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Mitchell Ashley
3 Most Important Announcements about Microsoft's Azure Cloud
Written on Wed, 11/18/09 - 9:36am
Microsoft's Ray Ozzie significantly blew past the basic Exchange, SharePoint and SQL database hosting services with the Azure announcements at PDC 2009 yesterday.
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Net Neutrality - Somebody Get John McCain A VoIP Clue Phone
Written on Mon, 10/26/09 - 9:56am
Net Neutrality vs. John McCain. Consumer vs. Ignorant Politician. Party affiliations aside, anyone proposing we allow carriers to clamp down and determine what content we can run through our Internet and ISP connections probably still has their secretaries print out emails for them. Would you allow Verizon...
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Podcast: Are you doing what it takes to succeed at implementing SharePoint?
Written on Fri, 09/11/09 - 2:00am
I talked with Dux Raymond Sy, author of O'Reilly's SharePoint for Project Management and Innovative-E SharePoint consultant, on this week's podcast about what we can learn from successful and failed SharePoint projects.
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Microsoft Nokia Good Deal For SharePoint and Exchange
Written on Thu, 08/13/09 - 10:01am
Reactions to yesterday's Microsoft / Nokia are interesting, ranging from Microsoft's given up on Windows Mobile to Blackberries have much the same features today. Here are some more salient views by Gartner's Nick Jones. But the real hint of what's behind this deal are in the "collaboration and Office...
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Ozzie, Services and Virtualization Will Get The Cloud Started Too
Written on Fri, 05/22/09 - 11:07am
In an interview Ray Ozzie indicated that email and collaboration, a.k.a. Exchange, SharePoint and online Outlook, is what enterprises will turn to first as apps are put in the cloud. I don't disagree, and I think that's probably true as far as enterprises go. Enterprises are generally the toughest...
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Oracle's Sun Is Blinding In Microsoft's Eyes
Written on Tue, 04/21/09 - 8:55am
I couldn't just stand back idly by and not comment on the Sun / Oracle deal. The industry always accused Sun of not knowing what it wanted to be when it grows up and now we know, Oracle. Oracle has just gone from sideline participants in the race to build the cloud software layer and cloud generation...
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Conficker & Our "Cold War" View of Malware
Written on Wed, 04/01/09 - 2:28am
Conficker. How and why has it spread so successfully? If there's any kind of IT security threat service providers and businesses are prepared for, it's the mass infection worm or virus that overloads networks, mail servers and desktop computers with malicious consequences.
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CS Degree? Constant Learners and Self-SysAdmins Are Required
Written on Tue, 03/31/09 - 10:22am
I enjoy the conversation sparked by the Network World article Does A Computer Science Degree Matter Anymore? I've hired lots of software developers and IT professionals and whether they have a degree or not isn't usually a top factor. When you can, developing a technical screening questionnaire...
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IT Security: Who Watches The Watchers?
Written on Mon, 03/16/09 - 4:05am
The situation with D.C.'s IT security is huge mess. Yusuf Acar, acting chief security officer following Vivek Kundra's exit to take the Federal CIO position, is now in the hands of the FBI on bribery charges from an alleged under the table deal with security vendor AITC.
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Windows 7 Post-Beta Leaks - Why You Should Care
Written on Fri, 03/06/09 - 2:00pm
If you're a BitTorrent user you might have noticed that another Windows 7 post-beta build (7048) has been circulating in the wild for curious downloaders.
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Virtualization: The Race To Give Away The Most Software
Written on Tue, 02/24/09 - 8:26am
Simon Crosby previously said on my podcast that the hypervisor should be free and now we know he really means it, and more. (Check out Simon's most recent podcast appearance.) Just as Microsoft's Hyper-V Server is free, Citrix XenServer now too is free.
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Job Hunting - Send Me In Coach
Written on Tue, 12/02/08 - 1:52am
Economy. Recession. Layoffs. Yuck already, let’s get on with reving up this economy again and creating lots of new jobs. Think positive. Lets find you a job. If you’re actively in the job market, I have an important idea for you: find a job search coach. Getting that next job might be hard or it...
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Podcast: It takes a village in the cloud
Written on Wed, 10/22/08 - 8:54am
Not to be undone by others in the industry, Savvis announced its SaaS Platform initiative at the end of September. Because Savvis is one of the first top-tier companies to put such a comprehensive program together, I asked Bryan Doerr to join me on the Converging On Microsoft podcast. Savvis has taken...
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New SaaS platform embraces ISVs
Written on Tue, 09/30/08 - 9:31am
Savvis announced Monday its new SaaS Hosting Platform initiative directed at attracting independent software vendors moving to the SaaS model. While the Savvis announcement isn't entirely new territory, it is one of the first pure-play hosting companies to make a major move to wrap a complete program...
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Financial Crisis & Transparency Good For Network Security
Written on Mon, 09/29/08 - 3:48am
As much as I wish we'd never gotten into this US financial and credit mess, there actually may be a few bright sides to the whole debacle, and one of those could be network security. One likely outcome of the situation is increased regulation of the financial, and potentially other, industries....
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Top 5 Strategies For Surviving A Recession
Written on Thu, 09/18/08 - 8:11am
Layoffs. Recession. Bad economy. Job hunting. Those are the topics around many water coolers right now. I was quite a bit younger but I lived through and tried to get a job right out of college during the recession of late 1970's and early 1980's. There weren't many jobs around when I graduated...
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4 Reasons Microsoft Will Crush VMware
Written on Thu, 09/11/08 - 9:05am
Microsoft's momentum in virtualization is growing quickly, as evidenced by September 8th's "Get Virtual Now" virtualization extravaganza showcase. Microsoft announced Hyper-V Server 2008 will be free to download along with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and Microsoft...
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The Secret Meaning Behind Seinfeld/Gates Ad
Written on Sat, 09/06/08 - 12:39am
I just watched the new Microsoft Seinfeld ad. I'm stunned that it wasn't a "blown away" kind of ad. So I have to ask myself, what's going on... what are they doing with these ads? The commercial basically is this; Seinfeld see Gates at a shoe store, goes in, tries to figure...
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Cisco still foggy about cloud services
Written on Wed, 08/20/08 - 10:56am
NWW Cisco Subnet has a post about bloggers writing prolifically about Cisco and cloud services. Setting the Cisco WebEx acquisition aside for the moment, Cisco could and probably will offer some type of software-as-a-service or cloud software service themselves. I would expect the best SaaS opportunities...
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Podcast: Only You Can Save The Planet On August 27th
Written on Tue, 08/19/08 - 5:32am
Power IT Down Day: it's a new initiative by HP, Intel and Citirx to help all of us reduce the power consumption of our workstations, computer, monitors and other electronic devices when we leave our desks at night. August 27th is the day planned to observe this "awareness holiday"....
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About Converging on Microsoft
Mitchell Ashley has a diverse background in software development, network engineering, information security, mobility, collaborative technologies, and IT management and operations. An early adopter of social media in business, he began blogging about security and information technologies in 2006 at theconvergingnetwork.com. Mitchell is VP of Information Technology at CableLabs in Louisville, CO, and previously held positions as CIO, CTO and VP Engineering at prior companies.
 

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