By Roger Howorth If you haven’t used an Apple iPhone you might be forgiven for thinking people like the software because it’s pretty to look at. While it is pretty, there may be more to it than that. For example, many web sites don’t work properly with Symbian phones, and Windows based mobiles are not […]

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By Roger Howorth Late last year Microsoft launched Office Communications Server (OCS) 2008 and Office Communicator 2007, the complementary desktop client for the new server suite. If nothing else, the pair could be used as a bargaining tool to help reduce the costs of office telecoms. If you haven’t seen them yet, they’re well worth […]

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A free lunch may not exist, but sometimes if we’re lucky we can find a free ride. After all, if someone provides a free service, why not use it? Firms are beginning to integrate their web sites with those of industry leaders such as Google and Yahoo. I’m not talking about providing better search facilities, […]

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Virtual desktop infrastructure is set to be the next growth area for IT organisations using virtualisation. The idea is to host users’ desktop systems on virtual server farms, and deliver the desktops using thin-client protocols such as Microsoft RDP or Citrix ICA. The advantage of VDI architecture is better management of the desktop environment. For […]

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Judging by some of the virtual machine (VM) management tools we evaluated recently, server backup software could soon be replaced by server replication tools. The trouble with backups is they spend most of their life archived on some tape or disk storage system. Even if you test the tape as soon as you’ve made it, […]

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While Microsoft is preparing to launch Windows Server 2008 I’m left wondering about licensing the new software. Let’s hope that the license management tools are an improvement on those in Windows Server 2003. Recently I heard about a firm using Windows Server 2003 Terminal Services that had run into a nasty problem. Messages were popping […]

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I had a watershed moment recently – I started receiving spam that contained only a single Portable Document Format (PDF) file. I’ve never had this stuff before, but I’ve got a feeling more is on the way. Fortunately the developers of the spam filter I use – called the Anti Spam SMTP Proxy (ASSP) – […]

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I’ve recently upgraded several systems to use the latest server virtualisation software from VMware. The business needed the upgrade because the new software enabled them to assign more then 3.6GB of RAM and more than two processors to the accountancy system, which runs in a virtual machine (VM) under VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3. But while […]

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