April 16, 2007

Spring Church IT Roundtable

I neglected to mention in my first post that today we are being hosted by Sugar Creek Baptist Church, http://www.sugarcreek.net/, at the LYF youth center. Our hosts were very gracious, and I want to thank them for opening up their facility and catering to us. (Image to right is an X-Box array for youth.)

Today we heard from many Vendors and consultants ranging from VMWare, ScriptLogic, DataCore, Service-U and Web Empowered Church.

I was familiar with VMWare and Service-U, and obviously Web Empowered Church, but the other two I'd never heard of before. DataCore is a mind expanding virtualization software that virtualizes your SAN or slack disk space across multiple servers, and synchronizing between virtual storage. I'd have to think about that more, but one thing that is potentially big for churches is synchronizing virtual storage between geographically distributed locations. What we were told was that you can synchronize between 8 different locations. So if multiple churches are using DataCore and have unused disk space, they can use each other as back up locations. Potentially pretty cool.

ScriptLogic produces a toolset of automation and management applications that makes nearly everything in Windows system administration easier. Active Directory users, GPOs auditing and alerting, patching, spyware, file permissions and ACLs, USB port security, MSI packaging, system imaging and software distribution, and file system level auditing. I'm excited about the potential of using ScriptLogic apps in our environment because it is easily powerful enough to make up for a half time network admin guy or more, and our network guy would salivate all over his shirt to have these tools at his disposal. The tools are not only cool, but can replace other tools like Symantec Ghost and MS SMS, saving you some money nad giving you one software manufacturer to yell at when things go wrong. :)

All in all, a very cool pre-roundtable day and I enjoyed meeting the vendors, including Tim Whitehorn, CEO and original creator of Service-U. Resurrection is a long time user of Service-U, and I have always suggested it to churches looking for a resource management and calendaring solution.

Looking forward to tomorrow, but first - a good nights sleep. Aaaaah.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oooooooo, ScriptLogic SHINY! Network Monkey need new shirt!

Ralf Baum said...

Yeah, Brian, probably they are slightly little known in mass. But only slightly. I am planning to visit TechEd 2007 summit (last year it was a great show, as always for sure) this summer and Scriptlogic, I heard, one of the main organizers there. By the way, that's who was presented on last meeting Fall '06. We are using their tools and as the one who uses them frequently I agree with you, it makes management operations easier. What I like in such products is their completeness and at the same very moment, their extendability. Your remark about VMWare reminded me of ScriptBlogic their official blog where they recently published a note about interaction between their own products and VMWare products. I guess it makes sense. Interesting to hear what VMWare thoughts about the fact that in essence the borders between 'real' and virtual desktops became blurred over the last couple of years. What were they talking about conjunction of virtual workspaces with physical ones on that meeting you've been to?

Anonymous said...

As a church technologist you have to come up with answers to complex problems quickly. As the Pastor of Channel Development at Saddleback Church I would LOVE to have a very connected interactive experience with all of you so we could solve some of these together.

Sooo.... I would like to invite you to be my friend on twitter. This means you will get my tweets and I will get your tweets. I have it setup to go to my cell phone. Robert Scoble has over 3000 twitter friends. This is where I saw this work for the first time. Everyone collaborates instantly. The wisdom of crowds, the long tail, disruptive innovation, collective wisdom, etc.

For example, this morning I want to ask a question about Wikis and volunteers.
I would tweet it to you, you could tweet back your thoughts. We would all benefit.

So, I invite you to check me out on http://twitter.com/ericbusby - I think a micro blog is better for pushing the innovation curve anyway.

(If you follow my tweets I will add you as a friend so I get yours too)

See you there,
Eric