Real World Computing

We had a very useful meeting with IBM last week and a lot came out of it. A lot of things from that meeting will probably hit this blog in one form or another.  One rather interesting topic for us was "users".  Our organisation uses a "Membership structure", meaning that while the organisation itself only has a small number of "core users", we have an enormous number of "extended users" (members) who don't work directly for us but connect on a number of issues and participate in a number of groups on a very regular basis.  It sounds like an unusual organisational structure but once you get your head around the model, you'll find that it's not only fairly common but that it's becoming more common for companies to work this way. ...and it's a great fit for IBM Connections ** .  **Note that when I talk about IBM Connections, I'm talking about their Connections.Cloud product, why would I talk about anything else? Ve...

There has been a lot of pressure on Apple lately with the US government pushing for access to their systems and lots of public pressure as people react to the “Error 53” scandal. To many people’s surprise, Apple has dug their heels in on these issues and as the pressure mounts, is showing no signs of relenting. Normally I would be up on my soapbox denouncing this seemingly anti-competitive behaviour but this time I think that Apple is right to make a stand. In the past, some of the things Apple did seemed to be mean spirited. For example; changing from the 30 pin plugs to lightning cable, and then blocking third party cables unless they were “Apple approved” (ie: paying royalties and super-expensive). I know that they had their reasons for those changes, particularly safety, usability, size and speed but for people with stereo equipment that has 30 pin plugs, it still hurts - and no, adapters aren't a good solution. Apple was mostly wrong then but despite the fact that ...

About this Post I'm a  big fan of Google Apps for work. Of the three major solutions I use on a regular basis (IBM Connections, Microsoft Office 365 and Google Apps),  it's easily the simplest to set up. In fact, I'd recommend it as the number 1 solution for small to medium sized companies.  I haven't tried it in a large company setting but I suspect it might be a pretty good fit there too. A Little about Timing In the recent past, getting established on the IBM ecosystem (IBM Connections), took about a week, while getting onto Microsoft's systems took more than two weeks (and it still causes a lot of daily pain). By contrast, you can get yourself established, without needing any help, on the google ecosystem in less than an hour -- yes, it's that easy. Here's How 1. Go to the Google Apps for Work Site ( https://apps.google.com/ - or in Australia, https://apps.google.com.au/ ) and click Start Here. 3. You'll be prompted to create your firs...

Recently we had a run in with the CryptoLocker malware, you can read about it here . The malware did a fair amount of damage across our file server but it was easily rectified by rolling back to shadow copies and traditional backups of files. Of course, in writing the inevitable incident report, I began pondering the future and posed the question, Given that traditional storage is giving way to cloud storage, does cloud storage in its broadest sense reduce or even eliminate the possibility of CryptoLocker, or similar malware in the future? - and -  in any case, what are our recovery options from the major vendors? More or Less Vulnerable? First, looking at the question of vulnerability, it very much depends on your access methods. All of the cloud services have web browser access to files, apart from general vulnerabilities in the browser itself, this is a pretty safe access method. If your password isn't compromised, it's unlikely that any of today's malware will ...

A Little History Over the years, we've had a fairly good run when it comes to viruses and malware. Much of that I can put down to the fact that we've always used IBM Notes as our mail system and it's less susceptible to hijacking. Of course, notes only slows down the distribution (and reduces the likelihood of specific mail calls being used).  It's not an effective anti-virus solution. Years ago, I used to run my anti-spam services on the mail server. There were two problems with this approach; The mail had already reached our systems before the first scan occurred - even if it was just spam, you're now using your bandwidth and your storage. You're running secondary processes on (or between) your mail server. It needs updates, maintenance etc.  Anti-Spam was the first service we moved offsite. For the past few years, we've been using the Symantec.Cloud anti-spam service. This was a very good service when it was a recent acquisition (Message...