Introduction
For those who haven’t read my previous blog posts, here’s a short summary. A couple of weeks ago I decided that I wanted to know more about cloud computing and get certified as well. I used freely available resources to attain these certifications:
In short, my conclusion was that the quality of the freely available resources were not sufficient. ITpreneurs responded to this by giving me access to their own paid ITpreneurs Cloud Essentials eLearning Course which I reviewed here.
I also contacted TrainSignal to get access to their training videos for CompTIA Cloud Essentials because their previous training videos on different subjects have always been great. They were kind enough to grant me access to the training videos which made this review possible.
Review
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: certification, certify, CLO-001, Cloud, cloud computing, Cloud Computing foundation, Cloud Essentials, CLOUDF, CompTIA, CompTIA Cloud Essentials, Exin, Exin Cloud Computing Foundation, foundation, Free, ICT, Learning, study, train signal, trainsignal, video
Introduction
For those who haven’t read my previous blog posts, here’s a short summary. A couple of weeks ago I decided that I wanted to know more about cloud computing and get certified as well. I used freely available resources to attain these certifications:
In short, my conclusion was that the quality of the freely available resources were not sufficient. ITpreneurs responded to this by giving me access to their own paid ITpreneurs Cloud Essentials eLearning Course.
First of all, thanks to ITpreneurs for this opportunity. Also even though they provided me with access to this course, nothing was expected in return. They just wanted to share their knowledge with me. Because of my personality, I felt however that that the very least I could do was to:
- Provide constructive feedback on the course
- Write about how I experienced the eLearning course
And this blog post is the result.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: certification, certify, CLO-001, Cloud, cloud computing, Cloud Computing foundation, Cloud Essentials, CLOUDF, CompTIA, CompTIA Cloud Essentials, Curiosity was framed, Exin, Exin Cloud Computing Foundation, foundation, Free, ICT, Learning, study
People who know me personally, know that I’m very passionate about ICT. Some of you might also have read about my previous blog post regarding cloud certifications. In this post I described how I prepared for the cloud certifications CompTIA Cloud Essentials (CLO-001) and Exin Cloud Computing Foundation (CLOUDF). In this post I also said that I felt that the quality of the freely available materials was lacking and suggested people would check out other (paid) learning resources like by example the TrainSignal CompTIA Cloud Essentials training videos because they have a good reputation regarding training videos.
Because I was still curious about the quality of the paid training materials, I decided to contact TrainSignal to see if they were willing to provide me with a review copy. I hoped they would agree, but didn’t have high expectations. To my surprise however, they provided me with a review copy.
In the meanwhile, ITpreneurs contacted me to check out their IT Preneurs Cloud Essentials Course. I really liked that they contacted me, because to me this feels like they’re very passionate too and are continuously trying to improve.
I’ve already completed the IT Preneurs Cloud Essentials Course and will be posting my opinion on this blog very soon. I still have to start reviewing the TrainSignal CompTIA Cloud Essentials training videos, but I’ll try to do this as soon as possible as well.
If you have specific questions regarding one of both learning materials, please leave a comment so I can include it in my reviews.
Tags: certification, certify, CLO-001, Cloud, cloud computing, Cloud Computing foundation, Cloud Essentials, CLOUDF, CompTIA, CompTIA Cloud Essentials, Exin, Exin Cloud Computing Foundation, foundation, ICT, Learning, study
As I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, Microsoft is working hard to get new and better versions of their software released as soon as possible.
Last week Microsoft announced that the Office 2013 suite reached released to manufacturing (RTM) including:
- Office 2013 for workstations (Outlook, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access, OneNote, Project, Visio)
- Server software (Exchange 2013, Sharepoint 2013, Project 2013, Lync 2013, Visio 2013)
- Cloud versions of the above mentioned software (Office 365).
The availability is dependent on the platform and your licensing type. More information about this can be found here:
http://blogs.office.com/b/office-news/archive/2012/10/11/office-reaches-rtm.aspx
I have to admit I didn’t expect them to reach RTM status already. I also hope that beta exams won’t be released anytime soon, because then I won’t have enough time to properly prepare 😦
Tags: Access, Access 2013, Cloud, Excel, Excel 2013, Exchange, Exchange 2013, Exchange online, Lync, Lync 2013, Lync online, Lync Server 2013, Microsoft, Office, Office 2013, Office 365, OneNote, OneNote 2013, OneNote MX, online service, Outlook, Outlook 2013, Powerpoint, Powerpoint 2013, Project, Project 2013, Project Online, Project Server 2013, Public Cloud, RTM, Sharepoint, Sharepoint 2013, Sharepoint online, Software, Visio, Visio 2013, Visio Server 2013, Word, Word 2013
Currently, there are many technological advancements taking place every day. To keep up with them is already very hard. To make it a bit easier I use RSS feeds to quickly filter what I think might be of importance to me.
A list of the RSS feeds I currently use can be found here , but you can also download an XML export of my RSS feeds here for easy import to your preferred RSS reader (assuming it supports XML import). I also advise you to check Microsoft’s RSS feed index so you can customize it to your own needs.
I personally use Google Reader for my RSS feeds because then my RSS feeds will be accessible from everywhere as long as I have a browser and an internet connection. When you are often on the road without an active internet connection, a dedicated client with cached articles from the RSS feed might also come in handy.
PS: The Microsoft blog rss feed had many articles added daily and can be hard to keep up with, but you can pretty quickly weed out duplicate articles and articles in foreign languages.
I hope this has been helpful to you.
Tags: bookmark, bookmarks, Cloud, developments, ESX, ESXi, favorite, favourite, gadget, Gadgets, ICT, Microsoft, news, rss, rss feed, technology, virtualization, VMware, vSphere, web site, web sites, website, websites, Windows
Cloud computing is getting increasingly important nowadays and I expect it to keep on growing substantially. As most ICT professionals I’ve read a lot about cloud computing and I know some parts of it. To increase (and test) my knowledge about cloud computing, I decided to try and get these certifications:
These exams don’t just focus on the technical aspects of the cloud, but also on the business aspects and what cloud computing could mean for your ITIL processes.
I passed both exams todat with scores of respectively 86% and 80%. But I have to say that I did not like the exams very much. I feel this way because cloud computing is such a broad concept and the “best” solution often depends on many factors, which of course are not provided in the exam. I think these exams would both benefit greatly from using cases/scenarios. It’s a pity I did not see any option to comment on the exam questions either.
If I’d have to choose which certification I found most valueable, I’d go with the Comptia Cloud Essentials certification.
Free study materials I used:
I thought the quality of these study materials were mediocre at best and I have my doubts about the correctness of some of the statements. Especially because cloud computing is defined in many different ways and because the “best” answer often depends on the situation which is not described. But as with everything, you can learn a lot from it by being critical and looking up everything you don’t know YET and/or have doubts about. You will learn more this way, which is far more important than just getting certified. I personally learned a lot especially about specific cloud services. Unfortunately I did not have access to paid materials, otherwise I would have loved to check out the Train Signal CompTIA Cloud Essentials training videos seeing as they have a reputation to provide high quality material.
I will now close with some wise words I read on Seth Godin’s blog post called “Curiosity was framed“:
Curiosity was framed
- Avoid it at your peril. The cat’s not even sick. (HT to C. J. Cherryh)
- If you don’t know how it works, find out.
- If you’re not sure if it will work, try it.
- If it doesn’t make sense, play with it until it does.
- If it’s not broken, break it.
- If it might not be true, find out.
- And most of all, if someone says it is none of your business, prove them wrong.
There are many more great posts on Seth Godin’s blog so be sure to check it out.
Tags: certification, certify, CLO-001, Cloud, cloud computing, Cloud Computing foundation, Cloud Essentials, CLOUDF, CompTIA, CompTIA Cloud Essentials, Curiosity was framed, Exin, Exin Cloud Computing Foundation, foundation, Free, ICT, Learning, Seth Godin, study
When I tried to include a RSS feeds web part to my public sharepoint site just the way I had done many times on intenal sharepoint sites, I found out that the RSS viewer web part was not available.
After searching the internet I found out why this was the case and I also found a workaround using a custom solution/webpart.
Even though it is possible to use RSS feeds this way on my public sharepoint site, it is not what I expected. In my opinion an RSS feed web part is such a fundamental part of websites nowadays that it should be available by default in Office 365 / Sharepoint online.
I hope that this will be corrected in the upcoming release of sharepoint (2013) for Office 365, but the preview still doesn’t provide this capability unfortunately:
Tags: Cloud, ICT, Learning, Microsoft, Office 365, Public Cloud, rss, rss feed, RSS Feed Webpart, Sharepoint, Sharepoint online, Tutorial, Tutorials, web part, webpart
Today I got a mail informing me about free “VMware Your Cloud or Mine” events being hosted in the Netherlands:
- Thursday October 18th in Rotterdam
- Tuesday October 23rd in Eindhoven
- Thursday October 25th in Utrecht
- Tuesday October 30th in Zwolle
Check the link to sign up and get more information about the event.
I will be attending the event in Eindhoven at October 23rd.
Tags: Cloud, Event, Free, ICT, Learning, private, Private Cloud, public, Public Cloud, VMware, VMware your cloud or mine, VMware your cloud or mine event, Your cloud or mine
Office 365 introduction
Office 365 basically provides you with collaboration services consisting of the following components:
- E-mail (Exchange online)
- Instant messaging (Lync online)
- Internal and external websites (Sharepoint online)
- Office (either locally installed or through web apps).
I really like this service offering because of the following reasons:
- All services (and servers) are hosted by Microsoft. This means you don’t have to invest in servers, software. You also don’t have to do the initial setup nor do you have to maintain the servers, operating system and software. This all helps you to be able to focus on your core business.
- You pay monthly fees, which are predictable.
- Since you are using a cloud based service, the functionality is continuously being improved and newer versions are being provided at no additional cost. Currently Office 2013 Preview is available for testing only on Office 365, but when it is released it will probably also find its way to the current Office 365 users.
But don’t take my word for it, just try it for yourself and see if and how you can benefit from it.
Configuring anonymous access to sharepoint lists on Office 365 (Sharepoint online)
Even though I like Office 365, it is far from perfect. For example, one of the reasons for me to get and Office 365 subscription was because (I thought) it would let me easily share website links, applications, scripts using sharepoints lists to the internet.
In reality however, the public facing sharepoint site was very limited and did not provide an easy way to do this. Another option was to create these lists on my “internal” sharepoint site and then provide access to people by inviting them by e-mail. This would however limit my audience / knowledge sharing potential.
After searching for people with similar issues, I came across a workaround that would help me accomplish my goals: http://anonymous365.codeplex.com
Steps to configure a sharepoint list on my public facing sharepoint site that is accessible for anonymous users:
- Download the anonymous365 sharepoint solution from http://anonymous365.codeplex.com
- Go to the “Site Settings” of your public facing site using by example :
http://bjornhouben-web.sharepoint.com/_layouts/settings.aspx
- Go to the “Galleries” section and go to “Solutions“.
- Click under the “Name” colume and in the ribbon interface under the “Solutions” tab choose “Upload Solution“.
- Browse to the previously downloaded anonymous365 sharepoint solution : “Wsp365.Anonymous.wsp” and press “OK“.
- Check the checkbox of the uploaded “Wsp365.Anonymous.wsp” and in the ribbon interface under the “Solutions” tab choose “Activate“.
- The go to the “All Site Content” of your public facing site using by example:
http://bjornhouben-web.sharepoint.com/_layouts/viewlsts.aspx
- Press “Create“
- Choose the list type you want, enter a name and press “Create“.
- Then in the ribbon interface under “List Tools” and “List” press the button “Anonymous Access“
- Choose what access you want to give anonymous users for this specific list and press “OK”.
PS: You can also use a list to share files using the attachments.
Closing thoughts
I hope this explanation was helpful and I love to get feedback. Because the groundwork is done now, I can focus on the actual knowledge sharing by populating the lists with content. So you can expect some major updates soon on both my blog posts and the lists below:
Tags: anonymous, anonymous access, Cloud, Microsoft, Office 365, Public Cloud, Sharepoint list, Sharepoint online, sharepoint solution
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