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“We brought in Coyote Creek in 2005 to manage our overall messaging services including the mgmt of our Unix and Exchange services. Their focus on service processes coupled with technology expertise is bar none and a model for an ideal managed service partner.

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Don’t Let Run-Away Projects Derail You

May 16, 2013

Run-away projects are the projects from hell. We’ve all seen them. They’re the seemingly never-ending projects that miss multiple deadlines, blow budgets and make the members of the project team want to jump ship. If you’re the CIO, it’s your … Continued

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May 2013: Why Coyote Creek is in the Office 365 Business
FMonthly Tips, News and Views from Coyote Creek May 2013

President’s Perspective

Why Coyote Creek is in the Office 365 Business

Office 365 – the cloud-based version of Microsoft’s popular Office suite – was first launched over two years ago. But it’s only been since Office 365 was “re-launched” in February with an updated business version that we’ve started to see a healthy interest in this Microsoft-hosted product. With Office 365, companies gain access to Word, Excel and PowerPoint as well as hosted email, SharePoint and Lync (the application that includes instant messaging, telephony and more).

I’ll be the first to admit that we were initially a little dubious about the quality of service and uptime offered by Office 365, especially given some pretty famous outages over the past 18 months. However, we have made the decision to be in the Office 365 business anyway. Why?

Coyote Creek exists to help clients implement information technology. At our core, Coyote Creek is an IT consulting company. Our purpose for being is to help organizations implement IT solutions. We advise clients on the good, the bad and the ugly – regardless of which product is under consideration. This includes Microsoft Exchange, which has been one of our core service offerings for over 15 years.

Our clients need help deciding if Office 365 is right for them. I mention Microsoft Exchange because one of the main reasons people are looking at Office 365 is because they want to get the benefits of Exchange – including Outlook email and calendaring – without having to run Exchange on premises. We’re seeing a lot of this with companies that have fewer than 250 employees, maybe even fewer than 100 employees, and are reaching the point where they may have to hire a dedicated Exchange administrator. Rather than add head count, they’re considering running Exchange in the cloud through Office 365.

In addition, organizations that are facing an upgrade and looking at the costs of hardware, software, depreciation and operations are thinking that it might make more sense to switch to the cloud.

We have the expertise to help our clients make the right choice. Coyote Creek has been helping clients assess their readiness for the cloud and for Office 365 specifically. For those that are ready, we also provide advice regarding the trade-offs of Office 365 – what it does well and what it does not do well. Although it’s a great product for some, like any product Office 365 is not for everyone.

Two important things that we’re finding are:
1. It doesn’t have to be an “all or nothing” decision. For some organizations the best option is to fully switch over to Office 365. For others keeping everything on premises (and either managing it in-house or outsourcing to Coyote Creek through our Remote Monitoring and Management service) makes the most sense. And for the rest, creating a hybrid situation is the answer.
2. The packaging on Office 365 is fairly complicated. Just like with Microsoft licensing (a topic we wrote about at length a while back), evaluating what you get in each level or version of the Office 365 package is not easy. Coyote Creek’s expertise can be invaluable in helping you choose the right level and package of Office 365 for your needs.
Conclusion: Coyote Creek is in the Office 365 business because our purpose is to help our clients evaluate and implement IT solutions. Office 365 is an IT solution that makes sense for many organizations.

Given our deep bench on Microsoft Exchange, we have the expertise to help organizations use Office 365 to move their email to the cloud – whether they want to implement a full Office 365 solution or create a hybrid situation that leaves some software on-premise.

We’ll be publishing more information about Office 365 in future articles, specifically focusing on the packaging and possible deployment scenarios. So stay tuned!

Mike Faster, President ______________________________________________________________________________________

Technical Editorial

Archiving Exchange: Microsoft vs. Enterprise Vault

If you’re using Microsoft Exchange, you know how important email archiving is. Without some type of archiving system in place you’ll end up overspending on expensive storage, see mailboxes get so large that they impact backup and recovery speeds, and risk being unable to meet compliance and e-discovery requirements. The question isn’t “should you archive?” but “what archive system should you use?”

In a previous post my colleague Elmer Catahay took a look at the comparative strengths of Enterprise Vault vs. Postini. Today I’d like to look at the differences between Enterprise Vault and the archiving capabilities that are built into Microsoft Exchange itself.

Start by taking a close look at your needs. Whether you should use Microsoft Exchange’s built-in archiving system or install a third-party product such as Symantec’s Enterprise Vault depends entirely on your organization’s needs. Microsoft has been very slow to add features to its archiving system. If you happen to be an early adapter and have installed a full suite of Microsoft’s new 2013 releases – including SharePoint 2013 and Exchange 2013 – then you’ll be able to take advantage of SharePoint 2013’s improved cross-platform archive search capabilities. For the purpose of this blog, however, I’m going to assume that you’re using an earlier version of Exchange. And for earlier versions of Exchange, if you need a full-featured archiving solution, Enterprise Vault is by far the better product. However, if you don’t need a full-featured archiving solution, since all that’s required to implement Exchange’s archiving functions is an enterprise-level Exchange license, this is obviously the less expensive and easier solution to implement.

The two products have some capabilities in common. For archiving Exchange, both Enterprise Vault and Exchange’s built-in archiving function allow you to:
- Create site-wide archive policies all the way down to user/group policies.
- Support access to archived contents through Outlook as well as OWA-based clients.
- Let users change archive settings for emails and folders.
- Create a tiered storage setup so that archived contents get moved to lower-cost storage hardware, without denigrating the quality of the end user’s daily experience.
- Set retention policies regarding when items will be moved into the archive as well as expiration dates to specify when items are removed from the archive.
Limitations of Microsoft Exchange archiving. In comparison to what you can get with third party solutions, including Enterprise Vault, Microsoft’s archiving function has some definite limitations. These include:
- Allows users to override default retention settings and delete contents and/or block archiving. Microsoft is driven at the user level, not the organization level. The only way to override this is to put all mailboxes in the organization on legal hold, which will prevent all users from deleting anything or moving anything from an archive mailbox into a regular mailbox. Unfortunately, because the legal hold means that nothing ever gets deleted organization-wide, doing this will also greatly increase your data storage costs.
- Moves archived files to secondary mailboxes within Outlook, so users cannot simply look in one place to find the items they need.
- Provides access to archived items through the Exchange server. This can lead to potential cost issues as your archived contents grow.
- Requires additional databases for tiered storage. Your choice is to add storage to an existing Exchange server and create new databases there, or setup another Exchange server in cases of remote site storage.
- Does not allow for single instance storage, which can result in multiple copies of the same message and attachment taking up space in your database.
- Shows purged items in search results. In Exchange searches are performed against the index, not against the actual stored material in the database. Depending on how things are set up, items that have been purged from the database may not get purged from the index. They can then show up in search results, even though they are not actually accessible.
- Does not provide cache of archived items locally within Outlook. The users’ mailbox items are cached but the contents of the archived mailboxes are not. When users are working in an offline capacity they therefore do not have access to archived items.
- Does not support Mac clients. Your Outlook 2011 and Entourage 2008 Mac users are not able to see their archive mailboxes unless they are using OWA or other supported method.
Advantages of Microsoft Exchange archiving. In comparison to Enterprise Vault, Exchange does have one significant advantage:
- Automatic failover of archived databases through DAGs (Database Availability Groups). If you need High Availability, Microsoft Exchange’s DAG set-up will give you automatic failover. With Enterprise Vault if you don’t create and build in an automatic failover system yourself, then if a server goes down a manual failover will be required.
Advantages of Enterprise Vault for archiving Exchange. Enterprise Vault is a full-featured system for archiving Exchange that:
- Allows you to set policies that cannot be overridden by end users.
- Provides very granular control, including the ability to create user-level archiving policies and settings.
- Moves archived items to a separate server, freeing up space on your more expensive storage. Archived items are then accessed from the Enterprise Vault server, reducing requests for old data from Exchange.
- Shows archived items in their original location, eliminating the need for users to navigate through a second mailbox full of folders.
- Has single instance storage capability, allowing you to reduce your storage needs by de-duplicating data before it is archived.
- Can cache archived content locally or remotely on the Enterprise Vault server. With Enterprise Vault you can set up vault cache and either set an organization-wide policy or allow users to decide how much archived data will be cached on the local server.
- Archives other data as well, including SharePoint and file server content. The benefits of this include single instance storage, searches across all content, and more comprehensive and manageable legal hold response.
- Enables robust legal discovery searches. With Exchange all you can do is conduct a search and then export the data that is found. With Enterprise Vault you can create cases that are on-going, living searches that will continuously find and store all of the content relating to a specific legal need.
- Manages the ingestion of all PST files, for secure storage. Enterprise Vault can automatically scan all computers in a domain for PST files and then bring them into the Enterprise Vault archive based on whatever rules you establish.
Conclusion: Coyote Creek has a great deal of expertise in both Microsoft Exchange and Symantec Enterprise Vault. If you need help determining which solution is best for your organization’s needs, or want assistance implementing your chosen solution, give us a call. We’re here for you!

Brett Atwell, Senior Systems Engineer ______________________________________________________________________________________

Remote Monitoring Management

When Microsoft Exchange breaks, do you Band-Aid

Some of us that live with Exchange have gotten used to its quirks, anomalies, hangs and occasional crashes. When something happens, your team usually has a quick fix, right? After all, it’s Exchange and many companies settle for living with minor problems, annoying anomalies, etc., because, well, it’s Exchange.

At Coyote Creek, we don’t believe in Band-Aids. We know Exchange inside and out and, while it does have its issues, our experience is that almost all of them can be identified and engineered out of the system. We can find and resolve the root-cause of Exchange problems because it’s what we do 24×7 for some of the most-demanding companies in the high-tech and financial services industries.

RMM is the permanent and cost-effective solution to your Exchange issues. Because we monitor and manage so many Exchange installations, we’ve developed rigorous operational processes, Trouble Shooting, Root Cause Analysis, and patching processes to ensure maximum Exchange performance. And when something does go wrong, we don’t stop until we’ve performed a complete root-cause analysis and fixed the problem not just applied a Band-Aid.

If that’s how you’d like to your Exchange installation managed, call or email Coyote Creek, it sounds like we have something in common. ______________________________________________________________________________________

Subscribe to Our Blog

You can subscribe to our blog to keep up with tips and best practices from some of the most savvy consultants in the industry. Don’t miss these hot topics discussions: Exchange 2013 Upgrade Path, An IT Professionals Personal Experience with Windows 8, Best Practices to Hiring an IT Contractor and many more! ______________________________________________________________________________________

Atlassian Partners

We are always looking for ways to make life simpler for our customers and Coyote Creek can now be your one-stop shop for Atlassian products and services! As an authorized Atlassian reseller, Coyote Creek can also help get your licenses’ expiration dates synchronized to simplify the process of license tracking and renewal.

______________________________________________________________________________________

We Have the Secret Sauce for Your Microsoft Exchange

If Exchange is important to your business and you’re looking for a partner to help you deliver the best possible service level at a predictable monthly cost, call or email Coyote Creek and get a free bottle of our RMM secret sauce. ______________________________________________________________________________________

Contact Us

Your primary contact with Coyote Creek is your Account Manager but you are welcome to contact our management team at any time. Please contact Terri Carney our Director of Sales and she will get you talking to the right people at Coyote Creek. ______________________________________________________________________________________

About Coyote Creek

Founded in 1998 by a team of former corporate IT professionals, Coyote Creek understands the issues and complexities that are part of large-scale and high-growth IT environments. Pragmatic and vendor neutral, Coyote Creek brings deep expertise to help customers manage technology and project risk, inspiring confidence and creating peace of mind. For more information, please visit http://www.coyotecrk.com
April 2013: How to Present Your Successes to the IT Steering Committee
FMonthly Tips, News and Views from Coyote Creek April 2013

President’s Perspective

How to Present Your Successes to the IT Steering Committee

In a previous newsletter I talked about How to Start an IT Steering Committee. Ideally this cross-functional group of executives from within your company will meet monthly to ensure that IT is aligned with business objectives. Once projects have been prioritized, an important function of the IT Steering Committee is to review IT project progress. This, of course, is an ideal time for the IT Department to toot its own horn.

How do you do this? What’s the best way to present the IT Department’s successes to the IT Steering Committee? To address this, I’d like to share some of the strategies that I learned from my mentors back when I started my first IT Steering Committee.

1. Keep things focused. IT projects are typically very complicated, with multiple tasks, deliverables and milestones. It can be very tempting to want to share each one of these exciting and intricate details with the IT Steering Committee. Don’t do it. As one of my mentors put it, “Beware the meteor shower.” Meaning that if you have the Committee members looking up at the heavens and there are all these meteors going through the sky, it’s just too much to focus on.

A better strategy is to boil things down to just a few items (but no more than three) that the Committee will track for each project. These should be a few pieces of the project that will convey the overall progress of the project as a whole. The beauty of this is that as the IT leader you get to pick what these items are. The challenge of this is that as the IT leader you have to pick what these items are! I know that I struggled with this at first, but once I learned to keep things focused, things became much easier. Focusing on a few important milestones kept the Committee from going off into the weeds and making the Committee meetings nitpicky and unproductive.

2. Have accomplishments to show at every meeting. Although it’s not necessary to have accomplishments to show on every project, you should have a list of completes or projects finishes to share at each meeting. How do you do this? You chunk your projects into three-month long pieces.

As I explained in my blog on Using Timeboxing to Ensure Project Success, all large projects should be broken down into three-month increments so that you’re delivering some sort of functionality or major project accomplishment every three months. Since your IT Steering Committee meets every three months, timeboxing not only ensures project health, it also ensures that you’ll have some completions or successes to present at every meeting.

3. See yourself as the orchestra leader. The same mentor that used the meteor analogy above also said that, like the orchestra leader, it’s your job to present the “beat count.” At each IT Steering Committee meeting there will be an agenda item to review current projects, and at each meeting you’ll be presenting the successes. Babump, babump, babump… like a song, these presentations will develop a cadence. You’re training the Committee to recognize that IT is making progress and getting things done. At each project’s outset you’ll determine which items will be tracked, and then at subsequent meetings you’ll be showing that these items are now complete. There’s a natural cadence to this that starts to pick up and accelerate. And when you have that cadence happening, life is good for IT!

Conclusion As the IT Steering Committee’s “orchestra leader,” a big part of your preparation for Committee meetings is to gather the accomplishments and successes that you’ll be presenting. In fact, this is arguably the most important part of your preparation process, more so than preparing the necessary information to get approval on something new. After all, if you regularly communicate your successes, getting those new project approvals will be much easier…and your prep work should pay off many times over.

Mike Faster, President ______________________________________________________________________________________

Technical Editorial

Exchange 2013 Upgrade Path: Don’t Rush Into This!

Although Exchange 2013 has been out for a few months now, few companies have been able to do anything with it. Why? Because in order roll it out into an existing Exchange 2007 or 2010 environment you must have the Cumulative Update Patch 1 on all Exchange 2013 servers. Cumulative Update Patch 1 was just released on April 2.

While coexistence is now possible, unless you are implementing a brand new instance of Exchange 2013, we recommend that you wait a while longer. Microsoft has already changed the requirements for coexistence a few times. Hopefully they’ve got it right, but who knows? At Coyote Creek we’re currently upgrading our own environment and will let you know if any other issues relating to coexistence between Exchange 2013 and Exchange 2007 or 2010 come up.

So what exactly is the upgrade path for Exchange 2013? The answer depends on which version of Exchange you’re running now. Regardless of which version you’re currently using, though, there are no in-place upgrade options. Along with the Cumulative Update Patch 1 for Exchange 2013, here is what is needed to upgrade to Exchange:

Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2013 Upgrade Path – If you’re running Exchange 2003 (or an earlier version), I’ve got bad news for you: there is no direct way to upgrade to Exchange 2013. If you’re ready to upgrade to Exchange 2013, you need to do a double upgrade, first to Exchange 2007 or Exchange 2010 and then to Exchange 2013.

Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2013 Upgrade Path – The upgrade path from Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2013 is very similar to the upgrade path from Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010. Just like in that situation, you will need to use a legacy name space and purchase a new SSL certificate with the legacy name space on it. You will also need to have Update Rollup 10 and Service Pack 3 installed on all of your Exchange 2007 Servers.

Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2013 Upgrade Path – For those who are currently running Exchange 2010, the upgrade to Exchange 2013 will be a nice and smooth swing migration. Be sure that you have Service Pack 3 installed on all of your Exchange 2010 Servers. Here are a few highlights of the migration:
- Potentially lower server license costs – If you plan to deploy Database Availability Groups (DAGs) in Exchange 2013, you’ll be able to run it on Windows Server 2012 Standard. Unlike with Windows Server 2008, you won’t have to pay for a more expensive version of Windows Server if you want to deploy DAGs.
- Same name space – No need to get new certificates, as you use your same name space. Plus, after you migrate you can consolidate down to a single name space, as Exchange 2013 does not require multiple name spaces.
- Same Outlook – Exchange 2013 works with Outlook 2007 SP3 and the November 2012 Cumulative Update patch, Outlook 2010 SP1 with the November 2012 Cumulative Update patch or Outlook 2013. On a Mac the supported clients are Entourage 2008 and Outlook for Mac 2011.Unless you’re running Outlook 2003 or earlier, there’s no need to upgrade to a newer version of Outlook.
- Convenient mailbox moves – End users can continue to use their mailboxes while they’re being moved. There’s no disruption, because the move is done online.
Considering your options for an Exchange 2013 upgrade path? Please give Coyote Creek a call and we can discuss your upgrade options.

Dan Knowlden, Senior Systems Engineer ______________________________________________________________________________________

Contract Services

Did You Try Turning It On and Off?

“Have you tried turning it off and on?” In the TV show, IT Crowd, the IT team run by Moss and Roy, stonewalls all user problems with this classic one-liner. We’re not suggesting that your IT team would ever do the same thing but — be honest — are there aspects of your support operations and performance that could be improved?

Coyote Creek can help. We’ve been helping many of the largest and most-demanding high-tech companies, improve their support operations and performance for many years and we can help you do the same by finding the caliber of support people you need or by outsourcing all or part of your support operations.

When it comes to finding support contractors, here’s how Coyote Creek Contract Services can help:

• Technical expertise – we get IT. We understand your business, we understand IT and can help you determine the skills you need.

• All candidates undergo the same rigorous screening and interview process that Coyote Creek uses to hire our internal engineers.

• All of our Contact Services engagements are supported by our technical and support infrastructure.

• We source our subcontractors from our extensive engineering network and many of them are direct referrals from current employees and customers.

If you need help with any aspect of your support operations, we’re here for you. Call or email Coyote Creek — we’re here to help

______________________________________________________________________________________

Subscribe to Our Blog

You can subscribe to our blog to keep up with tips and best practices from some of the most savvy consultants in the industry. Don’t miss these hot topics discussions: Exchange 2013 Upgrade Path, An IT Professionals Personal Experience with Windows 8, Best Practices to Hiring an IT Contractor and many more! ______________________________________________________________________________________

Atlassian Partners

We are always looking for ways to make life simpler for our customers and Coyote Creek can now be your one-stop shop for Atlassian products and services! As an authorized Atlassian reseller, Coyote Creek can also help get your licenses’ expiration dates synchronized to simplify the process of license tracking and renewal.

______________________________________________________________________________________

We Have the Secret Sauce for Your Microsoft Exchange

If Exchange is important to your business and you’re looking for a partner to help you deliver the best possible service level at a predictable monthly cost, call or email Coyote Creek and get a free bottle of our RMM secret sauce. ______________________________________________________________________________________

Contact Us

Your primary contact with Coyote Creek is your Account Manager but you are welcome to contact our management team at any time. Please contact Terri Carney our Director of Sales and she will get you talking to the right people at Coyote Creek. ______________________________________________________________________________________

About Coyote Creek

Founded in 1998 by a team of former corporate IT professionals, Coyote Creek understands the issues and complexities that are part of large-scale and high-growth IT environments. Pragmatic and vendor neutral, Coyote Creek brings deep expertise to help customers manage technology and project risk, inspiring confidence and creating peace of mind. For more information, please visit http://www.coyotecrk.com
March 2013: You Just Started a New CIO Job - Now What?
FMonthly Tips, News and Views from Coyote Creek March 2013

President’s Perspective

You Just Started a New CIO Job – Now What?

The CIO position has a notoriously short tenure in most companies. So if you’re a CIO, throughout your career you’re likely to have many opportunities to start new jobs – either because you’ve been promoted from within or because you’ve been recruited away to take a bigger better CIO role.

Like most CIOs I changed jobs a few times in my career, and when I first started Coyote Creek I also acted as Interim CIO for a variety of companies. I learned that when you start a new CIO position you will usually find yourself in one of two situations. How you should proceed will be determined by which situation you are in. Either…
- Things are a mess – Your predecessor left under a cloud and the IT Department needs significant improvement; or
- Things are pretty good – Your predecessor was well-regarded and either got promoted or left for a better job. The IT Department that you’re “inheriting” is well-run and doing a great job.
Getting the Lay of the Land

So the big question becomes: how do you determine which situation you’re actually in? Here is my advice:
- Keep your hands in your pockets for the first 90 days. This is a very important lesson that I learned from one of my mentors. Unless you have a crisis or emergency that absolutely requires action, avoid making any decisions or radical changes for your first 90 days on the job. Understand that this is not the time to show everyone how smart you are. They’ll figure it out soon enough! Instead, this is the time for you to get the lay of the land.
- Listen! It is through listening to everyone that you will get a 360 degree view of the IT Department, how it’s performing and how it’s perceived. Notice that the key action here is “listen.” Not “talk to,” but “listen.” And as you’re meeting with people, be careful not to share your vision or direction for IT or to give any indication as to which way you’ll go or act. At this point you don’t have enough information about the environment to be able to intelligently make these decisions anyway. Instead, start by getting the perspective of people at the top, middle and bottom of the organizational hierarchy.
Who exactly should you listen to?
- Listen to senior or executive staff – Interview these people. Ask a lot of open-ended questions about their perspective of the IT Department. Get a sense for how the Department is doing, and where the Department has allies or detractors on the executive staff.
While you’re sitting in the person’s office, plant the seed that you’ll be coming back to them regularly to continue to solicit their input – probably monthly. Begin to set the expectation that your interaction with them will be a routine thing. The second or third time you sit down with the person (while you’re still new in the CIO role) is a great time to ask them to participate in an IT Steering Committee.
- Listen to your staff. Start with all of your direct reports. Depending on the size of the organization, you may want to talk to everyone in IT. If this is not possible, you should meet with a selected group of the people who report to your direct reports, and then a selected group of these people’s direct reports.
Meet with each person more than once. I like to meet with my direct reports weekly, so that over the course of those first 90 days I’ll talk to each of these people 12 times, for at least an hour each time. Your goal for the skip level staff members should be to meet with each person at least two or three times during this 90-day time period.
- Listen to your suppliers. This includes everyone from hardware and software vendors to people who provide services to your organization, such as consultants and contractors. Your suppliers can be a great source of information and insight regarding what’s happening. Yes, these people’s perspectives will be colored by their desire to continue doing business with your organization. However, they’re also in a good position to have observations about your IT Department, so you should definitely solicit their input anyway.
- Be slow to form opinions. Normally I’m a big believer in a “gut check” or listening to my gut feelings to get a read on people. What I’ve learned, though, is that in this situation first impressions are often wrong. You’re the new sheriff in town, and everyone is trying to put their best foot forward to impress you.
Beyond your scheduled one-on-ones, you may find that people (often members of your IT staff) will approach you with unsolicited advice or help. Personally, I found that it was these folks for whom my initial impression was often wrong. When I was newer at the CIO role I thought, “how nice – they’re trying to help me!” Eventually I realized that many had ulterior motives. While some were just trying to gain favor with the new guy, others were trying to cover up for performance problems, overcome political weaknesses, etc.

It’s easy enough for people to make a good first impression. But if they can’t actually deliver, it’s a lot harder to “fake it” over the long haul. When you interact with people over the course of time you get a chance to observe their performance and get input from other people. After the “honeymoon” wears off you’ll have a much better feel for what’s really happening.
- Take a look at the personnel files. Early on I like to ask for the performance sections of the personnel files for each person in my department. I want to see all of the performance reviews or performance plans from the past few years. I’ll get a big stack of these and read them all. Beyond the obvious of trying to determine who is a good performer and who is in trouble, I want to see how the plans or reviews themselves are written. Do the performance plans contain descriptions of observable behavior? Do the reviews contain actual comments on an individual’s performance, or are they full of summary platitudes and generalizations that you can’t make sense of?
- Get to know your HR Department. During the course of getting these files it’s also a good idea to talk to HR to find out if there are any problem employees or “super stars.” Through this interaction you are also trying to get a read on what you can expect from HR. Are they an organization that will be helpful from a recruiting and hiring standpoint? If you have to take dramatic action such as reorganizing the department or terminating someone’s employment, will they support you? After all, it is inevitable that some of these situations will come up. It’s good to know in advance what to expect.
Conclusion

One of the big keys to success when starting a new CIO role is to make sure you don’t act quickly if you don’t have to. Listen to enough people to truly understand the lay of the land before you take action. If you keep your hands in your pockets for your first 90 days on the job, at the end of this period you’ll have a much better sense of what actions to take. In future posts I’ll address what to do next in each of these situations.

Mike Faster, President ______________________________________________________________________________________

Technical Editorial

Calender Issues in Outlook with Exchange

It’s no secret that for those organizations that use Exchange, a variety of calendar issues in Outlook sometimes come up. Once you understand what’s going on, many of these problems are easily resolved. I’m going to look at three of the calendar issues in Outlook that we’ve seen in recent months.

Problems caused by oversized calendars

While the best practice is to automatically archive all calendar entries that are more than, say, six months old, many people are reluctant to do so. It is especially common for executives to want to keep everything. I recently ran across a situation where the executive’s mailbox was 600 MB, and included stuff that dated back to 1999!

Huge files like this can cause a variety of calendar issues in Outlook, including:
- Increased chance of file corruption
- Delays of up to 30 minutes or more in receiving meeting updates accepted on the user’s behalf by a delegate
- Slow access to the calendar file by a delegate
The best solution, of course, is to allow Outlook/Exchange to remove older calendar entries that are no longer needed. Some executives like to keep their historic calendar information, however, so another option would be to create a secondary, archived calendar within the person’s Exchange mailbox. This archived calendar and the “legacy” data it contained would still be readily available, but since it would not be used as the person’s primary/production calendar, it would eliminate the problems detailed above.

Delays in accessing multiple calendars simultaneously

This is the most common calendar issue in Outlook that I’ve seen lately. What happens is that when a delegate attempts to access multiple calendars at once, the response time can slow to a crawl – with waits of up to one minute just to pull up a calendar! Unfortunately, there does not seem to be much consensus on how to resolve this problem. Recommendations include:
- Remove some calendars from your view – To see if this speeds things up.
- Check the size of the calendar files – As explained above, an outsize calendar file can cause significant slowdowns.
- Modify msExchMaxCachedViews – This Exchange Server attribute in Active Directory should be set at between 5 and 20 views per mailstore (and never higher than 50 views per mailstore). The idea is that setting this to a higher level will allow for more synchronization with multiple calendars.
Meetings hijacked by mobile device users

Another calendar issue in Outlook is caused by a glitch in the way that mobile devices sometimes interact with Outlook and Exchange. What will happen is that a user will create a meeting and send meeting invitations to multiple people. One of the invitees will use their mobile device to respond to the meeting request, and in doing so will unwittingly become the meeting organizer. Sometimes if this “meeting hijacker” attempts to decline the meeting, they will accidentally cancel the entire meeting instead. Half the attendees will then receive meeting cancellation notices, and chaos will ensue.

Although this meeting hijacking problem occurs intermittently with all types of mobile devices, it seems to occur more frequently on Apple devices than on those running the Android operating system. Microsoft and Apple are both aware of the problem, and Apple claims that with their latest IOS release, 6.0.1, the problem has been resolved. Time will tell if this is the case.

In the meantime, the best way to avoid this calendar issue in Outlook is to instruct end users not to accept meetings on their mobile devices. Meetings should only be accepted from within Outlook itself.

Need Help? As Exchange experts, Coyote Creek has a great deal of experience dealing with calendar issues in Outlook. We have a structured methodology that we use to pinpoint and solve whatever is going wrong – whether it’s caused by technical issues, software glitches or user ignorance. If you’re using Exchange and need help resolving calendar issues in Outlook, please don’t hesitate to give us a call.

Tom Craig, Systems Engineer ______________________________________________________________________________________

Remote Monitoring and Management

We have the secret sauce for your Microsoft Exchange

Exchange is important to you, but it’s probably not something you regard as part of your business’ secret sauce. However, for us, Exchange is our business and we have our own secret sauce that enables us to provide, in our opinion, the best Exchange 24×7 monitoring and management on the planet (*).

Coyote Creek provides remote monitoring and management for Exchange and other services to some of the largest and most demanding high-tech and financial services companies in the world. We’ve built our business around Exchange and now we’ve packaged our secret sauce in an affordable monthly model.
- 24×7 remote monitoring set up quickly with minimal impact on your resources
- Proactive support and management from our team of Exchange experts backed up by rigorous best-practices
- 100% commitment to making your Exchange service and performance the best that it can be
So, if Exchange is important to your business and you’re looking for a partner to help you deliver the best possible service level at a predictable monthly cost, call Coyote Creek and get a free bottle of our RMM secret sauce.

(*) By the way, while we may have the best 24×7 monitoring and management on the planet, our team is 100% US based in our Silicon Valley and Research Triangle NOCs.

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Subscribe to Our Blog

You can subscribe to our blog to keep up with tips and best practices from some of the most savvy consultants in the industry. Don’t miss these hot topics discussions: Exchange 2013 Upgrade Path, An IT Professionals Personal Experience with Windows 8, Best Practices to Hiring an IT Contractor and many more! ______________________________________________________________________________________

Coyote Creek is Available for 2013 Budgeting Advice

A number of our customers have asked for proposals for budgetary purposes, to help them plan for 2013 projects. If you need a quote for a project you’re considering for next year, just give us a call and we’ll turn it around right away. ______________________________________________________________________________________

Atlassian Partners

We are always looking for ways to make life simpler for our customers and Coyote Creek can now be your one-stop shop for Atlassian products and services! As an authorized Atlassian reseller, Coyote Creek can also help get your licenses’ expiration dates synchronized to simplify the process of license tracking and renewal. ______________________________________________________________________________________

90 Days of Free Monitoring for Your Exchange Server

In just 90 days we will prove to you the value of having Coyote Creek as your IT partner. Signup Today! ______________________________________________________________________________________

Contact Us

Your primary contact with Coyote Creek is your Account Manager but you are welcome to contact our management team at any time. Please contact Terri Carney our Director of Sales and she will get you talking to the right people at Coyote Creek. ______________________________________________________________________________________

About Coyote Creek

Founded in 1998 by a team of former corporate IT professionals, Coyote Creek understands the issues and complexities that are part of large-scale and high-growth IT environments. Pragmatic and vendor neutral, Coyote Creek brings deep expertise to help customers manage technology and project risk, inspiring confidence and creating peace of mind. For more information, please visit http://www.coyotecrk.com
February 2013: How to Start an IT Steering Committee
FMonthly Tips, News and Views from Coyote Creek February 2013

President’s Perspective

How to Start an IT Steering Committee

In last month’s newsletter I mentioned that Prioritizing the IT Project Workload is a job for your IT Steering Committee – a cross-functional group of executives from within your company who meet to ensure that IT is aligned with business objectives. But what if your organization does not have an IT Steering Committee? This month I’ll discuss how to go about starting one.

Step 1: Get Your Boss’ Buy-In

Before you can start an IT Steering Committee you first need to obtain your boss’ approval. To do so you can discuss the benefits of having an IT Steering Committee, which include:
- Aligning IT resource allocation with business objectives – This is the overall goal of the IT Steering Committee.
- Ensuring fair allocation of IT resources – So that no department uses a disproportionate share of IT resources unless the Committee agrees that this is where the investment should be made.
- Removing the IT leader from the resource allocation “hot seat” – With an IT Steering Committee in place, the IT leader is no longer solely responsible for making politically-tricky decisions, often in a vacuum.
- Getting help breaking up log jams – If an IT project is stalled because of lack of action or decisions from the business side, the IT Steering Committee members are often well-positioned to help address the problem.
- Showcasing IT accomplishments – As part of the on-going IT project review process, the members of the IT Steering Committee will inevitably see the IT Department’s accomplishments and get a good understanding of where the company’s IT dollars are going.
- “Training” your executive staff – Over time, the IT leader shows the company’s executive leaders that “if you give me budget, staff and approval, I get things done!”
Step 2: Get Departmental Buy-In

Once you have approval to form an IT Steering Committee, the next step is to get each of your organization’s critical business functions to agree to participate. Ideally you would like the C-level executive from each of these departments to attend the Committee meetings, but in practice these executives often send a delegate who is already interested and engaged with IT. What’s important is that each member of your IT Steering Committee must be in a position to (a) know what their department’s needs and priorities are and (b) have the ability and authority to make decisions on the department’s behalf.

Your goal is to form a Committee of people who will attend the meetings and actively participate in and cooperate with the process. If there are two people in the group who don’t get along, it can really undermine the Committee’s effectiveness. But even if this is the hand you’re dealt and/or there are contentious underlying battles going on within your company, you can structure your Committee meetings to help mitigate these issues.

Step 3: Plan the Structure of Your Meetings

Based on my own extensive experience, I recommend that you structure things as follows:
1. Meeting frequency: Hold a kick-off meeting during month 1, your first “working meeting” during month 2, and then meet quarterly thereafter.
2. Meeting length: 1 hour
3. Meeting agenda: Plan to have this written and on display during each meeting so that all participants can see it – and then stick to it! Each item to be discussed should be listed with its allocated time (i.e. “Opening 9:00 – 9:05, Priority One 9:05 – 9:20, etc.). The meeting goal (such as “establish IT project priorities” or “review on-going IT projects”) should be listed as well.
4. Ground rules: Establish these early on (everyone has a chance to talk, no interrupting, etc.) and stick to them. Although announcing ground rules of this nature can seem condescending, you’d be surprised how often it’s necessary.
The over-arching theme that you want to establish for your IT Steering Committee is that you’re getting something done. It’s the IT leader’s job to ensure that attendees all leave each meeting with a sense of accomplishment. They should feel that you had an agenda, you went through the agenda, and you got something done. This is what will bring Committee members back and make the Committee a success.

Step 4: Hold a Kick-Off Meeting

The IT Steering Committee’s first meeting is key. This is not the time to start reviewing IT projects, prioritizing resources, etc. The kick-off meeting is about setting expectations. What are the ground rules? How will the meetings be structured? What is expected of each participant?

This is also the time to introduce the IT project scoring sheet (as explained in my article on Prioritizing IT Project Workload), or whatever mechanism you will be using to prioritize IT projects. Explain how the prioritization process will work. Let participants know that they’ll be receiving a scoring sheet and list of projects. Although each person will be making their own decisions regarding how each project should be scored, it is helpful to plan to have the IT leader present during that process, in order to answer any questions that the executive may have.

Step 5: Prepare for and Hold the First Working Meeting

The IT Steering Committee’s first working meeting will be devoted to prioritizing the IT project workload. Prior to that meeting you will have met with each Committee member and walked them through the project scoring process – which means that you’ll have a good sense of where things align and where there might be conflict. As the IT leader you need to start managing this conflict before the meeting. To the extent that you’re able, attempt to get agreement on priorities before the prioritization meeting. You probably won’t get 100% agreement, but you’ll get some.

So why hold the meeting if you’ve already been working “behind the scenes” to get the decisions made? Because having the functional business heads physically see each other agree to the IT project priorities is invaluable. In an ideal world by the time the meeting takes place everyone will come together, see the priorities, and all nod their heads “yes” in agreement. This ideal might happen 75 to 80% of the time, while other meetings might require a fair amount of discussion and debate. In the end, though, if you follow your agenda, enforce the ground rules, and ensure that things really do get done, your IT Steering Committee will be a success.

Mike Faster, President ______________________________________________________________________________________

Technical Editorial

Patch Management for Windows

Like all software makers, Microsoft is constantly working to update and improve its products, and regularly issues patches for their customers to download and install. These patches generally contain security fixes, bug fixes, features updates or a combination of these items. Managing (i.e. dealing with) all of these patches is a core function of IT management, and needs to be done in a timely and efficient manner. Whether you’re doing patch management for operating systems or for applications, the procedures that need to be followed are very similar.

Patch Management Tools: Fortunately, there are many tools available which can be used to provide patches to Windows operating systems, as well as monitor and audit their patch levels. Microsoft’s primary tool for this is the SCCM (System Center Configuration Manager), which is built upon the Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) framework. There are also a variety of third-party tools available.

If you are responsible for patch management for your company’s windows environment, I recommend that you investigate the various available tools, to find the one that most closely satisfies your unique needs. As a remote management service provider, Coyote Creek uses a third-party patch management tool in conjunction with Microsoft Windows Update.

Structuring Patch Management for Windows Environments: Because so many patches relate to security fixes, having a structured patch management plan is imperative for securing your enterprise servers. Here’s what you need to do:
1. Assess your systems – The starting point is to identify exactly what systems you have and what applications they’re running. Next, determine which of these systems and applications are vulnerable and need patches. This can be done by examining registry keys, file versions and running services. Microsoft Update and WSUS use a combination of these techniques to automatically perform patch assessments for you.
2. Be notified of security updates – Do you know if new patches have been released for your operating system and applications? You can’t manage what you’re not aware of! A big key to patch management is to be constantly informed about the latest security patches.
Microsoft patches are very easy to track. Simply sign up for the security bulletin notification process. You can receive a variety of alerts by RSS feed and/or email. Staying up to date on third-party vendors’ patches often requires a little more work. While some vendors have an email alert service, others require you to regularly browse their websites.
1. Prioritize patch installation – Some patches are mission-critical and should be installed as soon as possible, while others might not need to be installed at all. Each patch needs to be assessed to determine (a) if it should be deployed and (b) if so, what its priority level is.
While a starting point for the prioritization process should be to review the vendor-provided severity rating, this information needs to be modified based on your business’ actual needs. For example, although Microsoft rates denial-of-service attacks as “low severity,” if your business requires 100% availability then patches that address denial-of-service attacks may be “critical” for you.

One thing to keep in mind in the patch management process is that installing a patch for an application often “breaks” the application. Your applications team needs to be prepared to fix any problems that the patch itself creates. For this reason, a risk analysis needs to be done for each patch to determine if the patch’s benefits outweigh its potential risks. Ideally, representatives from each of your organization’s departments that might be affected by a given patch should be involved in this discussion.
1. Schedule the patch deployment – Once you have decided which patches will be deployed, you need to determine which machines they should be installed on, and in what order. Critical patches may be selected for installation on a regular monthly basis, while moderate- or low-severity patches might be handled quarterly.
Because patch installation can be risky, you should always start by installing patches in your testing infrastructure. If all goes well, then you can roll things out to your production environment, always having a back-up plan in place in case problems ensue.

One of the trickiest parts about patch deployments is determining how to handle any required system reboots. If multiple patches are being deployed at once, you may wish to use “no reboot” install commands so that each one doesn’t cause a system reboot. Once all of the patches are deployed, you can schedule a system reboot for an appropriate time.
1. Verify patch installation – Never assume that a patch installation went smoothly! Even though a patch was executed on a system, a variety of factors may have prevented a successful patch installation. After a patch has been installed you need to complete another patch assessment to ensure that the proper files and registry keys were written to each system.
2. Verify that everything still works properly – As mentioned above, patch installation often has negative unintended consequences – especially when you’re dealing with application patches. Once a patch has been deployed you need to verify that the patched system or application, and all of the systems or applications that it affects or interacts with, are still working properly.
3. Keep good records – It is very important that you keep track of exactly what was installed, when it was done, and who was responsible for the installation. A strong patch reporting system will create an audit trail that can be used to identify possible causes of problems if something breaks, and that may be required for regulatory compliance purposes. Many of the patch management tools will automatically collect this data for you.
4. Report to management – Don’t keep all of these records to yourself! You also need to regularly provide reports to company management, to show that the patch management process is being followed and patches are being deployed in a timely and efficient manner. A high-level “executive summary” will be appropriate for your organization’s executive management, while a more detailed report is often required for your company’s IT folks.
Conclusion: Patch management for Windows environments – or for any environments, for that matter – can be a daunting task, but the above steps can help provide some structure for this otherwise unwieldy process. If you would like some assistance with the patch management process, give us a call. Patch management is one of the many services that we provide.

Romeo Cavestany, Systems Engineer ______________________________________________________________________________________

Success Story

Coyote Creek helps Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties ensure Business Efficiency and Continuity

“We were very impressed by the knowledge and friendliness of Coyote Creek’s engineers and their flexibility in working with us.” – Michael Enos, CTO, Second Harvest

Second Harvest is the trusted leader dedicated to ending local hunger. Since its inception in 1974, Second Harvest has become one of the largest food banks in the nation, helping feed an average of almost a quarter of a million people each month – one in ten people, in two of the most affluent counties in the Bay Area.

An efficient and robust IT infrastructure is critical to Second Harvest’s ability to support their operations as Michael Enos, Second Harvest Food Bank’s Chief Technology Officer explained. “It takes a very efficient logistics organization to run Second Harvest. For example, in 2012, we distributed 45 million pounds of food through a network of more than 300 partner agencies to 740 different sites throughout the Bay Area. Combine that with developing and supporting systems for fundraising and scheduling over 270,000 volunteer hours per year and it’s a formidable task for a small IT department to handle.”

Fortunately, the technology community has stepped up and companies like Adobe, Cisco, Microsoft and NetApp have helped provide a highly available infrastructure to support Second Harvest’s day-to-day operations and ensure operational continuity in the event of a natural disaster – a scenario in which Second Harvest would be a critical part of the community safety net.

Coyote Creek’s involvement with Second Harvest began when they were recommended to Enos to help with the upgrade of Microsoft Active Directory as a pre-requisite to a Microsoft Exchange 2010 DAG (Database Availability Group) migration. The Active Directory project, which included the decommissioning of various legacy domain controllers, went very well. Based on this success, Second Harvest engaged Coyote Creek to architect and migrate their existing Exchange 2007 infrastructure to Exchange 2010 and to implement Hyper-V and Failover Clustering on NetApp’s storage network.

Coyote Creek’s highly competent engineers worked against a well-defined Statement of Work and the migration project was completed within a month. “We were very impressed by the knowledge and friendliness of Coyote Creek’s engineers and their flexibility in working with our availability,” said Second Harvest CTO, Michael Enos. “We’re very happy to have Coyote Creek as one of our IT partners. It’s good to know that they are there when we need them.”

Just as Second Harvest provides an invaluable safety net to those Bay Area community members who need their help, Coyote Creek provides a safety net to Second Harvest Food Bank to help ensure their business efficiency and continuity.

______________________________________________________________________________________

Subscribe to Our Blog

You can subscribe to our blog to keep up with tips and best practices from some of the most savvy consultants in the industry. Don’t miss these hot topics discussions: Exchange 2013 Upgrade Path, An IT Professionals Personal Experience with Windows 8, Best Practices to Hiring an IT Contractor and many more! ______________________________________________________________________________________

Coyote Creek is Available for 2013 Budgeting Advice

A number of our customers have asked for proposals for budgetary purposes, to help them plan for 2013 projects. If you need a quote for a project you’re considering for next year, just give us a call and we’ll turn it around right away. ______________________________________________________________________________________

Atlassian Partners

We are always looking for ways to make life simpler for our customers and Coyote Creek can now be your one-stop shop for Atlassian products and services! As an authorized Atlassian reseller, Coyote Creek can also help get your licenses’ expiration dates synchronized to simplify the process of license tracking and renewal. ______________________________________________________________________________________

90 Days of Free Monitoring for Your Exchange Server

In just 90 days we will prove to you the value of having Coyote Creek as your IT partner. Signup Today! ______________________________________________________________________________________

Contact Us

Your primary contact with Coyote Creek is your Account Manager but you are welcome to contact our management team at any time. Please contact Terri Carney our Director of Sales and she will get you talking to the right people at Coyote Creek. ______________________________________________________________________________________

About Coyote Creek

Founded in 1998 by a team of former corporate IT professionals, Coyote Creek understands the issues and complexities that are part of large-scale and high-growth IT environments. Pragmatic and vendor neutral, Coyote Creek brings deep expertise to help customers manage technology and project risk, inspiring confidence and creating peace of mind. For more information, please visit http://www.coyotecrk.com

Why Choose Us

CityTeam Ministries

“Working with Coyote Creek was a fantastic experience. The team was extremely competent and all wanted to go the extra mile to ensure a smooth systems upgrade. They surpassed our expectations and have become part of the fabric we’ve woven to accomplish our mission.”

Jeff Cherniss
CFO, CityTeam Ministries

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How to Present Your Successes to the IT Steering Committee

Exchange 2013 Upgrade Path: Don’t Rush Into This!

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How to Start an IT Steering Committee

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Coyote Creek helps Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties ensure Business Efficiency and Continuity

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