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Simplex-IT
5225 Darrow Rd
Hudson, OH 44236
234.380.1277
Info@Simplex-IT.com |
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Greetings!
 April! Fools and taxes, showers and promises of flowers. The Indians start playing baseball and raise our hopes just enough so that when they remind us in August that we are, after all, talking about the Cleveland Indians, we long for football.
Remember the Fools part? Good. Now, moving on.
I'll be honest. Often the last few days of the month we scramble a bit putting together articles to include in the eNewsletter. Not this month. This month we've actually held back a couple of articles until next month. Some because the information isn't time-sensitive, so we're holding it back a bit. Other stuff because it's pretty cool but we wanted to make sure all the details are in place before we go public.
That doesn't mean we don't have some good stuff this month. For example our first technical webcast is this month with Sarah Dutkiewicz talking about PowerShell and Office 365(see elsewhere for the details).
Or the fact that we can now officially use the term "Award winning" when talking about Simplex-IT. Level Platforms, one of the largest players in the Managed Services industry, was good (ok, or delusional) enough to name Simplex-IT as the "Community Partner of the Year" for 2012 out of about 3,000 Partners. We didn't nominate ourselves or anything of the sort. Kinda cool.
Part of the reason that we won was our habit of being very open about our marketing and overall business process with other MSP (Managed Service Providers). To some folks it smacks of "helping the competition." But I'm a firm believer in the term "coopetition" (first heard that from Philippe Kahn, former CEO of Borland). Sometimes we cooperate, sometimes we compete.
Did I mention this is April 1st?
Later!
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Information & Bliss (but not together)
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Airlines want to charge by the pound.
Auto Insurance companies wants to monitor your specific driving habits and charge accordingly.
Frozen yogurt places charge by the ounce.
Metered services. Pretty simple, actually. When the increasing attribute of the customer (say, weight) causes the costs to the vendor (say, fuel), the vendor wants to pass the cost to that customer. Of course, in a true metered environment, a skinny customer would have to pay less. So far I don't hear the airlines offering that.
For purposes here I'm talking about two types of vendors. "Service" vendors are the guys who provide direct services to their customers. Airlines, restaurants. "Risk" vendors are the folks who will support you through some form of relief should a bad (theoretically unforeseen) situation arise. Insurance, healthcare.
But the idea is actually sound. The concept goes something like this:
Click here for more. |
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Bob here. Ok, this caught me a bit by surprise. First a little background. Level Platforms is the company we partner with to provide most of our network monitoring services.
Along with Microsoft, Level Platforms is the partner we rely on most to help us support our customers. Level Platforms has over 3,000 MSP partners (Managed Service Providers) worldwide, and is recognized as one of the (if not "the") top RMM (Remote Monitoring and Management) providers in the business.
And annually they recognize 5 partners in different categories. And let's just look at their announcement:
Click here for more
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FaceBook introduces Hard copy version: FB^2
| |  Since FaceBook's near-disastrous initial stock offering last year, the social media giant has been struggling to regain its supremacy in the social media world. Simplex-IT has just uncovered what their "next big thing" is, and their secret plan for introducing it to the world using a hit NBC show.
And it's, well, it's unusual. At first glance FaceBook is actually moving back in time with their offering, and getting into the publishing service. They're essentially going to be offering a hard copy subscription edition of FaceBook.
Click here for more
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More free eBooks from Microsoft!
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Spring is upon us! And that means...stay indoors, avoid the sun, and read up on technical stuff!
And of course Microsoft is there to make sure you don't catch any of those pesky UV rays.
How so? Why, by making a ton of technical eBooks on all aspects Microsoft available and free for the download.
Click here for more.
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Automating Office 365 Administration with PowerShell Webcast
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Announcing our first live Technical Webinar! This free event will be held online only on Wednesday 24 April from 11am to noon (Eastern).
While configuring Office 365, you may find it easy to work with the portal in the web browser. However, if you're managing 10s, 100s, or even 1000s of users, it can be a tedious, extremely time consuming chore to maintain them through the GUI. Scripting makes this a lot easier, and Microsoft's preferred scripting language for working with Office 365 is PowerShell. In this session, we will take a look at administrative tasks in Office 365 and how to accomplish them in PowerShell. Our presenter is none other than Sarah Dutkiewicz (yup, Kevin's wife).
<click here for more>
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FREE! Must See Lunchinar! "This Is No Time for Smoke & Mirrors - Disaster Recovery You Can Count On!"
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 Here's a quick question.How quickly could your company be back up and running in the event of a disastrous loss of your data or server? If you can't answer with certainty you need to attend this highly informative, free Lunchinar hosted by Simplex-IT!
Let's face it...failing to have a concrete contingency plan in the event of a catastrophe could be a death knell for your organization. Let Simplex-IT's Bob Coppedge show you how to build a complete, end-to-end Disaster Recovery Solution you can count on every time. |
Now Online!"THe New Microsoft Office" - Simplex-IT's March 2013 Lunchinar
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In case you weren't able to attend Simplex-IT's March Lunchinar on Microsoft's New Office 2013 and Office 365 offerings, all is not lost. The presentation is now available for viewing at your convenience on our YouTube channel. All you have to do is click the thumbnail below, kick your feet up and enjoy!
In this presentation Bob Coppedge guides you through the new and varied assortment of plans in which Microsoft's New Office is being made available. Focusing on a new approach for the software giant are the subscription offerings which bring several advantages to the consumer - affordable pricing as low as $99.95/year, always updated software, generous cloud storage, and integration between devices, just to name a few.  | | The New Office |
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SharePoint 2013 and Office 365. What plan has which features?
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Bob here. This is a short article, but I know that Office 365 and SharePoint 2013 can get pretty confusing as to which plan has which feature set.
Well, I found a site worth checking out. Click here to see exactly that.
Yup, it can be confusing. But it's worthwhile making sure that the Office 365 plan you select has the features you need.
Let us know if you've got any questions.
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Sarah here. Are you one with the command line? Do you find yourself writing batch scripts to automate tasks? Perhaps you're writing KiXtart scripts or even VBScript to help with your day-to-day tasks. How would you like another tool for your scripting toolbelt?
I've convinced Bob to let me share with you some tidbits from my favorite scripting language - PowerShell! PowerShell is Microsoft's scripting language running on the .NET Framework. It is part of the Windows Management Framework suite, along with Windows Remote Management (WinRM) and Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS).
What can I do with it?
Whether you're doing network audits, migrating to Office 365, administering servers with products such as Exchange, IIS, SQL Server, or Active Directory, or even managing remote workstations, PowerShell can be a great tool to know.
Read more here.
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John here. Recently I posted a blog article citing a change in licensing for the retail versions of Office 2013 (see "Microsoft's New Office Licensing - Changes in Response to a Changing World"). These new terms stated that once installed on a computer, Office 2013 could not be transferred to another computer. Ever. Ok, there was one exception - whatever. Apparently this stirred some strong protests and, as a result, Microsoft has now changed their position.
According to the article by Ed Bott on ZDNet.com as well as a blog post on their own website, Microsoft is "changing the terms of its licensing agreement for the three retail 'perpetual license' versions of Office 2013, restoring the terms that had been present in the corresponding agreement for Office 2010."
Read more here. |
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Effective immediately and running through May 31, 2013, Microsoft has announced their new Cloud Easy promotion designed to assist Small to Mid-Size Organizations in migrating their businesses to Office 365.
Read more here.
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| Want to find out about this stuff quicker? | | |
Blog updates from Simplex-IT over the past month
Remember to check out our blog:
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| Plain Funny #58 | |
Conspiracy theories are common. The CIA was involved in Gilligan's Island being cancelled. The FBI actually did stand for "Female Body Inspectors" back in the days when I was in the Seventh Grade.
But rarely do you hear the truth that's as disturbing as this. A word of warning: If you think the biggest issue behind the original Star Wars trilogy is whether Han Solo shot first, you may not want to watch this:
 | | Luke's Change: an Inside Job |
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We'd love to hear feedback about this! Send comments to Bob@Simplex-IT.com, or call us at 234.380.1277!
Sincerely,
Bob Coppedge
Simplex-IT LLC |
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