If there's any constant with MSPs, it's change. Not that that's unusual in the technology industry, but MSPs seem to have changed models and strategies more in the last few years than most other companies in most categories. They even changed their name: remember Applications Service Providers?
Well, the change continues, as companies refine outsourcing strategies. The new thing, apparently, is great big companies using multiple MSPs rather than going with just one or two, and general flooding of competition in the MSP market. 
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Posted by Lee Pender on June 30, 20080 comments
          
	
 
            
                
                
            
                
                
 
    
    
	
    There's probably something wrong when it's much, much easier to find Norris 
  Weese's career passing yardage total (1,887) than it is to find critical information 
  about your own company. 
One survey suggest that 
enterprise 
  search is just lame
, which, to us, sounds as though somebody should capitalize 
  on the opportunity to make it better.
 
	
Posted by Lee Pender on June 26, 20080 comments
          
	
 
            
                
                
            
                
                
 
    
    
	
    In case you hadn't noticed, the first four letters in the word "hyper" 
  are H-Y-P-E. And, until today, a lot of what we knew about the core product 
  in Microsoft's virtualization strategy, the Hyper-V hypervisor, was just that: 
  hype. (Well, hype and the fact that, 
as 
  we've maintained
, Hyper-V sounds like an '80s break-dancing name.) 
 
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	Posted by Lee Pender on June 26, 20080 comments
          
	
 
            
                
                
 
    
    
	
    Apparently, Symantec's purchase of Altiris, now about a year old, is going 
  fairly well. The security giant released a mega-suite this week called 
Endpoint 
  Management Suite 1.0
.
It's got just about everything in it that a product of that name would seem 
  to have, and Kevin Murray, senior director of product marketing at Symantec 
  (and not the former Texas A&M quarterback) said that everything in the new 
  suite actually works together.
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	Posted by Lee Pender on June 25, 20080 comments
          
	
 
            
                
                
 
    
    
	
    A couple of weeks ago, 
we 
  pondered
 what, exactly, social networking in the office would be good for. 
  Well, Christine responded to our questions with great enthusiasm:
  "Social networking for higher ed rocks! LinkedIn -- keeping up with 
    your students who have graduated! You know what they are doing, where they 
    are doing it, and what we missed in their education to correct class content 
    and keep up with the industry. It also helps us with our completer numbers 
    as most of my students change their e-mails and cell phone numbers as often 
    as they change their socks or add additional piercings and/or tattoos, and 
    we need to follow up with them six months after they graduate.
    
    "MySpace -- post your calendar, let your students know when you are in 
    class, when you are gone, when your office hours are. They're looking here, 
    not on your campus Web page! Second Life -- get your administration to sponsor 
    an island...let the fun begin!"
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	Posted by Lee Pender on June 25, 20080 comments
          
	
 
            
                
                
 
    
    
	
    Apparently Patch Tuesday isn't exactly a national holiday yet, as most users 
  choose to 
ignore 
  it completely
. 
 
	
Posted by Lee Pender on June 25, 20080 comments
          
	
 
            
                
                
            
                
                
 
    
    
	
    We intentionally gave, or tried to give, this entry a 
New York Times
-sounding 
  headline -- they always seem to start with a dependent clause -- because this 
  is one of those times when the big-name, mainstream, non-business media are 
  storming into our territory.
Oh, sure, the Newsweeks of the world write about technology a lot more 
  frequently than they used to, but they still mainly show up just for the big 
  events -- enormous product launches, executive departures and arrivals, earnings 
  disasters (or, less frequently, blockbusters), that sort of thing. Down here 
  in the trades, we grind out technology news every day. Only relatively rarely 
  are we visited by our friends in the big-time. 
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	Posted by Lee Pender on June 24, 20080 comments
          
	
 
            
                
                
 
    
    
	
    Dell is giving XP one more week to live, and if we're to believe some 
reports 
  from credible sources
, Microsoft might be thinking of extending the stay 
  of execution for the popular operating system, too. 
Well, it only makes sense, doesn't it? Look, 
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Posted by Lee Pender on June 24, 20080 comments