Thursday, May 30, 2013

Visualizing Success

When approaching any new project what you will need to do is visualize your organization's success.  It doesn't matter if it is a internal project, external project, outsourcing project, multiple business unit change, you will need a road map for your success. 

Communication should be a key part of that success.  Everyone knows change affects people / groups in different ways.  Your worst enemy is the water cooler talk in any project.  This is where rumors get started and can lead to a very negative feeling on what the organization is trying to accomplish.  As a consultant this is something we need to grasp with the organization.  You will approach it lightly and see the customer's response.  If they have a good track record of organization wide communication then they will be driving force. If this is something new, you as the project / technical expert need to be that driving force.  

In you project team / group's meetings / sessions you will need to convey a communication road map that aligns with your success road map.  You will need a strong leader in the business to share the visualized success with their employees, as these can become you worse enemy when trying to visualize, implement, and train them on the new way of doing things. 

What do I hear most when talking with employees who's management is not leading the communication of road map, "Well, this how we have always done it".  This is not a good attitude when changing for the good.  As you can see by just that one statement the success road map is not being communicated. 

Have a motto, create posters, send out weekly / bi-weekly / semi-monthly updates, and just be pro-active.  

When you start with the visualization get all the success criteria documented.  But with change there will be always a negative impact somewhere in the business.  Don't shelter it, be forthcoming and communicate this also.  

"Success Cannot Be a Success Without Change Being In the Equation"  

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

System Center 2012 Configuration Manager Low Level Overview

After searching high and low, and even asking Microsoft for a Visio diagram, and my searches ending in zero; I have created a generalized overview of the System Center 2012 Configuration Manager using Visio.




You can either save this JPG for you consumption or click below to download the PDF version. 


Thursday, May 23, 2013

Adobe Reader 11 Package Accelerator Available

As you may have seen, we announced that App-V 5.0 SP1 is now available as part of MDOP 2013.  In our many conversations at MMS a few weeks ago, we heard a lot of excitement around 5.0 SP1 as many of you are evaluating 5.0 alongside………

Read the whole post over on the “The Microsoft Application Virtualization Blog”………

http://blogs.technet.com/b/appv/archive/2013/04/30/adobe-reader-11-package-accelerator-available.aspx

System Center 2012: PowerShell – Connecting to Configuration Manager

Welcome to installment #2. In case you missed installment #1 - Getting Started – here’s the link. With the Getting Started blog, you tried a few basic Windows PowerShell cmdlets. I hope you took a bit of time to explore what other cmdlets are available in Windows. But now it’s time to get Configuration Manager hooked up to your PowerShell environment. Let’s start with the easy method………

Read the full post over on the “System Center Configuration Manager Team’s Blog Site”……

http://blogs.technet.com/b/configmgrteam/archive/2013/03/27/powershell-connecting-to-configuration-manager.aspx

Whitepaper: Manage Microsoft Desktop Virtualization with System Center Configuration Manager 2012

This whitepaper describes the integration and features of managing desktop virtualization solutions with Microsoft technologies………

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35813

What’s New in Application Virtualization 5.0 SP1 and User Experience Virtualization 1.0 SP1

As you may have seen, on Wednesday, we announced that MDOP 2013 is now available and detailed the new updates and features made to Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Monitoring (MBAM). But some of you might be saying, “What about Microsoft User Experience Virtualization (UE-V), and Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) 5.0? What is updated in these products?”

As you have heard us say over and over, your feedback is very important and helps drive what we build. Both UE-V and App-V 5.0 were released five months ago and we have seen these technologies adopted by companies like Eastman, NTTX,Etisalat Lanka. As more organizations continued to test and deploy these solutions, the more feedback we received. This feedback drove us to release service packs for UE-V and App-V 5.0 in MDOP 2013……

Read more on the “Spring Board Series Blog”………

http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/springboard/archive/2013/04/11/what-s-new-in-application-virtualization-5-0-sp1-and-user-experience-virtualization-1-0-sp1.aspx