Microsoft Partner SharePoint 8th Oct

Hello all,
First of all thank you to those that took the time out of their busy schedules to join us at the Network Si headquarters for our MS Partner briefing on Microsoft SharePoint.

Network Si and Novotronix both Microsoft Certified Gold Partners have a Partnership where by we are working together to help bring practical advise on implementations of the Microsoft Learning Gateway and to ensure schools are becoming up to speed with the 2010 target deadlines to enable them to deliver Parental Access.

We arranged for Industry recognised speakers Jon Novichi and Alex Pearce Microsoft SharePoint MVP to present. Alex demonstrated Great Barr School the largest school in the UK and how they are currently using the SharePoint technology - I was a pupil at Great Barr School funnily enough!

Steve Eyton Jones highlighted the SharePoint building blocks as well as giving an LEA example, Parental Reporting and Management Reporting as well as MIS integration. Steve really is a wealth of knowledge and has always been helpful to most us of us here at Network Si along with the customers of NSi.

Dave Rook from Charlton School presented as a SharePoint reference site.

Colin Winstone presented the implementation road map, decisions to be made, typical implementation example, delivery options, hosted/on premise, example of costs and ongoing support. I have always found Colin to be extremely professional and responsible in his dealings here with the customers at Network Si.

Well done to Robert Lister from All Saints Catholic High School on winning the laptop.

The feedback my end so far has been very positive, everyone I managed to speak with found value in one way or another and what I am particulary pleased about is the visitors making additional contacts for various other IT projects they are working on also. We are pleased we were able to add value -Thank you Dave, Martin and Steve for being of valuable assistance there.

In our experience of holding briefings we find the intimate briefings of 20 or so attendees means we can harness in and focus more to give attention to detail for the attendees and their individual needs and requirements.

For more detail on the morning please see the homepage on EduGeek a leading Educational Forum site http://www.edugeek.net/ where James Evans gives his overview report. James has also uploaded the master PDF.

Already we have had requests for additional dates and SharePoint 2010 Partner events, we will schedule a date soon to fulfill this -Watch this space for more details on that once the SharePoint conference in Las Vegas has finished of course!!

To get more SharePoint tips we recommend you have a look at http://www.learninggateway.net/

I would like to give a special thank you to the speakers for the help and assistance you have provided us. Last but not least thank you to all of my wonderful colleagues here at Network Si for the "Can do" attitude - It is a pleasure to work with you all as well as our MS Partners Novotronix you are a credit to our Partnership and we look forward to continue our successful working Partnership

staff productivity with Microsoft Office Communication Server 2007 r2

Are you wanting better productivity from your staff?
Are you wanting to reduce expenditure, whilst maintaining best of breed technologies?

Look no further then Microsoft Office Communications Server.
OCS is at the forefront leading the way we communicate with colleagues/departments, outside companies, peers.
The features include- Telephone Exchange integration (meaning you can call your Exchange Server to check on emails, diary, tasks and all your other Outlook Functionality)- Voice,
file transfer, instant messaging, video communication
Software is used to increase and streamline all communications, inc the typical conference call.

Your staff can collaborate in real time to get more work done.

Microsoft staff themselves are using the latest Office Communications Server r2 and are saving on average 90,000 Million in travel costs alone.

A less biased example, 46, 000 staff at Lionbridge save 25hours each on average a year with OCS which equals 125,000 hours saved in total which equates to 60 additional staff to the organisation.

OCS gives Lionbridge that competitive advantage needed especially in todays climate.
Staff benefit from better work flexibility, which is easily adoptable -with an easy intuitive, single interface bringing your organisation benefits today, saving money, delighting your peers, reducing environmental impact and increasing productivity.
http://www.microsoft.com/communicationsserver/en/us/business-value.aspx
If you want to see how OCS can benefit you today call Microsoft Gold Partners Network Si on 0121 511 1234 to arrange f0r an on site visit by one of our Certified Consultants.

Learning Gateway Conference and Novotronix

I thought it was about time I put this post up.
One afternoon in the Oldbury office when I first started with the company I picked up a colleagues extension and it was one of the Network Si customers...
“Can you help us with SharePoint...”
As I was quite new at the time and obviously not too familiar with what SharePoint was.
I decided to ask my colleagues as I would normally do here as who is best to help, (after hearing the full requirements) -three of my colleagues agreed we get a specialist SharePoint implementation company known as Novotronix out to see them.
I went on my colleagues recommendation as many of them have been working here many years and I respected what they had to say and put the customer in touch with Novotronix.

The IT Manager for this NHS group in the West midlands came back to me thanking me for the recommendation, I was quite chuffed “A flexible company with some good projects going on” was the comments given to me (as I'm not technical!) I was happy my colleagues gave me the right advice as I know how NHS dept IT can be difficult :-)

Just to show how IT is such a small world, 3 years later I bumped into Novotronix again!
This time face to face with one of the Directors Steve Eyton Jones, we was both at the Learning Gateway Conference in the West Midlands. I was on the desk helping sign guests in and I recognised the company name straight away and even managed to have a chat at the end with Steve as I was collecting the conference feedback forms, I asked him what interested him in attending on the day he explained the company he works for are able to provide sharePoint solutions in Education and talked me through some of his latest LEA wins he was very proud on the number of schools and colleges in the region his solutions are helping.

When I got back into the office I decided to check out Novotronix and did some of my own research, as you do -I asked a few questions to industry experts SharePoint MVPs everything they had to say on Novotronix was positive I thought well I will check on the EduGeek website and maybe there might be a few conflicting views..........it was all positive - I had to be 101% sure before I made this post!!

If you wanted to see the completed projects for yourself http://www.novotronix.co.uk/

Summer holidays and Microsoft breakfast briefings

I hope everyone is enjoying the well deserved summer holidays..
For those of you like me at work, let's have a look what is going on with the Microsoft Partners who have spent time listening to the customers (you!), their partners (us!), the MVPs and fellow Microsoft colleagues themselves.

Microsoft have spent significant time researching and developing, so let’s have a look at one area on everyone’s agenda
-Backups; common questions now spring to mind...
"Who can help me restore?"
"My backup product does some things well but protecting my advanced exchange isnt one of them"...

Data Protection Manager 2007 is key in this we are forever looking for better ways to protect and recover data from key applications like
-SQL server
-Exchange (in it’s various flavours)
-SharePoint
-File shares in windows 2003, 2008

Reliable, rapid backup and recovery - Data protection Manager enables this, delivering continous data protection for Microsoft applications and file servers.
DPM 2007 is a member of the Microsoft System Centre family of management products it's purpose is to help IT professionals manage their windows server infrastructure.
DPM sets a new standard and you have to see it in action to be fully appreciated.


Another one to bring to attention is Microsoft OCS 2007 r2 -not just because this is at the forefront leading the way we communicate with each other the features include
- file transfer,
- instant messaging
- Telephone Exchange integration (meaning you can call your Exchange Server to check on emails, diary, tasks and all your other Outlook Functionality)
- video communication

This is great for streamlining communications, just like msn messenger for businesses I hear you say, no more money spent having to cover long distance travelling you can use the web conferencing facility.
The R2 version runs solely on a 64 bit platform and is more scalable with the added new features like group chat.

Not only does OCS bring these benefits and more but what it actually does is drives down operational cost -about time and one of my personal favourites as we can work better in a more productively team environment and even remotely. So next time your staff “hay tissue” or [cough] “swine flu”, the poor individual can keep abreast of their inbox from the confines of their sick bed (if they choose to do so!).

These two technologies have to be seen to be appreciated, I am not technical (but I’m learning!) so I cannot give them the clarity and justification they deserve.
Network Si are to stage breakfast briefings and welcome you to these technologies, we are one of a handful of chosen MS Gold Partners hosting the breakfast briefings and for those of you that don’t already know our headquarters are in Birmingham, just off junction 2 of the M5 near Oldbury.

Invited to attend are IT professionals, briefing will cover public sector and Industry.
Question and answer exercise at the end from the MS product experts themselves.
Full breakfast included. I shall be meeting and greeting myself so I shall look forward to seeing a few familar faces. If you would also like to attend and want more information on dates and times, please follow http://twitter.com/network_Si Network Si on Twitter

Learning Gateway Conference

I was honered to be asked to help out at the Learning Gateway conference which happened recently at the prestigous Belfry grounds in Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands.

I greeted around 150 delegates mainly from Education and LEA backgrounds.

The days agenda consisted of innovative technologies being used in education including
-A keynote from Steve Beswick who is the Education Director for Microsoft.
-A session on maintaing your SharePoint and best practises
-Microsoft Unified communications for the learning gateway, office communications server, Exchange.
-Ask the 'Exports" which consisted of a team of leading independant experts including MVPs
-Informal SharePint at the Belfry bar afterwards to the chance to discuss with educational suppliers


My own opinons of the day were first of all shock to see so many attendees flooding us at the registration desk and some even before the desk was open at 8:00 and to even have attendees from other countries. People even showed up that wern't on the list (you all know who you are!) now that is when you know you have a good conference, the guest speakers had a lot to do with that! http://www.learninggatewayconference.com/

The day certainly helped me to increase my understanding of the future of educational technologies Microsoft in particular SharePoint and user adoption. I met with real world experts.

It was nice to see so many familar faces myself, Steve Eyton Jones from Novotronix who works for a SharePoint implementation company as well as Alex Pearce from the Great Barr School (my former school where I was a student!) Mark Berry who travelled all the way from the Bradford Academy, the guys from Edugeek, a few of the admins and those lovely moderators who keep us in line on Edugeek and many more, sorry if I've missed you off!

To read the educational forums comment post on the learning gateway conference you can view it on http://www.edugeek.net/forums/general-edugeek-news-announcements/38960-edugeek-learning-gateway-conference.html

I would also like to say a quick well done and thanks to the speakers for the knowledge and last but not least a special thank you to Alex and Richard for organising the conference and putting me up overnight in the Belfry. Let's all watch this space for the next one!

E-Safety Ofsted Inspections (Web Content Filtering)

The Internet is the most powerful educational tool ever created.
The Internet is the most dangerous place for a student to be.

The issue for education is both of the above statements are true. How do we balance the opportunity of the Internet and other IT with the duty of care to protect our students?

The Internet has opened this can of worms. For all the benefits Internet gives students for research, networking and communication. This great tool can also be dangerous for students as they are susceptible to unsuitable internet sites. Additionally, students are open to cyber bullying, paedophilia the list goes on..

The Schools, Colleges and Universities are becoming increasingly reliant on IT, with networks growing and becoming more complex. IT needs the resource and investment to keep on top of this. First of all IT needs that visibility of the growing network, the support, the man power that goes into managing, the growing number of products from different suppliers for security, storage, reporting, policy enforcement products etc

Question? Does anyone actually know of a single solution which can solve this?

Well, I have finally seen something that has exceeded my expectations, the solution is known as ‘Total Traffic Control’ from Lightspeed Systems. I made a point of going over to them at the BETT show in January 2009 -where we was greeted with an unbelievable attendance at their stand. Roland Malcolm my point of contact for Lightspeed introduced me to Earnie Kramer, who you may all be familiar with, he is very technical to say the least and very passionate about Total Traffic control and making a difference to students e-safety accross the globe.

I have since found out Lightspeed Systems are one of the fastest growing security company’s in education. This comes as no surprise when you look at what’s on offer in the product. The features and benefits of controlling spam, web content filter, malware protection, zero hour protection, Firewall, bandwidth management, email journal, application control, removable media control, policy enforcement, network usage reports, user activity reports, hardware inventory software audit and all from one product.

When we had our orignial web demo 2 years ago we had to see it in action to prove it really does do all of what it says. We were pleasantly surprised and amazed at the comprehensive reporting and functionality the product delivers with the web content filtering we could instantly see a benefit for other schools. It made sense for an evaluation to put it to the real test. It definately lived up to the expectations that were set in the demo.
We now benefit from a more streamlined security and administration for our network. Not only have we been able to reduce our annual costs year on year but more importantly as well we are protecting our students and right in time for those e-safety Ofsted Internet Inspections..

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/redirect-to/?redirect=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lightspeedsystems.com%2Fresources%2FLightspeed_TTC_Demo.html