IT Going Green and Making a Difference in More Ways

This is a 1E customer who not only uses our NightWatchman software to save electricity and subsequently reduce their own carbon footprint in doing so but they are also saw a return on investment of of less than three months on a project that also included our user self service product Shopping and services to design and implement SMS.  In the long run they are going to reduce the amount of carbon emitted into the environment by 1 metric tonne annually and their head count is only 4,500 employees.  Other benefits they will realize are faster and easier application delivery to the end users, and less IT staff costs by implementing SMS and Shopping, all along side NightWatchman.

I was not involved in this project personally, but I can tell you that with all of my customers who use NightWatchman they are not only saving millions of dollars on electricity each year and saving the planet at the same time but when they add our other software solutions like 1E WakeUp with our custom Wake-on-LAN solution and the much imitated Client Health patching of computers is much faster and reaching a patch level of 100% compliant is not only possible but now the expectation, add in our branch distribution software Nomad Enterprise and the fear of sending a package over a link and hoping it doesn’t saturate the pipe is gone, no longer can the Network admin’s point their finders at the SMS or ConfigMgr if their traffic shaping doesn’t quite work, Nomad has dynamic true bandwidth throttling built in that handles any change in network traffic, oh the stories I could tell.  And then when you add Shopping in and you never have to worry again about getting those frantic phone calls from your manager or director telling you to stop what you were working on “…because the department head of X is leaving for the airport in 45 minutes and has to have the latest version of Visio and PowerPoint installed on their laptop before they go, and I mean right now!  Create the package and ad thing you do. No, I have no idea what their computer name is why?  Oh, and make sure they have the right service pack and all the patches installed with those too!  We can’t have them getting infected.”  Because with Shopping that department head could sit in their chair open up their browser, select Visio and PowerPoint from the list of application on the Shopping portal and in just a few minutes it would all be installed while they were checking online to make sure they had the best seat for their return flight next week, all without ever contacting IT!

My customers scale, as far as client numbers, are almost always in excess of 100k so I get to design and test some very interesting solutions.  Hierarchies are very large and complicated, not to mention the sheer size of the IT operations and the risk associated with making changes to the computing environment and processes.  But when the design is complete, and we have checked every box indicating that all of the PoC tests are a success, and all requirements have been met, and I produce a report telling them how much they are going to reduce their carbon footprint and save on electricity, that they no longer have to worry about traffic shaping to make sure an SMS distribution doesn’t cause a network outage, that we meet and exceed application delivery to the end users where service level agreements are measured in seconds not days, and they are finally going to get the client fixed on all those computers where it hasn’t worked for no one knows how long, all they can do is smile in disbelief and ask me why they didn’t call sooner!  

So I can attest to this case study being factual even though I didn’t work on the project because I have seen it all with my own customers using the 1E products and services.

PeterboroughCaseStudy.pdf

Regards,
Anthony

Anthony Clendenen | Solutions Engineer | 1E

Microsoft MVP System Center Configuration Manager

http://configmgr.com

© Anthony Clendenen

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Two More Openings for SMS Engineers

These are located in Atlanta and sorry I don’t have salary information on these two, they are contract to hire.  The details are below, if you are interested shoot me an email including your updated resume and I will forward it on to the recruiter.

These 2 administrator/ packaging SMS Engineering positions begin as a 6 month contract and converts over to a permanent position. The hourly rate and salary are competitive based on experience.

The client is looking for candidates that have SMS packaging/repackaging combined with SMS Administration experience with MSI or   (Microsoft Installer) Technology. 

Job Responsibilities:

• SMS packaging (from scratch) and repackaging
• Deployment and working with the internal business units
• Following up with each business unit after deployment.  Completing a follow up report.
• Monitoring the SMS environment.  Must be proactive to keep the servers healthy.
• Deploy security updates to workstations (soon they will also work with the servers)
• The client is now using SMS on their imaging solution “OSD” and “BDD”
• Work with workstations, drivers
• Scripting:  VBScript preferred
• They are upgrading to SMS 2007 with “WSUS” Windows Security Update Services.  WSUS experience is desired.

• PKI experience is desired .
• Must have basic MS foundation infrastructure skills, AD (Active Directory), Windows operating system, troubleshooting skills

• Light project management skills are desired

• MOM experience desired

ENVIRONMENT:

• 3,000 desktops in the environment.  A mix of LAN devices, remote users, and VPN. 
• Only on call one week out of every 10 weeks
• A great deal of TRAINING offered

Regards,
Anthony

Anthony Clendenen | Solutions Engineer | 1E

http://configmgr.com

© 2007 Anthony Clendenen

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Tired Of Your Job? How about $105-120k for an SMS 2003 to SCCM Job?

If you are interested send me a copy of your resume and I will forward it on to the recruiter, the requirements are listed below.  This is with a federal agency located on the east coast.

Skill set and experience:

Experience with managing SMS in a multi-site environment including the ability to troubleshoot all aspects of SMS via analyzing log files on both server and clients

Job Duties:

Require consultant with extensive experience with SMS to perform the following tasks:

(1) Advise the Agency on the best design for System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2007 in a multi-site environment.

(2) Upgrade from SMS 2003 to SCCM 2007. 

(3) Create a disaster recovery plan for the SCCM 2007

(4) Implement Microsoft Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) 2007 & Microsoft Operating System Deployment feature pack (OSD). This will better prepare the Agency to upgrade its desktop environment to Windows Vista.

(5) Troubleshoot SMS infrastructure and packaging issues Create SMS package deployment business process.

(6) Evaluate Agency’s current SMS web reports for software modifications.

(7) Create a business process for SMS web reporting. SMS consultant will be responsible for providing Agency with the following Work Products:

            a. Upgrade plan for SMS 2003 to SCCM 2007.

            b. Implement upgrade plan for SMS 2003 to SCCM 2007.

            c. Disaster recovery plan for the SMS infrastructure.

            d. Implementation Plan for Microsoft Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) 2007 & Microsoft Operating System Deployment feature pack (OSD).

            e. Implementation of Microsoft Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) 2007 & Microsoft Operating System Deployment feature pack (OSD).

            f. Business process for SMS package creation.

            g. SMS web reports business process.

Project description:

Agency has contracted prime for the overall evaluation, design, implementation, sizing and upgrades of the structure of the Agency’s Active Directory, Group Policy Objects, System Management Server, Windows Internet Naming Service, Dynamic Naming Service, and Email. The Agency’s environment includes Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2000, and Windows Server 2003 for all Agency users and workstations in those environments.

The following technologies are used for scripting at the Agency’s: DOS Batch files, ADSI, LDAP, Kixstart and Visual Basic. The contractor shall have a high level of technical expertise with these scripting technologies in order to automate administrative tasks, software deployment, logon script development. The contractor shall have the ability to leverage languages such as JAVA, Cold Fusion, HTML, and SQL query to extract data from an SMS data base running on MS SQL server and build Web pages tracking software deployments & problems with the SMS infrastructure.

Restrictions:

(1) MUST BE A US CITIZEN

Regards,
Anthony

Anthony Clendenen | Solutions Engineer | 1E

http://configmgr.com

© 2007 Anthony Clendenen

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System Center Certifications - Coming Soon

If you have certs in any of the Microsoft management suite of tools, SMS and MOM, or would like to get a head start on getting your first cert in any of the newly branded System Center tools Microsoft has put together two sessions on what’s coming for System Center Certifications.  They have two but they are the same sessions just at different times to try and cover the different time zones for everyone.

There will be two different tracks one Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist, or MCTS, which is due to begin in Q1 2008, and Microsoft Certification for IT Professionals, or MCITP, which will be available some time after MCTS. 

If you are interested in attending either of these online Live Meeting event you can register for them by following the links below.

Oct 24, 7:30 AM PST

Oct 24, 5:00 PM PST

Continue to sources here and here.

Regards,
Anthony

Anthony Clendenen | Solutions Engineer | 1E Inc.

http://configmgr.com

© 2007 Anthony Clendenen

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Group Policy Diagnostic Best Practice Analyzer

In larger environments this new tool to identify GP configuration and dependency problems should be a great time saver and really help with the administration of GPO’s.  As a Solutions Engineer that works with customers who have workstations all over the globe and seats that number in the six figures I have seen some really complicated GP configurations.  Logon times that are calculated in minutes sometimes.  This is not exclusive to large environments however, the worst group policy settings I have helped to cleanup was only about 3,000 seats.

Links to download the tools are below.

Overview

The Microsoft Group Policy Diagnostic Best Practice Analyzer (GPDBPA) for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 is designed to help you identify Group Policy configuration errors or other dependency failures that may prevent settings or features from functioning as expected.

Group Policy Diagnostic Best Practice Analyzer for Windows Server 2003

Group Policy Diagnostic Best Practice Analyzer for Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition

Group Policy Diagnostic Best Practice Analyzer for Windows XP

Group Policy Diagnostic Best Practice Analyzer for Windows XP x64 Edition

For my US readers enjoy your long weekend!

Regards,
Anthony

Anthony Clendenen | Solutions Engineer | 1E Inc.

http://configmgr.com

© 2007 Anthony Clendenen

no comments yet.