User productivity: Achievable goal, or mission impossible?

Some interesting survey results;

SharePoint Usage Survey Results from OpenText.com

Over 2100 people participated in their survey: how are Businesses Using SharePoint?

Some of the more interesting results include:

• #1 Challenge is End User Adoption
• 44% of companies lack a training program
• 35% considering or using SharePoint in the Cloud

These results aren’t unexpected! I will share my take and field experience of this in a following post.

Gartner: Combine strategy and leadership to maximise the contribution of IT

Interesting Reading for Managers……

Strategy and leadership are the two most important disciplines for CIOs to exercise to drive sustained success, writes Dave Aron, vice-president and Gartner Fellow.

Few would argue with the fact that strategy and leadership have an interdependent and symbiotic relationship. Successful CIOs use leadership skills to energise people behind their IT strategy, which, in turn, provides the needed focus to leadership to maximise IT's business contribution.

I would go yet further and say that strategy and leadership are the two most important disciplines for CIOs to exercise to drive sustained success. This is particularly true during highly dynamic and uncertain times, when the content of other management disciplines - such as process and metrics - are prone to frequent change. In such environments, strategy is central to providing vision and direction, and leadership is required to inspire people to take the needed actions.

Read Further….

The Secret Mission of the Terminator – Apple fan?

Thought you might enjoy this! Watch the ending!

Did you have a good summer break?

Hi all. Sorry about the radio silence over the past few weeks. Been extremely busy with projects and then away on holiday. I had an ultimatum from my kids….it was them or my laptop. So, no laptop or Blackberry was allowed on our trip to New York. Felt helpless…some of you may know the feeling!

(The Mistry Family at the top of Empire State Building, New York)

The weather was great, food was excellent and had a wonderful time with the family.

Anyway, I came across this rather strange chap on my holiday in New York. Check out the pictures below..…will make you laugh! This guy was actually serious and stood outside the American Museum of Natural History all day! Anyone know him? I was too afraid to ask how many offers he had so far!

(click picture to enlarge)

Hope you all had a fabulous summer!

SQL Server 2005/2008 – Latest Patches and Planned Updates

Here is some info received from the Microsoft SQL Server team regarding the planned updates;

• SQL Server 2008 SP2. Microsoft targets release in Q3/CY2010.
• SQL Server 2005 SP4 release is planned for Q4/CY2010. Extended support for SQL Server 2005 will be available through 4/12/2016.  Please see http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/ for specifics.

Latest CUs (post current Service Packs);

• SQL2005: SP3 CU#9 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/980176/en-us)
• SQL2008: SP1 CU#7 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/979065/en-us)

Note: Install current Services Packs prior to latest CUs.

Current Service Packs;

• SQL2005: SP3 (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=ae7387c3-348c-4faa-8ae5-949fdfbe59c4&displaylang=en)
• SQL2008: SP1 (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=66ab3dbb-bf3e-4f46-9559-ccc6a4f9dc19&displaylang=en)

Outlook 2007 - Delete Auto-complete Email Addresses

Ever been haunted by an incorrect email address after having been entered/typed manually in the ‘To’ field? i.e. a typo?

Even after you have corrected a wrong email address in your contacts, the old email will continue to bug you when outlook tries to autocomplete addresses for you.

Microsoft outlook stores any email address you type into the “To” field–wrong or right. For example, if I type in “mom@blag.com” instead of “mom@blah.com”, outlook will try to autocomplete the error address into the email field. No matter where you try to correct this, the error email address will always be remembered.

Likewise, the bigger the cache of email addresses gets, the slower and more useless it becomes.

If you are lucky enough to trigger the autocompletion box, you can press the down arrow until the error email address is selected and then hit DELETE. Often, however, the autocompletion box will not be displayed.

The easiest thing to do is to blitz the whole file. The file lives here where your-profile is unique to your installation: “C:\Documents and Settings\your-profile\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook”

Delete or rename all *.nk2 files at this location.

If you need a detailed, walk-through you can find it here:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=287623

Fight against Cancer, everyone should! We are all in this together

Like me, you may may know someone close who’s life has been ‘uprooted’ by cancer. Let’s all contribute to a cause that is helping fight this disease. Our day to day life is very hectic and we forget that there are others who need our help! We can make a difference and can help by increasing awareness of this cause and donating.

Cancer Research UK is the world's leading charity dedicated to beating cancer through research. Their groundbreaking work has saved millions of lives. Further information about cancer and their research.

If you find my posts/articles interesting and is benefiting you and your organisation, then please do GIVE to this charity. Any donation, however big or small, to this charity will be greatly appreciated.  See Cancer Research UK - Donation link on the left hand side. Also, please help spread the word.

Thanks, PJ