First off, a little trivia:
The term USA PATRIOT Act is actually an acronym for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act.
Who doesn’t love a good acronym?
Now, let’s get down to what I found.
The first article I came across was by Timothy M. Banks, in his article titled Cloud Computing and the USA Patriot Act: Canadian Implications, Mr. Banks clarifies that the Canadian Criminal Code already permits the seizure of electronic data:
this legislation has led the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada to conclude in three decisions not only that Canadians are at risk of personal information being seized by Canadian governmental authorities (including without the knowledge of the target), but also that there is already a risk of that information being shared with U.S. authorities.
So there you go. A first indication that your data may not be as safe as you think even if it’s in Canada.
Then, I came across this FAQ on the Governement of Canada’s own web site: Frequently Asked Questions: USA PATRIOT ACT Comprehensive Assessment Results. Significantly, question #6:
Has there been a case where personal information about a Canadian was accessed under the USA PATRIOT Act?
The federal government is not aware of any such case to date.
Ok, so it’s not like this is happening on a daily basis…
A little more digging, and I found references to David Fraser, a Partner at McInnes Cooper in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Mr. Fraser specializes in Internet technologies and privacy. In this IT World article titled Don’t use the Patriot Act as an excuse, Mr. Fraser states that
The U.S.A. Patriot Act has become short for “Oh, we can’t use the cloud”
In another article – Keeping data here no protection against US: Lawyer – he says:
The Patriot Act is a “boogey man”,… The fact is most developed countries have legal tools that allow their law enforcement agencies to make legal claims on data held in their countries or outside their borders
Interestingly, that article contained a link to another one, where Mr. Fraser warns that there are security issues much bigger than “the cloud”: Never mind the Patriot Act, watch your thumb drives. Too true!! It’s incredible that still today, so few organizations have clear policies or tools to manage data loss through these tiny little storage devices.
More digging, and I came up with this Government of Canada page: Summary of Submissions to the Lawful Access Consultation, where it clearly states that:
For the police, this involves the lawful interception of communications and the lawful search and seizure of information, including computer data. Lawful access is a specialized tool used to investigate serious crimes, such as drug trafficking, money laundering, smuggling, child pornography, and murder. Lawful interception of communications is also an essential tool for the investigation of threats to national security, such as terrorism.
In other words, even if your data is on your own server, locked in you office, authorities can still get to it if they suspect you of illegal activities!
And there have been enough examples of that in Quebec in the last couple of years:
- Quebec’s anti-corruption squad seizes computer data in raid on Liberal party’s Montreal headquarters
- Anti-corruption squad raid on Laval city hall, mayor’s home
- Charbonneau Commission: Laval notary Jean Gauthier minimizes his link to Vaillancourt
Municipalities, mayors, notaries, engineering firms – all had data seized from their offices by the anti-corruption unit in this debacle.
My personal conclusion: unless your organization is doing something highly illegal, there should be no reason to fear using services like Office 365. And if you are into illegal activities, chances are that the authorities will be able to get to your data, no matter where it is!
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It’s no secret that in the past 4 to 5 years, more and more schools and school districts have moved to cloud-based services, the most popular of these being Google. I keep coming across multiple reasons for this: less infrastructure to manage, less expensive, “it’s what the teachers wanted”, etc. Calgary Girls’ School (CGS) was no exception: they moved to Google Apps several years ago and had no more on-premise file or email services.
Judi Hadden became principal of the school 3 years ago, coming from an educational organization that still had on-premise network services; she was surprised to see how all of the school’s data was being stored in the cloud – emails, documents, everything was in Google’s hands.
“I was very uncomfortable with that,” she says. “I was worried about privacy issues, safety; the whole idea that we had absolutely no control over rights, permissions, just who was doing what with all that data. It was all completely out of our hands.”
About a year later, Hadden brought on Joel Melashenko as Director of Technology. With an extensive background in education as well, he shared the same concerns about the use of cloud-based services. “I feel like we were just guinea pigs for Google; they want us to hand over all our data to them and trust them with everything. Despite all the reassurances, agreements, terms and conditions, I have a really hard time with this. All of these cloud services host our data outside of Canada, and therefore our privacy laws do not apply.”
The whole Edward Snowden saga certainly didn’t help reassure CGS that their data is safe from prying eyes. “Oh, people are watching!” says Melashenko. “Just a little while ago, one of our students posted something fairly menacing on Twitter; within a couple of minutes, we had a call from  a watchdog group in Washington D.C., warning us about the tweet. While in this case the outcome was positive, it demonstrates just how vulnerable we are in the cloud.”
So in the summer of 2013, Hadden and Melashenko decided to migrate out of Google and back onto on-premise services. They installed some Windows 2012 servers to provide file and print services, as well as Exchange 2013 for email. They moved all of the users’ files back onto the local servers, and migrated all of the emails into Exchange.
“Now, you see, that’s one thing people don’t think about in ‘the cloud’,” muses Melashenko. “There’s no such thing as a shared network folder. People just share files and folders with whomever they want. After we migrated the files onto our local servers, we had a lot of users complaining that ‘Hey, I had a lot more files and folders than this!’ We had to explain to them that ‘No, you had files and folders that were shared with you!’ It’s a whole other paradigm that I think a lot of organizations don’t think about: who owns the files? The users? Or the organization? What happens when a user leaves and you want to delete their Google account? All those shared files and folders are going to go where, now? Maybe this isn’t as relevant for students, but think about administrative and support staff: student evaluations, psychological evaluations, budgets and business plans, etc. How do you structure these things in a free-for-all cloud environment and ensure continuity when there are staff changes?”
“We just think it’s a better approach to maintain control over our data and teach our users to be good ‘digital citizens’,” says Hadden. “We’ve taught them how file systems work, how having shared folders on a network makes more sense than ad-hoc individual shares. Of course, it also allows us to better protect the school’s data by assigning the rights and permissions properly and controlling access to it. We now feel better knowing that we control who has access to what on the network.”
“We’ve worked with our staff and students,” she continues, “and have been teaching them about being ‘ethical digital citizens’. It has certainly paid off: we’re seeing our girls now making better decisions about what they’re doing with technology than a year ago. We have built awareness of the consequences of giving up personal information.”
At the beginning of the school year in September 2013, everyone started working with the new infrastructure. Everything was working well, and everyone was happy.
But there was still one piece of the puzzle missing: how would users now access their files from outside the network? All the files were now stored on Windows servers, but how could CGS provide access to these files from home, or from mobile devices?
“That’s where the Novell solutions come into play,” says Melashenko. “We met with Adaris back in November, and they talked to us about Novell Filr. It was exactly what we were looking for. Not only could we now provide Dropbox-like services to our users, but because Filr sits inside the network, it can also expose users’ Home directories as well as any network folder we want! We can control whom we expose these folders to, and to top it all off, Filr respects the file system rights we already had in place. Brilliant!”
“They also showed us Novell iPrint, which would allow us to print to any of our existing network printers from our mobile devices; we figured that would beautifully complement Filr and provide a more complete mobile solution. Our users have been loving it and the enthusiasm around the solutions has been great.”
“We realize that we seem to be going against the trend of moving to the cloud,” says Hadden, “but the reaction to what we’ve done has actually been astonishing. We’ve had many calls from other schools and school districts who share the same concerns that we had and are rethinking things. At a recent conference for technical coordinators in Alberta education, the keynote speaker began with the question, ‘Are you concerned about student information in the cloud?’, and it triggered off a huge discussion, where the overwhelming feeling was ‘Yes, we are concerned about this!’ In British Columbia, Â privacy laws strictly forbid public organizations – including educational – to store data with cloud service providers outside of Canada. The mentality out there is therefore very different – similar to ours here at CGS – and they cannot understand how educational organizations can permit users to store anything they want in the cloud.”
It should be noted that neither Filr nor iPrint require a traditional “Novell” network infrastructure; as is evident from the CGS story, they had a pure Microsoft/AD environment. Novell solutions integrate natively with either Novell/eDirectory or Microsoft/AD infrastructures.
“The Novell solutions have been working really well, and user adoption has been quick; we’ll certainly be looking at what else they have to offer!” says Melashenko.
Find out more here about the solutions: Novell Filr & Novell iPrint
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Gary, our ZENworks Director (right), with Jared Brunson, a Super-Ninja ZENworks Support Master who often helps out our team!
Well, another great week has wrapped up here in Provo, Utah at the Novell Tech Summit! It sure was great to see everyone, again, and get so much information and training on the products.
Yesterday morning (Thursday), Jason Blackett and Bryce Romney, the Product Managers for ZENworks Mobile Management went in depth about how the architecture works, and explained how to get the SSL certificates all setup and working properly. Although a recent addition to the ZENworks family, there is already a lot of interest around ZMM from customers.
During the discussions, it became clear that customers will need guidance with this, as this goes beyond IT and into the realm of HR and Legal. After all, you are talking about controlling and/or imposing policies on personally-owned devices.
In the afternoon, Jon Giffard, Senior Product Manager, explained in detail the application, usage and best practices surrounding Full Disk Encryption. As we’ve discussed in a previous article, FDE is critical to protecting the corporate data stored on your endpoints, especially laptops. Any organization with mobile users should really consider adding this to their security arsenal; after all, “An ounce of prevention…”
And to end the week, Jon Giffard spent this morning training us on Novell Service Desk. This truly is a fantastic solution for customers looking to streamline their IT processes and adding value to the business! We have been using NSD internally at Adaris for over a year, now, and it is indeed a vital part of how we do business with our customers. Two years ago we posted this article about Novell Service Desk – note that the offer still stands!
And that’s a wrap!
Next up: Brainshare 2013! Hope to see you there!
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What a day at the Tech Summit! So many interesting presentations, discussions and debates!
First up: Datasync Mobility Pack
It always surprises me how many GroupWise customers don’t know that they are entitled to this product. The Mobility Pack allows customers to connect their iOS, Android, Windows and any other ActiveSync-capable devices to GroupWise. Users can sync emails, calendars and address books, whether on smartphones or tablet devices.
We were presented with a roadmap, which had already been published on the Novell website.
What I did find interesting, though, is that the engineers covered some interesting troubleshooting steps. For example, to troubleshoot issues with items synching to the device, go to the Mobility Monitor, and check the user queue to see if there are any items pending. If so, send an email to that user and see if the Pending Emails increments. If so, then the issue is not between GroupWise and the Mobility connector.
Also very practical in determining where the problem lies is – of course – examining the log files. You can find these on your Datasync server in /var/log/datasync/connectors.
The current version is 1.2.4; in update 5, there will be a new Monitor feature that will allow you to view the status of your system. A preview of this feature is available in 1.2.4, but hidden. You want to activate it? Here’s how.
On your Datasync server, go to /opt/novell/datasync, and execute the following command:
./previewfeatures.sh -m -a enable
Restart Datasync:
rcdatasync restart
…and finally, log in to your Datasync Admin console. You will notice a new icon in your menu bar at the top-right of the screen:
Click on this button to get to the new Monitor screen. The initial screen will show you a system status (click image below to zoom in):
You can also drill down to specific users:
Now remember: this is only a Preview feature and is not yet supported by Novell! Enable at your own risk! There….I warned you.
If you want to turn it off again, just go back to your Datasync server and execute this command:
./previewfeatures.sh -m -a disable
That’s it!
Next up: Ted Tronson, Ninja Print Master
Novell has been talking about iPrint quite a bit in the past year. Two things that customers are really looking forward: AirPrint and the iPrint Appliance.
AirPrint will allow you to use iPrint and Wi-Fi to basically AirPrint-enable all of your printers for mobile printing! It will not matter whether your printers support the AirPrint feature or not; if iPrint can connect to the printer and print to it, then your mobile devices will be able to use these printers.
The iPrint appliance will allow customers – Novell or Microsoft environments! – to provide easy, secure printing to their users. The appliance will ship as a VM and can be deployed in about 20 minutes!
AirPrint will be available in the first quarter of 2013, while the iPrint appliance will be available in the second quarter. OES customers current on their maintenance will be entitled to both of these products, or they can be purchased separately.
Filr!
Presented by:
Kevin Crutchfield, Director of Engineering and Richard Linstedt, Product Manager
In my 20 or so years of working with Novell products, I don’t think I have ever seen customers so excited about a new product as they are about Filr!
The “consumerization of IT” has driven new needs; tablets and services like DropBox have shown users what file sharing could be like, and they LOVED it! This is a trend that IT cannot stop, but rather has to deal with. There is a strong demand from customers for an easy, dropbox-like experience for their users, all the while keeping the data secure and managed. Only Novell Filr will be able to provide that functionality for both Novell and Microsoft customers!
During the demo, it became quickly apparent that Filr is very much based on technology already existing in Vibe, but with added functionality and features.
For example, like Vibe, users will be able to track “What’s New” with their file activity:
Users will have access to files they have rights to on the network, or they can also store files in their own personal area:
Based on policies assigned by IT, users also have the ability to share files, either with internal or external users:
Of course, the real power of Filr will be in the ability to access these files from mobile devices; I was not able to get any screenshots of the mobile app, but during the presentation the engineers showed what it looks like, and well…it’s pretty slick!
Now, the “bad” news: a lot of us were expecting – and hoping! – that Filr would be released before the end of 2012. However, at this point in time, Novell has committed to a release date of April 2013. I know…a lot of customers are super-anxious to get their hands on this. In December, a Technology Preview will be made available to select customers and partners; Adaris will most likely be able to be part of this and we will deploy it internally so we can start testing it and showing it to customers. A public beta is scheduled for the beginning of February, to be announced – most likely – during Brainshare.
And finally, Tracy Smith, the Product Manager for Vibe, gave us an overview of the upcoming release, code-named “Hudson”. This version will be released about the same time as Filr, and since a lot of the underlying technology is based on Vibe, will include pretty tight integration with Filr. A lot of the folder types are being revamped and the new look is very nice!
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Ok, here we go – now we get down to the nitty-gritty! Here are my notes for today:
First up, Jason Blackett, ZENworks Product Manager with the ZCM roadmap.
Current version is 11.2.1. Maintenance Updates (MU’s) on a monthly basis, system updates every three months (11.2.1, 11.2.2, etc); 11.3 scheduled for late 2013.
Major themes for upcoming releases:
2013
- Windows 8 support (with 11.2.3 in Feb. 13); “basic” functionality, as in “what works in W7 should still work in W8”
- Updated reporting
2014
- Multi-zone management
- Audit / Security compliance
- User self-service
- Desktop virtualization
ZCM 11.3 (2014)
- Full Windows 8 support
- Audit and security compliance (track changes to bundles, policies; who’s doing remote control; track client activity)
- Multi-zone!
- Enhanced software discovery and inventory
- Improved role-based administration
ZENworks Mobile Management “Sundance”
- iOS 6 enhancements
- Support for LDAP groups and folders (assign policies to LDAP groups)
- Enhanced GW Mobility improvements (click on a user in ZMM, bring up Datasync page directly!)
- Improved reporting
- Usability, logging improvements (eg. view devices by user)
Next up, Dean Lythgoe, Product Manager for the Collaboration side of things. Dean basically went over the roadmap for GroupWise, Datasync & Vibe, which has already been published in a very unique way on Novell’s web site at http://www.novell.com/php5/groupwise.
Finally, Glen Davis, Product Manager for OES.
- Filr – technology preview by December, beta in early 2013, release in April 2013. (I know, everyone thought it would be released before the end of 2012, and everyone is really anxious for this, but this is a huge project and a lot of resources have been allocated to getting this out! I’m convinced it’ll be well worth the wait!)
- Mobile iPrint – early 2013
- iPrint appliance – April 2013
And that was just the morning!
In the afternoon, David Condrey went over Novell Storage Manager 3.1 and Novell File Reporter 2.0. These are not products that we’ve talked about very much with customers, but he certainly piqued my curiosity and we will definitely take a closer look at these pieces.
Lastly, Christina Chamberlain, a.k.a. “The ZAM Queen” (one of my favorite people at Novell!), gave us an excellent introduction to license management with ZENworks Asset Management. Every time I see this product, I can’t help but think, “Why doesn’t every organization have this to manage their licensing? It’s awesome!”
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Enjoying the Utah countryside…
“The best thing for the inside of a man is the outside of a horse.”
Personally, I agree with this statement wholeheartedly! It is my opinion that saddling up a horse and going for a ride through some wonderful scenery is, wellâ¦healing. Away from the concrete and noise of the city, from the traffic jams and construction detours, and most importantly, away from all your worries and cares for a few hours.
During the past year, I have been looking for fun places to ride as I travel across Canada and the US for business – after all, where is it written that you can’t mix a little pleasure with business?
This week, Novell is holding it’s Tech Summit meeting, where Sales Engineers and Partners are invited to come to Provo, Utah in order to meet with the product managers, gain insight into the product roadmaps and get hands-on training on some of their new offerings. I am here with our Director of All-Things-ZENworks, Gary Trepanier, and we are looking forward to a fantastic week!
I will be blogging as much as possible – hopefully, on a daily basis – about what we are learning. There is so much going on at Novell, so stay tuned to this site to learn more.
For those of you who have never been to Utah, wellâ¦it is perfect country for horseback riding, so Gary and I came in on Sunday and spent most of today riding with Rocky Mountain Outfitters. Ashley, our guide, is a professional rodeo competitor – barrel racing! – and was a fantastic guide!
Keep coming back to this blog during the week for info on the Tech Summit!
“Cowboy up!” It’s time to head out on the trail!
Now this is the kind of traffic I like! Soooo much better than looking out your windshield onto a long line up of cars, don’t ya think?
Gary, our ZENworks Director, contemplating a Great Train Robbery!
Sometimes, all we need is just to get started, a push in the right direction. There’s nothing more frustrating than going down a path that turns out to be a dead-end. So instead of attempting the journey, we hesitate because we don’t want to waste our time and effort. But to paraphrase Lao-Tze, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”
(I’ve always wondered how I could work that beautiful thought into an IT blog – there you go!)
IT projects are no exception – there’s a lot of cool stuff out there, but organizations don’t always have the time, know-how and energy to start down a path. We get that. That’s why we’ve put together a series of programs to get customers started quickly and efficiently with some Novell solutions. We call it our :Advantage program, and so far we’ve got four of them ready to go:
- vibe:Advantage – our most successful program to date. This engagement gets customers up and running with Novell Vibe, a fantastic enterprise collaboration solution.
- nsd:Advantage – so you’ve fired up Novell Service Desk, and now you’re staring at it and thinking, “Now what?”. That’s fine – this engagement will help you get started!
- dsfw:Advantage – for existing Open Enterprise Server customers needing an Active Directory domain for their environment, you’ve already got one! It’s called Domain Services for Windows and uses your eDirectory to provide AD services. Works great!
- zmm:Advantage – BYOD is here and kicking at your door, so deal with it! Find out how with ZENworks Mobile Management.
- filr:Advantage – your files, from anywhere, on any device, in your own private cloud! (Coming soon)
Apart from the dsfw:Advantage engagement, which is done remotely, all the engagements include one week on-site, all expenses included. This makes it easy to get approval – one flat fee, no receipts to deal with after the fact!
For more information, click the link below to download our flyers!
]]>Yep – Australia, mate!
Sydney, Australia, including the famous Opera House
Our work at Adaris has been great these past two years; my team and I have had the opportunity to travel across Canada and the US to work with customers on ZENworks, OES, GroupWise and Vibe. I personally have had a lot of fun working with Vibe customers all over North America, and so I was quite excited when a few weeks ago I received an email from a partner down here who had been to one of my Vibe presentations at Brainshare. One of his customers had deployed Vibe a little over a year ago, but needed some help getting some more stuff done. After a couple of discussions, the customer agreed to bring me on-site.
From left to right: Connie, Jacques, Claudio & Lou
I’ve already been here a week, now, working with Claudio Antonioli, owner of SystemCraft. They are a fantastic bunch of people, absolutely dedicated to Novell and committed to their customers. They remind me very much of Adaris in their passion for their work. Connie, who is Claudio’s partner, runs the office while he and his brother Lou are out working with their clients. She is amazing! Not only does she answer all customer inquiries, but also handles the team, the bookings, the administration and the accounting. Whew!
We spent the first week visiting customers, and then Connie organized two client briefings at their office. A total of sixteen customers came out for these briefings! Great turnout! We briefed them on everything that has been happening at Novell since the Attachmate acquisition, then demonstrated and talked about Vibe. Benjamin Old and Dave Wymer from Novell were there to represent Novell for these meetings, so a big thank-you to both of them for being there.
There was visible interest, lots of discussion and questions, and in the end, it looks like SystemCraft will be very busy with some Vibe projects! No less than 4-5 opportunities came out of these meetings.
The past year has been an exciting time to be a Novell partner, especially in North America, where so much has been done to rebuild and reconnect with customers. Dozens of sales reps have been hired, as well as systems engineers – more than I have ever seen in my 20 years of working with Novell. That wave, however, does not seem to have hit Australia – by all accounts, there are not yet enough Novell people here spreading the good word. So, to all my friends & contacts at Novell, I hope that some serious moves will happen soon to get some folks hired down here! You’ve got a wonderful partner here who is eager to help, so hopefully you will leverage them.
Sydney is huge! I guess there’s a misconception in us North Americans that Australia is this little island of kangaroos in the middle of the Pacific, so I was surprised to see what a big, vibrant city Sydney was. Can you say “underestimated”?
I’ve been having a blast down here – Australians certainly are a friendly bunch. During the customer briefings, I was introduced as a partner from Canada; I told them that this explained why I was the only one in the room who didn’t have an accent! Laughter all around.
And then there’s the coffee…
My wife and I make a moka-espresso in the morning, which produces a strong, flavorful coffee. When I travel on business, it’s one of the things I miss the most – a good coffee (well, I miss my wife, too, of course, but you know what I mean!). Seems like hotels in Canada and the US just don’t get it – this slightly dark water they serve and call coffee…meh, sorry! It’s not.
Australians, on the other hand, know and love their coffee! Espresso machines everywhere, lattes that are out of this world! Canadian and American hotels would do well to take note!
On a philosophical note…
I’ve had a lot of comments lately about how “lucky” I am, that my company is doing well, that we all get to travel and do work we love, etc.
I must say that I respectfully disagree. This does not come about through “luck”, but rather by making right decisions, taking chances and risks, and – most importantly – surrounding oneself with extraordinary people. My team is amazing, each and every one of them – it’s why we get things done, why our customers stick with us, and why Novell has entrusted us with a lot of business.
I am not lucky.
I am grateful.
There’s a big difference. And you know what’s funny? The more I express that gratefulness, the more “luck” I seem to get. One of my favorite folks to follow on Facebook is Norm O’Neal of One Community – I.T. in Action down in Indianapolis. Norm often expresses gratitude as well, and I’d bet he’s also a very “lucky” guy!
Stay well, everyone!
(or I guess I should be saying “G’day, mate!”)
Jacques
Enjoying a nice ferry ride in Sydney Harbour!
More pics on our Facebook page!
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Last week we had the opportunity to participate in a trade show reuniting the IT directors from about 45 organizations, all from the same vertical market. Of these 45 organizations, about 15 of them are still running Novell solutions, including OES, GroupWise and/or ZENworks. Evidently, over the years, many of them have migrated over to Microsoft-based networks.
We had some interesting conversations with a lot of these directors, including those that have moved off Novell products, and because we’ve been attending this trade show for quite a few years, some of them confided in us about their migrations.
To begin with, most of these organizations took an average of 3 years to complete their migrations, even the smaller ones (they range from 1200-5000 users). They realized – once they had started down the path – that it was more than just saying “we’re gonna get rid of Novell and go to Microsoft”. It seems a lot of them had not taken into consideration that it would also involve a major change in their “toolset”: all the little batch files and scripts, third-party tools, workflows and procedures they had built over the years to manage and maintain their Novell infrastructure now had to be, well….thrown out the window! Everything had to be re-invented for the new environment. Not only that, but resources that were very skilled with the Novell software now had to be retrained on Microsoft solutions. Some of them wanted nothing to do with this and left the organizations.
On the OES side, we heard of customers that transferred all of their file and print services to Windows and were now looking for a third-party tool to do what NetStorage used to do for them on OES. Seriously? Not to mention how much more complex it became for them to manage simple file system rights, compared to how easy and powerful these are with eDirectory.
GroupWise: one customer, who had been running a single GroupWise server for all of his 2000 users, went to Exchange and ended up with four servers – for the same number of users! Now, I realize that in an era of virtualization we don’t have to deal with physical boxes to manage, but you still have to patch, maintain and monitor FOUR servers instead of ONE! I’m not great with numbers, but if I do the math, that comes out to, ummm…four times the work!
ZENworks: this is where the most regrets were expressed. Those who actually had ZENworks as an endpoint management solution and moved to Microsoft also adopted SCCM (talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water – ZENworks 11 works just as well in a Microsoft environment!). One customer said, “If I had to do it all over, I would keep ZENworks. SCCM is just such a beast!” Another customer, who’s now in his fourth year migrating to Microsoft, is still running an old ZENworks 7 server (can you spell O.L.D.!) and able to do more with it than his staff has been able to do with SCCM – two years after they installed it!
These are real-life stories and comments, folks, and they make me wonder what these customers are getting from these migrations after all of these resource-sucking, time-wasting, expensive hours/months/years that is so fantastic. Most of them, when talking about their experiences, are not sounding all that thrilled about their new toys.
So…why???
Help me understand!
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Jacques Sauve (center) and some of his team members with their new laptop.
Unless you’ve been completely disconnected from the Internet for the past two months or so, you may have seen this video of Mr. Tommy Jordan, a North Carolina father who dramatically destroyed his daughter’s laptop after she posted some nasty stuff on Facebook.
Ok, so he shot her laptop with his .45.
Needless to say, the video went viral and opinions were polarized as to whether he went too far.
I don’t care about the “shooting of the laptop”. Enough has been said about that.
What I do care about is Mr. Jordan’s message: that we need to own up to the fact that we need to educate our kids that there are consequences to living in a digital world, and that with the freedom to post things publicly comes a certain responsibility. As he stated in his blogs after  all this happened, it’s not up to the schools or the education system to teach them; ultimately, it is our job as parents to make sure they get that.
I have two wonderful daughters of my own,14 & 12, and I’m happy to say that so far we’re very proud of who they are. I’m hoping that this is some kind of reflection on my wife and I’s work. We’ve done things differently, but to quote Mr. Jordan himself:
“Modern” parenting raises ill-prepared kids who can’t do anything and have no skills because they’re protected from even LEARNING them until 18 years old, at which time you want us parents to throw them out into the world, send them off to college, and expect them to be productive members of society? You can take your “modern” parenting, and shove it. Jeezus people. Half of you think chores at 15 are too much! God forbid we make them actually WORK too!
I agree!
I also like the fact that he received great support:
The police by the way said “Kudos, Sir” and most of them made their kids watch it. I actually had a “thank you” from an entire detectives squad. And another police officer is using it in a positive manner in his presentation for the school system.
Recently, Mr. Jordan decided to shoot another laptop to raise money for charity, in response to everyone who asked “Hey Tommy, when are you gonna shoot another laptop?”
The laptop on display at the Adaris office.
I certainly didn’t ask him to shoot anything else, but decided to bid on the laptop for several reasons:
- To show my support for Mr. Jordan’s position on taking ownership of our kids’ education
- To help his fundraiser
- Why not? Own a part of a great Internet viral story!
- I work on a Mac, anyways – I don’t like PCs either! (Ooooh, this’ll draw the ire of a couple of trolls! LOL!)
That’s all! Stay happy, folks!
Jacques Sauve
President
Adaris Technologies