So many people are asking “Is this the right product for me and my company?”  Microsoft will tell you yes, since they are coming out with two versions for businesses of this product, small business and enterprise.  But I know many of my clients are still not sure if they want to have all of their data up in the cloud.  So security is a top concern for them.

Microsoft’s online services have been designed with security in mind. Office 365 applications are accessed through 128-bit SSL/TSL encryption. Antivirus signatures are kept up to date, and security measures are applied in accordance with the Microsoft Trustworthy Computing initiative.

Here are some other highlights of Office 365

• Hosted Exchange – Exchange Online gives you the benefits of Exchange Server 2010 without the cost and overhead of deploying it in-house. User mailboxes up to 25 GB are supported. Attachments up to 25 MB are allowed. Users can restore deleted items, including items deleted from the Deleted Items folder.
• Up-to-date versions – With Office 365, companies and their users get all the features and functionality of the very latest versions of Microsoft’s server products
• Single sign on – Assuming your network is running Server 2008 Active Directory on-premises, you can configure Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) to achieve single sign-on, so that users can log on to the domain and be automatically authenticated to Office 365.
• SharePoint Online – SharePoint Online makes collaboration easy. You get 500 MB of storage per user account with a storage quota of up to 100 GB per site collection. Your company can have up to 1 TB total storage. Your SharePoint sites work with all Microsoft Office 2010 applications, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Outlook, InfoPath, SharePoint Designer, and SharePoint Workspace.
• Reliability - Downtime means lost worker productivity and ultimately costs companies money. Microsoft Online Services provides a service level agreement (SLA) and has a 99.9 percent scheduled uptime. Microsoft has multiple datacenters, located all over the world, hosting redundant network architecture. If there is an outage at one datacenter, another can act as a backup. Customers hosted by the first datacenter are transferred to another, with as little service interruption as possible.

The next concern people have is price.  If you just get the hosted Exchange, it costs $5 per month per mail box.  For $10 per month you can get Hosted Exchange, SharePoint and the Office products.  This can be an advantage if you are considering upgrading your exchange server or upgrading your Office Suite.

If you compare what it would cost on a monthly basis for just Hosted Exchange for a 25 person office, considering a Spam filter, Antivirus, offsite backups and maintenance,  you can save about $165 a month or about $6,000 over three years.  If you compare this with a 75 person office, the saving would be almost $500 per month or $18,000 for three years.

As you can see with both examples, hosted Exchange is the most cost effective option, so back to the original question, is this right for you?  Well if you want improved security, reliability and always being on the most recent version of MS office while paying for it monthly instead of up front, then Office 365 is right for you. 

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about Office 365, if it is right for you or the calculations I used to get to these numbers.

Farrell Lusher
Farrell@tscinc.com

Unfortunately, Outlook remembers all the mistyped and old emails as well as the correct and current ones.  At times it can be difficult to know which one is the right one. Fortunately, getting rid of entries you no longer want to appear in the auto-complete list is easy.

Delete an Address from the Outlook Auto-Complete List

To remove a name or email address from Outlook’s auto-complete list:

• Create a new email message in Outlook.
• Start typing the name or address you want to remove.
• Use the down arrow key to highlight the desired (undesired) entry.
• Press Del.

Prevent Outlook Address Auto-Completion Altogether

You can also stop Outlook from suggesting email addresses as you type:

• Select Tools | Options… from the menu.
• Go to the Preferences tab.
• Click E-mail Options….
• Now click Advanced E-mail Options….
• Make sure Suggest names while completing To, Cc, and Bcc fields is not checked.
• Click OK.
• Click OK again.
• Click OK once more.

I wasn’t feeling ill just because of the thought losing an expensive piece of equipment; it was the thought of losing all that personal and somewhat confidential information.  It made me start to think of some of what I have on that smart phone:

• Emails
• Text messages
• Photos
• Music
• Facebook account
• LinkedIn account
• Remote access programs
• Apps

Then I started wondering if there were any confidential emails or text messages that I did not want my competitors to see?  When was the last time I backed up all those really cute pictures of my daughter?  Did I really have it where my phone would login automatically to my Facebook & LinkedIn accounts?  Will I have to pay for that music or those Apps again?

So here are some suggestions on what should do before you lose your smart phone:

1. Make sure you lock your phone.  I would never have it where I did not need to enter my pass code to use it.
2. Download an app that has the ability to wipe your phone from any computer.
3. Download an app that will track your phone with its GPS function for you.

4)      Never put in your password for Facebook, LinkedIn or any type of social media account.

5)      Backup your photos and music to your computer regularly.

Here are a couple of suggestions on what should do after you lose it.

1. If you installed some of those apps, lock your phone then track it and if you can’t find it, wipe it clean.
2. Call your phone vendor to deactivate it.  Most phone companies will make you responsible for any calls made up to the time you deactivate it.
3. Look for it again. Sometimes gremlins will hide phones and they end up in a place you already searched.  That is what happened to me, I found mine in my car under the driver’s seat.  What a relief!

Moving ‘TEMPDFRG8620.EDB’ to ‘d:\progra~1\exchsrvr\mdbdata\priv1.edb’…
File Copy Status (% complete)

0    10   20   30   40   50   60   70   80   90  100
|—-|—-|—-|—-|—-|—-|—-|—-|—-|—-|
……………………Error: Could not re-instate ‘d:\progra~1\exchsrvr\mdbdata\priv1.edb’. It may be manually re-instated by manually copying ‘TEMPDFRG8620.EDB’ to ‘d:\progra~1\exchsrvr\mdbdata\priv1.edb’ (this will overwrite the original copy of the file with the defragmented copy).

Operation terminated with error -1032 (JET_errFileAccessDenied, Cannot access fi
le, the file is locked or in use) after 22654.188 seconds.

What I found out was that even though the Information store is dismounted in ESM, it may still be locked open

I could of stopped the following services and re-run the defrag (which will take another 6 hours of time)

• Net stop MSEXCHANGEIS
• Net stop MSEXCHANGESA

Or I could do this first and it should only take about 10 minutes.

If the defrag has finished with no errors and did not overwrite the main priv1.edb you can overwrite the original database with the defragged database and restart all servers (recommended as you will NOT have to re-run the defrag process again).

• Stop the Exchange Information Store and System Attendant services
• In your Exchange MDB directory, rename priv1.stm to priv1-backup.stm (if applicable)
• In your Exchange MDB directory, rename priv1.edb to priv1-backup.edb (if applicable)
• Copy the new temp defrag of the .stm file (in our case TEMPDFRG8620.stm) to the Exchange MDB directory – ENSURE the file name is changed to priv1.stm
• Copy the new temp defrag of the .edb file (in our case TEMPDFRG8620.edb) to the Exchange MDB directory – ENSURE the file name is changed to priv1.edb
• Restart all Exchange services
• Mount the Information Store
• PERFORM IMMEDIATE EXCHANGE BACKUP (this is VERY important as the old log files – pre-defrag cannot be used to replay a restoration with the newly defragmented database).

This worked for me and I was very happy!  I did not feel like re-running the defrag or even worst, restoring from a tape backup.  Just remember that an Off-line exchange database defragmentation will generally handle 9-10gb per hour – there is no way to speed up this process.  Please evaluate your database sizes BEFORE you start this process as large database defrags may need to be started over a weekend.

I like these types of clients because we can really help them out by getting them to go to a virtual environment. As you may know, a virtual server environment allows you to operate several server software installations on one hardware server. Here are some of the benefits of going virtual:

1. You don’t have to purchase all that hardware; you can get by with one or two virtual servers.
2. That means utilization of existing computer hardware resources is better.
3. You are using less electricity, no need to power up all those power supplies.
4. Your servers are taking up less floor space.
5. They are easier to manage.

You don’t have to have a lot of servers to take advantage of virtualization. We have a client that just has two servers, a Small Business server and an accounting server. Their accounting server was over 6 years old and really needed to be replaced. They had two options:

1. The first was to just replace what they had with a new server and software. The server itself would cost about $3,500 and they were looking at about 8 hours of labor from us plus another 5 or so hours from their accounting consultants to get it all set up and running.
2. The second option was to go virtual. They paid about $1,000 less since they did not need the Windows 2008 server software and it only took us 3 hours to install and no hours from their accounting consultants.

Going virtual on this projected saved them about $2600 or about 50% of the project cost.

Going virtual will make you green, not just in the electricity you save but in the dollars you save as well.

In order to quickly show desktop in Windows 7, just click on the Show Desktop bar at the far right end of the Windows Taskbar and notification area, which is next to the data and time clock (if you don’t hide the clock system icons in notification area). See illustration below for the exact location.

Duties:

1. Analyze clients’ operation, and information handling procedures that would devise most efficient methods of accomplishing work and management;
2. Develop complete and reliable main networking systems for clients’ management to increase profitability and cost effectiveness in information glow, integrated management methods, inventory control and cost analysis;
3. Study existing data handling systems, review business documents and operation procedures to evaluate effectiveness of data management systems, and recommending network system modification and/or new system procedures and organizational changes;
4. Assist and train clients’ management and other workers in software application and conferring with them to assure smooth functioning of computer systems or procedures, and insure that systems are applied as designed and functioning as satisfactorily;
5. Prepare or assist in the preparation of reports detailing the technical feasibility and cost of implementing data processing systems;
6. Plan and prepare technical reports, memoranda, and instructional manuals as documentation of program development; and
7. Upgrade systems and correct errors to maintain system after implementation at clients’ companies.

Qualification:

Master’s Degree in Computer or Information Science.

TSC, Inc.
Attn: Human Resource
5700 6th Avenue S
Suite 210
Seattle, WA 98108

3) Have three copies of any important files:  the file you use on your computer +  two backup files.

2)  Use two different types of media for the backup files. For example: one backup on tape + one on external hard drive. Or, one backup on DVD + one online backup.  This is to ensure if something went wrong with one backup, you have a second one to choose from.

1) Make sure one copy is stored offsite.  This could be online or anywhere your computer is not.  This is to protect against fire or theft.

Notice that online backup figures prominently in modern back-up strategy. With a growing number of low cost cloud (Web) based data storage services, online backup are a convenient and affordable part of your 3-2-1 backup strategy.  If you don’t have an online backup now, ask me which one is right for you.