Monday, July 15, 2013

Premier partners, today’s tools, and all that good stuff

Blue Chip Consulting GroupA few months ago, I made a transition and decided to accept an invitation to join the Content & Collaboration practice at Blue Chip Consulting Group. Blue Chip is a Gold Certified, Microsoft Managed Partner specializing in Infrastructure Optimization, and providing quality consulting services within the Microsoft stack. They’ve also been recently named as one of the Top 5 Microsoft Consulting Services’ Premier Service Partners for FY13, a distinction they’ve achieved 2 years running.

My consulting toolbox hasn’t changed much since my last role. In fact, Cloudshare is still as much a part of my tool set as it was in my last related post. And with the addition of their persistent DNS and vanity URL features, it’s now even easier to quickly fire up my VM’s when I need them, even on my Surface Pro tablet PC. These days, tho, I’m also making more use of VMWare for offline access.

But what is somewhat new to my list of dev toys is my personal Office 365 SharePoint account (recently upgraded to 2013 a few months back). I find that this is useful to have in order to get up to speed on the deployment and development differences between cloud and on-premise SharePoint projects, especially as more of our customers continue to explore Office 365 as an option for their SharePoint environment. And, at $8/month for a SharePoint-only E3 plan, it’s very economical as well.

Stay tuned for future posts as I continue to explore these tools & technologies to enhance my SharePoint 2013 delivery.

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Using a Touch Tablet for SharePoint Planning

image

As a SharePoint consultant, I’m often involved in whiteboard sessions where some aspect of SharePoint planning is being discussed and documented. This process can be facilitated in many ways, and with many tools, some of which may be more effective than others. As a happy owner of a Surface Pro Windows 8 tablet PC, I’m starting to explore new ways of using it to enhance the value of the consulting that I provide to my clients.