IT Pro Show – Same3Guys

Executive Summary: It’s important to keep your skills sharp. Sometimes this means you want to do some work outside of the office. You may even have a home lab setup. But without breaking the bank, what are some ways that you can exercise those skills and learn some of the latest enterprise technology? We’ll share some experiences and suggest some options based on our personal experience.   Hosts: John Kresic, Tom Kresic, Mike Kresic Running Time: 43:03   IT Pro News: Gmail turns 10, changing how the web works Microsoft open sourcing some important .Net technologies IBM celebrates 50 years of mainframes and backward compatibility Windows XP is at end-of-support after 13 years Windows 8.1 update makes the OS more desktop-friendly     IT Pro Main Topic: Using A Home Lab to Keep Your Skills Sharp Getting started: decide how to separate your home “production” assets from your lab All virtual, a DMZ and some extra routers   Virtualization. What do you want to test? Type 2 hypervisors run on top of an OS. This is like VMware Fusion or Parallels for Mac. VirtualBox from Oracle, VMware Workstation. Great for testing the next version of Windows Server, Windows Client, linux, etc. Type 1 hypervisor (Hyper-V, Citrix XEN Server or ESXi) is going to require some hardware. Check vendor compatibility lists to see what type of system board and components will work. Lots of helpful docs out there showing you sample “white box” servers. Many cost

Executive Summary: We know that a primary reason for employee dissatisfaction is having a poor manager. But what makes a manager great? What are some of the pitfalls most managers make? We'll share our experiences in a frank conversation. Hosts: John Kresic, Tom Kresic, Mike Kresic Running Time: 36:07   IT Pro News: Important wireless security standard WPA2 cracked. The cloud war continues. Google cloud announcements today (2.6 cents/GB; 85% off BigQuery; Compute Engine 32% off). Cisco drops $1B for its OpenStack cloud push. IBM pushing for open cloud with new cloud group.     IT Pro Main Topic: Managing IT Pros   Why Good Managers Are So Rare What Makes Knowledge Workers Productive   mentoring training, technical soft skills finance developing leaders not babysitting not Ford-era factory floor Conference Calendar: We cover upcoming IT Conferences during the 1st show of each month. Is there a conference you think we should be mentioning in this segment? Let us know! IT Pro Bookshelf: Doing Data Science: Straight Talk from the Frontline by O’Neil and Schutt    

Executive Summary: Is software bloat a problem at your company? How are you managing it? What can you do about it? We'll discuss as well as talk about some of the inherent challenges facing Enterprise Architects. They may not always be setup for success. Hosts: John Kresic, Tom Kresic, Mike Kresic Running Time: 32:34   IT Pro News Flash: IBM is shrinking the workforce in hardware up to 25% Playing catch-up, VMware announces vSAN offering How is Microsoft OneNote used at your company? And will free OneNote fit your enterprise better? How do additional products like the OneNote Office Lens scanning app help? If Office for the iPad is finally here how will it affect the enterprise? Or the me@Onenote.com emailing feature? ODATA 4.0 Standard announced in support of a data-centric web with JSON and REST. Happy 8th birthday, AWS and S3. IT Pro Main Topic: Many organizations are struggling with software bloat. There are just too many apps. How many of them are truly necessary? Some 48% of 1,116 CIOs and senior IT executives said their companies have more applications than required to run the business, according to Capgemini. That's up from 34% in a previous survey by the systems integrator. Only 37% said a majority of the applications their business is running are mission critical, while 70% reported that at least 20% of their applications are redundant. "The weight of application landscapes is reaching critical mass; disruptive technologies have emerged," the report states. "It is no longer a question of 'whether' to rationalize, but rather 'when' and 'how' to do it."   Is aligning IT to business difficult or taken for granted? Do EAs need to climb out of IT? How does an individual EITA climb the ladder? You need four things: business knowledge empathy (and good reflective communication skills) courage air cover      

Executive Summary:   Hosts: John Kresic, Tom Kresic, Mike Kresic Running Time: 33:05     IT Pro News: IBM needs to get into the cloud, fast ! Updates, people. Updates! SP1 is here: Office 2013, Project 2013, Sharepoint 2013, Exchange 2013 Cloud at the US Government : moving slowly   IT Pro Main Topic: The End of Net Neutrality?   Net Neutrality in the US: FCC, Comcast, TimeWarner, Verizon, AT&T Does Internet performance matter to your business? Conference Calendar: We cover upcoming IT Conferences during the 1st show of each month. Is there a conference you think we should be mentioning in this segment? Let us know!                        

Executive Summary: John has a recap of the Microsoft Project conference that he attended last week in Anaheim. Microsoft names their new CEO. And other Microsoft products are making some news. It's a busy show this week with a Microsoft theme to it.   Hosts: John Kresic, Tom Kresic, Mike Kresic Running Time: 36:18   IT Pro News: Microsoft’s new CEO is Satya Nadella Office365 now has two factor authentication Power BI for Office365 is now available Infopath 2013 is the end of the line       IT Pro Main Topic: MS Project conference recap 1200 attendees in Anaheim, California Big ideas theme. From work, project and portfolio management   Sensei is giving away apps this week   TPG has an integration framework. Office Store on PPM. Big data, excel, powerView, maps.   Check details on trust.office365.com. Also check out the compliance controls. There is now a simple way to create a site mailbox for the project as well. Announcement: Project Online is $33/mo (with BI) and the new Project Lite is $7/mo.   Excel now supports ODATA feeds. Project Online exports the data too. Ms Project now has a PoC for SSIS, not GA yet.   Partner Sensei has personal task based update apps for BYOD entry of time, etc.   Pro tip: avoid benefit budget exhaustion in Q4, sloppy throughout the year. Gotta sweep every two weeks, trust data, act on it. Data will get better.   Vendor Projility supports but Agile and TFS and work items with syncings to Project for PMs. It is important to try to capture time where people do their work. PMs should only track at iteration level. Track burn down of cards   Let teams prioritize work seq.   You need different workflows for agile and SDLC. MS Project supports that construction. User experience matters for ppm and the data entry folks.   Nintex also has prebuilt workflow actions for AD groups and membership. Also uses PSI for setting project statuses and types. The PSI has access to more data than the reporting database, so some operational reporting makes sense.   Big feature: support multiple versions of the same workflow. Nice addition: LazyApproval style is okayed from email, not need a Sharepoint login. After a workflow, some fields are set to read only to avoid tampering. Has a forms editor that locks fields and also reflows for BYOD. Timesheet quality is PMO-wide and not one project. Automate it with reminders.   Deep dive architecture. PWA is lean. ODATA important. Do not let views into db. Do not use web services or PSI but do use CSOM. Do use event handlers even on premises.     Other customers advocate separate farm, no customizations, tight financial with CFO sponsor, better reporting. IT Pro Bookshelf: Accenture ebook on the Five technology imperatives for the Future of HR    

Executive Summary: How does your architectural vision translate to projects that deliver new capabilities? And how are you maintaining those going forward? This is the transition from strategic to tactical. Your organization may struggle with finding the right balance when it comes to budgeting. Yet, both are important. We'll provide some perspectives.   Hosts: John Kresic, Tom Kresic, Mike Kresic Running Time: 26:39   IT Pro News: With AMD ARM updates, is your data center ready for NOT Intel Inside? Lenovo to buy IBM x86 server unit Lenovo to buy Motorola from Google, not IP not R&D Microsoft welcomed to the Open Computing Project, contributes cloud management and server designs IT Pro Main Topic: Balancing tactical and strategic initiatives the language we use the money we allocated the cultural pressure to deliver or to align to strategy external pressure from investors, competition, disruptive innovation   Conference Calendar: We cover upcoming IT Conferences during the 1st show of each month. Is there a conference you think we should be mentioning in this segment? Let us know!        

Executive Summary: A revealing study on the quality of hard drives. A surprising MDM acquisition by a major virtualization vendor. And our featured topic about the risk profiles of maintaining technology currency in your organization.   Hosts: John Kresic, Tom Kresic, Mike Kresic Running Time: 33:32   IT Pro News: Do you know which hard drives run the best? Backblaze knows. Trouble in your business with the new Windows? Microsoft publishes new guide for Windows 8.1 users. Is the end-of-life for Windows XP affecting appliances like ATMs too? VMware is the proud owner of MDM Airwatch for $1.5B.   IT Pro Main Story:  Identify your risk profile for technology What best describes your risk profile for selecting and applying technology: Is Run until it Breaks a description for you, or Test and Innovate? Assessing “mainline business” vs other business units. Where do you lead? Is it Tech for Tech sake? Can you solve a business problem? Does Tech innovation automatically have to come from IT? or the reverse? Is the company’s culture your IT culture, your personal culture aligned?   IT Pro Bookshelf: Architecture and Patterns for IT: Service Management, Resource Planning and Governance, Charles Betz      

Executive Summary: Collaboration is vital to knowledge workers. We discuss the topic for IT pros and why supporting this community is important. We'll also discuss some aspects of lifecycle management that you may not have considered. Plus, an extension of support for an old OS from Microsoft.   Hosts: John Kresic, Tom Kresic, Mike Kresic Running Time: 37:02   IT Pro News: Windows 9 buzz drives MS BUILD conference attendance Windows XP updates extended from April 2014 to July 2015 Oracle patches set record at 144 IBM still #1 in annual patent count       IT Pro Main Story: Collaboration for Knowledge Workers Collaboration as the engine for Knowledge Workers. document creation workflow and approvals publishing rights management enterprise search content lifecycle IT Pro Bookshelf: Implementing Effective Enterprise Architecture, Slideshare A list of classic computing books    

Executive Summary: It's a brand new year and we are looking ahead to what we think will be some of the big stories and trends in enterprise IT in 2014.   Hosts: John Kresic, Tom Kresic, Mike Kresic Running Time: 28:04   Our 2014 Outlook for IT Pros: Big data hype is over Voice-guided apps will change how people interact with corporations Expectations of Microsoft’s new CEO new partnerships or changing alliances IT as a broker Faster cycle times        

Executive Summary: Many organizations conduct employee performance evaluations this time of year. But no matter when you go through the process, we'll share some thoughts around the process of giving and receiving feedback. What are the disservices people do to their colleagues by omitting important information or by sabotaging a truly good performance? Chances are, you've experienced one or more of these first hand.   Hosts: John Kresic, Tom Kresic, Mike Kresic Running Time: 40:34   IT Pro News: Why cloud infrastructure pricing is absurd How cloud partnering is shaping up Just for fun, check out this HP cloud strategy from The Onion.     Performance Evaluations: leadership, communication, tech, business, personal development, relationship building seniority of people, mentoring your role in the feedback process: peer, occasional, manager, subordinate giving feedback: constructive, objective, good and bad observations, anonymous coward accepting feedback: be open and not defensive.     Conference Calendar: We cover upcoming IT Conferences during the 1st show of each month. Is there a conference you think we should be mentioning in this segment? Let us know!     IT Pro Bookshelf: Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High by Kenny Patterson        

Executive Summary: Have you been asked to consider colocation as an alternative to on-premises solutions? Or even cloud hosting? We'll talk about some considerations you should be thinking about if you are looking at total cost of ownership. And Microsoft opens up Office to students. We'll talk about why this is such a good thing for people starting out in their IT careers.   Hosts: John Kresic, Tom Kresic, Mike Kresic Running Time:   IT Pro News: Future knowledge workers will still be fluent in Microsoft Office, thanks to school licensing. Can open projects help you manage risk instead of vendor support? Is cloud cheaper if you will keep the servers for a long time? Conference Calendar: We cover upcoming IT Conferences during the 1st show of each month. Is there a conference you think we should be mentioning in this segment? Let us know! Project Conference on February 2-5, 2014 in Anaheim, California Lync Conference 2014 on February 18-20, 2014 at The Aria in Las Vegas, Nevada Gartner CIO Leadership Forum on February 23-25, 2014 in Phoenix, Arizona SharePoint Conference 2014 on March 3-6, 2014 at The Venetian in Las Vegas, Nevada Interop on March 31-April 4, 2014 at The Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, Nevada     IT Pro Bookshelf: Slideshare for LinkedIn’s Data Infrastructure IBM Developerworks on Openstack architecture          

Executive Summary: We're discussing Microsoft's plans for consolidating operating systems. And pundits argue the merits of OpenStack in the enterprise. You know we're weighing in on this one. Happy Thanksgiving!   Hosts: John Kresic, Tom Kresic, Mike Kresic Running Time: 38:19   IT Pro News: Three versions of Windows are not in Microsoft’s future, per an Exec at the Redmond company. Developers will eventually get Node.js support in Visual Studio Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer simulates several client logon and mail flow scenarios.   Is it right for Gartner to criticize OpenStack, or is this how open development process works? R is for PhDs, Python is for the rest of the data scientists? Conference Calendar: We cover upcoming IT Conferences during the 1st show of each month. Is there a conference you think we should be mentioning in this segment? Let us know!     IT Pro Bookshelf: Learn Python the Hard Way, 3rd Edition Beta of Lambda Expressions in Java 8, docs.oracle.com    

Executive Summary: Amazon made some big announcements at their reInvent conference that should make competitors sit up and take notice. We'll tell you about their new I2 offering that is geared towards providing consistent IOPS and their new foray into the VDI market. How much is a Yottabyte anyway? We've got an interesting infographic to share with you, too.   Hosts: John Kresic, Tom Kresic, Mike Kresic Running Time: 31:17   IT Pro News: Amazon focuses on consistent high performance with its new I2 server offering. Amazon offers VDI Some stats on AWS in its history We love infographics. Here’s one on data sizes that’ll have you telling your friends what a Yottabyte is.   Conference Calendar: We cover upcoming IT Conferences during the 1st show of each month. Is there a conference you think we should be mentioning in this segment? Let us know!     IT Pro Bookshelf: videos: Sharepoint 2013 for IT Pros          

Executive Summary: While Microsoft searches for its next CEO, one co-founder and one candidate have visions of splitting up the company. Meanwhile, the employee ranking system leaves to much applause. Elsewhere, it looks like IT budgets and headcount are on the rise. We'll speculate on what all of this means coming up in today's show. Hosts: John Kresic, Tom Kresic, Mike Kresic Running Time: 33:21   IT Pro News: Microsoft co-founder thinks the company should split. Microsoft also kills Ballmer’s morale-wrecking employee ranking system. IT budgets and headcount set to grow in 2014. Need some CPU cores? Are you linking docs or attaching them? The Itanium is not for sale     Conference Calendar: We cover upcoming IT Conferences during the 1st show of each month. Is there a conference you think we should be mentioning in this segment? Let us know!