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Miller Systems Picks Up a Bronze Omni Award for MillerSystems.com

Our thanks to the Omni Awards for recognition in the “Self Promotion” category for our work re-designing and re-developing our own corporate website, www.millersystems.com.

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Categories: Web Design and Development

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PowerShell : Exporting multi-valued attributes with Export-Csv – how to tame the beast (SysAdmins, rejoice!)

The Scenario:

You want to query AD, Exchange, SharePoint, etc. to quickly retrieve some basic, but really useful information about something really common. Examples: users, sites, etc. And of course you want to export these values to a CSV so you can sort, filter, aggregate, count, etc. in Excel or some similar tool.  One or more of the values that you’ll retrieve – usually the most important ones, in our experience – is not a single value, but instead, a set of values (e.g., a user belongs to multiple groups, or multiple distribution lists.) Easy, right? Not so much.

The problem:

PowerShell queries on fields/objects that naturally yield multiple results don’t return the values when you use the Export-Csv cmdlet, even when the values are displayed in the PowerShell console itself.

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Categories: Managed IT Services

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What Should We Expect from Cloud Providers During an Outage?

Reality check: Outages happen. They happen with on premises systems, and they happen in the cloud. It doesn’t matter whose service it is. We could argue about who’s more reliable, but in the end, assuming that you’re up enough of the time that it’s a tenable solution, we generally judge our providers on how they handle the outages.

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Categories: HostingManaged IT Services

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Nice recap of last week’s CMSWire TweetJam on Defining the Modern Intranet

CMSWire put together a great panel for a TweetJam last week.  There were 11 of us in all that participated.  There were some great insights from everyone involved.  I definitely recommend a once-over of the Jam, and the recap is a great place to start, and or if you prefer, read all of the tweets here: https://twitter.com/#SocBizChat

Here are the questions that shaped the discussion:

  1. Name the top 3 functions of the modern intranet.
  2. In what areas do intranets fall short of employee’s needs?
  3. What steps need to be taken to keep intranets relevant?
  4. Enterprise social networks vs. Intranets – Competing? Merging? Distinct? What’s your take?
  5. Looking to 2014, what challenges lie ahead for intranets?

Enjoy!

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Categories: Intranets and ExtranetsSharePoint

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Seth Miller Hosts “Future of Freemium” Panel at FutureM Conference (Video)

On Thursday morning Miller Systems founder and CEO Seth Miller led a panel of seasoned marketing professionals at FutureM 2013 in a session titled “Future of ‘Freemium’: Driving Business or Out of Business.”

From software to journalism, consumers and business leaders expect so much for free. It’s disrupting business models and forcing producers to shift to higher-value/highly-differentiated niches, or switch to other monetization models, such as selling off user data or hocking ads. When the expectation is “free and cheap,” how do you market premium offerings that will sustain a business model?

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Categories: Events

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Gearing up for a really exciting panel on the Future of Freemium at FutureM!

Miller Systems is excited to announce that we are hosting a panel discussion at this year’s FutureM conference in Boston, which runs from October 16-18.  

Our session, The Future of Freemium: Driving Business or Out of Business?, will be held on Thursday, October 17 at 9:30AM at the Hynes Convention Center.  We’ll be discussing how to maintain value in an instant gratification marketplace with expert panelists from SpiceWorks, ChartIQ and the W3 Companies.

Our own Seth Miller will be moderating the session and will have the unique pleasure of sharing the stage with the following panelists:

Alex Gramling. As Chief Marketing Officer for W3, llc, Alex Gramling directs marketing strategy for the firm’s portfolio companies in the healthcare and technology arenas.

Tabrez Syed. Tabrez Syed is the vice president of Products at Spiceworks, the network for IT that’s transforming how $1 trillion in technology products and services are managed, marketed and sold each year.

Dan Schleifer. Dan Schleifer is the President and Co-Founder of ChartIQ, a mobile-focused social stock charting platform.

FutureM brings a one-of-a-kind experience to Marketing and Media trendsetters by debating the cutting-edge development and future landscape of Marketing. The programs are unique, forward-thinking, and will challenge, integrate and bring to life what tomorrow holds for businesses in the digital age.

As a valued member of the Miller Systems community, we hope you’ll join us. By using the discount code MILLERDISC, you’ll receive a 10% discount on your pass. Register for FutureM today

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Categories: EventsUncategorized

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Look before you leap: Evaluating cloud migrations in high-performance LAN environments

Seth Miller demonstrates why its crucial to gather all the relevant data about how your systems are used before moving anything to the cloud.

Using cloud based file storage, sync, and collaboration systems is very popular, and a great fit for a lot of organizations of all sorts and sizes. Here’s the catch, though: If you’re in an environment where users are doing more than email and basic office apps, the cloud doesn’t always make sense – and evaluating the viability of a move to cloud can be very difficult.

Sample scenario

Let’s bring this a bit closer to the ground. You’re in IT for a group working in media production.

  • You may have as few as 40 or 50 total users – but you wouldn’t know it from looking in the server room. That probably looks more like a “typical business” with 250 or more users. Dozens or hundreds of terabytes, lots of servers (physical or virtual, doesn’t matter).
  • You’re dealing with big files (video, high fidelity audio, high res images, etc).
  • You’re not 100% Windows at the desktop. You’ve got a split of Macs and Windows, maybe even a few Linux boxes.
  • You’ve had SANs/NAS/large DAS RAIDs for many years by the time 2013 rolled around. When GigE LAN became standard, productivity soared.
  • Let’s assume you don’t have a multi-gigabit internet connection, for sake of discussion.

My friend, if this all sounds familiar, you are in a textbook high-performance LAN environment. Assuming you don’t have a multi-gigabit connection to the internet, you may have a real problem moving to the cloud.

Cloud migrations always sounds great on paper. This heatmap told us otherwise for one of our clients. Check out our TechRepublic article to see if you might be in the same boat.

Read the full article on TechRepublic.
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Categories: AnalyticsManaged IT ServicesSolution Architecture

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Have SharePoint Online and Office 365 Evolved Enough for SMBs to Get Value Past the “Price of Entry”?

Originally published in CMSWire, August 29, 2013

Office 365 has made SharePoint available to the masses due to its aggressive price point.  But is a low monthly cost per user enough for an organization to really facilitate enterprise collaboration and ultimately justify the ROI?  Will SMBs be able to successfully implement and adopt SharePoint Online without substantial investments in expert assistance?

Perspectives on Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery

Seth Miller participates in an interview with SmartPros, a leading provider of accredited professional education and training to Fortune 500 companies. Watch as Seth talks about his current perspectives and insights on Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery planning, including the impact rising technologies such as mobile and cloud are having on BC/DR plans.

Prediction for 2013: An Explosion of SharePoint Internet Sites…and a Grain of Salt

Originally published in CMSWire, January 3, 2013

Microsoft has crafted the latest edition of its Web Content Management platform to make it more appealing as a solution for building public websites. SharePoint has long been the go-to platform for intranets and document management solutions for small to large businesses.  But now SharePoint 2013 is poised to make dramatic inroads as a WCM for internet sites.