LAN2LAN Technobabble

LAN2LAN advocates open approach to social media

Danny Williams — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 15:31:58 +0100

LAN2LAN advocates open approach to social media as CIOs embrace application visibility and control

LAN2LAN has responded to the rising demand from customers for a more sophisticated approach to protecting corporate networks

New transparent approach will help CIOs create best practice framework that maximises customer engagement and minimises security risk

Surrey–based specialist systems integrator LAN2LAN is encouraging CIOs to take a new, open–minded approach to the security challenges associated with the rise of social networking in today’s corporate environment. More organisations than ever before are using social networking media such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter™ to increase customer engagement, change perception and ultimately improve customer satisfaction. However, this can expose organisations to the threats of security across their corporate network. LAN2LAN has responded to the rising demand from customers for a more sophisticated approach to protecting corporate networks by extending its capabilities, investing in key technology and expanding the size of its dedicated security team.

LAN2LAN recommends a blended approach to security that embraces the wealth of sophisticated technology available today with a set of sensible and flexible processes that clearly define how employees should access and use social media in the work environment backed up with genuine visibility and control down to the user level. By implementing social media best practice, the IT department can be pivotal to facilitating effective communications with customers whilst maintaining compliance with industry standards such as Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI–DSS) or the Information Security Management System standard ISO27001. Danny Williams, one of LAN2LAN’s Security Specialists, commented: “Social media networking sites represent a billion plus members, a huge community for companies to interact with. People are using social media channels to praise or air their grievances about the products and services they receive especially in a business to consumer environment. Banning social networking outright in the work environment effectively isolates companies from what the marketplace is saying about them and denies them a right to reply where they can protect and defend their brand.”
IT departments can now adopt a smarter approach to the growing presence of social media in the workplace. There are several simple but effective measures LAN2LAN can help companies take to better control the new social media business environment, for example, permitting staff to update their profiles on professional networking sites whilst restricting the use of certain applications such as chat and gaming. In addition, nominated personnel should be allowed to post information about the company to social media networking sites and respond to negative comments posted on the company’s products or services. These activities would form the basis of a best–practice policy that supports existing corporate HR and risk management procedures which is then communicated widely across the organisation in the usual way.

LAN2LAN security experts achieve this by working closely with selected partners in the security space such as Fortinet, Palo Alto, Tectia and HP Tippingpoint. These trusted vendors have all undergone LAN2LAN’s strict technical evaluation and commercial due diligence process to design and implement solutions that match customers’ specific business requirements.

LAN2LAN has provided security solutions for many high–profile organisations including London City Airport, Exeter City Council, Mouchel, Experian QAS and Reed Managed Services.

Danny Williams concluded: “LAN2LAN has seen a major step change in the security landscape. Organisations have so many more aspects for which they need to provide a robust, complete security defence system, from the perimeter to the mobile end–point, from wireless to outsourced cloud–based services. Our depth of security, infrastructure, collaboration and mobility knowledge, combined with a proven track record in developing policies designed to protect company intellectual property, provide a unique and powerful offering in today’s brave new social media world.”

LAN2LAN Assist – Hardware Maintenance Support Services

Steve Lapthorn — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 15:23:14 +0100

LAN2LAN Assist – Hardware Maintenance Support Services

LAN2LAN 'Assist' is the Hardware Maintenance & Support service division of LAN2LAN. Our 'Assist' program provides a complete hardware/software support solution for our customers. The LAN2LAN Assist service offering can provide 24/7 maintenance & support on a wide range of hardware systems across the UK, Ireland and mainland Europe.

As a professional IT support services provider, LAN2LAN Assist understands the importance of Customer requirements. Equipped with a strong technical and support team, we are able to offer a competitive pricing model, a highly qualified technical team and an unrivalled level of service.

LAN2LAN Assist provides support across a wide range of vertical markets from finance, legal, construction, retail, government and leisure.

Supported vendors

Supporting industry-leading vendors including HP, Cisco, 3Com, Nortel, Juniper, IBM, and Extreme Networks means LAN2LAN Assist is vendor independent.

Networking
Cisco, Check Point, Extreme, Juniper, HP, IBM, 3Com, Watchguard
Servers
Compaq, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Gateway, Sun
Storage
HP EVA, Lefthand and MSA, Dell EqualLogic, Datacore
Desktops and Laptops
HP, Compaq, Dell, Fujitsu, Gateway, IBM, Toshiba, Samsung, Sony
Printers
Brother, Canon, Epsom, Fujitsu, Genicom, HP, IBM, Kyocera, Lexmark, Newbury Data, OKI, Panasonic

Technical assurance

LAN2LAN has access to a network of c85 engineers combining Field Engineers, Network Engineers and Senior Consultants offering a wide range of skill sets to cater from basic network implementations to more complex and large scale deployments. All Engineers are periodically trained on all the leading vendor solutions and industry standard accreditations allow us to deliver enhanced support services without compromising on quality.

27/4 Service Desk

With a purpose built Network Operations Centre (NOC), LAN2LAN Assist is able to provide a 24/7 Service Desk facility with guaranteed responses and fixes within your defined service level agreement. We can proactively monitor networks in real-time (keeping downtime to a minimum), provide technical assistance, process fault calls and provide a ‘single point of contact’ to manage the service delivery for all our service contracts.

No matter which technology, vendor or location, the LAN2LAN Assist Service Desk is always ready to process Customers requests. This single point of contact approach provides you with a simple and efficient method of logging your call or email, making sure that all issues are resolved in a prompt and professional manner. Incidents will automatically be routed to the appropriate technical team. We are able to locate the nearest engineer using our real-time tracking facility. Our Engineers are then able to remotely update calls and resolve them from our secure portal.

Equipment spares

In order to meet stringent SLAs, LAN2LAN Assist has access to a comprehensive network of 48 spares locations so field engineers have the ability to respond quickly and effectively to any fault call or incident.

Location

The footprint of LAN2LAN Assist engineers spans UK, Ireland and parts of mainland Europe. This is one of the reasons why we are able to offer very short SLAs and recognised as the partner of choice for support. Most support companies cannot provide the levels of geographic coverage that LAN2LAN Assist can and that is why more and more of them are looking towards trusted, reliable and experienced support providers such as LAN2LAN Assist.

LAN2LAN: three Golds from HP

Steve Lapthorn — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 15:20:19 +0100

LAN2LAN: three Golds from HP

LAN2LAN is a specialist systems integration, support and management organisation. We have been delivering clever networks, with no limits, since the foundation of the company in 1994.

LAN2LAN offers experience, expertise and excellence in Infrastructure, Security, Collaboration and Mobility solutions. We have long-standing certified partner agreements with many industry-leading vendors, so we continually receive up-to-date information on the most recent developments in IT.

This year LAN2LAN is proud to announce that our specialist teams have attained three HP 2011 Gold accreditations in the HP Networking technology area:

2011 Gold Unified Networking Specialist and Professional

As a HP Unified Networking Specialist (formerly known as ProCurve Networking Specialist), it confirms that LAN2LAN has the HP certified technical capabilities to provide comprehensive design, deployment and management services that span the networking lifecycle.

LAN2LAN provides the expertise to design, pre-stage, install, implement, manage and support complex unified wired and wireless networking infrastructure solutions for medium and large customers.

2011 Gold Networking Security Specialist

Recently HP acquired all 3Com and TippingPoint security products and integrated them into the HP Networking portfolio, our newly acquired certification validates that LAN2LAN has the highest expertise to deliver complex networking security solutions.

LAN2LAN has experience and expertise to assist mid-sized companies to large enterprise organisations with their corporate networks in the following areas;

Network Security Management and Visibility
Data Centre and Virtualisation Security
Network Threat Prevention
Network Access Control
Tippingpoint Intrusion Prevention

This accreditation verifies that LAN2LAN provides the highest levels of expertise to design and support complex networking security solutions.

Data Centre Co-location

Steve Lapthorn — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 15:08:03 +0100

LAN2LAN selected 4D Data Centres Limited as their hosting partner to offer co–location products and services to new and existing customers. LAN2LAN also host our own DR infrastructure and web servers in racks at 4D Data Centres.

4D Data Centres offer physical space for IT equipment such as server, storage and devices – providing power, cooling and connectivity in a secure and well maintained environment.

Many organisations use this Surrey–based data centre facility as it provides secure, fast, and resilient dark fibre internet connectivity with automatic failover.
The on–site Network Operation Centre (NOC) monitors the data centre network 24 x 7, 365 days a year with 1st and 2nd line support, and an online portal is available for account management, power control, reporting, billing and help desk communication.

For some businesses, locating their servers into a data centre may not be necessary; however you may want to ask the following questions:

How much would we save if we consolidated all our servers in one location?
How much will it cost us if we need to expand our current IT infrastructure in the future?
What would be the business impact and cost to the company if we lost our servers to a power–cut, theft, fire or flood?

If the answer to any of the above is “a lot”, then a data centre may be the best option for your organisation.

4D Data Centres has been designed with these main points in mind:

1. ROI : Server consolidation to an off–site location

Customers can consolidate their servers and co–locate their IT equipment into 4D Data Centres environment to reduce their own power and cooling costs and to minimise the impact to an organisation due to system downtime. Full racks, half racks and quarter racks are available with an uninterruptable power supply.

Your IT equipment will be kept in the best possible condition by providing an environment which keeps them at a constant humidity and temperature level within the data racks using cold aisle containment.

The use of a co–location facility enables the high overhead cost of a data centre to be shared across many clients, giving economies of scale and a much higher degree of security and reliability.

4D will also take care of the essential services such air conditioning maintenance and internet connection reliability, allowing IT Managers to focus on the more productive IT projects in hand.

IT Managers will have remote access to your servers 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and free 15 minutes per day remote technical and skill support service, known as “remote hands” to request assistance with changes to be made in the data centre environment.

2. Scalability : Expand your current IT infrastructure

Many IT–reliant businesses and projects experience very rapid growth and this creates the need for an infrastructure that can be scaled quickly and reliably. 4D Data Centres can help to mitigate the risk of scalability such as recruiting and retaining the additional IT staff required to install, maintain and support this mission–critical infrastructure. 4D have the staff resources and technical infrastructure in place to enable you to grow your business.

3. Reliability & Protection

4D are confident to offer you 100% uptime service level agreement on power and 99.99% uptime service level agreement on network availability. Can you achieve this level of reliability within your organisation?

4D can also offer you protection against elements beyond your control such as power–cuts, theft, fire and floods:

Power–cuts
4D have their own resilient power supply through a UPS system giving an uninterruptable power and also their own back–up generator just for good measure. This provides the best possible environment to keep your servers at a constant humidity and temperature level and supplies them with continuous power supply and connectivity so in the event of a power failure your servers – and your business – will keep running.

Theft
Your servers will be stored in secure cabinets (racks) to which only a few people have authorised access. These high quality racks comprise of secure metal frames, solid metal side panels and meshed doors with combination locks. Additional security is available in the form of cages if required.
The racks are located in the data centre where special security measures are taken to look after your IT equipment with CCTV and motion detector alarms inside and outside the building, plus infra–red detection (night vision) and on–site security guards.

Fire
4D has installed VESDA smoke detectors in both the ceiling and under the floor at their data centre environment which constantly monitors and samples the air, immediately detecting any slight variance or fluctuation and alerting the Network Operation Centre.

Flood
An under–floor water leak detection system is built into the data centre floor giving an early indication of any potential problems.

In summary
4D have been working in collaboration with LAN2LAN on customer projects over the last 3 years. We originally selected 4D Data Centres as our hosting partner because of their integrity, flexibility and ‘can do’ attitude.
Also, the value–add services listed above are provided by 4D Data Centres free of charge, whereas other companies will charge extra, or worse still, cannot offer these assurances to our customers.

Please contact your LAN2LAN Account Manager who will be happy to discuss your hosting requirements and arrange a visit to see the offering from 4D Data Centres.

Winter

Andy Dennis — Thu, 2 Dec 2010 14:20:19 +0100

Winter has hit the south of England now. With Gatwick closed and our road/rail networks struggling to keep clear, travelling to and from work or to a clients site has become difficult . In the past, with this level of disruption, it would be really difficult to run a business.

This is now not the case. With IBM/Lotus Notes remote replication all our staff that cannot make the office can keep working. IBM Lotus Sametime keeps us all connected be it in the office or working remotely. IBM Lotus Quickr enables us to share information . Hitachi IT Operations Analyzer means I can verify all of our services are running correctly. A SSL VPN and a Cisco soft phone means I can work remotely and take calls from the office.

Blackberry hand-held's help connect our employee's and provide them with real-time information. Guardian 24 lone worker security helps us stay safe via our Blackberry's when working at remote locations or even stuck in the snow.

So whatever the weather conditions outside, we can keep working, just as well as if we were in the office.

Please stay safe this winter.

Watchout USB Disk and iPad/iPod/iPhone Lotus Traveler Installations

Andy Dennis — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 15:47:54 +0100

One of out clients as experienced an issue with installing Lotus Traveler onto their chairman's iPad today. After clicking on generate an error is being displayed with a message as Open in USB Disk and the Mail profile will not be installed.

The error turns out to be a 3rd Party application call USB Disk. If you de-install USB Disk from the device, install Traveler then installation will complete without any errors. You can then re-install USB Disk.

It looks like that USB Disk hooks into Safari to intercept content and that stops you being able to install your Traveler profile.

Thanks to Rich and Alan for their patience in troubleshooting!

XPages developers - be wary of 8.5.1 FP4

Melissa Snell — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:22:06 +0100

This seems to cause an error when you try to view an XPage that relates to "XSP not defined". I don't know what the cause of the issue is, only that it seems to be introduced when you apply FP4.

One of my customers got this error on one server but not another. Upgrading the server to 8.5.2 resolved the issue.

Not sure if it is recognised officially yet but there are more postings appearing about it so beware.

There is such a thing as trying to be TOO helpful...

Melissa Snell — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:06:49 +0100

I don't know about the other developers out there, but I have often written LotusScript code that uses COM to manipulate Microsoft Office - printing to Word, creating spreadsheets with pivot tables and charts, creating Powerpoint presentations and so on. I actually quite enjoy doing this - particularly spreadsheets as I love manipulating data.

I have an application that I wrote 3 or 4 years ago that manages sales orders and invoices. When the user wants to print the invoice documents they hit a button that outputs the content to Word. I did this because all the things you need, such as programmable headers and footers, pagination, table-based layout that is easy to navigate is sitting there ready for the taking.

This worked beautifully until "Scary Toolbar Word" (i.e. Word 2007 a.k.a "where in the hell did they put feature x that I always knew how to find") started to be deployed across the organisation. My beautiful invoice layout was vertically challenged in that it spread across more pages and the headers and footers became broken as a result. If you produced the invoice in Word 2002 and then opened the resulting document in STW, then it was fine - it was the generation of the document that was the issue.

:-(

What I have learned is that in STW, there are some 'helpful' settings that add the following by default to the normal template:

> After paragraph spacing - 10
> Line spacing - 1.15
> Add space between paragraphs of the same style

Now this has the effect under normal circumstances of making a Word document easier to read. However for my invoice layout this proved to be the cause of the problem.

In this particular case I discovered that instead of re-writing my code, one workaround to this is to change the default settings for the paragraph spacing.

On the Home ribbon, in the Paragraph group, click the Paragraph dialog box launcher.
Click the Default… button
Set after paragraph spacing to 0
Set line spacing to 1
If required, select the check box for Don’t add space between paragraphs of the same style.
Click OK.

Once these defaults had been set then my invoice reverted to its former glory!

The old ideas are the best....

Melissa Snell — Fri, 9 Jul 2010 11:50:48 +0100

Has anyone else seen the new Nikon advertising campaign? "I AM" signs being held up by various groups of people? Then on the final screen "I am" on a YELLOW BACKGROUND. Does that seem a tiny bit familiar to anyone???

Check this out: http://www.iamnikon.co.uk/en_GB_IAM/

Quick Notes 8 Developer Tip - correcting code indentation in Designer 8 LotusScript Editor

Melissa Snell — Mon, 5 Jul 2010 13:42:31 +0100

One of the things that I found initially challenging about the new LotusScript Eclipse editor is that it appeared to drive a coach and horses through my old trick of matching up opening and closing statements by checking the column number of the code. For example if you had a series of nested "ifs" containing a lot of complex, badly commented code you could check which "end if" matched which "if" by positioning your cursor and checking the column number on the lower RHS of the designer client. However the new designer doesn't always line things up correctly, particularly if you are copying and pasting code about.

So I discovered this speed key: CTRL+I (that's a capital 'eye'), which is the speed key for Source -> Correct Indentation.

Now I save the code (just in case!) and then CTRL+A followed by CTRL+I - and voila! My code is then nicely indented.

Would be nice to be able to expand/collapse nested statements though. Perhaps for the future?

Jazzing up view columns on the web using JavaScript

Melissa Snell — Thu, 1 Apr 2010 16:18:31 +0100

Sometimes we want to do things in a view that we know would impact performance or that simply aren't possible. I'll warn you up front that this is going to be "old school" but could still have useful applications in XPages.

The Problem
I was given a web application to work on where the home page was using multiple embedded single category views set to display using Java applet. Needless to say the load time on the page could be described as "poor" if one was feeling kind. I wanted to convert the home page to use an HTML version of the views, but one particular view was interesting in that if a particular document was "overdue", there was a column set to show value as colour that turned the text red. This column calculated whether something was overdue or not by comparing a date field to @today (listed in the top 10 design crimes list in my book). So there was the issue: how can you compare a date to "today" without using @today in the view.

The solution I chose has two main ingredients:

1) A CSS class for "red" text
2) A JavaScript function that compares a date I pass it with "Today" and tells me if its in the past or not

1) The following style was added to the stylesheet referenced by the form that would be displaying the 'view'

.redText {
color:#cc0000;
}

2) The following function was added to the JavaScript library referenced by the form that would be displaying the 'view'

function setRedColor(dtY, dtM, dtD, strStatus) {
// dtY dtM and dtD are passed in as strings. strStatus is the text I want to appear in red
today = new Date() //this is today and the view doesn't know about it!
cDate = new Date(dtY+"/"+dtM+"/"+dtD)//this is the date I passed in
if (cDate document.writeln(""+strStatus+"")
}else{
document.writeln(strStatus)
}

Note that in this example I constructed a JavaScript date object from strings - if you pass in numbers, the initialization of the variable would be more like:
cDate = new Date(dtY,dtM,dtD)

You can use JavaScript function to convert if you prefer using parseInt(string).

So to pull it all together, I have a view column where I have directly coded the HTML for table rows and cells (the table tags and table headings are on the form as passthru HTML and I am using the view as a way to populate the table rows). I am pulling this view column in via an @dblookup because you are limited to the number of HTML embedded views you can display (one basically). In simple terms what the code does is compare StageCompletionDate to "today" in the JavaScript function and returns HTML directly into the table cell in the view text being rendered to the browser. Note that around each of the arguments being passed to the JavaScript function are apostrophes, so what looks like " is in fact " '. I wouldn't use the apostrophes on the date arguments if I wanted to pass them to JavaScript as numbers.

""+FullName+""+
""+
@If(Status !="Completed";"";;@Text(StageCompletionDate;"D0S0")))
+""+
" "+ Status+""+

So there you have it! The date displays in red if the document is over due and with no major cost to the view - all the hard work is done by the browser. I really like this as a neat way you can be creative with Notes!

I've used this technique for other things, such as displaying a client-specific price for a product list. That one is a little more complicated but I can post it if anyone is interested.

Controlling a Lotus Symphony Presentation from your iPhone/iPod Touch

Andy Dennis — Tue, 9 Feb 2010 11:15:44 +0100

With Keynote and Powerpoint you can control your presentations from your iPhone or an iPod Touch, but how do you do this with Lotus Symphony ?

It's pretty simple all you need to do is install the Logitech Touch Mouse application, on your PC (or Mac), install the Logitech Touch Mouse Application from the Apple App Store onto your iPhone or iPod Touch and create a peer to peer (or adhoc) wireless network between your iPhone/iPod Touch and your Desktop.

The Logitech Touch Mouse application turns your iPhone or iPod touch into a wireless trackpad and keyboard for your computer, so you can point, click, scroll and type from afar, in any application, on a Mac or PC. It works via WiFi, so if you either have to connect to an existing WiFi network or set-up your own peer to peer (or adhoc) WiFi.

Once you have done this you can use your iPhone/iPod Touch to control your Lotus Symphony presentation.

As it turns your iPhone / iPod Touch into a trackpad/keyboard, it can control any Windows or Mac application, and the best part about it is its free!

More information on the Logitech Touch Mouse application can be found here

We’ve won the Best in Community Service Award 2010

Andy Dennis — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 10:48:38 -0400

It's official, LAN2LAN have won the Best in Community Service Award 2010 at Lotusphere. We are all really, really proud with the award for our Congrego Solution

Jasper Warren picked up our Trophy, which can be seen in all its glory below!

LotusKnows Congrego is a great solution. What a great way to start our 2010!

Congratulations to all of the other Lotusphere 2010 award winners and finalists.

All the pictures of the award and some of our friends in the community can be found on our Lotusphere 2010 Flickr Set

Merry Xmas to you all!

Andy Dennis — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 11:50:43 +0100

Well, its that time of the year, to wish you all and your families a Very Merry Xmas from all of us at LAN2LAN. We hope that all you boys and girls have been very good this year, so that Santa does pay you a visit.

As the end of Xmas Eve arrives you can check out Santa's progress right here with the Norad Santa Tracker..

For a little Festive Fun check out our special Xmas egame and see if you can help Santa win the Winter Olympics..

Microsoft Exchange 2010 Storage vs Lotus Domino 8.5.x

Andy Dennis — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 11:33:03 +0100

It's being reported that Microsoft are dropping the Single Instance Storage component that was added to Exchange 2005. This feature enabled only a single instance of an attachment to be stored in the mail store. The Microsoft Exchange 2010 server store will allow for the native compression of all attachments.

If you an Exchange Administrator, I'd suggest you keep a close eye on the releases and upgrade notes for Exchange 2010 and particularly the potential increase in disk space for your environment.

Now lets map that across to the space saving features in Lotus Domino 8.5.1. These are DAOS (Domino Attachment and Object Service), LZ1 compression within a database for file attachments, design compression for database design elements and a single copy template to ensure only 1 copy of design elements are stored on your server.

DAOS has been seen to save our clients between 30-60% of disk space by storing a single copy of an attachment that has been distributed to multiple users on a Lotus Domino Server.
LZ1 compresses ensures those single attachments which are not distributed to multiple users are compressed.
Design compression can be used to compress design elements
A Single Copy Template can be used to link all of your mail files to a single template..

With all of these features enabled you can reduce the total amount of storage your Lotus Domino Server utilises.

I know which platform I would choose if my disk space is constrained.. and lets not forget Lotus Domino is not a rip and replace solution..

As always the information in this post is correct at the time of writing.

,

I’ve been virtualized

Peter Smith — Fri, 4 Dec 2009 12:09:48 +0100

To be more exact, I have just become a VMWare Certified Professional (VCP4).

For an out and out Lotus techie this may seem a departure from the Yellow straight and narrow, but it actually plays well into the kind of Domino infrastructure projects we are currently engaged on. Our major theme when working with customers on Domino upgrades to 8/8.5 and now 8.5.1, is to use the process as an opportunity to enhance their environment. This can be done through deploying new features as part of the upgrade, optimising performance, consolidating servers and extending functionality though services such as Traveller, web-enabling apps with Xpages - you all know the rest.

So far, so standard, but we are increasingly integrating options for virtualization into Domino projects as customers are looking to reduce their IT footprint, make their infrastructure more flexible (Agile anyone?), and having an eye to centralised off-site services (enter the Public / Private Cloud discussion).

I'm now one of four VCPs at LAN2LAN, and will work with our Virtualization Practice on Domino related projects. One of the benefits of our multi-tier approach is that we have HP hardware and SAN expertise in house, together with network and Microsoft professionals, allowing us deliver an end to end solution for our customers.

The future is still bright Yellow for me, but perhaps running on Yellow Blades.

Vulnerabilities in the PDF distiller of the BlackBerry Attachment Service for the BlackBerry Enterprise Server

Jaime Alcorn — Wed, 2 Dec 2009 13:11:00 +0100

Just received the following vulnerability notice from RIM:

http://www.blackberry.com/btsc/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=KB19860

Seems there is still a PDF vulnerability around and technote KB19860 details how to deal with it. Security severity rating range from 5.7 to 9.3.

I am planning to upgrade to BES 5.0.1 next week so will just disable the PDF ability on the attachment service till then.

BES Professional & Domino 8.5

Jaime Alcorn — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 16:53:06 +0100

We have a number of clients still using BES Professional and they want to upgrade to Domino 8.5. BlackBerry Technical Support Services have the following response:

"Thank you for contacting BlackBerry Customer Support. We are pleased to assist you.

The highest version of Lotus Domino supported with BlackBerry Professional Software version 4.1.4B is 8.0.1. There are currently no plans to provide additional support for Domino 8.5 for use with BlackBerry Professional Software. The highest version of Domino currently supported is 8.5.0, when used in conjunction with BlackBerry Enterprise Server version 5.0"

So, you either need to upgrade or remain as is. Some considerations for an upgrade:

BES Professional was aimed at the small business market and was approved to sit on a production mail server
BES requires a dedicated server so this will cause a few issue with the migration as the Domino server name may change
There are some issues with a migration and upgrade so you may consider setting using a new BES management database and then using the transporter tools to manage user moves
Check your hardware specification against BES 5.0 requirements
Plan your upgrade/migration properly - best spend more time on the planning than the execution - will save lots of time in the long run and minimise the issue you may have

Cloud conversations can have silver linings

Peter Smith — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 22:05:10 +0100

We recently had a meeting with a customer to talk about the future of their mail systems - half the company are on Domino and the rest on various Exchange systems (not integrated).

"The Cloud" was flagged as an area of interest because fundamentally the business want to shift away from the cost and overhead of maintaining their various distributed thick client mail systems, and free up time and money to focus on real business issues. The key point for me in the conversation was that in contemplating "The Cloud" as a solution, what they were in fact saying was that they had made the mental shift to say that mail can be a commodity that is primarily browser based.

Once we make that leap the world's your oyster. What does it matter which specific vendor / product you end up with, as long as the system provides the functionality and service that the business requires at an acceptable price level?
With the acceptance of "The Cloud" we are able to discuss centralised hosted/managed solutions (private cloud), switching from "everyone has a client" to browser access + web enabled applications whilst still retaining the flexibility of local clients for specific roles.

While some will end up in a LotusLive/Google/Microsoft cloud solution, a lot of organisations will opt for the "private cloud" approach. They will have their systems centralised, managed and effectively outsourced whilst retain a level of control over where their data is held and who/how/when it can be accessed and modified.

So, far from being a "game killer" the Cloud can actually open up new opportunities and provide the catalyst for customers to consider new approaches to traditional solutions. As for our customer, we are looking to work with them on identifying their business requirements first and then help them select the correct solution.

DAOS and clusters in 8.5.1

Peter Smith — Tue, 3 Nov 2009 13:42:08 +0100

I was reading through DAOS information to work out how best to restore Quickr documents (that live in DAOS enabled places) and stumbled across this gem from an IBM Engineering open mic call. The question was around TSM but the answer was really interesing..

"A: Clustermates are independent with DAOS configured per server. One of the benefits of the 8.5.1 release is to have the servers participate in DAOS. You do not need any special software to do a production backup in these circumstances. Back up the .nsf using the normal TSM and then back up the .nlo DAOS files (treating them as flat files).

On 8.5.1, there are some new features that save bandwidth. For example, if two servers are running DAOS and you want to send an attachment from one to another, DAOS first checks to see if the attachment is already there. If so, there is no need to send it twice. If all servers in a cluster have DAOS and a new message comes in that you've already seen, DAOS does a reference count to check."

Not quite a single DAOS store but great that it intelligently checks to see if it exists already.