Inside ASI-AP

Recently we purchased a Google Search Appliance to beef up the search functionality of the various ASI websites - and we have named it the Googlebox. It is currently available internally at the URL http://googlebox/.

The Googlebox is not just able to index website content but in fact anything in our systems - including SQL databases and Exchange email boxes. As most of you know we do have a lot of information stored in our own iMIS SQL database including all SMRs, community postings, consulting project postings, enhancement requests and other things. This will now go into a single search index on the Googlebox along with all of our websites, the docs.imis.com online manuals and files from Clarity.

With the new VMWare ESX infrastructure now live in our Melbourne hosting centre (see previous post) we have updated our hosting prices to reflect the new options for virtual dedicated servers. If you haven't seen the new price sheet contact me. In essence the pricing is broadly the same - but customers will receive a better solution - virtual dedicated servers instead of shared servers. For some configurations the new pricing is even a little lower.

We have added the option to sign 1, 2 or 3 year contracts (previously hosting did not require a contractual commitment to any period other than a month). Longer term contracts attract bigger discounts off the standard prices, so there is some incentive for customers to sign longer terms with us, save some money and get a better solution.

We have invested over a hundred thousand dollars since the start of the year in our new hosting servers in Melbourne. Similar projects have also been undertaken in the US, Canada and UK hosting centres - the total spend worldwide is now just under $800,000. We have moved to a virtualised environment where we can manage a hundred or more customers on a single server cluster, instead of having to manage over a hundred individual servers. We are using VMWare ESX Server, which is the server infrastructure product of the same VMWare we have been using on our desktops for iMIS demos for a couple of years now. ESX actually runs Linux as it's core operating system, and on top of that it can run hundreds of Windows Servers, all virtualised.

After being in Melbourne for 6 weeks, Paul heads back home to Florida and his family tomorrow. Paul came here in January to cover for Lap while Lap took annual holidays. It was certainly a hectic few weeks for Paul covering both internal IT and hosting queues. One of his major achievements while here was to roll-out the brand new virtual server farm in our Melbourne hosting centre - over $100k in hardware to give us a new state-of-the-art facility to offer to hosted customers throughout the region.

Paul doing a handover back to Lap

We went live with the self-service aspects of our global HR system (HROffice - www.ascentis.com) last week. I logged in today to have a look around and put in my first leave request using the self service website. I updated my personal details, I added in my family details, I added a leave request, and I checked on my training hours. I was actually very surprised to find how quick and easy the self-service application is to use. Great work Julie and the HR team!

Dan Corey, ASI Worldwide Director of IT and Hosting, will be visiting the AP Melbourne office for the first time next month. This is the reschedule of his postponed visit from March.

He will be arriving in Melbourne on Thursday November 8th, and departing Melbourne on Friday November 16th.

There is a broad agenda already set for Dan's visit, including review of IT and hosting infrastructure, and scheduled visits to selected hosting customers. Like last time, the agenda is open so if you have general IT or hosting related requirements that you would like to talk to Dan about (other than specific issues that you should log through the normal IT/Hosting Issue Management system), please add to his agenda by editing the wiki page.

Shortcuts to Applications
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Windows provides keyboard shortcut options to easily access preferred applications – this is similar to the quicklauch toolbar except that you can launch without the mouse. The shortcuts are CTRL+ALT+X = where X is a specific key for that application.

For example I use CTRL+ALT+W to open Word, CTRL+ALT+E to open Excel and CTRL+ALT+Q for Query Analyzer, CTRL+ALT+T for Terminal Server.

To create a shortcut of X for internet explorer:
1. Find the Internet Explorer on the Start>>Programs menu
2. Right Click (instead of Left Click) the application name on the start menu

I have been back in the Melbourne office for 2 weeks and some people have jokingly said they missed my weekly updates. Yes jokingly. However last week I accidentally started giving out daily Windows and Excel tips to some staff.

Well I don't know everything but it is like our customers - "you don't know what you don't know". If you already know all the following that is great!So here are some Windows tips I shared -

Windows Key (Win) shortcuts are enabled by holding the Win key while pressing another key. Some of the ones I know are below :)

Win+BREAK = Display the System Properties dialog box.

As you would have seen on your emails, our own iMIS client system was upgraded from the iMIS 15 release candidate to the iMIS 15 GA release over the weekend.

What you may not know is that you now have full access to all the new functionality offered in the iMIS 15 .NET browser interface.

You need to be inside the ASI network - that is on a PC in the office network, or on one of the terminal servers, or on the VPN. Then point your browser at http://asiweb9/imis15/.

This will bring you to the new .NET public view of iMIS 15. Want someone's phone number or email - simply click Directory and type in all or part of name or company or both. You don't even have to login. Same for our events calendar - just click the Events tab. Nice.

Due to the increased costs of running our business, including salary rises for you, we have announced our price increases for 2007. For reference, the CPI is currently running at 3.5%.

Hosting price increases take effect from September, and these have been already communicated to customers. Our hosting prices have been increased more than CPI to address the correct market pricing (we are still cheaper than Webcentral and they provide a volume service), as well as to allow us to provide our own greater levels of service. Customers wanting to lock in the old pricing are able to prepay a year or two in advance if they are interested.

I attended my Sonexis training session this week that was given by Steven in our US IT team. Sonexis is our telephone and web conferencing system that we own inhouse, and that is integrated into our IP phone system. It means that when we use it, we do not have to pay per minute charges like we do when we use Webex.

Note that we will still be using Webex for all public webcasts. Sonexis should be used for all other conferencing requirements.

It’s been a couple of weeks since we turned on our auto-attendant answering system for our main office numbers, which I posted about here. The initial reaction from callers has been mixed.

It appears most of the issues are related to confusion on what we expect each of you to manage on your phones, and what we have communicated to you. The basic rule is straightforward – Jennifer and Danielle are no longer available to manage your phone, to take your messages, or to let people know where you are. That is now your job. You do that by using all of the following points:

One of the benefits of the recently implemented auto-attendant system is that it gives an access point into our worldwide phone network. And once you are inside that network, we do not pay call costs since all the calls go over the IP network. A couple of examples below.

I am onsite at a Melbourne customer and I want to call Jason in the Sydney office. I could either direct dial his extension on 02 8913 9201, which is an STD call; or I could dial into our Melbourne auto-attendant on 03 9869 7500, and then enter Jason’s extension 8201, and this call is now just a local call.

With the recent iMIS 15 upgrade of our own internal client system, IQA is now available to all of us – for the first time. I have played with IQA before many times on demo systems, but never actually had a chance to use it on real data. Especially our data. And I have to tell you – it is mind blowing!

Our internal iMIS client system is used worldwide. We have over 400,000 name records in it, including customers and prospects from every country that we work it (obviously, country is an important field in keeping things manageable!). It is well structured in terms of organisations and person contacts - for example, prospect organisations are 'P' type and prospect contacts are 'PC' types. But until IQA came along, having regular users search this type of structure was difficult, and you basically had to be able to use Microsoft Query in order to perform advanced searches.

I assume most people already know that ASI runs it's own business using iMIS. Over the weekend the US IT team (thanks Leon and Tim!) uprgaded our internal iMIS client system from iMIS 10 to iMIS 15. We are now live with iMIS 15 !!

Out of interest, other systems that we use include: