FLEXible

A conversation about doing more with less

I found myself getting slightly annoyed the other day while talking with a friend. They run a small business and have yet to utilize social media to get the message across. They’re just a bit old fashioned and can’t be bothered to dive into this form of marketing. <Editor’s Note: Just to warn/relieve you, this post is not about social media; it’s about missed opportunities.>

I reasoned that Twitter and Facebook may seem trendy and self-indulgent to some, but what matters is that your customers are using it, and so are your competitors. It’s a free service – get on there and get your message out. Makes sense, right?

Time will tell if I win that battle, but it did remind me of a similar scratch-your-head scenario that still exists. Companies who still haven’t moved their SharePoint to a private cloud.

Now is the time

Recession. There’s your buzzword. Tossed throughout blog posts and newswires everywhere you look. Global economies are suffering and recessions are flaring up on every continent. And the blame is just as prevalent – tossed around at every politician and disaster in its path. But I’m not here to talk about how we got here; I’m just the guy trained in CPR and holding the life raft to get your business out alive.

I’m here to talk about moving your on-premise SharePoint infrastructure to the private cloud. Yes, it’s an economy only the Cloud could love. And that’s why you need to be…

Doing More with Less

I think we can all agree that whatever industry you’re in and whatever position you hold, you’ve been charged by your superiors or, for those at the top, your budget, to do more with less. The first time I heard this I looked down at the pencil in my hand and broke it in half. Bam! Two pencils. So I’m experienced at finding solutions. But sometimes the solution isn’t that simple; sometimes it takes more of a leap.

SharePoint Hosting provider Fpweb.net is once again teaming up with Innovative-e, Inc. to present a FREE webinar on “5 Risky SharePoint HR Temptations” on Wednesday, May 23rd at 2:00pm ET.

Join Chris Schwab, SharePoint Engineering Director for Fpweb.net, and Caroll Ford, Managing Partner and SharePoint Practice Owner for Innovative-e, Inc., for an in-depth look into the Human Resources “temptations” or mistakes that organizations make when it comes to understanding the roles necessary to successfully implement and maintain a SharePoint portal, as well as knowing what skills are essential to the various roles. Key topics in this FREE webinar include:

• Discussing the different roles that are required to successfully implement a SharePoint portal
• For each role, learning the appropriate technical and soft skills necessary to form a winning team
• Selecting the “right” people for a SharePoint team
• Understanding how SharePoint governance guidelines and policies interact with the team selection and success
• Managing a cross-functional team that consists of IT and business people who may report through different structures

Please register FREE to attend this featured SharePoint webinar.

“It’s a Dog-Eat-Dog World.”

Besides lending some pretty revolting imagery, the term’s purpose is to warn that society is looking out for itself, so beware.

It’s rare for a stranger or a company to legitimately look out for your best interests and cater to your needs.

Frustratingly rare. We’re programmed to enter any economic exchange (whether it’s buying clothes from a department store or purchasing *shudder* car insurance, etc.) with the mindset that if we aren’t careful, we’ll be taken advantage of. And it’s not our fault, because this is usually the case.

They know they can’t make money without customers right?

I’ve talked about Why Customer Service Matters before, because it’s critical to me. Go ahead and read that link. I’ll wait… In that case, my experience with United Airlines (with whom I’ve been a loyal, almost exclusive, flyer for the past eight years for some reason) was horrible. And when I confronted them about it, I got the standard ‘sorry and see ya later’ response. And that’s not good enough.

Want easy, seamless integration between your company’s network and Fpweb.net’s SharePoint Cloud? How about Disaster Recovery (DR) failover with fast, secure Virtual Machine (VM) replication across the Internet? New updates in the core Microsoft server product lineup are closing the gaps and facilitating smarter cloud-based SharePoint environments. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Microsoft SharePoint and the Cloud are becoming fast friends! (*hold for applause*)

At the recent Microsoft Hosting Summit 2012, I was thrilled to see the future of Cloud tools unfolding before my eyes. Microsoft is finally producing tools that enable providers like Fpweb.net to go big and fast. As a trusted SharePoint advisor and leading hosting provider for the platform, Fpweb.net is 100% SharePoint, and solving our customers’ SharePoint needs just got easier!

Fpweb.net has provided Microsoft’s SharePoint Team with a ton of feedback from our customers, and I am delighted to say that most of our wish list has been fulfilled with this release of products. Always nice to see Redmond recognizing Fpweb.net’s dedicated SharePoint team in their new product release presentations.

So, let’s talk about what the Microsoft Product Teams have been up to – and which tools Fpweb.net will be using to build the next-generation SharePoint Cloud. The big three core components behind SharePoint are Windows Server 8, SQL Server 2012 and System Center 2012. SPOILER: Windows Server 8 is the greatest Cloud platform on the planet…

Without further ado, let’s get started.  

(In this final post in a  4-part series on How to Upgrade SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010 series resident SharePoint Engineer Joe Beyer provides insight on the configuring Microsoft SQL Server and the final steps using the Database Attach upgrade process.)

In my last post, I covered one of the two primary methods of upgrading SharePoint: the In-Place Upgrade. Now let’s take a closer look at using the ‘Database Attach’ method of upgrading.

Database Attach

For this method, I am going to assume the following tasks have already been completed:

• SharePoint 2010 required hardware and software is already in place and ready for upgrade.
• Current SharePoint 2007 environment has been patched with Service Pack 2 or later.
• Successfully ran PreUpgradeCheck (stsadm –o preupgradecheck).
• Ran the prerequisite installer on each web server in the farm.

At last! Here is Part 3 of 3 of my How to Upgrade SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010 series as promised (or at least Part 3A of 3 – I realized there was still a LOT of information to cover, so I decided to ‘Harry Potter’ it and break the last final installment into two posts).

I know most of you have had your SharePoint environments hanging in limbo while you patiently awaited this third and final blog. Let’s finally roll up our sleeves and get these environments back up and running on SharePoint 2010!

To pick up where we left off… the first blog of this upgrade series was essentially just a high level overview of the upgrade process as I just touched on each method. The second blog was more of an introduction to both the In Place Upgrade and Database Attach Upgrade methods. In this third blog, I would like to expand on each method in hopes that you can use this blog as a step-by-step guide to upgrade your environments.

Fpweb.net is hosting FAST Search Server in the SharePoint Cloud

You have a choice in enterprise search. And let me assure any enterprise or mid-sized company, you don’t just need FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint, you want it! When you’re running a company that is powered by outside-the-box thinking, you can’t be limited to “out-of-the-box” features. You need your environment to grow with your business needs.

If the purpose of using SharePoint is to benefit from the productivity and collaboration that it enables, you’ll miss a key business benefit by disregarding FAST Search.

So what is FAST Search Server?

We’ve written a pretty comprehensive look at the features of FAST Search Server 2010 but in the meantime, here’s a brief summary:

Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint takes all of the search and integration capabilities that are baked into SharePoint Server 2010 and then amplifies those capabilities with improved flexibility and scale along with beefing up the content processing to the point that it can index and search over a billion items. Which is a lot.

Looking for a change? Want a job where you look forward to showing up?

Thinking about starting a new career with a company that is designed around harnessing your creativity? Fpweb.net is filling its St. Louis offices with talented, driven individuals who can help take our Fpweb.net teams to new places. We understand that hard work should be rewarded and that’s why we take care of our employees.

We care about our employees and while they’re taking care of the company, we want to take care of them. On top of our strong benefits package that includes medical, dental and life insurance, we offer a retirement plan (matching 401k) and a Gold’s Gym membership for good measure. We don’t track your vacation or sick days. If you need a day, take it. We’re a relatively small team so you’ll actually have a say in how things are done here. We provide you the environment to perform at your best and excel at your career!

Sure, in one sense Microsoft SharePoint is an application: the SharePoint software package is installed and deployed directly on a server (or cluster of multiple servers). But SharePoint is so much more than just another enterprise-level application. Fundamentally, SharePoint is also a platform. Beyond its ‘off-the-shelf’ capabilities for online collaboration and workflow management, SharePoint also serves as the backbone to enable specialized apps and solutions from third-party vendors.

With a SharePoint environment, you get a fully-featured platform upon which other business-critical applications can be installed. And under the broad umbrella of the SharePoint platform, there is a rich tapestry of business applications to choose from: Business Intelligence (BI) apps, content and document management apps and extensions, search software ‘bolt-ons’ including FAST Search Server, extensible code libraries, reusable web parts, security and compliance solutions and list goes on and on. While maybe SharePoint was originally conceived as a standalone program, it has evolved to become a premier applications platform for developers to customize and build upon.

(This blog is a follow-up to Rob LaMear’s Understanding the Hybrid Cloud SharePoint Model.)

As Director of SharePoint Engineering at Fpweb.net, one of my roles is traveling around and talking with people about hosted SharePoint. One of the more interesting comments I get is “My organization has data we can’t move out to the cloud, so we can’t use your service.” Interestingly enough, I love hearing this, because it usually indicates that they haven’t yet considered the most powerful and functional way to implement SharePoint in the Cloud…The hybrid model.

A misconception here is that this is an all-or-nothing solution, which is far from accurate. The power of any cloud service is to find services that are great at what they provide, then bolt them together to get the best of everything. Traditionally Hybrid cloud solutions refer to a combination of cloud services and On Prem infrastructure, but you can also consider a hybrid solution a mixture of services in the cloud. Want some examples? We can do that…