COMDDAP 2009

COMDDAP Davao
creating IT… growing IT… winning IT…
July 2-4, 2009

COMDDAP Davao held at Apo View Hotel. This said event promotes new technology in the market. Also, they had sessions that help IT people, web developer etc. gain new ideas and knowledge in their fields. I had attended 3 of their sessions or seminars; HP Thin Client, Windows Server 2008 and Open Source for Business Application.
I was pretty amaze with this new technology HP (Hewlett Packard) presented, The Thin Clients. In this session, the speaker was Leonard Zapa, the Market Development Manager in Remote Client Solutions Group. Actually he was promoted this HP new contraption, what its functions and how will it benefits the buyer for its purpose. Thin Client is a computing device desktop and a solid state device. It does not have hard drive on it. According to the exhibitor, it is more reliable, stable and last longer compare to the thick desktop we usually have.
With its structure, it is thinner compare to our desk top. It has 8 USB ports, 2 of its port is place inside of it for the purpose to secure USB cannot be detached by accident. What good with this is that you don’t need for anti-virus because once it is detected it automatically shuts downs and reboots and remove viruses.
Below are the benefits that Thin Clients offers:
Enhance Security
Easy Manageability
Environment Friendly
Lower Over-all Cost
Thin Client saves power consumption, 80% lower of your energy expenses. Users can save up to 11watts to 20 watts. It has minimal heat generated which requires less cooling that’s why Thin Client does not have fan inside of it. And because of its thin structure it really saves space.
Here below are the factors to be considered in analyzing the total cost of ownership in which Mr. Zapa mentioned:

Hard ware cost
Power consumption
Heat dissipate
Space saving
You really find this pretty amazing because of the features it offers.

Next session that I had attended was the Windows Server 2008. The exhibitor of this seminar was Lee L. Gorospe, a Technical Trainer of EDUPRO Inc. He discussed the following area in Windows Server 2008:
Active Directory Roles
Active Directory Rights Management Service
Read Only Domain Controller
Hyper V
Network Access Protection
Server Core

AD RMS (Active Directory Rights Management Service) is an information protection technology that works with AD RMS-enabled applications. This is to help safeguard digital information from unauthorized use. AD RMS is used as to restrict access to an organization’s intellectual property, limit the actions users can perform on content of the data or information and limit the risk of content being exposed outside the organization.
The good thing with this AD RMS is that if you want to protect sensitive files on MS Word, MS Excel or in MS Power Point it has features to set the rights to view, change or edit and print a particular file. You can even set its validity period. File can be set its expiration for its protection. Also in e-mails in the MS Outlook, you can restrict it from being sent it to the Internet and from being taken outside of the company especially the confidential e-mails of a company.

RODC (Read Only Domain Controller) is an option for deploying a new Domain Controller. This is recommended for Sites that are lacking IT personnel and security. Also this is the solution for Sites/Office that has no or poor physical server security.

Virtualization (Hyper V) is used to reduce costs, increases hardware utilization, optimizes the infrastructure and Improves server availability. It has the capabilities to bit locker (seamless, secure data encryption), live backup (Volume Shadow Service integration) and support for full or Server Core installations.
NAS (Network Access Protection) is a platform that enforces compliance with health requirements for network access or communication by the use of Internet Protocol security (IPsec). With this security to an unauthorized access would restrict.
Server Core, we need this to reduce the attack and servicing surface area. And it increases reliability and security and servers are optimized by role are easier to manage and maintain. It really benefits us by minimal server installation. This requires less disk space. It also saves money and time and assures more secure servers.

The last session I had attended was the Open Source for Business Application. Ben Aligre, a Project Manager of Spin Web, was the lecturer of this session. In this session we were just few, most of the people were web developer or IT people. He gave a situation to them on how many days would be able to create web site for ANCHOR recipe and how much it would cost for the to make this site. But before they gave their answer, Sir Ben started the discussion. Open Source is an approach to the decision develop, it is no vendor lock in the source is open and free to use. It is license software that is free for distribution and access to the source. I was confused the difference by the Free Software to Open Source, but one of my friends who had already enrolled the subject of FOS or Free Open Source explained it. According to her, there was confusion with the word of “free”. Because when you heard the “free software” they find it as cheap, worthless and useless. And that’s why they change it to Open Source. There are softwares that are non-proprietary or do not need license. These softwares are Lime wire, Transmission, Ubuntu, Open Office, Mozilla Fire fox, Thunder Bird, Pidgin, Gimshop, VLC and many more. After the discussion, they had talked the situation; many had answered 30 days or more but for Sir Aligre and company assumed that they can make it within 15 days with less expenses. It because no need for you to purchase software instead you just have to use open source software.