Susanne Dansey’s Blog

Testing… one, two… two, two…

Hello again!

Yes, I tried and failed miserably in resisting the urge to blog again.

So, here I am, having spent a few months settling down over here in Sydney and now I’m plugging back in. I’ve caught up with a few of the usual suspects over here, caught up with the Sydney SBS Group, as well as enjoyed the sunshine on the beaches, skydived, horse ridden in the Blue Mountains, realised that the road signs over here aren’t as good as the UK (hey! but at least after getting lost I know alternative routes to places!), reluctantly accepted that pints are only available for Guinness (if you’re lucky!), and know that you can’t tear Aussie paper money (thanks Robbie!).

I’m all Visa’d (not Vista’d) up so now it’s off to work* for me! Hoorah!

Next blog post: SBS2008 and how to get an end-user as excited as an IT Administrator/Geek/Microsoftie does about it…

p.s. When an Aussie says ‘howareya?’, is it rhetorical?!

*Hangman clue: D_LL

Thanks for reading!

A year or so ago, Microsoft released a 20-minute Guide to selling SBS which I seem to recall was only available in the UK. When it was announced on t’Internet, Microsoft Partners worldwide found it of use because the principals behind selling IT to a business is pretty much the same - in most cases, you sell it as a solution and not as ‘tin’.

As time has gone on, the product and the sales ‘pitch’ has become dated (or well-used) and I’m pleased to say, a revised version of the guide has been released for you to download.

The marketing team here at Westcoast are busy working on a Microsoft Microsite at the moment, so I used the opportunity to get a copy of the brochure uploaded so you can check it out.

Click here to download your copy. Hardcopies are available for Microsoft Partners from the Partner Portal.

Worth a read whether you are an IT professional or a business looking for some help with IT.

If you haven’t done this before, it’s well worth a go to help you find out a little more about yourself. Based on your individual responses, the MBTI instrument produces results to identify which of the sixteen different personality types best describes you. Your personality type represents your preferences in four separate categories, with each category composed of two opposite poles. The four categories describe key areas that combine to form the basis of a person’s personality as follows: 

1. Where you focus your attention - Extraversion (E), or Introversion (I)
2. The way you take in information - Sensing (S), or INtuition (N)
3. The way you make decisions - Thinking (T), or Feeling (F)
4. How you deal with the outer world - Judging (J), or Perceiving (P)

• Extraversion: People who prefer extraversion tend to focus their attention on the outer world of people and things.
• Introversion: People who prefer introversion tend to focus their attention on the inner world of ideas and impressions.
• Sensing: People who prefer sensing tend to take in information through the five senses and focu on the here and now
• Intuition: People who prefer intuition tend to take in information from patterns and the big picture, and focus on future possibilities.
• Thinking: People who prefer thinking tend to make decisions  based primarily on logic, and on objective analysis of cause and effect.
• Feeling: People who prefer feeling tend to make decisions based primarily on values and on subjective evaluation of person-centred concerns.
• Judging: People who prefer judging tend to like a planned and organised approach to life, and prefer to have things settled.
• Perceiving: People who prefer perceiving tend to like a flexible and spontaneous approach to life, and prefer to keep their options open.

Why not guess what you think you are before taking the test?

Click here to give it a go.

I’m an ENFJ… what are you?

I am a marketing collateral hoarder. I admit it. But it really comes in handy when I need an idea and I know I can find it in the pile of ‘ideas’ that sit on my desk. Most of the hard copies have been replaced by RSS feeds but there’s still a fair bit laying around that I’ve found as I’ve started to tidy up my desk.

Hopefully, you won’t mind me sharing some of it with you; and if you do, well… look away now.

Let’s start with Vista (as it’s in the title).

Section 1: The  statistics.

WARNING: Use with care, frequent use of big numbers can cause mental blindness and can seriously risk your health.

1. Analyst firm IDC estimates that Microsoft’s Partners in Europe will clock up in excess of 32 billion Euros this year from sales associated with Windows Vista.
2. For every pound Microsoft earns in the UK on sales of Vista, its Partners will make £7.50.
3. IDC predicts that Windows Vista will be installed on more that 100 million computers worldwide.
4. The same guys have said that Windows Vista-related employment will account for more than one million IT jobs across the biggest European national markets. This means that Windows Vista will account for more than 20 per cent of the total number of IT jobs across the continent as a whole.
5. More than 60 million licenses of Windows Vista have been sold (as of June 2007), with 42 million PCs covered by volume licensing.*
6. Security is one of the key drivers for people moving to Windows Vista and 50 per cent of IT managers moving to it agree.
7. Windows Vista revealed total cost of ownership savings are estimated at $605 per laptop per year, with related technologies and best practices implemented. This is a saving of 14% over Windows XP (GCR Custom Research adn Wipro Technologies).
8. Vista drivers are being certified at a rate of 1,600 every month.

Section 2: The Opportunities.

This is where the real science happens. Statistics are impressive but why should you really be looking at Vista? Why is a customer going to want to upgrade and why are you going to want to support it when XP has been doing the job just fine thank you very much…?

I found some quotes from Partners who have made Vista work for them and their clients. These guys have put in the hard work and focused on solving problems rather than just stick it in and cope with the changes:

“In terms of adoption, most Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 customers are seeking to implement Windows Vista at the same time. What is great to see is that customers are using their Vista deployments to resolve any outstanding technical issues they might face and rather than just an upgrade, they are using it to completely revolutionise their technical infrastructure. We don’t think that Windows Vista is difficult to sell; it’s just that the projects are very different.”

Alun Rogers, Technical Director, Risual (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner)

“Whenever we’re talking about an upgrade or roll-out to a customer, we will always offer familiarisation training with Windows Vista or Office 2007. This training is vital to the success of the implementation and will ensure a more rapid adoption. If customers buy Windows Vista without training, they won’t get all the benefits they are looking for. In educating customers, you can unlock any reservations about Windows Vista, and combat any perception that Windows XP is good enough.”

Adrian Barkey (he’s a very nice man), Director, EJC IT (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner)

“We are a desktop deployment Partner. We are utilising the resources provided via the Microsoft Partner Programme to make the deployment of Windows Vista easier for our customers. We’ve found that numerous organisations have not implemented desktop deployment solutions, and desktop automation is a project in its own right whether you are moving to Windows Vista or not.”

Peter Mercieca, BDM, Silversands (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner)

“There’s a greater focus and messaging around Software-Plus-Services that’s coming from Microsoft, and this is creating a new wave of interest around the interoperability of the UC technologies, Windows Vista, and the 2007 Microsoft Office System.”

Ciaran Cosgrave, Chief Technology Officer, Netstore (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner)

Section 3: Tools

Unified Communications (UC) Training - Gartner predicts 40% of companies will complete the convergence of their entire voice and data networks onto a single network by 2010, and 80% of companies will integrate communications (voice/messaging) into some business applications or processes in the same time. Think about businesses using UC, Vista, Office, and Server, and you get choice. www.uclearningpaths.com

Windows Vista tools and resources - access a range of sales and deployment resources including toolkits and hardware assessments as well as newsgroups and relevant blogs: www.microsoft.com/uk/partner/vista 

*but how many were downgraded to Windows XP?

After installing a copy of Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 on their machine, a customer found that their version turned out to be something different.

It seems that the machine was originally bought as an Office Ready PC (you can read about the programme here.) had been installed with a FPP (Fully Packaged Product) of Office rather than the MLK. The error occurs because the trail software was not removed before a full copy of Office was installed over the top. 

No need to panic though if you see this, here’s how to fix it:

• Completely uninstall any copies of Office ( use this KB to ensure everything is removed) on said machine.
• Reinstall the FPP copy and that should have you back up and kicking.

See also:

The title bar displays ‘non-commercial use’ when you start an Office Home and Student 2007 Programme

Please remember that ‘non-commercial’ by Microsoft’s definition means ‘the software is not licensed for use in any commercial, non-profit, or revenue-generating business activities’.

The Manchester SBS Group is up and kicking and due for a new launch on the 27th March.

 Click here for more details on how to attend.

 Question: Is it/ will it be a SBS user Group or is it like the rest in the UK and a Small Business Specialist/IT Pro Group?

 Good luck guys!

Dell Small Business 360 are hosting a free online course that will help you understand what’s available to assist you with your small business data back up solutions.

“Market research firm IDC reports that storage capacity is rising 60 percent per year and many small businesses need to upgrade their capacity at a similar rate¹*. Meanwhile, unmanaged or poorly managed data can waste several hours a week of time spent looking for information. The good news is that the right storage devices can help businesses share data and collaborate in an automated way. In addition to avoiding wasted time and improved collaboration, your business can move more quickly and arrive at key decisions more efficiently if you manage, back up and intelligently migrate data on an ongoing basis.

In this free online course, PCMagCast expert instructors will provide you with the information you need to know to move your data and your storage processes to the right kinds of solutions. The course will consist of three 20-minute webcast lessons complemented by downloadable coursework for each lesson. The three lessons are as follows:

Lesson 1 : Do You Know What Type of Storage You Need?

Lesson 2 : You’ve Got What You Need? Time to Move and Secure Your Data

Lesson 3 : Making Backups Sound, Secure and Easy”

Click, here to register.

No harm in those trying to communicate the same messages to log-on and pick up a few ideas on how to articulate it?

*Source: IDC, “Worldwide Storage 2008 Top 10 Predictions: New Paradigms,” Doc # 209796, December 2007.

Become a Windows Mobile Specialist or a Windows Small Business Retail Mobile Specialist by studying a series of courses developed specifically around the features and benefits of Windows Mobile. Also available are online sales tools, and mobile device news.

Very useful if you want to train a new recruit up on the product both in terms of ‘light’ technical and sales; or even if you want to brush up on your product knowledge.

Click here to access (you will need to use your Windows Live ID to sign in).

I presented yesterday at my penultimate presentation in Farnham which was a lot of fun. Lots of questions were asked, so here’s some answers to some of those asked.

Not sure what version of Microsoft Office you have?

Open up any of your Microsoft Office programs (Outlook, Word, Excel, etc…), click on ‘help’ in the toolbar and select ‘About Microsoft Outlook/Word/Excel etc…)

How to back up emails, files, and folders within Outlook.

Firstly, I apologise for slipping in the word ‘pst’ into my presentation without explaining what it meant. A pst file or ‘.pst’, stands for Personal Storage Table (yawn!) and an explanation of it can be found here.

An Outlook Backup Tutorial can be found here. (no point re-inventing the wheel eh? )

How to back up emails, files, and folders within Entourage.

For further information on Entourage for Mac, click here.

How to back up your data within Entourage, click here.

How to back up your Mac OS X, click here.

How to mail merge in Outlook

Using Outlook 2003 click here, and using Outlook 2007 (because you need to start in Word and pull the information over rather than push from Outlook), click here.

Many of the other questions asked of me can be found in a previous post. Click here to read about it or read through some of my recent posts.

Please note, the links and information on the Internet didn’t all get posted in the last few days, most have been up for years and haven’t been purposely hidden from you. If you need further information about a particular issue regarding your IT, chances are someone else has already had it and discussed it online using something like a forum. Simply type in a question or problem using a search engine and you should find yourself a few solutions.

Even better, why not pick up the phone and call an IT expert close by you so you can get some solutions to your problems as well as get some new ideas on how to run your business better. I recommed you type in your postcode here and call up a local Small Business Specialist. I used to be one before I changed jobs so I know that they’ll be able to help you.

Last stop: Basingstoke