August 30, 2010 - eGroup, Inc. today announced that it has successfully completed the VMWare Desktop Virtualization solution competency. This achievement demonstrates that eGroup is committed to be an expert in helping customers virtualize their IT environments. Further, in achieving this competency, eGroup acknowledges that this distinction and VMware solutions are key accelerators for enabling their growth in the virtualization market. Click Here to read more…

OK, I know this information is readily available to anyone with a gMail account but there are times when technology is released that is just plain cool and warrants repeating it. This past week, Google released a new feature to their already established Google Voice product. For those who have not investigated this yet, Google Voice allows one to secure a dedicated local phone number that can be used to route calls based on rules to different locations such as home, work, mobile, etc. Changing your mobile number? Doesn’t matter because you don’t need to give it out - just pass out your Google Voice number and you’re insulated. Don’t want to talk to someone? Just send their calls to cyberspace! The new feature released allows calls to be made to and from your Google Chat window, including international calls for very low rates .

Click Here to read more…

Recently eGroup worked on a project for a large software company that involved creating a XENAPP 6 Farm for several hundred users, including many located in the UK, the Netherlands, and also in Australia. A core requirement of this install was to enable timezone, currency, and date format localization for CRM and Sales Management software utilized by those remote users.

XENAPP 6 requires Windows 2008 Server R2 64-bit to run and many of the policies available through the Citrix Delivery Console require settings in the GPMC. Because the latest version of XENAPP relies heavily on Windows 2008 Server Roles and the client was not running a full 2008 AD many of these policies were not available on their AD server.

Click Here to read more…

eGroup’s VMWare VMWorld 2010 in San Francisco’s schedule is all set and ready for next weeks conference.  Tune into the eGroup Blog and follow us on Twitter for late breaking info directly from VMWorld if you are unable to attend.  If you are able to attend the event let us know through the comments or contact us while out there.

Here is the eGroup Schedule for sessions so far.  Send us a note and we can meet up for the session or pass along the information afterwards. 

Monday. August 30th:

• Lab Automation Best Practices:  Advanced Technical on VMWare Lab Manager
• Virtualizing Tier 1 Applications:  Exchange, Databases, SAP, SharePoint, Oracle using AppSpeed, CapacityIQ, DRS, Hot-Add.
• Virtual Appliances: Simplifying Application Deployment and Accelerating Your Journey to the Cloud
• Design, Deploy, and Optimize Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 on vSphere
• Exploring VMware APIs:  Management Automation!

Tuesday. August 31st:

• Design, Deploy, and Opitimize Microsoft SQL 2008
• Spring Into The Cloud: Understanding Spring as a Cloud Application Development Platform
• SpringSource: Application Infrastructure for a Virtual World
• Accelerate Windows 7 Migration with VMware ThinApp and View
• Troubleshooting ThinApp Applications

Wednesday. September 1st:

• Optimizing Your Virtual Infastructure Capacity with vCenter CapacityIQ
• Guest Operations Using VMware VIX APIs and Beyond:  Automate Guest operations, installations, etc… through this API!
• ThinApp : What’s New and Future Vision
• Virtual Machines Outperforming Physical Machines - Crossing the Performance Barrier:  Application Performance in VMs!
• Application Management with Noah Wasmer

Thursday. September 2nd:

•  Java Apps on vSphere: Technical Best Practices and Why Now Is Better Than Ever
• VMforce – The Trusted Enterprise Java Cloud
• Zimbra and The Future for Mission Critical Apps in the Virtualized Enterprise
• VMware vCenter™ Chargeback - Advanced

 Looking forward to seeing or hearing from all the attendees!

" Free " is the best word in the English language.

One of the complaints that I have heard through the years centers around the costs that are associated with Blackberry’s Enterprise Server (BES), and I can understand why. When one considers the alternatives, why would an organization pay so much for BES? The licensing costs, RIM support contract, and the BES software can add up to a small fortune.  When you add a tough economy to the mix, people tend look elsewhere to save money. Nonetheless, the fact remains Blackberry Nation is alive and well. Consider the alternative (like the Droid), you can connect to your exchange front end in about 2 minutes without any additional costs — this has become a big point of contention against Blackberry.

Blackberry has answered the bell and released the Blackberry Enterprise Server Express and it comes with a ton of free goodness to get your users hooked up with what they need — at no additional costs. That’s right…Free.

Click Here to read more…

It is no mystery the buzzword of the year is “cloud computing”. According to Gartner, it is at the top of mind for CIOs, but at the same time, it is probably the most confusing and misunderstood topic. Vendors, hardware or software, aren’t helping matters by publicizing everything as “cloud ready” or “cloud aware”, especially for products that have nothing at all to do with cloud computing. After a simple explanation of cloud computing, I’ll introduce you to the three basic types of cloud computing and how they are different. I’d like to touch on VMware’s cloud strategy, as well. Click Here to read more…

This is the first of many how-to posts on some of the basics and more advanced ways to style and design SharePoint 2010 using SharePoint Designer 2010 to give it extra appeal.

I was working on a marketing site the other day that I wanted to make fixed width for 1024px screens and centered on the page.  Very easy to do in most applications but will all the CSS that SharePoint has it can be difficult sometimes to find the location to make that easy change.

Here is how you can make your site a fixed width and centered on the page in SP2010…

Open up the corev4.css file and look for the “form” tag.  Specify it below to your desired width.  Typically this would be done in the body and “container” (or whatever you like to call your main wrapper div) tags on traditional sites.

form {
 width: 950px;
 margin-left: auto;
 margin-right: auto;
}

Save and your site should now be centered!

It is always nice to a have a consolidated place to find what you are looking for, and in case you are in need of specific ports that concern Citrix XenApp environments, then please use this as a guide.

Click Here to read more…

Recently when installing ESXi 4.1 for a customer I noticed a little quirk in the new setup of the management console that had me chasing my tail for a good while and I thought I would share my experience with you guys so you didn’t make the same mistake.

Click Here to read more…