Our last entry focused on the core, light touch scenario that Swimage Encore provides. This entry will take you through a scenario that some folks claim cannot be accomplished without being on the latest versions of all infrastructure components. As one of our customers said while being told that at a presentation, Swimage Encore provides full zero touch deployment RIGHT NOW, without expensive prerequisite infrastructure upgrades and without linking yourself to a treadmill of imposed upgrades. Now don't get us wrong, we love infrastructure upgrades. Our consulting services team is always on the ready to assist you with those needs but we want to engage in that partnership with you when the upgrade makes sense for your business. That concept of deploying solutions when those investments make your company more competitive seems obvious but, more often then not, the implication of hte technology on your business is an afterthought.

So, with no further preamble or intro, here is a brief introduction on the zero touch scenario with Swimage Encore. For a deeper dive, please feel free to sign up for a free and amazingly entertaining demonstration of the entire framework. (Take our word for it, it is very entertaining!)

Hello folks! Long time no speak! We have got a quick video demonstration of one of the core scenarios that Swimage Encore supports ready for your viewing pleasure. We promise it will be the best 6:17 of your Monday, September 28th!

The scenario is straight forward. You have machines out in your infrastructure with no operating system loaded. This quick intro video covers core themes, terms and activity in this scenario.

Click Here to see the Presentation

OK folks, we all read the news last week and have been using Windows 7 for quite some time. I took it upon myself to write up some notes on the new release for our sales team to use at an upcoming event. I tried to cover the important bits while not repeating the same stuff everyone else has already said. If you want to take a look, the White Paper is now live online. Click Here to read away!

The trick to any new operating system is to determine the relative worth to the organication and then figure out how to get it into play with as little risk as possible and with a velocity that allows you to take advantage of the new technology faster than your competitors. Windows 7 brings a feature payload that is significant as well as a technology set that should help you overcome adoption hurdles like AppCompat in new ways. That simply leaves the "How," around getting it out in a rapid, safe and repeatable fashion.

Queue the Reverand folks! 

The team got back from Vegas and everyone is safe. We are now getting a chance to reach out and speak too many of you who we met at the show and man has that been exciting! We are looking forward to sharing a demonstration with you over the coming weeks. If you are interested in a demo, click here and you can sign up online!

For those of you who have not seen Swimage Encore yet, I wanted to talk about a couple of the coolest features in our product. During deployment, the beginning and the end are key inflection points. Knowing that a given target machine is ready for deployment is critical to projection of success. More often than not, deployment failures are caused by conditions that should be corrected before deployment is performed. A key component to Swimage Encore is our Validation phase. This is a process, by which the system can check a multitude of key environmental factors like disk space, availability of components (per the configuration) as well as disk health to insure the deployment that is scheduled will be successful. This phase can be run as a distinct workflow but is also run immediately before any deployment. This allows administrators to check groups of resources targeted for deployment in advance of the effort to get a sense for how successful that deployment job may be pre- execution. This process will run again as part of the “Pre-Deployment Checklist” via the workflow and make sure machines that are not ready for deployment will not be targeted. Every failure we avoid before starting is another bad review avoided and more importantly, one less dissatisfied internal customer!

Validation addresses the beginning of the deployment, but the end and execution is also very critical. In order to address that, Swimage Encore provides unparalleled status throughout the deployment process. Leveraging our live dashboards, deployment engineers can watch all activities related to a particular migration or upgrade and immediately see how things are progressing. As a drill through in the dashboard, every single step of the workflow can be investigated (and from any authenticated workspace as we are entirely web-based! Or even from your iPhone if you happen to have one. No need for a footprint or client.) The system will even echo any potential error state back to the console via a “Live Tether.” This “Live Tether” allows the engineer to see exactly the error faced on the client side, take any actions available (That would be available on the client side) as well as the ability to remotely troubleshoot from the web console. This is available at all phases of deployment (yep…even in the Preinstall Environment!). What this means is that anytime there is a problem, which we know is a rare event, your engineers will know exactly what it is and be able to remediate it from anywhere.

We are obviously very excited with the product, process and solution we have in Swimage Encore. We hope you give us the opportunity to demonstrate this via the web very soon! To tune into a webinar on Swimage Encore, click here and sign up for one of our standing demonstrations. It is time “Drink the Kool Aid” and start making new technology a true company asset rather than an encumbrance. To read more about that concept, stay tuned for an upcoming Blog about Infrastructure Optimization.

Brothas and sistahs, I’d like to thank ya’ll for comin’ out to visit me at the Swimage Revival at MMS 2009.  It was so nice seein’ ya’ll, and I know my deacons enjoyed meeting with you to talk about the data salvation possibilities of integrating with Swimage Encore.  We had a lot of fun, gave away a bunch of shirts, and drank a whole lotta Kool-Aid! 

If we missed seein’ you at the Revival, you can still enjoy some photos and videos at http://www.SwimageRevival.com I realize that’s not the same as enjoying my glory in person, but it’ll have to do until next year.  I’m gonna need at LEAST that much time to recover from all the fun I had in Vegas. 

I wanna thank all of the wonderful folks, from the Keynote speakers, the attendees and the fellow exhibitors for the kind words during the conference. My deacons and I had a wonderful time sharin’ the 11 CMD-Ments of Deployment and discussin’ the ways that Swimage Encore can get you off that horrible treadmill of writin’ custom scripts to deploy and onto a sustainable framework that leverages the strength of your infrastructure.  Not to mention freein’ you up to do things that add significant value to your IT Department.  

All of us at Intrinsic are looking forward to demoing Swimage Encore to you fine folks in the comin’ weeks.  If you didn’t get a chance to sign up for a demo, you can do so now by vistin’ http://www.intrinsic.net/Home/Products/Events-and-Demonstrations.aspx 

Once again, thank ya’ll for a wonderful time, and we look forward to seein’ ya’ll again next year.  Peace be with you brothas and sistahs, and may all your deployments be smooth.  Goodnight.

So folks, we took a pile of pictures and videos but due to the amount of work we were doing, some of the media is a bit out of date. Here you will see a few more testimonials and interviews with our fellow exhibitors. Going and visiting them now is a struggle (since the conference is over from an Expo Hall perspective).

Here we have Mr. McLovin who was a HUGE fan of our presence in the Expo Hall. He claims that is really his name and he seems VERY honest!

Then we met Bob and he told us about some of his pains as they relate to deployment:

As mentioned yesterday, we were fortunate enough to meet Rodney, the resident interviewer extraordinaire for MMS. A portion of that interview made it to the big stage today (link forthcoming) which triggered a number of new visitors. Word on the street is that our friend Mr. Urban was cat calling during the interview.

Today on the Expo Hall floor was slower that early in the week but the conversations were excellent. Plenty of folks were coming around to get more information about our services and products. Unlike the "Swag Grab" that happens early (and we are not against this!), the discussions today were focused on specific problems our customers face and how we can provide solutions. The ability to spend that time with potential customers is another thing that makes MMS a "Must Attend" event.

As our Expo Hall thinned out for actual potential customers, our fellow exhibitors got into the action. The Reverend was able to get out and meet some possible future members for his flock. We also offered an olive branch to the folks who felt we might have been a little sacrilegious. Pictures forthcoming.

I apologize for the lack of media this evening but we had a late night with a wonderful client dinner at Dos Caminos and a private film shoot in the VIP suite.

More news to come.

No animals were harmed in the filming of the spot that we will be releasing and nobody who was arrested was held.

We continue to have a great time on the Expo Hall floor with our theme and story about helping customers get out of the "Custom Software Development" business. We got a GREAT reference from a gentleman over on MyITForum. He apparently saw our booth and had some very nice things to say about Swimage. We want to thank Paul for those kind words and invite him over to the booth for some Kool Aid!

Here are some images from the floor today. We had some terrific visitors and a quote of the day. A passerby made a comment, "Well, when nothing else works, you might as well try sacriligious." Instead of encouraging the gentleman to pray for a sense of humor, Reverend Cornelious responded with, "Not sacriligious brotha, sacrilicious!"

We hosted Rodney, the MC of MMS for a brief interview as well as the young ladies from the SecureVantage booth. They were great sports and managed to put up with the Reverend! Make sure you check out the folks over at the SecureVantage booth! Last but not least, we met John Rakowski from dilgenter. He is also doing a daily blog about MMS. Try and check that out and let John know what you think!

We will have some video posts up a little later this evening including a few new testimonials. Make sure you post some comments and let us know if these posts are getting you closer to the action! I apologize for the misspelling last night (er...this AM). I am sure it will happen again!

We will be adding some of the videos from today's floor activities later this evening.

Well folks, during the opening expo we ran across a customer who has seen the light. This customer was faced with significant deployment challenges. He and his team recognized the power of Swimage and this is what he had to say about it this evening.

Check out the video EVERYONE is talking about!