If you are interested in Cloud-Based servers – then the article reference here is for you:
Old McDonald Had a SharePoint Farm E-I-E…IO – Part 2
The article was written by Todd Carter (MCM, MCT, and all-round good guy).
A quick bit of clarification. When I refer to a “Cloud Server” – I am refering to a:
- Dedicated Virtual Machine (It’s yours and yours alone)
- The machine is running on a shared Hypervisor (physical machine)
A lot of people think of a “cloud server” as a server which is “not running in their data-center” – regardless if their server is dedicated to them or shared.
The hosting providers tested in this article were:
- Microsoft Azure
- Amazon Web Services (AWS)
- Rackspace Cloud Servers
Tags: 2012 Server, AWS, Azure, Cloud, Cloud Server, Microsoft, Microsoft SharePoint, Server, SharePoint, Windows, Windows 2008r2, Windows 2012, Windows 2012 Server, Windows Server
Just as no two finger-prints aren’t the same – no two SharePoint hosting options are the same.
To help clarify the options - I’ll be delivering a WEBinar on Friday where I’ll be showing the differences between Rackspace, o365, and …well .. everything else. Just to be clear – I work for Rackspace so I’ll have lots-o-information about them. Click HERE to sign-up.
This Webinar is part of a “week of webinars” sponsored by Rackspace. Here is a page where you can learn more about them and sign-up for those that interest you.
Hope to “see” you Friday.
Tags: DataCenter, Hosting, o365, Office 365, SharePoint, SharePoint Hosting
Mary Jo Foley posted an article for ZDNet Concerning a change to Microsoft CAL (or Client Access Licensing) for the following products:
- Bing Maps Server CAL
- Core CAL Suite
- Enterprise CAL Suite
- Exchange Server Standard and Enterprise CALs
- Lync Server Standard and Enterprise CALs
- Project Server CAL
- SharePoint Server Standard and Enterprise CALs
- System Center 2012 Client Management Suite
- System Center Configuration Manager
- System Center Endpoint Protection
- Visual Studio TFS CAL
- Windows Multipoint Server CAL
- Windows Server CAL
- Windows Server RDS, RMS, Terminal Services CAL
The core message is that Microsoft is raising the price of User CAL’s by 15% and allowing you to access your company’s Microsoft Servers by an unlimited number of devices. This is different from the Device CAL which would allow for an unlimited number of users connect to your Microsoft Servers from a specific number of licensed devices.
This change is effective December 1, 2012 (or when your pre-negotiated EA expires).
In the past – these prices have been roughly the same. A blog posted from December by UK reseller Softcat gives greater details.
Moral of the story – licensing for SharePoint is changing again.
Tags: Core CAL Suite, Enterprise CAL Suite, Exchange, Licensing, Lync, Microsoft, Microsoft Licensing, Project Server, SharePoint Systems Center, Windows Server
So my brain has been wrapped up in thinking about how SharePoint is evolving as a product and evolving as core strategy at Microsoft. I’m not 100% ready to share my thoughts with you yet – but what I will say is that in a lot of ways, SharePoint is the “plumbing” that enables their overall strategy. That became increasingly clear today when I read this article about some of the innovation Microsoft is investing in concerning generating power for data-centers from reclaimed methane gas from sewage treatment facilities.
Microsoft’s involvement in running/managing data-center facilities is here for the long-haul. SharePoint as the plumbing that enables Microsoft’s “Office” strategy. The next thought to explore is why does Microsoft have this office strategy. But that’s a topic for another day. For now: just as we can’t do without the plumbing in our house – SharePoint as the destination and enabler of the Microsoft Office strategy is here to stay. I am very curious to see what form it takes in the future.
Tags: Data Center, data plumbing, DataCenter, Microsoft, Plumbing, SharePoint, SharePoint 2013
On June 25th of 2012 Microsoft announced it’s intent to purchase the social media company, Yammer.
For several month, the SharePoint community wondered what the impact of this purchase would mean for both Microsoft and more specifically, SharePoint. Last week at the SharePoint 2012 conference we learned what some of that road map looked like. Here are the big nuggets:
- Yammer will only be available online – no on-premises solution
- Yammer is “included” when you bring your SharePoint to o365
- Microsoft is dramatically lowering the cost of Yammer – from $15 to $3 per month.
- Yammer is investing heavily on integrating Yammer into SharePoint
- Microsoft gets the needs for social now. There was a comment in the keynote the way an Enterprise will enable productivity is to build a “social layer” within (and outside) their businesses.
- Microsoft spend $50B in large part to show that it gets the importance of social
Yammer is to the Enterprise what Active Directory is to the Organization.
Tags: Microsoft, Newsgator, Rackspace, SharePoint, SharePoint 2013, Social, SPC12, Yammer
SharePoint 2013: How is our world changing?I have spent a lot of time thinking about the messages we recieved last week from Microsoft from the keynote all the way down to the last sessions. I would characterize the message of the week by showing a picture from Jeff Teper’s Keynote address.
The key word they obviously want us to see is “INNOVATION”. It is my opinion that’s the goal of Microsoft SharePoint 2013 – especially the version they are making available through Office365. I believe it is Microsoft’s goal to remove as many barriers as possible away from business users who want to (and need to) work together. People who are successfully working together can get work done. If Microsoft is successful in removing the barriers of productivity – then they stand at the threshold as the creators of technology that could unleash productivity, creativity and ultimately – Innovation.
Now this is an interesting problem to solve – because in many ways they created the problem (at last the most common tool that enables the problem) – Microsoft Exchange. I would venture to state that there is more corporate intelligence and work bound to our in-box and calendars than anywhere else in our company’s vast IT resources. Microsoft isn’t just throwing another tool at a problem here – it really does appear as though there was some very deep thought around productivity, work-streams, tasks, and all of the most common business activities that happen every day in our jobs. Consider that in a SharePoint/Office 2013 and Microsoft Device reality that:
- I can author a document (or task, or issue, or site…) at my PC and easily engage others to help with it’s creation
- I can consume and/or edit that information from the device of my chosing
- I can easily invite others into the approval process
- I can easily share that information with others
- I can tag the content with a folksonomy that fits my business
- Others can elect to join the effort
- Others can follow document’s progress
- Others can easily discover the content through searches or simply because they pay attention to the content I create
- IT can create policies that govern the lifecycle of the content I create and tag
- We can author content in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote even without the desktop application loaded on our device of choice
To me – it seems as Microsoft stands at the threshold of our business with a set of tools, technology, and devices that will help us not think about any of those items (though in some cases – they are quite sexy). At a minimum, we will be much more successful in getting our job completed and in the best case: our cumulative innovation will help us transform our business and organizations to greater levels of success.So this begins a series (hopeful a long-running one) where I will point out where their strategy is succeeding and where it isn’t. Please feel free to share your experiences.
Tags: SharePoint 2013, SPC12
I will be presenting at SharePointConnections in Las Vegas next week in a session called “Demystifying SharePoint in the Cloud”. My session is Wednesday 3/28 at 2:30.
In this session I’ll be helping to put some definition around:
- What is “the Cloud”
- What it means to have “SharePoint in the Cloud”
- When it’s appropriate to put data in the Cloud
I’ll also be presenting a “decision matrix” that helps to provide some context around when it’s appropriate to used cloud-based technologies.
Hope to see you there!
Tags: Cloud, SharePoint, SharePoint 2010, SharePoint in the Cloud
Today (which is a great day) you may have read the press release from Rackspace, an article in the Wall Street Journal, or saw a twitter from a friend – but today Rackspace announced that we have purchased SharePoint911. I can’t tell you how thrilled I am about this announcement!
Nearly 4 years ago I launched Rackspace’s SharePoint Hosting service, which is built on Rackspace’s Fanatical Support ™. This was such a successful product for us that we began looking for ways to not only be the best SharePoint Hosting company – but the best SharePoint company. That has quest lead us to SharePoint911 and the team that Shane Young has gathered. You see when Rackspace looks for an acquisition – we never look to capture market–share but acquire talent; and that’s what we’ve done here. These guys & girls rock!
I am pleased to welcome the SharePoint911 team to Rackspace and to our journey. The collective horsepower of our teams standing atop the worlds largest (and greatest) hosting company is awesome! But more than that – I am thrilled to be on this journey with people I’m happy to call friends. Each individual voluntarily made the decision to join the team. To each of you new “Rackers”, I’m humbled that you’ve come to Rackspace – Welcome!
To the test of the world – how can we serve you! (In our datacenter…. or yours… but more on that later.)
Here are a few links to what some of the team has posted about the event:
Tags: acquisition, Better Together, Better_together, SharePoint, SharePoint911
This is a quick post to let you know about a new resource, it’s called “SharePoint in the Cloud“. Over at Rackspace we have created a Linkedin Group to have a discussion around all things “SharePoint in the Cloud“.
While this is a new group, I’d encourage you to go over and subscribe – we’ve got some very interesting things planned for the group and the discussions we’d like to have. But first…it takes group members – so if you find this topic interesting – go sign-up and we can get the conversation started!
Tags: Cloud, Cloud SharePoint, Linked-In, Linkedin, Rackspace, SharePoint, SharePoint 2010, SharePoint in the Cloud
Content Delivery Networks and SharePoint
- Shorten the distance by using a more efficient network (CDN)
- Shorten the distance by staging SharePoint servers closer to the users
- Shorten the distance for some of the content by putting some of the larger content closer to the users
- Increase the efficiency of delivering the content from SharePoint by combing the many packets into a few packets – and compressing as much as possible
- Shorten the distance between the servers and the users by utilizing a more efficient network
- Stage content from your sites in regional points of presence (POP) in the CDN
Tags: Akamai, CDN, Content Delivery Network, Gartner, NTLM, SharePoint, SharePoint 2010, SharePoint Architecture, SharePoint Authentication, SharePoint Content Delivery Network
