| Form-based authentication is presently employed as a term of art in the context of Web- and Internet-based online networked computer systems. In general, it refers to the notion of a user being presented with an editable "form" to fill in and submit in order to login to some system or service. However, the term is actually ambiguous in that the notion of using some sort of displayed "form" in which one enters credential information is a technique that is not unique to the Web.
A defining characteristic of the general notion of form-based authentication, as it is commonly used, is that the credential prompting and subsequent credential conveyance is conducted out-of-band relative to the transfer protocol employed between the client and server.
SharePoint 2010: Form-based authentication (with SQL Server)
How we did it in the SharePoint 2010:
SharePoint 2010 supports FBA, Like WSS 3.0 or MOSS 2007. It's a feature of ASP .Net which we use with SharePoint. SharePoint 2010 you can create web applications using Classic Based Authentication or Claims based Authentication. However, FBA can only be configured with web applications created using Claims Based Authentication.
With SharePoint 2010 and ISS 7.0, FBA configuration quite easier to configure. Andre Cannell and many MVP’s has written lots of the things for configuring the FBA. So, I go directly what steps we have followed and added. In FBA configuration their three things required
1. Provider class
2. SQL database
3. Claim Based Web application
Provider class: FBA requires two ASP.NET 2.0 classes. The first is a Membership Provider that indicates where the data source for authenticating users resides. It provides methods to retrieve all users, search for users by name, and manage settings such as the password for each user. The second class is called a Role Provider and it provides a list of roles (groups) and methods to determine which users is part of which role(s).
Create a custom Membership provider by inheriting from the System.Web.Security.MembershipProvider class. For a custom Role Provider you need to inherit from the System.Web.Security.RoleProvider class.
A custom Membership Provider has to implement at least the following methods in order to work with SharePoint 2010:
- FindUsersByEmail
- FindUsersByName
- GetUser(string, bool)
- GetUser(object, bool)
- GetUserNameByEmail
- ValidateUser
A custom Role Provider has to implement at least the following methods in order to work with SharePoint 2010:
- GetRolesForUser
- RoleExists
Deploy the assembly to GAC as it’s being used outside the context of the Web Application and referencing the membership and role provider in the web.config.
SQL database
For the storing the user information FBA required SQL database.
A custom database required three table for FBA :
· Users: For storing the registered use information.
· Roles: For creating the roles.
· UserInRoles: For the users which have given the specific set of the role(like Mike Ray and he is administrator in role).
Stored Procedures: Stored procedure to get and set the data for the implemented provider classes methods.
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Provide Access to the Membership Database : As an administrator, you’ll be able to add and modify user accounts. But from the SharePoint runtime, we’ll have to provide access to the membership store. This can be done in simple way Create a login to the FBADB database and give “Database role membership”, make the user a dbo_owner.
Claim Based Web application
· Create a custom Web Application that uses Claims Authentication
· Select FBA and provide names for the Membership and Role Providers
· Register both providers with your Web Application (web.config)
1. system.web/membership/providers/add
2. system.web/roleManager/providers/add
· Register both providers with Central Administration (web.config). You have to add the whole roleManager and membership sections here.
· Register both providers with the Security Token Service (web.config located in 14\WebService\SecurityToken.)
Well all the steps above the extract what we have done in the environment. If you are using the default classes and default database. It can be configured from the IIS wizard. More on the FBA with custom classes and custom database you can find here in blog site. |
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In 2003, Mark Achbar presented the perception that any organization or corporation can be treated as living beings. He prepared a documentary (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379225/ ) that presents the concept of the corporation throughout recent history to its present-day dominance, including with the way it takes BIRTH, grows, and evolves with different experiences. It is very much like saying that the corporations have its own life. And as any ambitious human beings, corporations are also has ambitions about its own improvement and moving towards perfection. And to make this possible, one must understand its irregularities or bottlenecks and then remove them. Very much similar is the concept of having diagnosis of the whole body to find the ill or malfunctioning part, and then taking right treatment to cure it.
In order to do a complete diagnostic of corporate body, one must be able to look at its various components in distinct but still integrated manner. To make this possible for a vastly spread organization, a very good vision is provided by ‘Platform Vision’.
 Fig. Platform Vision Architecture Model
In a normal human body there are various systems and sub-systems working together, performing different actions using different inputs, like respiratory systems for providing oxygen, heart for blood circulation and brain for coordination etc., all work simultaneously contributing to a healthy human body. Similarly the various systems and systems within an organization like different departments and processes work together to contribute to a healthy and growing organization.
Following table provides a rough mapping between various layers of PV Architecture Model and with various characteristics of Human Beings:
PV Architectural Model |
Human Being |
User Experience: The way any system, application, or device is designed and visible so that it accommodates the persona, purpose, and preferences of all users. |
Appearance and Attire: The act or fact of appearing, as to the eye or mind or before the public. |
Search: Information access capabilities to crawl, index, and search structured and unstructured enterprise content. |
Enthusiasm and Curiosity: Great excitement for or interest in a subject or cause and the desire to learn or know about anything. |
Business Intelligence: Presenting a single informational view to applications or other sources of information and to provide interfaces that assist in planning, evaluation, collaboration and decision-making. |
Intelligence: The capacities for abstract thought, understanding, communication, reasoning, learning, learning from past experiences, planning, and problem solving. |
Web and Social Computing: Building, customizing, and managing enterprise-class Web applications including rich media, targeted personalization, geospatial visualization, and search. |
Interactivity and Communication Skills: The set of abilities and techniques needed to make other people understand the thoughts that person wish to convey. |
Integrated Communications: Technologies that enable a variety of personal communications choices from within the same client environment. |
Circulatory system: Passes nutrients and blood to and from cells in the body, circulating through all body parts. |
ECM and Collaboration: Content-related capabilities such as ways to capture, work together on, and search structured and semi-structured content such as documents and spread sheets. |
The Senses and The Nervous System: An organ system that coordinates the activities of muscles, monitors organs, constructs and processes data received from the senses, and initiates actions. |
SOA & BPM: Provides ways of integrating new systems with legacy systems, and provides ways to update and replace existing systems while minimizing disruption and complex workarounds. |
Self-Disciplinary Activities and Habits: Ability to regulate activity conduct by controlling self-behaviour and actions; often seen as acquired pattern of behaviour that occurs automatically. |
LOB System: Internal corporate business unit or company’s existing enterprise architecture, which is the main driving factor of the organization. |
Daily Routine and Responsibilities: Current levels of responsibilities, and routine followed to fulfil the same. |
Data: The consistency, security, and storage of data or information. |
Knowledge: Acquaintance with facts, truths, or principles, as from study or investigation; general erudition. |
Infrastructure: The physical implementation of technology and the base functionality for management and security for all layers of the platform. |
Physique and Skeletal: Physical or bodily structure, appearance, or development. |
IT Process: Policies and processes for managing IT infrastructure and operations. |
Ethics and Values: Concepts and characteristics such as good and evil, right and wrong, justice, virtue, etc. followed by human being. |
Besides, the later version of Platform Vision also covers two more layers, which can be compared to human body as below:
Security and Management |
Immune System |
Software as a Service |
Capabilities and Potential |
This comparison can be validated in terms of many more factors by looking at various other similarities between human body and a corporate organization. For humans, it is very difficult to remain isolated from other people. They need to talk, and express and share themselves with others. In similar way, organizations also cannot exist without having proper means to communicate with other organizations or social entities. They need other organization as their clients, as well as vendors. Besides, if any of the internal system or part of human body is malfunctioning, effects can be seen in the whole body, which is true for any organization as well.
This simple comparison provides many different perspectives of looking at the things inside or outside an organization. With this, predictions can be made about the strengths and weaknesses of the organizations, their requirements and also about the ways of proper and efficient functioning of the organization. Moreover, relationships between various layers can be determined on basis of this logical comparison. For instance, to gain more self-discipline, one must be enjoying a good health (Physique), have enough knowledge about the truths and principles of life, and also must have proper ethics and values to build upon. This, when compared to corresponding counterparts in an organization, reflects that in order to improve upon the management of Business Processes (BPM), organization needs support from its infrastructure, data management, and improve upon its IT Processes implemented in the organization.
This comparison also points out certain important aspect of the behaviour of an Organization, which is the ways in which an organization interaction with other organizations. As evident with history of human civilization, humans are considered as social beings, living in close proximity with other humans, acting and behaving in accordance with other human beings. In similar manner, the best way to look at an organization might be in proximity with the other organizations it is interacting with. To analyse any organization, besides its internal infrastructure (which is covered by the PV architecture Model), we might also need to focus on various other organization it interacts with, may be to get its raw materials, to market its products, or to supply the products to end users. Interaction and communications with these organizations also form an important part of analyses of an organization, and the overall improvement of an organization can very much depend on its dependency on other organizations, and their improvement.
Besides that, there are many other essential aspects like identifying new areas of investment, prioritization of initiatives or capabilities of adoption of new technologies that can be explored using this perspective. And as the studies progress, ways can be found to measure the growth of the platform (not only the organization), such that it can include better ways to understand the organizations, and hence support them in a better way.
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| With the name SOA, I know you suddenly have a cloud of those Tech acronyms in your minds – WSDL, SOAP, CORBA, REST….but be assured what I just mentioned were the last instances of these SOAic terms for this post at least.
“Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have.” – Samuel Butler(British satirist)
“… some of the greatest advances in science have come about because some clever person spotted an analogy between a subject that was already understood, and another still mysterious subject.” — Richard Dawkins, in “The Blind Watchmaker”
Let me explain the principles of Service Oriented Architecture through a real world analogy -
To begin with – What is a service?? To put in very simple terms – Doing something for someone. One who offers these services is a Service Provider and the one who consumes is Service consumer. Some real world analogous examples include – Your family doctor providing medical services to you, your Bank offering insurance, savings, investments and other services, your ISP providing internet services to you etc.
The Analogy – ATM (Automated Teller Machine) Services
I was on the vacation last week and just remembered that an advanced cheque is dated next day and the check might get bounced as I had withdrawn the entire amount few days back. I needed to transfer some amount from another account to the one from which cheque had been issued. I immediately went to an ATM nearby and made the transaction; was relaxed then an enjoyed the vacation. The ATM services my bank provided just saved me from spoiling my vacationsJ
Looking from the SOA perspective – Bank is the service provider, ATM service is the service being provided, and I am the service consumer.
Service Abstraction and Service Composition
The ATM service to me as a customer is just a blackbox; I insert my ATM card there, follow some instructions and get my things done. I do not need to worry about things like how transaction is being processed, how the bank is managing it’s employees, where from it is buying ATM machines, how are they being placed, how the bank is managing security and risk factors etc etc.
Service Abstraction is a design principle applied within SOA paradigm that limits the exposure of service information only to what is required to effectively utilize the service. It emphasizing on treating the services as a black box hiding the Logic and implementation details.
The ATM service being used by me is actually composed of ATM placement service, ATM processing service, CRM services etc but there is a layer of abstraction in-between and me as customer, need not know all these details – This is the Service composition principle that SOA is based on.
Service Loose Coupling
Service abstraction enables loose coupling of services. When I say loose coupling, I mean any of the service module can be used independent of the other. The logic, design, and implementation of all the services is independent of each other. These modules can change in their own boundaries without having any impact on the way they are consumed. It is just about maintaining awareness and reduce dependencies.
Looking at the ATM analogy – ATM service abstracts the other service modules like transaction processing, machine purchase, ATM placements, risk management etc. The bank is purchasing ATM machines from a vendor say X, the ATM placement unit does not need to worry if the ATM machine will be purchased from vendor Y in next financial year. The placement unit will continue to receive ATM machines as earlier from the standard interface – the ATM Purchase department.
Service Contract
Service contract is a kind of agreement between the two parties – Service provider and service consumer. It defines the service behavior, functionality (in the Service description documents), Service Level Agreements (SLA) and Quality of Service (QOS) considerations and negotiations etc.
Looking at the ATM example again – Before opening my account in the bank, I have agreed upon some terms and conditions with the bank like – They’ll be offering this service only in selected cities, the same ATM card can be used with ATMs of few other banks etc, I’ll have to pay a fixed annual amount to continue using the services, the services will be 24x7 available, they will maintain the integrity of all the information I’ve filled in the application form etc
Service Discovery
The very important principle of SOA - Services should be discoverable. They should be automatically detected or discovered over a network.
The bank whose ATM service I am using, I got to know about it through an advertisement on the TV.
Service Reusability
Services should be reusable - Like ATM service would ask for PIN to show the credit details and would reuse “get customer credit details” service into some other applications say the one generating quarterly statements and reports.
Service Orchestration
Orchestration is a very important principle of SOA. All the service modules should be well orchestrated and coordinated as in which components would be executed when.
In the same ATM example – just imagine if the transaction you made was not updated in the bank’s database and the account balance notification SMS on your mobile still shows the zero balance, the updates made to the database was delayed and your cheque got bounced – This would all create a mess!!
So each and every process in the service should be executed in the perfect order.
What’s and Why’s – How SOA makes things better?
Service Oriented Architecture – a very simple style for building software applications. Nothing to be buzzed about! For those of you who have been still questioning investment in SOA implementation, the blog post from a friend of mine will definitely help you bust the myths.
It is about how organizations design their architecture based on the principles of abstraction, loose coupling, composition, abstraction, reusability, orchestration etc. It is a methodology and not a product.
SOA provides you with and design approach that is modular enough to change as your business changes, SOA is agile and helps you keep your business agile. The reusability component helps you leverage your existing investments. When your IT knows that all the services within organization are being according to specific methodology, it realizes everything is in control.
To sum up- SOA is simple, agile, cost effective and controllable. It is based on the same service orientation principles that we have successfully implemented in our own world and so is in the IT world. SOA is SMART
Got suggestions to make future posts better? Something I missed? Do you have a similar analogy to share? Your suggestions, thoughts, queries are most welcome. Post me your feedback at preksha.porwal@advaiya.com. |
| In today’s economy, Self-Service Business Intelligence (BI) is becoming one of the major requirements of organizations. In order to reduce IT costs organizations want their employees to be able to carry out reporting and analysis related tasks themselves. Organizations are also looking at self-service BI to help their employees make better decisions by using these reporting and analysis features. These better decisions will help organizations make more money. They are trying to reduce IT costs and increase their employee efficiency by adopting the tools which are easy to use, familiar and which fulfill all their demands.
Companies have data at various locations and they want to streamline the integration of data from these sources enabling front-line operators as well as administrators to access and utilize the reports. Sometime they also need geospatial visualization including mapping, routing, and custom shapes which helps end users to create customized reports.
Self- service BI can be considered one stage ahead of traditional BI solutions. Organizations want IT people to enable self-service BI without increasing workload, they want to do more with fewer resources, manage the flow of information coming from different sources, increase IT efficiency by centralizing BI and data management, facilitate sharing and collaboration with SharePoint and many more. Organizations demand a complete solution using the latest technologies to fulfill these requirements.
The answer to the above requirements is “PowerPivot”. PowerPivot is one of the most significant and important Business Intelligence (BI) advancements. It is an add-in to Microsoft Office 2010 Excel application which lets you run your files in memory. Excel is an easy to use application in the business, so it lets employees work in a familiar environment giving better output. It lets create tables having millions of rows, far beyond the one million row limit in Excel and integrate the data from various sources. Slicers work as a filter to decrease search time.
PowerPivot for SharePoint is a tool that allows collaboration, sharing, and reporting. It gives a preview of Excel workbook containing the data generated using PowerPivot. It also provides automatic refresh of the data of the workbook, the refresh interval can be customized by the owner. The dashboard helps companies manage the information. The PowerPivot gallery mode of library provides a thumbnail view and theater mode provides a 3D view of the charts and tables to the front line operators and administrators. Using this gallery one can access the desired and updated report easily.
I really liked using the PowerPivot application very much. By using this feature, organizations can increase their performance and efficiency. It is a very simple and easy-to-use application which everybody can use to view and generate reports and carry out analysis.
Have you used PowerPivot? Please share your experience with the tool. Let us know what you think and give us suggestions for improvements, changes, or additions — anything that will add value to the IT community. You can send us an e-mail message at infopv@platformvision.com
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| Complex event processing has been the top ic of discussion for a while now. CEP is a technology for high-throughput, low-latency processing of event streams. While reading on SQL server 2008 R2 new technologies, I came across StreamInsight. Microsoft has come out with a new technology called StreamInsight for complex
event processing. Microsoft has introduced this technology with SQL Server 2008 R2 and I think StreamInsight is a powerful platform for developing and deploying complex event processing (CEP) applications. Let us see what exactly StreamInsight is.
We all know that typical relational database applications are query-driven but event-driven applications are becoming more important day-by-day. These Event-driven applications are characterized by high event data rates, continuous queries, and millisecond latency requirements that make it impractical for data to continue to exist in a relational database for processing.
Using StreamInsight, one can develop CEP applications that derive immediate business value from raw data by reducing the cost of extracting, analyzing, and correlating the data. It also allows you to monitor, manage, and mine the data for conditions, opportunities, and defects in real time. This ability to monitor, analyze and act on the data in motion provides significant opportunity to make more informed business decisions in near real-time.
Let us look at the high-level architecture showing event data flow
Above figure shows a high-level architecture of StreamInsight. Events from various data sources are fed to input adapters. From input adapters data events flow through query logic to output adapters and finally to target sources.
StreamInsight can be associated with BI and data warehousing. The use of in-memory caches and incremental result computation provide excellent performance with high data throughout and low latency. As part of SQL server 2008 R2 organizations can benefit from real time and fast processing of complex data. Some of the event stream sources which require high-throughput, low-latency processing of event streams are financial trading applications (financial services), manufacturing process monitoring and control, clickstream analysis, operational analytics, Web analytics, power utilities, health care, IT monitoring, logistics and telecommunications.
The key benefits that anyone would feel while using StreamInsight are its flexible deployment capability, .NET development environment (which is familiar with large developer community), highly optimized performance and data throughput, and manageability (Provides low TCO and allows ISV’s and integrators manage StreamInsight deployed systems remotely). These benefits totally fit in as someone use StreamInsight i.e. while you use this technology you would automatically feel these benefits.
Also, one could see strategic and tactical business goals which can be achieved using StreamInsight are
- Improving KPI definitions by moving towards a predictive business model
- Quick response to areas of opportunity or threat by incorporating your KPI definitions.
- Performing low-latency analytics on the events and triggering response actions that are defined on your business key performance indicators (KPIs).
- Analyze and correlate data incrementally while the data is in-flight i.e., without first storing it thereby yielding very low latency.
So people, it was general explanation on StreamInsight and its benefits.
In my opinion StreamInsight is a better technology for quick processing of streaming data with many of the associated business benefits as discussed above and this is where it stands at the momentSo there it is for you, if you want to test StreamInsight and are allergic to SQL Server, for one reason or another, don’t worry – go ahead, you can still use it.
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A primary challenge for IT is to “keep the business running.” While this is one of IT’s most important tasks, it is often one that companies take for granted. If things go well, the work goes unnoticed. But if things go wrong, IT can be criticized for not performing its b
asic function. From an IT personnel’s perspective it can be described as “the best you can get is a C. If everything goes correctly that is what was expected so you get a C, if things go wrong you get a D or a failing grade. You need to be doing something unexpected to get more than a C.”To keep the business running, IT departments face several significant challenges, including saving operational costs, integrating and using existing investments, adapting to changing business needs, and keeping the focus on innovation. Though these challenges may seem to be common, they are complex and require the careful attention of every IT professional.
What can companies to do help improve this situation? How can we streamline the work of IT professionals so they can spend more time innovating rather than trying to keep the company lights on? The answer is something we already knew but never realized: We need to organize the different pieces of their work, like putting the colors of a Rubik’s cube in place. We need to have a single, dynamic platform that brings together business intelligence (BI), business process management, integrated dependencies, application servers, portal infrastructure, integration capabilities, and development tools.
There is mounting evidence that the trend towards application platform software is growing. Major vendors like Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, and IBM are moving to an integrated platform approach. Likewise, customers want to minimize the number of vendors, technologies, tools, and training sessions required to accomplish their business goals. They want to consolidate costs wherever possible.
When I think about an integrated platform approach, it occurs to me that all the different tools and applications that a company purchases or acquires can be classified into four large platform layers: infrastructure, database, middle tier, and the application that runs on top. These layers are made available to end users through client interfaces like the Web, rich client, or mobile. Within these layers there are different capabilities that should be met in order to have a functioning platform that meets the needs of the business.
The infrastructure layer provides shared services—like Security, Identity and Access, Networking, and Virtualization—that applications need to operate across an IT infrastructure. The database layer manages transaction processing, data warehouses, and, of course, reporting and analysis to show how we use information. In the middle tier, I think about connectivity across an enterprise—Enterprise Integration, Application Servers, and Workflows. Finally, the application layer covers a company’s end-user applications that are supported by the other three layers. The different platform capabilities can come from different vendors but the more you consolidate on a single vendor or vendors that are designed to work together, the more you can take advantage of the entire platform and what it gives you
What do you think? Do you believe an integrated platform is the answer to our IT concerns? Please let us know! Also, we would like to hear your suggestions for improvements, changes, or additions—anything that will add value to the IT community. Send us an e-mail message at infopv@platformvision.com
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| Have you noticed that this site looks a little different? The look and feel isn't radically different, but there are definite subtle changes. The Platform Vision Model is still here to help IT decision makers evaluate and communicate the implications that any technology decision will have on the entire IT stack. And that model remains as the core around which the site's content is built. The concept of evaluating products based on the capablities they provide as compared to competing products is still our approach.
The new additions to this site include new tabs: Industry Trends and Business Value. The Industry Trends tab is where you'll find news about the major technology companies and their products. You can subscribe for free to our Platform Vision Reports on various technologies, such as Google, Cisco, Microsoft, and Oracle.
The Business Value tab takes you to content about how to get the most out of your technology investments. Learn about trends we've uncovered doing Business Value Assessments in enterprises around the world.
SharePoint 2010
The change with the biggest impact to our company's development team is the fact that this site is built completely on SharePoint 2010. Because the dev team has been working on the SharePoint 2010 platform since the product was in beta, the journey hasn't always been smooth. The developers and the content team are learning new things daily about what is possible, what is not possible, and what is more trouble than it's worth.
But with this experience under our belts, we've decided to continue down this path and will be updating the site further in the coming months. We'll be adding both functionality and a new look and feel. And we'll be diving deeper into what SharePoint 2010 can do.
Watch for blogs by our dev team. They're in the process of putting together their thoughts and experience, including their frustrations, in a series of blogs. The dev team and all of us at Platform Vision would love to hear what you think about the site, about SharePoint 2010 as the basis for a public we site, and about our experiences. We also welcome your questions and suggestions.
Thank you for reading our blogs and visiting our site. We are working on some very useful and unique content that will help you compare products. We will soon be releasing our comprehensive cloud computing Gap Map buyers' guide, so stay tuned. |
| In this first part of a two-part video recorded at the Cloud Identity Summit, PingIdentity’s CTO Patrick Harding talks about the coming explosion cloud services vendors, the need for a scalable way of handling them, and why we need to be limiting our use of passwords.
Follow Sean Deuby on Twitter at @shorinsean.
Follow the Platform Vision blog on Twitter at @platformvision.
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| Welcome to the first installment of a new Platform Vision column: CIO Perspectives. We'll be in regular touch with CIOs (and CTOs) about what industry trends and topics they're interested in, and we'll be posting our interviews with them on PlatformVision.com on a regular basis. For our first installment I spoke with Matt Watson, CTO of VIN Solutions. VIN Solutions develops Customer Relations Management (CRM), Internet Lead Management (ILM), website, and inventory management software for auto dealers, and is on the Inc 500 list of the fastest growing private companies in America. I recently spoke with Matt to get his take on the role cloud computing takes in his IT infrastructure.
Jeff James: What sort of cloud-based services, products, and applications are you using in your own IT environment?
Matt Watson: We have our own virtual infrastructure in our main office and throughout the company. We don't use any public cloud services like Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Windows Azure, but we recently started using Jungle Disk, a cloud-based backup service. We used to use Mozy for cloud-based file backup, but Jungle Disk fit our needs more effectively.
We also use Salesforce as a CRM tool internally. We also rely heavily on VMware vSphere 4 for our virtualization needs as well.
JJ: How many employees and seats do you manage?
MW: We have 140 employees, and more than 22,000 users use our software. Our IT department is primarily headquartered in our main office in Overland Park, Kansas.
JJ: Some IT managers still have concerns about security, identity, business continuity, and other items when it comes to putting their IT resources in the cloud. How did you handle/address those concerns?
MW: With regards to Jungle Disk, we really didn't have any concerns. The biggest thing we were interested in for a cloud-based backup solution was the speed of the file restore from the cloud to desktops.
JJ: What advice would you give other IT managers when it comes to making the move to a cloud-based IT infrastructure?
MW: We haven't been using cloud-based products and services for long, but we've been happy with Jungle Disk. It's a good solution -- a very, very good solution -- but it's not 100%. It is good for backing up some important files to the cloud, while we still rely pretty heavily on disk-to-disk backup software.
JJ: What were the first apps/services you moved into the cloud? When did that happen?
MW: Jungle Disk is the first cloud-based service we've used internally, and we use Salesforce. I don't think we could move 100% of our infrastructure into the cloud, mainly because we have truly massive database that we use internally, and we're reluctant to move those off-site.
Our database is running off a server with 24 processor cores, and I believe the demands we put on that database prevents it from being a good candidate for virtualization or moving it into the cloud. I'm convinced that cloud computing will remain an important part of our IT infrastructure for a long time, but it will only remain a part of it.
We do have some needs for media compression and encryption, and those might be good candidates to move to the cloud.
I don't think any company could ever use the cloud for everything – you still need a domain controller, still need a file server, and you can still buy loaded servers from Dell for just a few thousand dollars. I don't buy into the "everything will be 100% cloud computing" idea, as I think cloud computing will remain part of our IT mix. One tool out of many tools that will be selected to match the needs of a project.
JJ: Cloud computing is still very much in a growth and development phase. In what areas would you like to see cloud computing improved?
MW: I think that stability and reliability are the biggest factors. My biggest concerns -- more than security in the cloud -- is that many of the services we need aren't available in the cloud yet. I also think that what services that are in the cloud now are often incomplete, or don’t have the full set of features that we need. For example, with SQL Services you can’t do a full backup. Cloud computing will continue to grow , and it could be ideal for some small projects of ours. I don’t know if very large enterprise applications will ever be a good fit for cloud computing. I don’t think a hospital or healthcare provider would be willing to put their entire medical and patient database in the cloud. |
| By Jeremy Moskowitz, Group Policy MVP and Founder of PolicyPak Software
People ask me all the time, “Hey Moskowitz… why did you choose Group Policy [as a focal point for your career]?” And my answer is pretty simple. I’m a control freak.
I chose Group Policy as a technology focus because I love the idea of being in charge over 100, 1000, or 10,000 or more users. I love watching administrators set up Group Policy and see the looks on their faces after they get the results of increased security, more control, and less chaos.
I liked Group Policy so much I started “spreading the gospel” at conferences like Windows Connections and Microsoft TechEd, teaching my 5-day Group Policy Master Class (www.GPanswers.com/training) and writing a bestselling book, now in its 6th edition, Group Policy: Fundamentals, Security and the Managed Desktop (www.GPanswers.com/book).
Then, at a recent TechEd conference, I sat in at a Birds-of-a-Feather session, just as an attendee. People were expressing their current gripes with Active Directory and the Group Policy system. One attendee raised his hand asked the question that changed everything for me. He asked: “How come I can’t control all my applications using Group Policy?”
When the attendee asked the question I felt like Sir Isaac Newton must have felt when that apple fell on his head.
It was super clear to me: I would make something that would do that magic. I would create software to control applications and other parts of Windows—using the Group Policy ecosystem they already use.
The benefits of this system would be very clear. I knew administrators and IT managers would want to:
- Ensure IT and business applications’ settings—on any system a user roamed to.
- Optionally lock out settings and tabs so end-users can’t work around IT policies
- Deploy settings when needed; un-deploy settings when no longer needed (automatically)
- Save money on help desk calls, desktop “house calls,” and Level 3 calls because things are just set up correctly
- Use Group Policy, the settings delivery system already built into Active Directory (no new servers, no infrastructure, no schema updates, no special domain type.)
- Help ensure compliance with IT and business standards for both Windows and applications
- Work with the systems that people use the most—Windows XP and Windows 7—as well as Terminal Servers and Citrix, and other products based on Windows (like Virtual PC, Med-V, VMware ACE and View, and any VDI solution)
When I look at the modern desktop, I look at it in layers (simplified as such):
- Operating system
- Agents/Drivers
- Applications
- Settings
When I sat down to analyze what was missing, it was very, very clear. We needed a way to “de-couple” the application’s settings from the application. And that’s what PolicyPak does.
When a user roams from her laptop to her desktop, then roams to her terminal server session, then to a VDI desktop, PolicyPak makes sure that the required IT and business settings are always the same, regardless of the computer. And, it uses Group Policy to make that connection.
I wanted PolicyPak to quickly integrate into what an IT organization has already invested in.
That’s why PolicyPak uses Group Policy as the “transport” for the directives. That’s also why PolicyPak leverages the administrative console already being used—the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC.) PolicyPak just snaps in and requires no new training to get started.
Additionally, PolicyPak works right alongside Microsoft’s most popular MDOP (Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack) suite components:
· AGPM: This is Microsoft’s Advanced Group Policy Management tool that enables “check-in/check-out” Group Policy Object workflow management. It works perfectly inside the workflow, because PolicyPak just is Group Policy.
· App-V: This is Microsoft’s Application Virtualization. This enables administrators to deploy an application to desktops without actually installing the product. It uses a virtual file system and virtual registry. PolicyPak becomes a “bridge” between Group Policy and App-V. That is, using Group Policy and PolicyPak, you can deliver a virtualized application’s settings. This is a real timesaver for any App-V admin, because he can sequence the application one time, deploy it over and over again, but use PolicyPak to manage each teams’ settings, as needed.
As a Group Policy MVP, I am constantly thinking about community. I try to help people out as much as I can, sharing my knowledge and helping them fix thorny problems. Indeed, I run the GPanswers.com community forum with lots of free tips, tricks, and training to help IT Pros get the most out of Group Policy (www.GPanswers.com). And it’s for this same reason that PolicyPak has a 100% free Community Mode to help people get started right away at no cost.
That’s my story about why I created PolicyPak. I hope you’ll check it out and start gaining control where you feel it will be helpful.
I do weekly webinars entitled “PolicyPak: How to Save Serious Time, Money, and Effort (While Increasing Your Security and Compliance).” You can sign up for an upcoming live demonstration or download the free PolicyPak Community Edition right now at www.PolicyPak.com.
Jeremy Moskowitz, Group Policy MVP runs GPanswers.com, a community website to help people get their tough Group Policy questions answered and provide Master Level Group Policy training (www.GPanswers.com). He also founded PolicyPak Software, which is described in this article. More information, as well as the free PolicyPak Community Edition, can be found at www.PolicyPak.com. |
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