We recently completed a project at a UK hoster who needed to offer Web based application hosting allied with value added services such as Exchange-based email, Sharepoint etc. Now, the HMC4 Solution would seem to be the best platform to use as a base for this as it provides all of the automation required for the Exchange pieces (to most tricky bit) but the Solution doesn’t directly support the provisioning of web sites in IIS and databases for customer use on SQL Server 2005.
Until now! My colleague Patrick de Rover did some sterling work and we now have a layered solution which allows for the provisioning of Web and Data Hosting on the same platform as Exchange 2007 and Sharepoint v3. Fantastic! We have already seen interest in this type of installation at a number of other hosters in Europe and I’m really proud that we are pioneering work in this direction. Remember that we can also deliver Terminal Services and Softgrid Support on HMC too, so we are no looking at a pretty solid hosting platform implementation.
Today I had a fantastic day at West Midlands Safari Park. We decided to go and see the White Lions (who are GORGEOUS!) and all of the other cool animals too, but I was genuinely blown away by actually seeing these glorious creatures in the flesh.
I’m not the sort that gets terribly excited about things (OK, motorbikes and technology notwithstanding!) but when we drove through the gates into Wolf Wood and there was an American Timber Wolf.. in the road.. WOW!
It really got better and better too, the white tigers, white lions, wild dogs, tawny lions, bengal tigers, the many types of deer, the bison, the …. well the everything really were totally out of this world!
It actually really hits home that a lot of the wonderful animals are actually endangered and that we really do need to take more care of what we have on this rock, because once it’s gone, it’s gone forever.
I’m going to sponsor one of my favourites.. a White Lion of course and I hope that I can, at least in a small way, provide some help to for those working to save all of the endangered species.
When I’ve worked out what’s wrong with my file upload, I’ll get some pictures to go along with this.
The problems with taking time away from work, for me at least, is that one’s brain doesn’t seem to realise that we don’t have to do anything for a while. The urge to check email, to ‘just make sure everything is OK’ is almost overwhelming!
With that in mind… today I’m going to look at some property we might be buying, and investigate fitted bedroom furniture. If that doesn’t kill off the urge for checking in with work, it’ll be down I’ll simply have to eat chocolate!
Also planned for today is obtaining some interior design software for the Mac, so I’ll let you know what happens there. I’m also hoping to get a copy of the Adobe CS3 suite sometime soon, but given the cost of that, I’m not holding my breath.
OH! And I’m going to do a podcast in the next day or two covering the kit I’m using and also playing with the ‘enhanced’ format with pictures attached. Should be fun .
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