29Dec
22Dec
How to Fall in Love with your Job: Always do your best
Peter, most people don’t like their jobs. But you go out there and find something that makes you happy. –Office Space Even half a century ago, most people could not have connected with this movie as well as they do today. Memes from this modern classic can be found everywhere on the Internet,...
15Dec
Office 365 Offboarding: Reverse Hybrid Migration to Exchange 2016 On-premises
Why would anyone want to off-board mailboxes from Office 365 to Exchange On-premises? Isn't that a bit like moving backwards? Well, I tend to think so, yes--at least in the SMB. But what happens when a mid or larger-sized enterprise organization eats a smaller-sized business through acquisition? In this scenario, it...
08Dec
Hyper-V Failover Cluster Best Practices (footnotes)
Some of you may be familiar with this handy best practices checklist, published by Microsoft. Actually it comes in three varieties currently (I haven't seen an updated one for 2016 yet): 2012 Hyper-V Best Practices and 2012 R2 Hyper-V Best Practices 2008 R2 Hyper-V Best Practices It's a pretty good resource. In my...
01Dec
Without a backup, your pants are on fire
I shouldn't even need to write this article. It's silly, but I have to do it anyway. So here it goes... Not having a backup of mission critical applications and data is an emergency equivalent to having your pants on fire. Most business owners and stakeholders already assume that you have a backup--they...
26Nov
Summary post: How to migrate from SBS to Office 365 & Server 2016
I had a series of posts on the topic of migrating from SBS to Office 365 and Windows Server a while back, and I've been getting a number of requests for a "summary" post with links to all the articles. I get a few people each week emailing me about...
17Nov
How OneDrive changed the way I work
My Documents, on steroids I kind of think about OneDrive like the My Documents folder of yore. Back in the olden days, "My Docs"--as it was affectionately referred--would be redirected to a company file server and backed up there by your administrator. But it meant you had to physically (or via VPN)...
10Nov
How Skype for Business changed the way I work
This platform can do way more than what I'm using it for right now (I don't have the extra fancy features where you can get a phone number, call land lines, forward to your cell, etc.). My understanding is that Skype can do all that, but I mostly use it...
03Nov
How Office 365 has changed the way I work
Office 365 as a Gateway to Mobility Nothing is more intriguing to me right now in our industry than the concept of mobility (and to some extent, BYOD). I am an avid fan and believer: I think that Office 365 has, more than any other product, delivered on the promises of cloud and...
27Oct