Which Version Of Windows 7 Is Right For Your Business?

With the release of Windows 7, Microsoft is again offering a wide array of choices in versions of the operating system. However, if you are looking at buying Windows 7 for your business you should only really be looking at three versions, Professional, Enterprise, or Ultimate.

Windows 7 Professional boasts all the functionality that is needed for virtually any small to medium sized business. It offers compatibility with many programs designed for Windows, new and old. One of the big downsides to Windows Vista that prevented many businesses from upgrading was that Vista broke functionality in older programs that were not designed to work with the added security features of the operating system. If those programs have not yet been updated Windows 7 Professional can help solve that problem, and allow you to finally upgrade from Windows XP. The way that Windows 7 solves this problem is through a feature called Windows XP Mode, which uses a virtualization technology that is nearly transparent to you and your staff, which allows you to continue using your older programs without breaking them. Windows XP Mode is not available in any of the Home versions of Windows 7.

Security is (or it should be) a concern of all businesses today. Windows 7 Professional can help your business in this area as well. Professional, unlike the Home versions, offers an Encrypting File System, which is a technology that protects your files and folders from prying eyes. Backing up data is also something that everyone should be doing, however many do not because of the hassle involved in making those backups. With the Automatic data backups functionality, data can be backed up to your network without having to remember to manually run the backup, thus taking the pain out of the process.

With Windows 7 Professional, you also have the ability to join a Windows Active Directory Domain at your business. An Active Directory Domain is a system that runs on a Windows Server and manages your staff’s network passwords and other settings. All businesses with more than 10 employees should have an Active Directory Domain. With the any of the Home versions of Windows 7 you cannot join an Active Directory Domain, and must manually manage your passwords and computer settings.

If your business requires more complex functionality Microsoft offers the Windows 7 Enterprise version. This version of Windows 7 gives your staff access to all of the functionality found in the Professional version of Windows 7 and more. One technology, not found in any of the other versions of Windows 7 is BranchCache, which if enabled with Windows 2008 R2 Servers, can limit the amount of redundant network data that is passed between remote offices and your main office or data center. This allows your remote staff to be more productive as they will not have to wait on certain network functions, such as password authentication. These network functions would be processed locally in their office instead of being sent over a slower network link.

Enterprise also offers added security through Microsoft’s Bitlocker technology, which allows you to securely encrypt the data on the hard drive of your computers. This is especially useful in the event that a computer is lost or stolen, as the data on the hard drive, including Windows itself is useless unless Bitlocker is deactivated by the user upon boot or login. Bitlocker can also be extended to protect mobile devices and usb keys through Bitlocker To Go.

Finally, Microsoft also offers the Windows 7 Ultimate edition. In Ultimate you will find virtually the same functionality as you found in Windows 7 Enterprise. Yes, they are the same, except for one main thing, you cannot buy Windows 7 Enterprise. The Enterprise version is only available to businesses that buy their Microsoft licenses though a Volume license with a Microsoft Software Assurance agreement. For everyone else there is the Ultimate version.

As you can see, there are a plethora of things to take into account when choosing the right version of Windows 7 for your business to maximize value on your investment. Luckily, there are many resources available to you to help you make the right decision. Many of these resources can be found on the Web, but you should also consider speaking with an independent IT expert or a Microsoft Licensing specialist get the right fit.

8 Technology Investments to Help Small & Medium Sized Businesses Dominate the Recession

When the economy takes a turn for the worse most business try and make swift budget cuts to give themselves a better financial runway. Usually these cuts impact Marketing and IT with great severity, when ideally these are the two areas you should be at the very least maintaining budgets. With that in mind over the next couple weeks we will be highlighting 8 areas where you can make relatively minor investments in technology to help your business Small or Medium sized business dominate in the recession by doing more with less to gain competitive advantages.

The 8 Technology areas that we will be highlighting:

1. Communications
2. Data Deduplication
3. Cloud Computing
4. Learning how to use the tech that you already have
5. Electronic Document Storage
6. Virtualization
7. Hardware Upgrades
8. Going Mobile

Active Directory Tip: Access External Website With The Same Domain Name As Your Internal Domain

It is often the case that companies use their external domain (i.e. enirtia.com) for their internal Active Directory domain, and this is completely fine, except when you want to access your website which is hosted on an external server.

Active Directory automatically sets up an internal DNS server for use on your network, and assumes that it is the Authorative server for the domain you used, which in our case here is “example.com”. When clients on your internal network ask your Active Directory DNS server for a lookup on example.com it is going to direct them to one of your domain controllers. If you request”www.enirtia.com” and you happen to have IIS running on one of those domain controllers you will see whatever the default website that is running on that server.

To get around this we need to add a redirect to your IIS server, a Host record to your internal DNS server, and a delegation to your DNS server, all of which are simple to do. These changes are based on the assumption that your external website is setup on external DNS servers with an “A” record pointing”www.enirtia.com” to the IP address of the server that is hosting your website, and that example.com without the “www” is setup with a CNAME record pointing at”www.enirtia.com“. If it is setup in the opposite manner this will not work.

Host Record:

First find out what the IP address is of the external web server if you do not already know it. Go to Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > DNS and locate example.com. Right-click and choose “New Host (A or AAAA)”. Type “www” into the name field, and the IP address of your external web server into the IP Address field. Click the “Add Host” button to save.

IIS Redirect:

To redirect “http://enirtia.com” to “http://www.enirtia.com we need to create a redirect in your IIS server. Go to Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Internet Information Services and locate the Default Web Site. Right-Click on the default web site, and choose Properties. Go to the Directory tab and setup a redirect to point to”www.enirtia.com”.

DNS Delegation:

To create a DNS Delegation you must know the names of external name servers servicing your domain name. Go to Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > DNS and locate example.com. Right-Click and choose “New Delegation”. Type www into the Delegated Domain field, click next and provide it with external authorative name servers for your domain name.

Why Sun Should Have Followed Apple’s Path

These days you don’t read or hear too much about companies deploying Sun Servers or workstations, you don’t read about the great advances in the Sparc Architecture, and you don’t read about how Solaris is powering the newest supercomputer. All of the things are what you would have routinely heard about ten years ago and through end of the dot com boom. Back then Sun was the platform of choice for enterprise computing and powering the latest web startups. Many a dotcom blew their VC funds on top of the line Sun servers to power their new next greatest thing. However, Sun has languished in light of cheap, but powerful, x86 and x64 hardware running Linux, which has virtually eliminated any advantages that Sun once had with their Sparc Servers and Workstations.

With their advantages dwindling Sun decided that they should jump on the mainstream bandwagon, by saying that they support Linux, building x64 servers, Open Sourcing Solaris, and buying MySQL. However all of these efforts seemed to be half-hearted measures to allow them to say they were doing these things, to get people in the door to talk to them about their Sparc closed source Solaris systems. They went so far as to start selling x64 workstations that ran, *GASP*, Windows.

Had Sun really supported these efforts they would have stopped selling a commercial version of Solaris and embraced a highly optimized, user friendly, custom version of Linux as their OS of choice that could run on any device they made. Furthermore, they would have limited their Sparc SKUs to the extremely high-end systems with everything else running x64. Finally, they would have embraced the consumer with gateway products to build their brand and suck new customers in, while building a hedge against market fluctuations. Does this strategy sound familiar? It should, its exactly what Apple did to not only maintain relevancy, but steal significant market share from Dell, HP, IBM, and Microsoft.

In Many ways Sun could have been bigger than Apple because they already had enterprise products, they just needed a consumer strategy, which albeit is much more difficult to create than an enterprise strategy. They could have accomplished this through an acquisition several years ago of a company like Suse, HTC, Creative Labs, or Macromedia. Anyone of these companies or any number of others could have vaulted Sun into the consumer space or have given them the tools to build really innovative consumer and enterprise level products.

Cisco, another dotcom high-flyer saw the writing on the wall about a dwindling enterprise market. This prompted them to make some strategic acquisitions to enter the consumer and small business space with Linksys and WebEx, among others. While not exactly the same, since Cisco does not make Workstations or Servers (at least until this week they did not), it is similar, they continued to serve their core market while bolstering their consumer offerings as a hedge against the separate market fluctuations.

But alas, they did not and in today’s news is that Sun is in talks to be acquired by IBM for nearly $7 Billion. However, I do not view this as bad news for either company because there are great synergies in products between the two companies. It is also not too late for IBM to still embrace a consumer strategy and get back into the workstation and laptop market that they should have never left.