Disclaimer: not every bank has this setup yet,
my bank just happens to be leading the pack.  

I got my iPhone 4 about three weeks after it had been released.
  I am finally one of the cool kids and I do not have a blackberry
or windows phone anymore.  I installed my banking app and
remembered someone telling me that their app allowed depositing of
checks via the app by taking pictures.  Honestly, I thought this
was the most useful thing to do with the camera and the iPhone in
general.  

I get expense checks from time to time that are not direct
deposited and my bank has no local branches.  Previous to the
iPhone app, I had another bank locally, and I had authorized wire
transfers between the two.  But this still required me driving a
ways, depositing the check and then transfer the funds.  iPhone app
comes along and this is not a problem any more.  I choose mobile
deposit and take a picture of the front and back (which is signed
with and labeled for deposit only into my account).  Funds are
available immediately.  

To me, this is a game changer and should send banks into
examining why they have so many branches when a smart phone could
do a bulk of deposits for individuals.  Commercial deposits, well,
not every solution is a good fit to every problem.   

My definition of CLOUD:  The most over used buzz word of recent
times.  Putting that aside, some IT solutions just fit better with
someone else hosting and maintaining that part of your business.
 Today, I am focusing on email.  

Money: Yes, money talks.  You can host email
offsite for as little as $4.17 / month / user and a maximum of $10
/ month / user.  This isn’t with some fly by night company either.
 We are talking about Microsoft and Google.  Let’s case study a
company with 30 employees needing to upgrade their email server and
say that the company replaces equipment precisely every 4 years.
 Option 1: Purchase new server and replace.  Cost: Approximately
$7500.  (Server + Software + Licensing) .  Option 2: Google apps
domain: Yearly cost $1500 and total cost over 4 years is $6000 plus
initial setup (man hours). Option 3: Microsoft hosted exchange:
Yearly cost of $1800 and total cost over 4 years $7200 plus initial
setup (man hours).  Option 4: Microsoft BPOS: Yearly cost of $3600
and total cost over 4 years $14400 plus initial setup (man
hours).

With the last 3 options, the best news is that after the first
four years, your company is purchasing new equipment.  You continue
to pay your monthly fee and upgrades and improvements are added to
your hosting solution in the cloud with out any intervention from
your IT staff.

Maintenance:  I am in no way saying the cloud
is maintenance free, but I am saying that your IT staff will spend
much less time maintaining the email hosted in the cloud once the
initial setup is done.  Think of this, the burden of backups,
uptime, equipment and so on is now rolled up into a nominal fee you
are paying.  

Reliability: Service Level Agreement!  What
would it cost your company to place a redundant email system to a
data center that offered very high speed internet and redundancy.
 I have recently priced this and $20k – $30k for hardware alone.
 Add on a $500 – $1500 monthly fee for the data center and
internet.  All this exercise was to get your SLA up to 99.9%.  Or,
when you buy a hosted solution, it comes with that SLA bundled in
you low recurring fee. 

Eat our own Dog Food: Not only do we recommend
these solutions, but we use them too. Our corporate email is hosted
with Microsoft BPOS.  Personally, I have a Google apps domain for
my family.  I like both products and they both are reliable and
quality products.  

Ready to buy yet?   If this peaked you’re
interest and you are ready to switch, give Strickland Networks a
call.  Not only can well help you chose the right solution, we can
help you implement it as well.

The other night I was up late (imagine that), and I was
tinkering with my phone and some possible cool apps.  I came across
one of my all time favorite apps, QIK for my Blackberry.  QIK is
really a website, www.qik.com,
that allows you to stream live video from your video camera enabled
cell phone.  I live streemed this video from my Phone and then it
was automatically Published to the site.  You can also mark videos
as Private, share them with specific people, or publish to several
social networking websites. Your Live Streams are also
archived.

If you are also interested in finding out more about the
RoomAlert, check my blog or subscribe to the RSS feed.  I Should be
posting about it soon.

Very Cool!

So I run into more and more computers compromised by malware or
viruses everyday.  With internet access ubiquitous and with
computers connected to the internet 24/7 it’s just a matter of time
before some malicious hacker attempts to add your home computer to
a botnet somewhere in the world.  And staying on top of all the
required security updates can be daunting for a typical home user. 
Our computers are supposed to make our lives easier, right? 
They’re not supposed to cause us headaches and give us a night job
just keeping them secure.

One free tool that I have found invaluable for home networks is
OpenDNS for free content filtering for the everyman.  I recommend
this service to every home user.  This amazing service not only
protects your computer, but it protects your kids as well by
blocking viruses and malware, as well as filtering other yucky
content like porn, drug references or other adult contet.  All for
free if you’re a home user.  They do offer businesses service as
well for an incredibly cheap price.

They have great walk throughs on setting it up on their website
(http://www.opendns.org), but to summarize, you configure your home
router to use OpenDNS servers to resolve internet addresses instead
of the DNS servers your ISP provides.  Most users will need to run
a small piece of software on one pc on the network to update
OpenDns whenever your IP address changes, but it’s aslo very easy
to set up.

I can’t recommend this service enough – I’ve been using it for
several years now.

Here is a great blog post that gives instructions on configuring
many different types of home routers:

Other:Using OpenDNS to filter unwanted sites to your home network.

So okay, I wasn’t able to sleep so I started reading some email.
You kow trying to catch up on some inbox reading.  I then came
across my occasional MCP Flash email that told me about a new
online game.  It is a  Microsoft Professional Quiz Show style
game!  I know sounds geeky, but I figu re if you are reading my
blog you might be into this kind of thing.  Anyways, You can use
your passport login on Live ID whatever you have, and give it a
go.  If you login it will track your progress so that you can leave
and pick up where you left off later.  Also for me it was adictive,
and it points out what I need to brush up on (since this is my
career I figure I need to stay sharp). 

Questions Range from Easy, Medium, and Hard and it is timed when
you see your answer choices.  There are also some lifelines or as
they call them, “Vouchers” that you can use.  Questions topics
include but are not limited  to: Win 2008, 2003, Exchange 2007, Win
7, XP, and SQL 2005.  There could be more but I didn’t play for
long.

The name of the game is Are You Certifiable?. 
And, here is the link:
http://www.microsoft.com/click/areyoucertifiable/default.aspx

If you want add me as a friend in the game, screen name: DRMILES

Happy Gaming!

Over the past 10 years I have worked on a multitude of routers /
firewalls.  SonicWall is my absolute favorite.  In operating
systems, I have switched around liking one over the other but in
firewalls, SonicWall has always been my champion.  

One of the best features is you do not have to be a genius to
program the firewall.  No memorizing long commands and perfect
syntax to be used in command line.  There is a simple, easy to
understand GUI that is web based.  Any computer with IE or Firefox
(no chrome support, yet) can connect and make changes.

The price is just awesome as well.  We have had customers
request Cisco and I throw in a SonicWall quote to compare;
SonicWall wins hands down every time.  The add-ons that people
crave like Intrusion Protection Service, Antivirus / Anitspyware
protection, and Content Filtering are very solid products with low
prices.  

Wireless: SonicWall has you covered.  My first sonicwall
wireless install was for a 3 story 15,000 square foot office
building.  I placed the access point dead center vertically and
horizontally and I had the whole office covered.  Not one single
dead zone.  This was in 2005.  Pretty much unheard of to cover that
much area for about $500.  Recently we installed a much smaller
office with 4 access points, let’s just say the neighboring tenants
are now having trouble using their wireless because the SonicWalls
are broadcasting so well.  

The two things that just bring it home for me are support and
reliability.  When I call support, I do not wait that long and I
get knowledgeable people.  This is not like calling a PC company
and everyone reads a script.  In the reliability department, I have
installed hundreds of these units and the most common replaced
part, power adapters.  In 10 years, I have sent 1 SonicWall back to
the manufacturer for replacement.  

Everyone’s blood is blue until it hits oxygen, mine just happens
to be SonicWall blue.

With all of the new features of XenServer 5.6, I have been very
excited about rolling it out.  There has been one thing though. 
OpenManage and XenServer haven’t been the best pals.  When we had
been trying to rollout any XenServer on a Dell Server, it seems
that we had to jump through hoops to make OpenManage work.  Well
Dell has really worked on being more XenServer Friendly and
released a Supplemental Pack for XenServer. 

A Supplemental Pack is an install package that can be
slipstreamed into the install of XenServer.  So if you were
installing XenServer you would simply start with the install CD,
then use the Linux Templates Supplemental CD, and then use the Dell
OpenManage CD when it asks for you to continue the install.  It is
great!

I had to call Dell to get a copy of the ISO because it was not
yet available on the website.  Here is the link so that you too can
enjoy some Dell and Citrix Xen!

http://ftp.dell.com/sysman/OM-SrvAdmin-Dell-Web-LX-6.3.0-2075.XenServer56_A00.10.iso

By
the way, Thank You! Johanness Far (Dell Enterprise Technical
Support Senior Analyst) for getting me the link.