Assigned to the Help Desk?

Here’s a great little glass half-empty/half-full article about being assigned to the help desk. The quote presents the two opposite viewpoints. I figure both cannot be simultaneously correct. It must be that some companies know how to run a help desk. Others don’t. Your viewpoint is likely to be influenced by which environment you find yourself condemned to.

Your help desk career: Dead end or launching pad?

In particular, help desk technicians who work in “stovepiped” IT organizations — that is, companies where systems analysts, network managers and other IT professionals are segregated from one another — can go 10 to 15 years without being promoted into IT infrastructure, business analyst, systems administrator or other types of roles, he says.

A new breed of IT pros begs to differ, maintaining that a job on an IT help desk can open doors to other IT career opportunities. Help desk technicians, these proponents say, gain valuable experience working with end users throughout the enterprise and learning what makes the business tick.

When Google screws up this badly …

… then come tell me how local management of email is more reliable than GMail.

An elephant never forgets? George W. Bush’s lost e-mails: Page 1

When the Bush administration took office, it decided to replace the Lotus Notes-based e-mail system used under the Clinton Administration with Microsoft Outlook and Exchange. The transition broke compatibility with the old archiving system, and the White House IT shop did not immediately have a new one to put in its place.

Instead, the White House has instituted a comically primitive system called “journaling,” in which (to quote from a recent Congressional report) “a White House staffer or contractor would collect from a ‘journal’ e-mail folder in the Microsoft Exchange system copies of e-mails sent and received by White House employees.” These would be manually named and saved as “.pst” files on White House servers.

Microsoft pays half billion for Sidekick.

If you were thinking, like maybe 5 years ago, that a Sidekick was a solution to mobile computing in the enterprise, here’s where you’d be.

Danger for Microsoft - The INQUIRER

With all these managers above them, the pair have to work out how to beat Apple’s Iphone, RIM’s BlackBerry Pearl, and whatever former Danger co-founder and former CEO Andy Rubin is doing with Android at the comparatively flat organisation, Google. µ

Sun mulls closed MySQL features

This is a pretty even-handed assessment of the situation.

Sun may shut off high-end MySQL features | Reg Developer

It’s emerged Sun may release extra data back-up features in the Enterprise Edition of the next version of MySQL, due in Q4, to paying enterprise subscribers only.

Gartner on Google and the Enterprise

So just how threatened is your traditional IT department by Google’s onslaught? That depends on what they value. Gartner’s Rich Hunter is quoted as saying:

Sanity check: Will the Google revolution engulf IT departments? | Tech Sanity Check | TechRepublic.com

“Google has the potential to be the first-choice provider of many services that are now handled by internal IT organizations, starting with non-competitively-differentiating services such as email (which Google already provides to a number of enterprises), and ultimately including high-value-added functions and services such as business intelligence, mobile sales support, and others. Some IT organizations might consider it a boon to pass these functions on to Google so that the IT department can concentrate on very enterprise-specific competitively differentiating applications. IT organizations that measure their worth in terms of how much of the company’s IT needs they supply themselves will be less happy to see Google move in on their turf-and I do mean specifically that in many cases it will be an argument about turf, not enterprise value.

Big Blue Switching?

IBM has a pilot program to see if their staff would like Macs. Apparently 86% of the pilot group elected to keep the MacBook rather than suffer Vista. It also seems that Lotus Notes is headed for the Mac and iPhone.

IBM Launches Pilot Program for Migrating to Macs — RoughlyDrafted Magazine

IBM’s software strategy is also embracing the Mac platform, with a new version of Lotus Notes and an integrated package of office productivity software based on OpenOffice and branded as Lotus Symphony being slated for release for the Mac later this year. Support for Notes email and calendaring on the iPhone and iPod Touch is also reported to be in IBM’s plans.

This does *not* mean you are autistic.

Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar.

Asperger’s and IT: Dark secret or open secret?

What Jeremy is not good at is suffering fools in the workplace or dealing with the endless bureaucracy of the modern corporation. If someone is wrong — if their idea just plain won’t work — he says so, simply states the fact. That frankness causes all manner of upset in the office, he’s discovered.

These IT professionals are all autistic. Bob and Ryno have Asperger’s Syndrome (AS), sometimes referred to as Asperger’s Disorder; Jeremy has high-functioning autism (HFA).

Another tool to sync Google and Exchange

Yes, its a link to a Scoble article … but it points out a potentially interesting third party app that may have some advantages to the Outlook/Google sync tool that Google provided, in that it syncs new entries right away, instead of on an absolute timer.

Google’s five-year plan to hit Enterprise continues (Cemaphore helps Google out) « Scobleizer — Tech geek blogger

Today we are seeing new signs of life in Google’s strategy and the help didn’t come from within Google itself.

It comes from a small company named Cemaphore. They just announced “MailShadow for Google Apps.”

What does it do? It synchronizes email and calendar items between Microsoft Outlook and Exchange and Gmail/Google Calendar.

Sounds really boring, right? Hey, didn’t Google just ship its own synchronizer?

Yes, and yes.

Gartner says OK to iPhone

Its more of an amber light rather than a green light, but Gartner has reversed its position on suitability of the iPhone for Enterprise use.

IPhone improvements OK, but not a sure thing

And the iPhone is sure to remain a consumer-oriented product, one that still includes iTunes, a feature that can’t be removed.

Still, the March 6 announcement that the iPod will support Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync means many of the reasons Gartner previously warned CIOs away from iPhone have been voided.

For instance, a remote wipe feature can now be used if the phone is lost or stolen and the phone can force changing, complex passwords. That’s a significant step forward for a device that previously had no security features to serve most businesses’ needs.

So for the time being, Dulaney and Gartner see the iPhone as safe to use in a limited capacity. Email and personal information manager functions used through Exchange should be safe. And Apple is telling analysts that the upcoming June release will have a comprehensive set of business-oriented email features like the ability to accept appointments.

Are your data safe with Google?

As it turns out, your data may be safe in the same sort of way that chickens can be safe from foxes, but not necessarily safe from the farmer.

globeandmail.com: Patriot Act haunts Google service

Montreal security strategist Jeffrey Posluns says Google’s software suite may suit some small businesses because cost savings are significant. But he warns that the deciding factor should be the sensitivity of the organization’s information.