Are You Being Served?

To serve, or not to serve . . .

OK, ditch the literary references.

"Should I have server?"

That's the $10,000 question.  Servers are wonderful things - powerful, capable, expensive.  Expensive to buy; expensive to configure; expensive to back up; expensive to maintain; surrounded by expensive power, environmental and network infrastructure.

There was a time when having a server, or a set of servers, was essential.  Large businesses had servers.  Small businesses had standalone computers.  The two didn't intersect.  Servers were so central to businesses that they had to be flawless - continuously available,  backing up while running, allowing hardware device replacement with no down time (hot swapping) and on and on.  A whole support industry grew up to support these complicated, powerful systems. 

The premise is/was: "You need to have a server, and therefore the server needs to have all these continuous availability features".

For most small businesses ("small" as defined by InterConnected Technologies: fewer than 20 computer users) the answer really is "No, you don't."  Yes, there are unique circumstances that dictate the presence of a server in a small business - usually an application requirement.  Usually NOT a functional requirement.

Why is that?  Well, simply put, the things servers offer, which are so essential to all businesses these days, and which only servers can provide to a business with, say, 500 users, are now available in other ways from other places.  

Why is that?  Well, simply put, the world has, in the lingo of Stephen King's Dark Tower series, moved on.  Things have changed.  Things that give enterprise power to non-enterprise users.

What things?  Well, to use the buzzword of today:  "The Cloud."

Those of us old enough to remember the 70's clearly (no jokes here) will remember the concept of a Service Bureau.  They were companies that offered computer services to other companies that didn't really want to run their own fancy data centers.  The Cloud is really just a reincarnation of that in the internet age.  The key difference is that anyone, anywhere can take advantage of cloud-based services easily and usually at remarkably low costs. 

Here's the logic chain that leads so many small businesses astray:

1. You need a server.
2. Since you need a server, the server has to be well configured, with all the bells and whistles to make it work flawlessly.
3. Since you have a server that can do all sorts of things, you should use it to do those things.

The problem with that logic is the problem with so much otherwise-unflawed logic:  the premise is wrong.  If you reject the premise, the whole chain of logic becomes invalid.  It's not that the things servers can do aren't valuable to a small business; it's that there are other ways of obtaining that value that cost far less to acquire, implement and maintain than a traditional server. 

So it is for most small businesses.  With today's technology, most - dare I say the majority - of small businesses do not need a server, and so do not need the expense associated with buying, installing, configuring, running and maintaining a server. 

So, down to brass tacks:

Servers are single points of failure.  Keeping things moving smoothly requires the elimination of single points of failure, and/or bulletproofing those that remain such that the risk of failure is greatly reduced.  That's why servers are expensive - that bulletproofing.  If you don't need the server, you don't need the bulletproofing.

The functions provided to large business by servers are, in part, (going from the most practical to the most esoteric):

File services

Nearly everyone is familiar with the concept of using files that are on another computer.  Large businesses use file servers because it's easier overall to manage things when all the files used by hundreds of users are on a server.  With the advent of several file storage mechanisms, small business have numerous less expensive options to provide the same thing.

Backup services

This is really just a subset of File Services.  Backing things up from a server is easy to control, easy to maintain, easy to monitor.  It's also expensive.  Hardware and software to perform server backups cost well in excess of $1000 per server.  With the advent of more advanced client computer backup tools and services, centralized backup is largely no longer necessary for small businesses.

Print services

Servers can make it easy to have a collection of printers that are accessible/installable for everyone on a network.  With the ubiquity of network attached printers, these printer services are largely no longer necessary for small businesses. 

Exchange services

This is one of the biggest traps into which small businesses fall.  "Since you have this server, let's run Exchange on it.  It doesn't cost anything more, and you'll get business-class email".  The problem again is the premise.  It does cost more to provide the service well.  The server, environmentals, power and networking requirements to provide reliable email service go far beyond what most commercial office space can accommodate/provide.  With the advent of hosted Microsoft Exchange service, small (and many large) businesses are seeing the advantages of not having to provide a commercial class data center to run their own email services reliably.

SQL Server

Time was if you wanted to have an SQL database you had to run your own SQL server.  Those times are long past, as almost every web hosting company offers inexpensive SQL database services, and many if not most major application service providers who require SQL services offer entirely hosted services that include both application and SQL database services.

Domain authentication services

"Since you need a server, you should have all the computers authenticate through the domain controller."  Again, the premise is incorrect.  Even if you do need a server, whether domain authentication is required depends completely on what users need to do with their computers and the server.  

DNS services

This is the service that translates www.ibm.com to 129.42.56.216 which it really is.  It's also the service that translates the names of other servers and computers in the local network into their addresses.  One only needs this to be done on a server if one has other servers in the local network.

DHCP services

This is the service that assigns local addresses to machines on a local network.  This service can be provided (and in the 'old days' always was provided) by a server.  Even the lowest retail grade router these days can do an adequate job of this.  The more sophisticated commercial routers of today can do this flawlessly.

Conclusion

Running all these things on a server used to be the only game in town.   They represented the only way to get certain things done, and became central points of failure that affected dozens, hundreds or thousands of users.  They evolved into the robust, capable, expensive hardware and software entities they currently are based on that risk, and requirement.  For small businesses, there are almost always other, more modern, more efficient, cheaper, and often more capable ways of accomplishing things formerly done only by servers.  The benefits of servers almost always only apply when there are economies of scale.  Managing a business of 500, or 5000, or 200,000 employees without servers providing some part of that management would be unthinkable, unmanageable, unwieldy - just plain wrong.  For now.  The technology continues to evolve.  One clear example of this is Microsoft Exchange.  While it is true that hosted Microsoft Exchange (and, to a lesser extent, the newer but less capable Google Apps) provides enterprise-class service to non-enterprise users, it's not limited to just the little guys.  United Airlines, an entity fully capable of implementing whatever technology it wishes, recently outsourced 50,000 Exchange mailboxes to a hosted provider.  This trend will continue, as outsourced, specialized services become more and more powerful and capable.  Right now, though, they are plenty powerful and capable of providing excellent value, greater simplicity and enterprise-class service for small businesses, without the attendant enterprise-class costs.

The Battle Continues: importing and organizing digital pictures

Watch this space for an evolving discussion of this topic.

At issue:  how to do this efficiently and powerfully.

Options:

1. Manual
2. Windows 7 import
3. Windows Live Photo Gallery import
4. Adobe Photoshop
5. Picasa 3

There is already an article here describing option 1, Manual, but while this gives great control, it is not easy, and is very labor intensive.

As time permits, we'll look at the rest.

Watch this space - vital Android apps (according to me)

This is just to get things started, these are the best apps of their kind, and essential to my daily use of Android:

Core application replacements / enhancements

Enhanced Email - improved Exchange client. If you need multiple Exchange accounts, or a mix of Exchange and Google Apps / Gmail in the same place, this is for you. (requires Contact Editor by dmfs as well).

Calengoo - replacement calendar; brilliant!!

Calendar Snooze - better control over calendar reminders.

MeContacts - "favorites" app for frequent contacts.

Contapps - another spin on the dialer, with some very handy functions.

Tasks for Microsoft Exchange (or Roadsync) - if you want to sync Todos with Exchange.

Go Launcher EX - excellent alternative launcher.

Alarm Clock Plus - just what it sounds like.

Life productivity apps

ToMarket - shopping list manager.

Carrr Matey - "dude, where's my car?" only better!

Shazam / Soundhound - let it "listen" to a song and it'll tell you what it is, who sang, it, etc., etc.

Functional enhancements

B-Folders - encrypted notes that sync between Android and PC over local wireless.

Evernote - data capture of all types; sync'd to web and PC.

Movies (Flixter) - movie reviews from Rotten Tomatoes, showtimes, reviews, etc.

Documents To Go - Word, Excel, Powerpoint, PDF.

Jukefox - interesting and powerful music player.  Caused some instability on my G2x, but interesting for the future, nonetheless. 

Utilities

Beautiful Widgets - I resisted a long time, but the small home screen clock/weather widget, and the 1x1 day widget are dead useful if you have a phone without Sense.

Circle Battery Widget - a very nice, easy to use 1x1 battery meter.

Battery Notifier (Big Text) - puts the battery level in the notification bar where you can always see it.

Wifi Manager - much better/clearer widget to manage wifi connections.

Bluetooth Widget - home screen shortcut to toggle Bluetooth, or access Bluetooth settings.

Astro File Manager - file explorer.

More detail (links, reviews, etc.) to follow.

Finally! Gmail allows conversation threading to be turned off

OK, ladies and gentlemen.  I said when it first came out, and I still maintain, that Gmail (and Google Apps) web-based email, while powerful and very advanced in some ways, began and remains with one of the worst user interfaces I've ever seen.  From the start it was confusing, disorganized and inefficient.

"Hey, Don, don't hold back; tell us how you really feel!"  you might say.

I have watched the evolution of the Gmail web interface over the past couple of years as it has moved ever-closer to what people are used to, toward a more efficient, intuitive interface.  Pushed aside is the original avant-garde concept of "don't delete anything; just remove the 'Inbox' label instead and keep it forever" (and in Google Apps, this filled up more one user's mailbox in the process, with no abilty to obtain additional space, even if one is willing to pay, still!).  The buttons and actions on the main email screen have gradually been altered to be more "normal".  How many people really want to add multiple labels to a given email?  Not many.  Read/Reply/Forward/File/Delete.  That's what people do with email.  Concocting elaborate tagging schemes for email creates the same tangled and inconsistent mess that so many people who created hundreds of folders in Outlook created for themselves. 

Now, some say this is a concession by Google.  I guess I agree:  it's a concession to years of user interface design evolution that made email clients better.  Something Google initially just decided to throw out.

Enter the latest:  the ability to turn off threaded email.  Now, I don't mind threaded email: for some select situations in which it makes sense, like discussion groups with long back-and-forth discussions on which I might not keep up on a regular basis.  But for regular email the Gmail interface for threaded conversations (the only view available) is cluttered and confusing; has led to people forwarding or replying to the wrong "place in the thread"; is less than stellar.  In the vernacular: it sucks. 

Google has finally decided to let us turn it off.  This feature (really an anti-feature, I suppose) will be rolled out over the next week or so.  See the Google Help posting, below. 

Now, before anyone describes me as an Anti-Conversationist, let me say that I actually like the way Outlook 2010 shows threaded conversations.  It's not the function, it's the interface.  Until Google morphs the interface for conversations into something clearer, less cluttered - you know, better - I'll stick with unthreaded, thank you very much!

Here's the Google help page:

Conversations

Gmail groups all replies with their original message, creating a single conversation or thread. In other email systems, responses appear as separate messages in your inbox, forcing you to wade through all your mail to follow the conversation. In Gmail, replies to emails (and replies to those replies) are displayed in one place, in order, making it easier to understand the context of a message -- or to follow the conversation.

When you open one message in a conversation, all of your related messages will be stacked neatly on top of each other, like a deck of cards. We call this Conversation View. In Conversation View, each new message is stacked on top of the ones that arrived before it, so that the newest message is always the one you see first.

To see all the messages in a conversation, just click Expand all. Note that a conversation will break off into a new thread if the subject line of the conversation is changed, or if the conversation reaches over 100 messages.

If you'd like, you can change this setting so that replies aren't threaded into conversations, but appear as individual messages in your inbox. To do so, go to the Generaltab of your Gmail Settings, and select the radio button next to 'Conversation view off'.

We're in the process of giving users the option to turn Conversation View off. Everybody should have this option within a week or so.

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http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=5900

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Hallelujah!

What's a Smartphone buyer to do?

Attention citizens:  the smartphone world has been turned on its ear (almost pun intended . . . think about it)!  A couple of years ago the iPhone burst on the scene and changed everything!  Well, that's what Apple would have you believe.  It changed some things, yes.  It created a new market for a machine that was, yes, a phone, but was so much more.  Trouble was/is, it was/is only a mediocre phone, thanks in part to the cellular radio and/or antenna, and thanks, in large part, to AT&T about whom it can be said that their service isn't very good, but at least it's the most expensive!

When the iPhone was released, smart phones had smallish screens and did basic business stuff:  email, PIM apps, and the like, along with a smattering of other things.  Everyone forgets that the Palm stores sold tens of thousands of apps long before the Apple App Store, though, so the precedent for a device that was "so much more" was set long before Apple did its thing.  That said, the iPhone is credited with changing everything - so be it.

Enter Google.  Google made a modest little Linux-based open-source operating system called Android. It quietly came out on a single T-Mobile phone, the G1, and that's the way it was until fairly recently.  In the past year, everything has changed again, and it's not Apple's doing this time.

Android has experienced astonishing growth over the past year.  The numbers are all over - just Google them (yes, again, almost pun intended).  With faster growth and a larger installed base than the iPhone, Android has emerged as a power to be reckoned with, and a darned fun "phone" to have.

The point?  If you have an old PalmOS phone, or a Blackberry, or a featurephone (or, yes, even an iPhone that's driving you crazy), and are considering an upgrade, look very seriously at one of the new crop of Android devices.  If you use Google's Gmail or Google Apps or Exchange for "email", Android phones do these things as well as anyone.  For Exchange users, you can get email, contacts, calendar and task sync over the air with Exchange for far less (typically about $23/month less) than comparable service for a Blackberry. 

Don't just go get an iPhone.  They're wonderful devices, but really not very good phones.  Android phones are wonderful devices, and very good phones.  Even some of the most devoted iPhone fans will admit that once the iPhone comes out (probably) on Verizon they'll be switching carriers immediately.  Trouble is, that's probably not going to happen until at least 2012 (when, as we all know from the movie, most of the world will be destroyed anyway).  Plenty of time to experience the yummy goodness of Android, and then go get an iPhone, if you still want to.  Sometimes people go get iPhones because they don't know that there's a viable alternative out there.  There is. 

Don't just go get another Blackberry.  They are great devices.  They changed everything before Apple did.  But they are expensive to run, and if you are not required to use one, or don't need the extra things that they do (and I contend that if you're reading this you probably don't), why pay for them? 

Don't just buy an Android phone, either.  The decision about what "phone" is right for you is as important as (or perhaps these days more important than) the decision about what computer is right for you.  If you're a client of mine (or a relative!), let's discuss it!

Something to think about.