Smart Phone Security Concerns & The Microsoft Office 2010 Detroit event

Microsoft Detroit 2010 3rd post of series August 2010

The Microsoft Detroit 2010 event was great; this is the 3rd post in a series describing the seminar. The seminar was opened by Mr. Matthew Hoster, who was excellent! His blog is http://blogs.technet.com/matthewms.  He advised the attendees on Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Outlook 2010, and SharePoint 2010. The second presenter who is based at Microsoft's HQ in Seattle, Washington was Ms. Jennifer Kim who told the audience that Microsoft Outlook now has a social connector for Web 2.0 technologies like Face book http://www.facebook.com/, MySpace http://www.myspace.com/, LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/, and Microsoft's own social network tool called Mingle. We were also given copies of the Windows 7 operating system http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/default.aspx  that was a 64 bit version. Speaking of smart phones I said I would go over best practices for Black Berry administrators in this blog but I will save that for the next blog because the Blackberry has been in the news a lot lately.

When it comes to secure communications with a smart phone the Black Berry is the gold standard. For proof I point to recent news stories. In the Michigan South Asian monthly paper http://www.echo-media.com/  it was reported that Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom (England) has stated only Blackberry http://www.rim.com/ smart phones are sanctioned for official use by British ministers in the story no iPhone, only  a Blackberry for British Ministers. Also the UAE (United Arab Emirates) has ordered a ban on the Blackberry because RIM refused to set up a proxy server in the country for their service provider in the UAE, Emirates Telecommunications Corp. http://www.etisalat.ae/.  It can be safely said that when governments are mad at RIM because of their inability to monitor your instant messaging, & web browsing services your communications are secure. In other smart phone security news the Nokia prototype smart phone case where the Moscow based blogger Mr. Eldar Murtazin made negative comments about the Nokia N8 http://www.nokia.com/ smart phone is ongoing with the Russian police investigating after Mr. Murtazin did not respond to inquires from Nokia as to how he got the N8.  The Nokia Russian homepage is http://www.nokia.ru/.  We will follow the Nokia & Blackberry stories as they unfold and keep you posted.  Back to the Microsoft conference they also introduced the Windows 7 smart phone and I now have the hardware specification for the Windows 7 smart phone. The specifications are:
1. 800 X 480 touch screen
2. A Cortex or Snapdragon Central Processing Unit (CPU)
3. A Direct X 9-compatible Graphics Processor
4. It also combines elements of the Zune music player, the X-Box 360 game console, Microsoft Exchange
    Server & SharePoint.

This leads to another issue that came up at the conference, but that a lot of IT people are embarrassed to admit they do not know: What is SharePoint Server  and what can it do for me and my company?

Microsoft Share Point Server

Microsoft Share Point Server was covered at the Microsoft Office Detroit 2010 conference but many people wonder; what is Share Point Server? Share Point Server is a valuable business tool that can do the following:
1. Allows collaboration at your company
2. Can be used to set up a company Portal.
3. Allows search for company documents (think Google).
4. Allows enterprise content management and when you consider the Wiki leaks incident in regards to secret
    U.S. military documents for the war in Afghanistan leaking to the public, this is a vital task.
5. Allows you to do Business Process Management (BPM) to manage your company more efficiently.
6. Allows you to collect Business Intelligence (BI) on your organization to spot trends

Also I found out at a Compuware http://www.compuware.com/ conference  I was invited to, that SharePoint server can be used for SOX (Sarbanes Oxley) financial reporting requirements for publicly traded companies.  In the next blog I will give Blackberry tips and go over using SharePoint server for people who are still not quite sure what SharePoint Server is and how it can help their businesses cut costs.
Mr. Winston Shines is a consultant for Maximillian Bryan & Marcell Technologies Internationale LLC http://www.mbmtinternationale.com/, he has been published in Baseline magazine http://www.baselinemag.com/, (to view the article click on http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/IT-Management/Ensuring-ITs-Survival-301220) has written the copyrighted book Training Today's Youth for Tomorrow's Technology which is on sale at Amazon http://www.amazon.com/ and has been a paid speaker at the Michigan State University School of Education http://www.educ.msu.edu/ annual education technology seminar in East Lansing Michigan.