learn in the screencast, is its price: It’s a free download. The tool only looks for Microsoft applications. There are dozens of other inventory tools which may or may not be better suited to your needs.

Also, be sure to read our article that goes into more depth on doing software inventories, Retain, Retire, Rewrite: Performing Application Triage in Your Windows 7 Migration.

Want more like this? Sign up for the weekly IT Expert Voice newsletter so you don’t miss a thing!

Anxious to reap the oft-touted benefits of Windows 7, you may want to jump right into a pilot implementation. But to realize the maximum and most effective return on your latest OS investment and to ensure user buy-in for the initiative, it’s prudent to take a step back and test all your existing applications for compatibility.

No doubt you’ve standardized on many applications, from spreadsheets and presentation tools to word processors and customer relationship management. But how many IT executives can guarantee that end users are running only corporate-approved tools? Who truly knows how many user-downloaded tools, orphan applications, and customized programs lurk throughout your network? The only way to be certain, then, is a PC to laptop treasure hunt to locate all applications and test their compatibility with Windows 7 before entering the migration fray.

After all, 54% of IT executives cite application-testing as the most successful way to mitigate deployment problems, according to a March 2010 report by Info-Tech.  While smaller businesses may solely depend on off-the-shelf software, larger companies’ software mix also often includes proprietary, customized, and non-IT installed applications, says Mark Tauschek, director of research at the London, Ontario research firm. READ MORE

You’ve probably heard that people hate change. Not true.  People choose change all the time.  What people rebel against is coercion and forced change. What people resist are requests that come from someone who said, “Trust me, it will be a seamless transition,” the last time.

What can you do to ease the change when there’s a mandate to migrate to new software? You should involve people in planning, mitigate time spend fooling around with the tool, and make it as easy as you can to get people back to being productive at work.

But that’s not as easy as it sounds, especially since the people who are receiving this wonderful new software are not like you (and me). Most people who have self-selected into technology careers — the ones writing and rolling out new software — don’t mind playing around to learn new software.  In fact, we rather enjoy it.

The rest of the world ain’t like that. READ MORE