Fully Managed™ Blog

Keeping Drives Mounted in OS X Client

2012-04-21T02:05:00-07:00

Many times, it's nice to be able to re-purpose old machines for specific functions. One such function, in my case, is a CrashPlan Storage Server (with the new PROe). However, if that machine came with Mac OS X (not server), then external drives are unmounted by default upon user logout.

Below is a little trick that tells the OS to keep drives mounted in OS X client while logged out.

Create (touch) the following file:

sudo touch /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/autodiskmount.plist

Edit the file, and add the following content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>AutomountDisksWithoutUserLogin</key>
<true/>
</dict>
</plist>

Save the file, and restart - now your external drives will mount automatically without having to log in.

Enjoy!

Laptops for Africa: Logo Ready

2012-04-06T06:11:00-07:00

We are pleased to announce that thanks to Jon Day, our Laptops for Africa logo is now ready for production and looks amazing (and not a moment too soon)! If you would like to read more about or get involved this inspiring project, please contact us and we'd love your help. Our Nathan Tymos is headed to Zimbabwe in exactly 9 days, so please read over this mission as soon as possible if you or your organization would like to help out. Thank you to all of our Top Guns and valued clients/partners who have contributed already.

Laptops for Africa: Thanks Waiward Steel M&D Drafting

2012-04-01T11:16:00-07:00

We are overwhelmed by the outpour of support we have received since launching our campaign to collect Laptops for Africa. It has been so inspiring hearing back from our clients that they share our passion for this cause.

Our most recent donation was a big one! We are pleased to announce that we have collected a donation of 12 laptops from Waiward Steel and 6 laptops from M&D Drafting!

Waiward Steel and M&D Drafting are committed to showing leadership not only in their industry through safety, quality and production excellence, but also through their commitment to social and environmental responsibility in their community. We are grateful to these organizations for their generous donation to our Laptops for Africa program and our Top Guns are hard at work getting them ready for their new life!

Please contact miranda@fullymanaged.com if you are interested in donating. Click here to learn more about what we are doing.

Laptops for Africa: 30 to Zimbabwe

2012-03-09T05:45:00-08:00

What are you most passionate about? At Fully Managed™ we live and breathe our passion for technology. We love it so much it is one of our core values. Our Top Guns are famous for not only using, but also making sure to recommend the best and most current technology available. However, with new and improved tools reaching the market faster, our once leading edge and well-loved machines have a much shorter life cycle and many, regrettably, are set aside like so many out-grown toys. Although there are processes to break down and recycle these outdated (but still useful) devices, some components are still discarded as waste in a landfill, increasing damage to the environment.

At Fully Managed™, we have another solution!

Last year, we had the incredible opportunity to help a man in Africa improve his business and his family’s quality of life by sending him one of these outdated by North American standards, but still fully working laptops. (You can read more about this first shipment here). Inspired by how this computer changed his life, as well as the greater educational opportunities that his children will have, the Laptops for Africa program was created. Our mission became to collect, refurbish and send more “hand-me-down” technology to Africa, getting these powerful tools into the hands of children and families who can use it to create better opportunities for themselves and their communities.

This April, we have the opportunity to not only send more laptops to Africa, but also to help one of our Top Guns, Nathan, achieve his personal dream of improving the quality of life for orphans in Zimbabwe. At Fully Managed™ it is important to us to not only inspire our people, but also help them reach their life dreams. Nathan has been on four trips abroad, helping build much-needed infrastructure and sharing his passion for technology in impoverished communities around the world. When asked about the most rewarding parts of his work abroad, he recalled a trip back to Zimbabwe where he witnessed how computers sent to a community in years previous were still being used and working at full capacity. Although, Nathan described these computers as “slow and obsolete by Canadian Standards”, he also, described them as being a “lifeline in these communities; helping run feeding centers, play music and provide access to the internet during events”.

Nathan’s dream has inspired us here at Fully Managed™, and our goal this April is to collect and refurbish 30 previously loved laptops and laptop bags for his upcoming trip to Zimbabwe. Our Top Guns in both Vancouver and Edmonton are joining forces and will be working hard to help refurbish these laptops, but we need your help to give these computers a new life in Africa.

We’re looking for donations of laptops and laptop bags – any computers or accessories that may be lurking in your office or basement. No need to worry about the condition! Paperweights and dusty doorstops are a welcome challenge. We honestly love this stuff.

If you know of anyone that has laptops to spare, please pass this message on! The more laptops we can collect, the more lives you can help change! We would love you to be a part of our mission.

Strategy Not Support

2012-02-17T16:36:00-08:00

If it isn't broken, why pay to fix it?

It used to be that our clients approached us because they needed a skilled trade, someone to fix broken technology. Do any of these sound familiar?

My server/network is slow
My iPhone/Blackberry/Android doesn't work properly
I'm not confident in my backup system
I'm pretty sure my competitors have better technology than we do
I can't adequately access stuff remotely
I have no insight into my inventory or asset life-cycle

I could not count the number of clients we acquired simply because they had a completely inadequate IT infrastructure. Fixing these problems used to impress people. As technology becomes more reliable and easier to consume (we are also getting smarter), we are faced with an interesting paradigm shift in our industry. If things don't break as often, what the heck does your monthly fee go towards?

Extinction is near, for many.

I believe that many, even well-run IT support providers may become extinct if they fail to evolve and understand their new place in the business technology ecosystem. This has become incredibly evident in our presentation to new prospects. It used to be that the Reactive Support Services were at the core of our presentation - now, we spend no more than 3-4 minutes explaining how well we can handle reactive support issues - our clients assume that we can do this well after over 10 years in the industry. We used to talk about how many techs we have, what certifications we have, our impressive client list, etc. None of this seems to matter anymore and people (myself included) are getting immune to the endless checklists of features and benefits. So, now what?

It's time to get strategic.

It's not about IT support anymore, it's about technology strategy. It's about working with a partner who treats your IT infrastructure like a strategic asset, something that can help drive your business forward and give you a competitive edge. Here is the criteria I use when selecting a new partner:

Can you help us increase our revenues?
Can you help us reduce our costs?
Can you help reduce or altogether remove risk?

What we have learned is that the industry has evolved, and we are glad to have evolved with it. Here are some of the things we focus on today:

Scorecards - how does your organization size up against others in your industry or of a similar size?
Standardization - within your network, how consistent are the systems and applications?
Budgeting - do you have an established IT budget that accounts for the life-cycle of your key IT assets?
Best Practices Alignment - how confident are you that what you already own is setup the way it is supposed to be setup?
Reporting - do you have absolute accountability and insight into what is happening within your IT ecosystem?
Relationship - do you have "your guy" (e.g. IT manager, IT director or CIO) who you can bounce ideas or concerns off of?

Our team of Technology Strategists, Senior Consultants, Consultants and best practice experts are now on a mission to ensure we address these key areas for our clients. Our goal is to reduce the reactive support so that there are zero incidents in a month. I'm not sure we'll ever get there, but we are certainly going to try.

Laptops for Africa: 1st Wave Delivered

2011-12-13T10:00:00-08:00

Laptops for Africa: we did it!

The first of our Laptops for Africa has arrived in Kilimanjaro, Africa.

We are thrilled to have the opportunity to share our passion for getting "every day" technology in the hands of the less fortunate for educational and entertainment purposes. We posted recently about the first leg of the journey from Edmonton, and we are happy to provide a follow-up post on the success of this mission!

Nickson and his family are incredibly thankful, and we hope that you find his story below as inspiring as we do. We will be providing an opportunity for clients and associates who want to support this great cause to get behind it by providing us with their hand-me-downs which we will clean up, refurbish and deliver to another thankful family in Africa. The message below from Nick is in his original words:

Dear frends i hope all of you your fine,me and my family we all happy,i was promise to send some few pictures of my family,i did that and those are the pictures of my wife and three kids,Tammy my family their very happy with the computer you send to as,Allan and Vanessa,they have little knowlege of how to use computer,their have a period of computer lesson everyday so Allan can do much better than me, Irene she is very young but she is learning from Allan and Vanessa,my wife she is also try to use computer so every body is try to do some thing with this computer,thank you once again and say jambo to all kids and my brother Wes
kind regards Nick Lyatuu.

NB;Irene she is last born she has eight yeas with light blue clothers,Vanessa she is eleven yeas with redshort this two their all in primary level,Allan he is 17yeas now and he is already finish secondary education,and he may join high school next year,my wife she is not working at the moment,but she was a nurse before.we all living in Arusha.

Fully Managed: Microsoft IMPACT Awards 2011 Win

2011-12-07T06:00:00-08:00

This past Wednesday, November 30th 2011, marked the Microsoft IMPACT Awards for 2011 in Toronto. Chris Day and I attended this prestigious event which is put on by Microsoft Canada annually to recognize outstanding partners in Canada. For Fully Managed™, this was our second appearance at the awards as we were a finalist in the same category last year (Online Services Partner of the Year). I thought I would provide a little different perspective on things and provide a personal play-by-play of the day in its entirety:

5 AM: Rise and shine. Our flight is at 8 and it's the beginning of a LONG day.

8 AM: Take-off. I somehow received the worst middle economy seat on the plane with two individuals in front of me who immediately ordered Caesars and rum/cokes, this continued throughout the entire 4+ hour flight.

4 PM (EST): Landed. a smooth flight, no bumps, I managed to consume a great movie and a go-karting documentary, however, I neglected to eat which leaves me in a state of starvation.

4:30 PM: Where are my bags! Haven't seen them come down, Chris and I are the last people there, no bags in sight, does Murphy really hate me this much? A couple thoughts immediately cross my mind: am I seriously going to have to wear jeans to this event? The doors open at 5:30, so there's no chance I could find a replacement suit. As Chris and I are headed over to the Air Canada customer service kiosk, I see one bag coming around the corner, there it is! Talk about relieved... we move quickly to find a taxi or a town car to get us to the Hotel

5 PM: Where did all the Taxis go, massive lineups for both cabs and limos with limited vehicular carriages to service either. Apparently there is a shortage of transportation in Toronto, that or it's a busy day. Chris and I wait at least 30 minutes to finally get something that can take us to One King West in downtown Toronto. The drive downtown seems to take forever. If you think Vancouver is bad for congestion, think again. I witnessed 10+ close-calls on major accidents and it took us forever just to reach our hotel. We are now running behind as the reception started at 5:30 and dinner starts at 7.

6:15 PM: We decide to grab a quick bite and drink before quickly changing into uniform as we're both famished. A couple of sesame chicken skewers washed down with an Espresso Martino (Kahlua, baileys, shot of espresso, vodka) were a perfect pre-game meal.

6:30 PM: Fermenting Cellar. We arrive at the venue only minutes before the official dinner starts. The Distillery District in Toronto is amazing, very Gastown-like as it reminded me of home. Old brick buildings, cobblestone walkways, and infested with restaurants and shops. We quickly grab our lanyards upon entering the event and find our table as it's minutes before the start of the event. At our table is Rob King (Director, Marketing and Channel Strategy, Microsoft), two individuals from IT Weapons, the President of Dolphin Digital Technologies and his wife; a great crew!

7:00 PM: And it begins. The night starts off with Eric Gales (President, Microsoft Canada) making his opening remarks. The host of the event is introduced, Robyn Benincasa who is a motivational speaker on the topics of teamwork and leadership, a great theme for the evening. Throughout the entire evening, Robyn talked about past experiences and had various slides and video clips of eco-races and situations where teamwork and leadership prevailed in critical situations. Overall, she had an inspiring and motivating story and was a great host for the evening.

8:00 PM: The awards begin. The first award category of the night is for the Community Leadership Partner of the Year. Scott Burton (at our table) is one of the finalists. Sure enough, Scott and his team are awarded the first trophy of the night so congrats to Scott, his wife, and the team at Dolphin Digital Technologies. It was great to see a deserving company awarded the first trophy of the evening and I thought to myself, maybe this is a table full of 'winners'...fingers crossed.

9:00 PM: Drum roll... I could not believe how nervous I was as our category was up next, I'm never nervous, but my heart was literally trying to escape from my chest. I knew what it was like to sit there and have your name announced as a finalist (Microsoft IMPACT Awards 2010) only to not have it called as a winner. It's crushing. We set a goal the night we received the news last year at the same event that we would be back as finalists and be awarded Microsoft Online Services Partner of the Year.

So here we are, sitting in anticipation as they announce the finalists. What made me nervous was that we were going up against a 1-billion dollar company in Softchoice but I knew we had a legit shot as we worked so hard for it. Finalists announced, heart pounding, leg won't stop moving, I look over a Chris and the guy is as cool a cucumber but I can tell his heart is also trying its best to explode from his chest. "...and the award goes to a company that creates Peace of Mind for their clients...” BOOM, I knew right away it was us and instantly gained a perma-grin as our table erupts in cheers. Chris and I went on stage, accepted our awards, and Chris said a few words. We posed for a picture on stage, had our photo taken with Eric Gales and made our way back to our table. What a relief, we did it!

10:00 PM: We spent the rest of the evening making our way through a 3-course meal, posing for additional pictures, and speaking with other Microsoft Partners (finalists and winners). As always, Starshot and Microsoft put on a great event with awesome food, a great open bar, and a wicked DJ that created a perfect atmosphere from start to finish.

This award represents hundreds of hours of labour spread across our entire team. From account managers, to consultants, to individuals that are supporting our Online Services deployments on a daily basis, this was truly a team effort and a well-earned award. We set this target over a year ago; we knew what it was like to be a finalist and to be so close to receiving that type of recognition. It left a bitter taste in our mouth but motivated us to do better and achieve greatness and last Wednesday we did. Last Wednesday capped off an amazing 2011 by the Fully Managed™ team and we are honoured to be recognized for our hard work and dedication to Microsoft Online Services.

Welcome, Apple.

2011-10-11T09:15:00-07:00

Today is a another exciting day for the team at Fully Managed: we announced full support for Apple solutions within our managed services (technology support, management, monitoring, and strategy) and professional services (project and consulting services) teams. I wanted to add a little colour to press release, perhaps answering the question “Why?” in a bit more depth. We even made a little 60 second video, in case that’s all you have time for right now.

Why Apple?

Over the past several years, we have been seeing an increasing demand for Apple and Mac OS X solutions within the business networking environments we support. We have seen an explosion in Apple’s mobile devices into the enterprise, with iPhone and iPad leading the pack. This is driving clients whose desktops have traditionally been 100% Windows-based to start asking the question: could I use one of those beautiful looking MacBook or iMac devices with our Windows-based back-end infrastructure? I will try to shed some light on why this question makes most IT professionals with a Windows background cringe.

Until recently, we have done our best to steer clear of Mac OS X in the networks we support due to the perception that there were compatibility issues when interfacing an Apple computer with a Microsoft Windows back-end. While there were (and will continue to be) some complexities involved in doing this – i.e. you need to know what you’re doing – it’s been possible to create a seamless hybrid Windows/Mac network for many years. Luckily, it’s become even easier in the last year due to some key improvements with Mac OS X Lion and the release of Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac. Translation: it’s possible, and actually very exciting, to create seamlessly-integrated Windows and Apple environments.

Why Microsoft?

Those clients with a passion for all things Apple may ask, why Microsoft? I absolutely love that question! Microsoft delivers amazing, innovative, integrated, industry defining technology solutions. Have they made mistakes? Certainly. Vista (cough, choke). However, Microsoft is here to stay and in fact the company is on the verge of something incredible with Office 365 – which works beautifully on a Mac, by the way. From the desktop perspective, few can deny the rock-solid experience delivered by Windows 7 (though I’m sure some will try), and Windows 8 will raise the bar again. From the server perspective, and this is a bold statement, there is no operating system on the planet that competes with Windows Server 2008 R2. It has become the de facto standard – an incredibly powerful, secure, flexible and easy-to-use operating system that delivers the majority of information we access on a daily basis.

What happened to Monkey Mac?

Over the past several years, we have worked closely with Luis and his team at Monkey Mac to provide “best effort” support to our clients having mixed Windows / MacOS environments. We’ve also been a great partner to Monkey Mac, handing over any opportunities we received to provide IT support for predominantly Mac environments. While this relationship has been working well, our clients want more: faster, more comprehensive, more integrated services. As a result, and after much consideration, we reached the conclusion that it would be best to have Luis and Monkey Mac join the Fully Managed™ family. Translation: we are driven by our clients, and the demand is there, so we’re going “all in”.

What’s in it for you?

The result is that over the next three months, we will be fully integrating MacOS and iOS device support into our managed services offering and cross-training our entire Mission Control team (thankfully, Luis happens to be an Apple Certified Trainer as well!). Ultimately, this will enable us to provide the same fast, friendly, reliable service we always have, regardless of whether you are on a Mac or a PC. We’ve also got some amazing, cool, impressive technology we’ll be unleashing soon for those clients who do have Apple devices in their network. stay tuned for that. Finally, to those of you joining us from the Apple camp, I salute you. We believe in choice, we believe in best-in-class, we believe in creating an experience. Thank you for reading…

The Foundations of Mission Control

2011-09-27T10:30:00-07:00

At Fully Managed™, we have an incredible responsibility.

Our clients come to us because they want peace of mind. We are entrusted to handle sensitive data, monitor and maintain mission-critical systems, and maintain detailed documentation. We take this responsibility seriously - so seriously, in fact, that we have brought the Foundations of Mission Control to Fully Managed™.

These principles and qualities below are inspired and adapted from NASA's Mission Control, a team responsible for the safe launch and return of human life and multi-billion dollar spacecraft. When mistakes are made, billions of dollars are lost and people die. While our stakes are not quite as high, we feel a similar level of care and responsibility for the clients we support on a daily basis - which is why the Foundations of Mission Control resonate so perfectly for us at Fully Managed™.

It's all about trust.

You give us access to an amazingly wide array of your sensitive information systems, largely because elevated access / permissions are mandatory for us to provide the level of IT service and support you desire. While we certainly appreciate this level of access, to a certain extent it has always been "just accepted" that we get access to your systems because we need it.

What is often forgotten is that IT staff are human and can make mistakes like everyone else. Further, while none of us likes to think of this, they can also become particularly dangerous should they become malicious or rogue. While a security breach or data loss are fairly rare in occurrence (which is why we've gotten away with "no questions asked" access for so many years), it is a common outcome and should not be ignored. Even simple, innocent tasks such as creating new user accounts, if not managed properly, can and will wreak havoc on an organization.

Perhaps even more important is our responsibility to ensure that our clients' mission-critical systems are maintained, monitored and protected from both internal and external factors. Clients count on us to manage the entire life cycle of their IT infrastructure, from deployment to maintenance to backup and disaster recovery - every IT asset must deployed, maintained, monitored and supported according to best practices - nothing less. We believe that with this trust comes incredible responsibility, which is why we have unveiled the Foundations of Mission Control on our technical team.

Introducing: The Foundations of Mission Control

To instill within ourselves these qualities which are essential in our quest for excellence in Creating Peace of Mind for our clients, partners and team members:

Discipline: Being able to follow as well as lead, knowing we must master ourselves before we can master our work
Competence: There being no substitute for total preparation and complete dedication for we cannot tolerate the careless or indifferent
Confidence: Believing in ourselves as well as others, knowing we must master fear and hesitation before we can succeed.
Responsibility: Realizing that it cannot be shifted to others, for it belongs to each of us; we must answer for what we do, or fail to do.
Toughness: Taking a stand when we must; to try again, and again, even if it means following a more difficult path.
Teamwork: Respecting and utilizing the ability of others, realizing that we work towards a common goal, for success depends on the efforts of all.

To always be aware that suddenly and unexpectedly we may find ourselves in a role where our performance has ultimate consequences. To recognize that the greatest error is not to have tried and failed, but that in trying, we did not give our best effort.

How do we live by these principles?

An amazing base - Our core purpose, our core values, our brand promise, our people, our experience and our certifications - essentially, the Fully Managed™ culture
Robust documentation - our documentation management and reporting platform provides instant access to all documentation and key performance indicators for each client environment
Rigid policies and procedures - every completed task must follow a Fully Managed™ certified and client-approved standard operating procedure (SOP)
Comprehensive access control - we tightly control which engineers have access to which documentation.
Detailed auditing - we can also see exactly who, when, where and why any of our engineers accessed client documentation and passwords.

Office 365 - Lync and SharePoint Online

2011-09-18T15:19:00-07:00

We just completed our internal migration onto Lync Online and SharePoint Online, powered by Office 365. While we've been heavily involved with Office 365 since beta, and have migrated several clients successfully to the platform so far, we weren't in a position to migrate our internal infrastructure until now.

I'm pleased to say that two days into our deployment, it's safe to say that the Lync and SharePoint provided for by Office 365 are going to completely revolutionize the way we communicate internally. Some of the key new features we are now taking advantage of include:

Next generation Lync Instant Messaging client
One-on-one and group video chat
Desktop / application / presentation sharing
Seamless integration with Active Directory and integration with partner organization through federation services (single sign-on)
Seamless document management with SharePoint (a polite goodbye to file servers)
All of this works from anywhere, on virtually any client (Windows, Mac & mobile devices)

We will be posting a lot more content around the various benefits and use cases, but in the meantime, if you haven't taken a good look at Office 365 yet, prepare to have your mind blown.

Laptops for Africa: The Journey Begins

2011-08-21T08:04:00-07:00

The journey of laptops to a better place in Kilimanjaro, Africa...

August marks an exciting month for us at Fully Managed™: the very first leg of the journey of a refurbished laptop computer from Edmonton, AB to Pigeon Lake to Calgary to Kilamanjaro, Africa. Why are we doing this and why is it important to me?

We see so many new and gorgeous systems leaving our doors each day, replacing other systems that are "older" by our standards. It turns out, these same systems which we would normally recycle are actually sorely needed in Africa, by working men and women who can't afford clean clothes & water, let alone technology.

As a leading IT service provider, this initiative obviously ties in extremely well with our business; we have the passion and people to select and rebuild these systems efficiently. However, what makes this initiative truly special for us is that we are executing on our Core Purpose of Creating Peace of Mind for an entirely new group of people in Africa - we've up until now been focused on our team, clients, and partners. We're thrilled to add community to this list.

Our team is standing by to accept your aging laptops for this amazing cause. We'd also love the opportunity to list you as a donor on our website. Please contact your account manager if you'd like your business to participate!

Use a signed SSL certificate with a JSS (Casper Suite) server on Mac OS X Server

2011-07-25T08:00:00-07:00

Purpose: These instructions will provide a detailed step-by-step guideline in order to use an existing CA-signed SSL certificate for your Tomcat keystore, allowing you to leverage the same certificate for your JSS server.

Requirements: Mac OS X Server (10.6.8), Casper Suite 8.21, access to download a copy of SSL provider cert bundle, web server certificate, and admin access to Mac OS X server computer being used for installation.

Obtain Server Private Key

Launch Keychain Utility on your server with root privileges:

1) In terminal, type:

[code]sudo /Applications/Utilities/Keychain\ Access.app/Contents/MacOS/Keychain\ Access[/code]

Type your administrator password when prompted.

2) Once Keychain utility launches, select “Keys” in the Category pane.

3) Select your existing web server private key and certificate pair, and click File > Export Items.

When choosing a location to save, remember you’re authenticated as root, and the hidden root home folder may be displayed as a default location. Choose a location on the desktop of your currently-logged in user (e.g. Desktop).

The file format should be .p12. I will name my exported file “mykeypair.p12?.

You will be asked to create a password for the exported .p12 file, choose something secure but easy to remember.

Extract the private key from exported .p12

Please note, the private key is very sensitive, and a file should *not* be left sitting around with the server’s private key. Protect it very carefully.

In Terminal:

[code]sudo openssl pkcs12 -in mykeypair.p12 -nocerts -nodes -out privatekey.key[/code]

Where privatekey.key is the arbitrary name of the exported file. The [code]nocerts[/code] flag removes the certificates, the [code]nodes[/code]flag removes the encryption (DES).

Authenticate when prompted (administrator password). Then type the export password previously configured.

The new private key file will be created, but it will have additional information that’s not needed.

Open the new file in a text editor:

[code]sudo nano /path_to_key_file/privatekey.key[/code]

Trim the file contents so you only have:

[code]—–BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY—–
UNWNW2304983…..(REST OF CONTENTS TRUNCATED)
—–END RSA PRIVATE KEY—–[/code]

Save and close the privatekey.key file.

Obtain CA-signed Webserver and CA Bundle Certificates

Download a copy of your web server SSL certificate and CA bundle certificate from your SSL provider. In the case of GoDaddy, for instance, these look like this (when downloaded for Tomcat):

The ones we want, in particular, are gd_bundle.crt and hostname.tld.com.crt (hostname.tld.com will actually be the FQDN of your web server). Move these to your working folder, alongside the privatekey.key file previously created.

You should now have a folder with your exported .p12 file from Keychain Access, web server certificate, and CA bundle file.

Create a PKCS12 keystore for use with Tomcat

Now, we will create the PKCS12 file that Tomcat will use:

[code]openssl pkcs12 -export -in hostname.tld.com.crt -inkey privatekey.key -out jsscert.p12 -name tomcat -CAfile gd_bundle.crt -caname root -chain[/code]

In the above command are these variables:

hostname.tld.com.crt – should be the path to your web server certificate
privatekey.key – should be the path to the private key that was created previously
jsscert.p12 – is the arbitrary name you would like your new pkcs12 file to have.
gd_bundle.crt – should be the CA certificate bundle provided by the signing authority

After executing the command, you will be prompted for an export password to be used with the resulting PKCS12 file, enter the password “changeit”.

Once the file is created, move it to the JSS Tomcat directory, like so:

[code]sudo mv /path_to_new_p12/jsscert.p12 /Library/JSS/Tomcat/jsscert.p12[/code]

Edit /Library/JSS/Tomcat/conf/server.xml. In the area for the 8443 connector port, you will need to add/edit the following:

[code]keystoreType="PKCS12"
keystoreFile="/Library/JSS/Tomcat/jsscert.p12"
[/code]

The fully configured connector port should look similar to this (the two lines I added/edited are highlighted in blue):

Save the file and close it.

Restart the Tomcat service:

[code]sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.jamfsoftware.tomcat.plist
sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.jamfsoftware.tomcat.plist
[/code]

Upon visiting your JSS admin page again, it should now be using your SSL cert!

Reference documents:

http://www.jamfsoftware.com/kb/article.php?id=298
http://www.jamfsoftware.com/kb/article.php?id=076
http://www.openssl.org/docs/apps/pkcs12.html

Microsoft WPC 2011 Los Angeles Insights

2011-07-11T08:54:00-07:00

On the morning of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2011 in Los Angeles, CA, I reflect on our past year of partnership with Microsoft and how much has changed in such a short time. In 12 months, Fully Managed™ has doubled (actually 2.5x) in size, expanded our Western Canadian presence to both Vancouver, BC and Edmonton, AB and relocated our headquarters to a new custom-designed facility to support our core purpose of Creating Peace of Mind. We have improved on all our key client-facing metrics, including service level and overall experience. We have added phenomenal new team members to support our growth, and overhauled many of our key processes to drive our core values and brand promise. One thing is certain, we are just getting started and I'm confident that the next 12 months will be even more incredible. Having a big vision is important, but having the team to execute on that vision is critical (which we do). I am inspired and humbled to be a part of it. Now, some thoughts on what we've seen and can expect from Microsoft moving forward.

Microsoft Cloud 2.0

Last year, as I presented on "Winning the Cloud" at WPC 2010 in Washington, DC, many partners were looking at BPOS / Microsoft Online Services and scratching their heads wondering how they could make this into a real business opportunity. Neither Office 365 nor Windows Intune were generally available at this time. I was met with significant skepticism, even though the year prior at WPC 2009 in New Orleans this story was already percolating for many successful Microsoft partners. One thing I think is clear at this point is that not only is cloud a viable solution for many SMBs, but in fact a preferred one. Office 365 is going to take SMB by storm, and the reasons are simple: access the latest and greatest Microsoft technology for a minimal monthly fee, no up front capital investment and never buy another server. Ask a business owner if they'd rather purchase a bunch of servers (and repeat again in 3-5 years), or subscribe to a service far more reliable than what they can afford to purchase. Which do you think 9 out of 10 go for?

A Confession

Although we were hugely successful in moving a huge number of clients to the cloud last year, and that trend has continued, Microsoft's cloud offerings were no longer near as attractive or mature last year as they are now with the recent release of both Office 365 and Windows Intune. We have entered an era where mass market adoption is imminent and we see a large percentage of our clients moving to Office 365 within 18 months. The more commodity infrastructure we can move to the cloud, at a lower total cost of ownership that on premise, the more budget our clients have available to spend on more strategic initiatives.

Collaboration Time

Our plan is simple: give our clients the ability to collaborate better, run leaner, inspire their staff, reduce technology issues, and quite simply experience a zen state when sitting down with their computer or while on the road with a mobile device. Office 365 is a means to that end, and we'll be putting a lot of effort to show how fun business gets when you have such a robust and inspiring platform on which your team can collaborate.

Shameless Plug

If you are a Microsoft partner and attending the WPC 2011 conference, I will be presenting at Cross and Upselling Cloud: Windows Intune and Office 365 (CLD15) on Wednesday at 4:00-5:30 PM. Myself and other leading Microsoft partners from around the world will be be presenting on the market opportunity for Microsoft partners with Office 365 and Windows Intune.

Office 365 Has Arrived

2011-06-28T08:22:00-07:00

Welcome to Office 365

It's been an exciting morning so far at the worldwide press conference held in New York, NY! Today's Office 365 launch was laser focused on productivity plus collaboration as the key drivers of this new technology. Microsoft has done an amazing job of re-branding BPOS (Microsoft Online Services) as 365, but it's much more than a re-brand when you look under the hood.

This new Microsoft Office 365 suite combines the server-side solutions such as Exchange, SharePoint and Lync with the familiar client experience (Word 2010, Excel 2010, PowerPoint 2010, etc.). In effect, these software tools are now able to realize their full potential, because while most of our clients have the software to run this, they simply haven't been able to afford the server-side software required. The barriers are gone, and a new era of cloud-based computing is now available for SMBs. Hosted cloud infrastructure is rapidly becoming a commodity, and we couldn't be happier to be a part of it and do our part to shed unnecessary servers in for small and medium-sized businesses. Interested in learning more about whether Office 365 is a great fit for your business? Head over to our Office 365 implementation, consulting and support page or Contact us today.

Photos from the NYC Launch attended by Chris Day, CEO, Fully Managed™:

Office 365: Game Changer

2011-06-21T20:21:00-07:00

Microsoft will officially launch Office 365 on June 28 at an event in New York City. Hosted by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, the show will kick off at 10AM local time (7AM PT) and be available via a live Webcast. Key partners and customers from around the US will be present at the event.

We couldn't be more thrilled about what Office 365 means for both our clients and Fully Managed™. In fact, we are so confident in this offering that we believe that 80% or greater of our clients in Vancouver and Edmonton will be migrated to Office 365 within 18 months of the launch date. Here are a few of the reasons that as a Microsoft partner we are so excited:

Deployment

Clients with aging IT infrastructure can quickly and painlessly be migrated to a full suite technologies which normally would require careful planning and execution. New clients can be moved to the cloud virtually instantly with complete peace of mind that the infrastructure can support their business. For us, this means we can handle a greater volume of client migrations and new implementations than ever before - with the same team!

Productivity

The majority of our small and medium-sized clients historically have not been able to afford the entire "Microsoft stack" in their server room. With Office 365, our clients not only get e-mail & calendaring, but also Office Web Apps (enabling the ability to edit spreadsheets - for example - in a web page, in Firefox if they so choose!), Website & Collaboration (enabling the spinning up of public or partner facing sites and allowing for the first time ever true business-to-business collaboration via SharePoint), IM & Online meetings (whether a one-on-one video chat with a colleague or a meeting with many attendees via Lync). We'll be hosting a number of seminars for our clients to "show and tell" just how powerful all of these tools are to drive efficiency and ultimately client experience.

Scale

Whether a prospective client has 10 staff or 10,000, the processes we build as a partner to move them to the cloud are clearly defined from start-to-finish, meaning we can take on larger clients than we normally would when we are responsible for building out the back-end. This opens up a whole new market of clients for us as we have typically been focused on clients with 10 to 250 employees.

Value

Instead of spending thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of dollars with us to migrate platform, clients are able to re-allocate budget for more interesting and strategic initiatives such as customization and training - areas in which we actually are more profitable and more valuable to our clients. It's time to face the reality that few companies will spend money deploying servers which they can subscribe to in the cloud, in the very near future.

Consistency

One of the big opportunities we see with Office 365 is to get all of our clients running on a consistent client platform. For our clients, this means far greater productivity and peace of mind as power users are able to cross-train the entire user base. As a Managed Services Provider, we thrive on stable and consistent environments which ultimately reduce our costs (and increase our profitability) when supporting our clients. With Microsoft enabling both P and E plans with the option to effectively rent Office 365 on a per user, per year basis it becomes virtually a no-brainer to get everyone running on the latest, greatest Microsoft Office 2010 software. Software deployment, patch management, and training initiatives (for example) all become much more straightforward.

Mac, OSX Lion, iCloud and iOS5

2011-06-12T12:40:00-07:00

Welcome, Mac.

Friday, June 10th, 2011 marked an interesting day for me: the day I became certain that supporting Apple systems will become a significant part of what we do at Fully Managed™.

Apple's recent announcements on iOS5, iCloud and OSX Lion are incredibly meaningful. Before going any further, read my friend Miguel Carrasco's post: Thoughts on the Future of our Industry to see how a Microsoft MVP software developer sees things progressing. People predicted that Apple's iPhone and other beautiful looking products would take away market share from competitors, but I don't think anyone predicted just how deep the rabbit hole could go. So, without further ado...

Long story short: Apple has done it again. Their lofty vision, laser-focused strategy and no-compromise execution has landed them in a position where they now have the opportunity and more importantly the platform to become a permanent fixture in the historically "Mac-free" business network. If their stock wasn't North of $325 a share, I'd probably buy some right now. Here are a couple of interesting stats to consider:

Apple market cap: 300 billion
Estimated iPhone sales in 2011: 126 million
Estimated smartphone sales in 2011: 450 million
iPad devices sold to in last quarter of 2010: 7.3 million
Estimated tablet sales in 2011: 45 million
Total computers to be sold in 2011: 250 million
Mac computers to be sold in 2011: 16 million

A few thoughts on these (approximate) stats:

Apple has a huge and impressive chunk of the smartphone market at 28%. Interestingly, IDC estimates that Google's Android OS has nearly double that.
Apple has a relatively small chunk of the computer market at 6%. This means a juicy opportunity for Apple, assuming they can develop a solution to battle the typically more cost-effective PCs that make up the remaining 94% and make the operating system participate happily as part of a business network (more on this later).
While the number of iPad devices sold is fairly unimpressive, it is impressive that last quarter iPad accounted for 75% of the total tablet sales (IDC). The iPad has created a significant new base of people (primarily those with plenty of disposable income) who are looking to access content on these devices.This market is growing rapidly and will drive the development of better applications.

Apple's Triple-Play

iOS5

As a single operating system for iPhone and iPad devices, iOS5 will bring further social and productivity and "worry free-ness" to those few hundred million users, pretty much overnight. Features like WiFi and iCloud sync mean we can now walk around with these smart devices with no concerns about synchronizing the content between them or backing them up. As an aside, iMessage will in one fell swoop pretty much destroy RIM. Thank you Apple for taking care of those who rely on BBM, the only remaining task to convert 100% of Blackberry users is to release an iPhone with a sliding keyboard. Stranger things have happened.

iCloud

Apple has done an amazing job of thinking this through and deeply integrating the cloud with iPhone and iPad. To quote Apple, iCloud "stores your content wirelessly and pushes it to all your devices". iCloud will allow you to keep your devices backed up, your content ubiquitous and your entire music collection online (for a ridiculously cheap $24.99 per year). Kudos to Apple for inking the necessary deals with the record labels to allow this, I am in awe of your legal team.

Lion

Mac OS X Lion has been announced and includes many innovative features such as Resume (re-open apps exactly where you left off), Auto Save & Versions (application independent), Time Machine with Internet restore, the Mac App Store. Probably the biggest new feature, however, is the fact that Lion brings touch, full screen apps to the Mac - basically turning your Mac into a giant iPhone or iPad. As these devices get released with touch screens, guess what? Your iPhone, your iPad, your iMac and your MacBook will all have a consistent, touch interface. Your apps will all work the same way, and I suspect we will (soon) see a convergence of apps that you can buy once and use everywhere.

What's next?

We are getting very close to a pivotal moment in business computing, accelerated in large part by Apple. iPhone and iPad devices now have a significant presence in business, primarily because many of us have these devices in our pockets/bags already. As consumers of this technology, we logically ask questions like "Can I hook my iPad up to SharePoint?". Software developers are being forced to support these devices because failure to do so means they'll instantly alienate 28% of mobile and 75% of tablet users.

It doesn't stop here. People are so comfortable and happy accessing information on these devices that there is a trickle effect, and the obvious next question becomes: "Can I just get a Mac and hook it up to our network?" Whether you like it or not, the answer is rapidly becoming YES - and it's only going to get worse (or better, depending on how you look at it). On top of that, with all of our information rapidly moving into the cloud it's becoming less important the operating system (or even device) you choose to access that information from.

Competition breeds innovation.

Once all devices are compatible with the back-end systems we need to access, the choice of which we go with simply comes down to other factors like price, performance, security, reliability, etc. If you like the look and feel of an iPhone/iPad and you can get a similar experience on their laptop / desktop PC it is only logical that - assuming you can access everything you need to - you may very well select a Mac. I think this is a very good thing for the industry, and I embrace this competition wholeheartedly. People deserve to use the best, most functional, most comfortable devices they can - whether that's a Windows 8 tablet or an iPad 4. For us as a Managed Services Provider (MSP), it means we need to be good at supporting the wide array of devices that our clients will choose to use to access their information. If we can shift the effort spent supporting workstations to more strategic technology initiatives, we will all reap the benefits.

Downtime is relative

2011-05-13T10:16:00-07:00

Cloudy with a chance of thunder showers.

Over the past couple of weeks, we've seen a couple of significant system outages from some of the world's largest and most well-respected cloud providers: Amazon's EC2 infrastructure outage on April 21st, which lasted a full three days - and more recently, the May 10th Microsoft Online Services outage which carried on for two days. Many are now second guessing whether or not they should still be moving to the cloud in light of these recent service outages. My answer? Heck yes.

Downtime is relative.

Many people have a distorted view of what downtime (the inverse of uptime) is all about. A provider can achieve 99% uptime by ensuring that their service is available for all but 86.4 hours or 3.6 days in a calendar year. By my calculation, Amazon is currently tracking below 99% based on this recent outage, a far cry from their EC2 SLA target of 99.95% (4.32 hours or 0.18 days of downtime per year). SLA is basically a metric designed to make people feel better when assigning risk to a provider. In reality, when you consider what it feels like to incur a 2 or 3-day downtime incident, SLA paperwork offers little comfort.

From what I've seen thus far, achieving 99.95%, 99.99%, or any other similar incredible uptime number is simply not yet possible given the complex engine that drives these public cloud infrastructures. Everyone is still learning, and improving continuously, but we're not there yet. Can anyone prove me wrong? This is why we based our SLA as a Managed Services Provider (MSP) on what we can directly affect - for example, response time.

Should you still go cloud?

Consider your next best alternative - either hosting with a 3rd party provider or building out your own infrastructure. Do you think that either of these options will be more reliable or resilient than what Microsoft, Google or Amazon could build for you for a price that meets your budget? Dig deep and I think you'll find the answer.

Amazon Cloud Goes Down, Hard.

2011-04-22T11:08:00-07:00

Well, Thursday April 21st marks an historic day in the history of cloud computing. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), one of the titans, the giants, the behemoths in cloud computing, sustained a massive outage that as of the time of this post has been down for 33 hours with no sign of full recovery in sight.

A quick review of the Amazon Service Health Dashboard shows that the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (N. Virginia), one of the largest and most highly populated regions in North America, shows a series of 19 fairly morbid updates starting at 1:41 AM PDT on April 21st, 2011 and ending (as of the time of this post), at 8:49 AM PDT on April 21st.

We at Fully Managed™ were negatively affected because several of our key information systems run within this availability center. This includes our public website and several ancillary systems we use to support our clients. Luckily, we have a fairly diversified set of tools and robust disaster recovery plan that have allowed us to sustain this 33 hour outage without impacting our clients negatively. What have I learned from this outage?

Communication is the key.

The Amazon Health Service Dashboard is a great idea but in a time of crisis the execution of communication via this feed is completely and utterly useless. While I appreciate the thought of Amazon providing us with semi-regular updates every hour (or sometimes 5 hours, depending on how they're feeling), the content provided provides absolutely zero peace of mind for us as a client. Take this example:

"Our current estimate is that the majority of volumes will be recovered in the next 5 to 6 hours.." and "..a smaller number of volumes will require a more time consuming process... will take longer to recover..."

Clearly, this is written either by a lawyer or a weather forecaster. Since I believe that the large majority of sites that are offline still reside inside the availability zone that is offline, what help does this statement above provide? Should we start rebuilding the applications from older backups? Will the restore be successful when completed? Have you really just lost all of the data and are trying to buy time to make a press release? We need quantifiable information here. I have to believe that by now, 33 hours later, Amazon has an idea of the damage and a more precise timeline that they could provide on a client-by-client basis. Not sharing that information is a massive failure on their part. Sort of reminds me of the Tiger Woods debacle.

The bigger they are the harder they fall.

We've been led to believe that the massive cloud providers such as Amazon have an incredibly robust, virtually bullet proof back-end infrastructure. They provide money-back SLAs boasting 99.95%. Two issues come to mind here: 1) Are they actually achieving this SLA? Certainly, after this outage they will no longer be hitting 99.95%. 2) Who cares about a bit of money back when your operation has been ground to a halt for two days?

Diversify or die.

This incident should raise some concerns for anyone currently considering or leveraging cloud computing of this nature. My recommendation is that you work with your IT leadership team to add some strategy around disaster recovery and business continuity with cloud computing.

The funny thing is, Amazon will probably see some upside from this outage as their clients light up new server instances in different availability zones. I can tell you that we are not looking at this option, and would rather implement failover systems either inside our own private cloud, or other public cloud hosting provider.

Office 365 Enterprise Plans

2011-04-16T09:19:00-07:00

Office 365 is coming...

There is a lot of excitement building around the upcoming release of Office 365 for business. As I was reviewing the available enterprise options for Office 365 today, it became even more apparent to me that this is truly the not-too-distant future of business productivity for small and medium-sized businesses. What 30 employee company wants to spend $15,000 on Office 2010 anyway? Even with OVS licensing options making this more palatable, the monthly subscription model is the silver bullet to widespread adoption.

This is a great proactive step by Microsoft to ensure they retain market share and evolve beyond software to a true services company. While the change in revenue model is probably a tough pill to swallow (we've certainly seen a lot of change inside Microsoft to accomodate this shift), I am certain that it is the right long term move.

For $24/user/month, our clients will gain access to the entire back-end stack (Exchange, SharePoint, Lync). Also included is a copy of Office 2010 Professional, providing the familiar and powerful tools they are used to (i.e. unlike Google Apps). So, a company of 25 staff will be paying $600/month and truly be in a position where they can free themselves from the need to own or host servers for these core productivity apps with no major capital expenditure every 3-5 years.

What does it all mean?

The cloud is becoming a fast-approaching reality for many businesses, and this new offering from Microsoft will truly be a game-changer for many of the businesses we support today. Like many, we are eagerly anticipating the release of this offering so that we can start moving our client base in Vancouver and Edmonton to it as soon as possible, further increasing their performance and productivity and enabling us to focus on more strategic technology initiatives for their business.

The Importance of IT Strategy for SMB

2011-03-28T12:21:00-07:00

My most recent blog post in The Georgia Straight focused on the topic of IT strategic planning for small business. At Fully Managed™, most new clients we encounter exhibit little to no signs of technology planning and strategy within their IT environments. Historically, IT is tackled on an ad hoc basis and is implemented in a reactive fashion as the business grows. As you can imagine, this makes it difficult to plan and budget over the course of a fiscal year.

One of the most important aspects of IT planning is alignment and I touched on this briefly:

“It is important for any business to align their IT priorities with the overall strategic direction of the business. A road map outlines key milestones over a set period of time which should align with the corporate strategy and will allow you to forecast expenditures so there are no surprises. This provides you, the business owner, with a proactive method of budgeting and a timeline of when change will be introduced into your environment”

An important value added service that is included with every Fully Managed™ MSA (Managed Services Agreement) is the vCIO service that we provide to our managed clients. vCIO stands for Virtual Chief Information Officer and it’s a regular service where an executive at Fully Managed™ spends one on one time with key stakeholders within your organization to steer IT in the right direction. Recurring phone calls, in-person meetings, and Quarterly Technology Reviews help shape the face of IT within your organization.

A key outcome of these strategic vCIO meetings is a technology road map. This plan allows you to outline goals and objectives over the course of a fiscal year and sometimes further into the future:

“A technology road map clearly sets priorities and objectives and documents existing weaknesses within your technology environment. These weaknesses can be grouped by priority level and a set of technology solution recommendations can pave the way to achieve stability, resiliency, and improved performance. Let’s use IT asset lifecycle management as an example. Wouldn’t it be good to know when your equipment is coming out of warranty and how many workstations and or servers you should be replacing on an annual basis? A road map which includes asset lifecycle management will identify aging systems within your business and allow you to plan for their decommissioning. This will also allow you to achieve a standard operating environment over a 12- or 36-month period instead of the piecemeal approach to replacing IT assets as they fail. As you can imagine, being able to plan for the retirement of aging equipment before the equipment fails improves uptime and productivity, as you can phase out old hardware before it actually dies.”

At Fully Managed™ we’re about being as proactive as possible when it comes to managing your IT infrastructure. Our vCIO services allow you to tap into seasoned IT executives who can guide you in the right direction. Defining an IT road map will allow you to introduce change within your environment in a methodical manner and it ensures your IT strategic initiatives align with your overall business strategy.

Microsoft Releases Free BlackBerry Services

2011-03-28T06:42:00-07:00

Huge News for BlackBerry Users

Microsoft today announced via e-mail to clients that the hosted Blackberry Enterprise Services (BES) for BPOS clients is now available immediately and costs $0. This is a follow up to the recent announcement posted on the Office 365 blog. Two letters were sent out (Letter A & Letter B), depending on whether or not the client was currently actively using BES or not on their account. The process to take advantage of the free hosted BES licenses is simple: 3 or 4 steps depending on whether one fits the former or latter category.

When Office 365 is released later this year, BES services will also be free and Microsoft/RIM together have announced significant collaboration on this project to ensure that new and exciting features are released for BlackBerry users (for example: mass provisioning, software updates, etc.). We are thrilled at what this means for our Managed Services clients who are subscribing to BPOS and I for one am confident this is one more nail in the coffin of 3rd party hosting providers and on premise Microsoft Exchange (specifically, for those where the cost of hosted BES @ $12 per user per month was seen as too steep). Great job Microsoft!

Windows Intune Launch

2011-03-27T07:32:00-07:00

Windows Intune Released

We were featured last Wednesday at the Microsoft Management Summit in Las Vegas, NV as part of the Windows Intune launch. For those of you who don't know about Windows Intune, it's an early release product from Microsoft designed to simplify PC management for the SMB space. PC management within the SMB is typically either handled via 3rd party tools (e.g. Kaseya, N-Able, LabTech) provided by the MSP, or a mish-mash of tools put together to accommodate requirements for endpoint security / anti-virus (e.g. Symantec), Update Management (e.g. Windows Software Update Services or WSUS), Monitoring Tools, Remote Management Tools (e.g. LogMeIn).

My Thoughts on Windows Intune

Since we now handle PC management for nearly 200 clients in Vancouver and Edmonton, I am pretty excited about the future of Windows Intune. While it's currently not a drop in replacement for our suite of tools (for example, scripting installation of 3rd party software is not yet a feature), but in the future as the product evolves it could possibly become our primary management console. I presented across Canada at TechDays this year and fielded a lot of questions on whether or not Windows Intune was ready for mainstream. The answer is YES - because for most of the small businesses out there there is a lack of management in place and Windows Intune can quickly plug the gap.

Case Study

Microsoft was included us and one of our clients, Angel Restoration, in a Case Study on Windows Intune as well. I noticed today that ConnectWise also announced integration of Windows Intune with their professional services automation (PSA) platform which the lions share of IT service providers leverage today.