Scott Alan Miller

It’s pretty common in IT circles to develop a certain cult-like or “fanboy” mentality. What causes this reaction to technologies and products I am not quite sure, but that it happens is undeniable. One area that I never thought that I would see this occur is in the area of filesystems – one of the […]

Something that I see discussed quite often in IT circles is “which version of software should I install?” This could apply to a database, an application, firmware or, probably most often, an operating systems. And with the upcoming end of support life for Windows XP the topic has reached a fevered pitch. There are effectively […]

With the pending end of support for Windows XP looming just around the corner, it’s time to take stock of the desktop landscape and make hard decisions. Windows XP has dominated the desktop landscape in both home and business for more than a decade. Sure Windows 7, and to some small degree Windows 8, have […]

Everyone seems to want to jump into purchasing a SAN; sometimes they are quite passionate about the technology. SANs are, admittedly, pretty cool. They are one of the more fun and exciting large-scale hardware items that most IT professionals get a chance to have in their own shops. Often the desire to have a SAN […]

Private clouds, hosted or on-premise, are rapidly becoming commonplace. More and more businesses are learning of cloud computing and seeing that running their own cloud is both feasible and potentially valuable. But due to a general lack of cloud knowledge, it is becoming more and more common that clouds are recommended when they do not […]

Microsoft’s latest desktop reboot is out in the wild, and lots of people are getting their hands on it and using it today. Is it time to consider moving to Windows 8? Absolutely. That doesn’t mean that Windows 8 should be your main desktop later this afternoon, but it’s important to consider a move to […]

Windows 8, with its new, dramatic interface, represents a huge gamble for Microsoft. It’s a huge gamble not only because the company risks slowing update cycles and attrition of its desktop installation base but also because the Windows desktop underpins the Microsoft ecosystem. That ecosystem could easily unravel if Microsoft fails to maintain a strong […]

In speaking with small business IT professionals, one of the key factors for hesitancy around deploying virtualization arises from a attitude best described as “don’t put your eggs in one basket.” I can see where this concern arises. Virtualization allows for many guest operating systems to be contained in a single physical system, which, in […]

Bring Your Own Devices (or BYOD) is one of those hot topics this year that seems to have every IT department worried. What does BYOD mean for the future of IT? People have already begun to lump it in with the consumerization of IT and IT professionals everywhere are terrified that the traditional role of […]

Risk is a difficult concept and requires a lot of training, thought and analysis to properly assess given scenarios. Often, because risk assessments are so difficult, we substitute risk analysis with simply adding basic redundancy and assuming that we have appropriately mitigated risk. But very often this is not the case. The introduction of complexity […]