We heard late last week from our friend Jeff Middleton at IT Pro Experts, that he has expanded his company’s Project Kit Catalog to completely address all established SBS, Windows and Exchange platform infrastructure. Effectively the model of solutions first introduced by SBSmigration.com in 2004, the catalog is now the basis of IT Pro empowered deployment or migration of any Microsoft SMB platform infrastructure.
According to Middleton, the primary customer for the kit are skill-based IT Pros who use his project outlines and second level support on a project by project basis for predictable and reliable infrastructure deployments and upgrades.
This relationship can be based upon one-at-a-time orders or subscription-based partner plans that scale with discounts and expanded service options. The entry point includes Swing It!! Kits to address all cross-platform transitions in addition to version upgrade/migrations for these core technologies based upon Active Directory, Exchange and common back-office server resources.
According to Middleton, with IT Pro Experts’ project plan together with the second level support enables partners to handle deployments with confidence in even complex situations they may have limited experience to handle. A central value in our methodology is the “build-offline, test and deploy as an infrastructure substitution” model that mitigates risk.
According to Middleton, the three kits outlined here are currently in final assembly to be packaged and uploaded, with everything else completed and ready for use. He added that the solution next he expects to incorporate Windows 2012 and Exchange 2013 based platform solutions being introduced over the next several months. “Our development cycle and release timing on these new Microsoft platforms tracks well with what most consultants prefer as ‘avoiding the bleeding edge’ on new platforms, but planning for quick adoption on stable and supportable opportunities,” Middleton said.
However, Middleton added that Exchange 2013 RTM adoption in a migration context likely won’t start moving because of product constraints established by Microsoft. “Until service pack updates Microsoft has promised by mid-year enable concurrent operations of Exchange 2013 with any previous versions of Exchange, its simply not a viable project to undertake,” he said. “We see some adoption opportunity for Windows 2012 based domains in the meantime, and we are moving quickly to start supporting those in the next few months.”
In the meantime, Middleton says that the product solution is a bundle of Swing It!! Kits include full documentation and tools for the end to end project scope, plus a Support Case scoped for end-to-end unlimited support for the entire project (not per issue, not per incident). “Our support staff is entirely second-level based, capable of handling migration or disaster recovery of the full platform requirements, and therefore answers any questions anyone might have for the duration of the project using our hosted Support Case Management resources,” he said.
