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February 2nd, at approximately 7:30 a.m. local time on Gobbler’s Knob in a small town in western Pennsylvania, 20,000 people and a national radio and television audience anxiously await the prognostication of America’s favorite furry forecaster. In a tradition dating back 119 years, Punxsutawney Phil emerges from hibernation…and if he sees his shadow, it’s back into the burrow for six more weeks of cold weather. The celebration of Groundhog Day in America and Canada has its roots in the ancient Roman Feast of Lights and the early Christian tradition of Candlemas Day. However, it took a giant leap in popularity - as did Punxsutawney Phil and the entire town - with the 1993 release of the popular Bill Murray-Andie McDowell movie. In the film, Murray plays a cynical weatherman - appropriately named Phil - sent to cover Groundhog Day for the fourth straight year. Having made no effort to hide his frustration during the newscast, he goes to bed the night of February 2nd only to awake at 6:00 a.m. the next morning and discover it is Groundhog Day again…and again…and again. Are you struggling to achieve your goals and grow your small business? Albert Einstein said, insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” To truly make a leap, you have to commit to doing some things differently. Success Handler Action: With your team, look at your small business from the “10,000-foot level,” identifying areas where issues continually arise. Think about the reasons you keep encountering the same obstacles. Here are some questions to help you get started: ~ What are the things you do best? ~ Where are your biggest and most frequent frustrations? ~ Why are there differences between these results? ~ When was the last time you successfully changed something, and how did you do it? ~ Who are your team members most adept at taking action on new initiatives? The next step is to determine which areas you want to focus on changing first. Prioritize your challenges by order of highest potential impact on your small business. Then consider possible options for fixing each one. Ask those you trust for their recommendations, and talk to other business owners about how they handle these same issues. The more input you receive, the more likely you’ll reach the right conclusions. Success Handler Action: The best way to improve those situations that are keeping you on a circular treadmill of frustration is to begin addressing your challenges one at a time, taking a proactive approach to change things. Here are five steps for implementing solutions in your small business: 1. Select the option you think is most appropriate for overcoming a specific challenge. 2. Communicate the upcoming change to everyone affected by it. 3. Train key team members, then document in writing the new processes/procedures. 4. Measure the effectiveness of your solution, tweaking wherever necessary. 5. Recognize and celebrate with your team all positive improvements. Harold Ramis, the director of “Groundhog Day,” envisioned Murray’s character awakening over and over again for 10 years before finally freeing himself by learning to treat people differently. While that amount of time may have allowed Phil to learn a poem in French, create an ice sculpture and expertly play the piano, it nearly drove him crazy in the process. Before overloading on your fill of doing the same things and getting the same results - over and over - start changing your approach in a few essential areas. You may just find that tomorrow arrives bright, sunny and with the beginning of six weeks of incredible progress for your small business. Copyright © 2005 by Success Handler, LLC. All rights reserved. Magic Secrets Revealed. - Find out how David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear or how David Blaine levitated off the sidewalk! Make A Living Online Course. - David Vallieres Provides Detailed Instruction for Making a Living Online. This is a guest blog post written by Dave Kawula, a Senior Consultant with 1E. Dave was the guest on our January episode of the AlignIT Manager Tech Talk where we talked about how IT managers can take the risk out of their Windows 7 deployment projects. Here Dave outlines a key strategy to employ at the very beginning of your project and some of the tools that you can use.
As the clock keeps ticking towards end of support for Windows XP we need to find ways to accelerate our Windows 7 Migrations. Just because you accelerate your Windows 7 Migration you don’t have to increase your budget. In fact what if you could do the opposite…accelerate the project and reduce cost. Wait a minute – this is an IT Project. The words “reduce costs” don’t really exist in a typical IT Project. Well maybe they can… Most Windows 7 Projects I have seen project over 80% of the costs for that project on Application Packaging and Remediation. What if there was a way to have an organization quickly rationalize their deployed applications. What if there was a way to remove unused software from a desktop prior to the migration. I can sum it up in one word: “Rationalization”.Well there are a couple of tools out there that can help us out with this. One is the Application Compatibility Toolkit “ACT” from Microsoft. It is a great tool that allows us to gain insight into our organization. This unfortunately requires an agent to be deployed on the workstations and requires us to scan them to see what is installed. Then pull the information back to a central database and try to analyze what is deployed. The second tool is one that many of you will already own and have probably deployed. Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager has a software metering component that will allow us to use simply scan the machines using the Configuration Manager agent. One problem this requires a lot of configuration and won’t automatically pull back unused software to keep licensing in check. The third tool is one from 1E Software call AppClarity. You can checkout a link to this product here: 1E AppClarity I have personally seen AppClarity give money back to an organization in less than 60 Days after the acquisition of their software. Think about it…why waste money getting shelfware or unused software ready for your brand new Windows 7 Desktops. Once again “Rationalize” not only the amount of software that needs to be migrated to the new platform but also the amount of work. Checkout the screenshot below of this software package. It has revolutionized the way I approach Windows Migrations.
So in my perfect world that I live in I need a tool that will do the following for my Windows 7 Project:
If you can drive cost savings at the start of this project you will be well on your way. Gartner has estimated that it costs on average between $1000.00 to 3000.00 + per desktop to migrate to Windows 7. Most of this cost comes from the work required to migrate unused applications. What if you could get back all that time and save hard dollars by removing shelfware before your projects starts. This makes your project sponsors very happy and allows you to accelerate this project. Deployment costs reduced by 30 % simply by “Rationalizing” the number of applications that need to be ported to Windows 7 and automating the delivery mechanisms for the images. You could easily save over $90,000 in soft costs out of the gate. Reduce the amount of Software Renewals, Support, Deployment, and licensing costs. Once again we “Rationalize” all of our apps. Assume a 50% savings for your organization what does that return? How about an estimated 1 /mil + savings in hard and soft costs. By the way – now that you have a tool that helps rationalize this – think of the savings the next time the licensing police come visit you. I hope you have enjoyed this post and I welcome any feedback or if you want to share your experiences with your Windows 7 projects thus far. About Dave Kawula
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Dave Kawula is an MCSE and CNE with over fifteen years of experience in the IT industry and a senior consultant with IE. His background includes data communications networks within multi-server LAN/WAN environments. He has experience with project management, network strategic planning, network design and integration. He has led the architecture for NT, SMS/SCCM, Exchange and Internet Gateways, including managing migration paths and issues as well as implementation. He has supported a variety of network infrastructures as well as architecting and defining technical standards.