Pocket Tech & Beyond

Recently, a reader asked a good question: How do Windows Server 2016: The Administrator's Reference and Windows Server 2016: IT Pro Library differ?  The short answer is that they are completely different texts, written separately from start to finish, while both covering Windows Server 2016. An IT Pro could own both sets, or the individual books in each set, to round out and complete their library. More specifically, Windows Server 2016: The Administrator’s Reference provides over 250,000 words covering Microsoft's latest server operating system and includes the two IT Pro Solutions books I've written for Windows Server 2016: 1. Windows Server 2016: Essentials for Administration 2. Windows Server 2016: Server Infrastructure The IT Pro Solutions books are practical and precise hands-on guides with ready answers for IT professionals. You get fast answers and quick instruction. Windows Server 2016: IT Pro Library provides over 500,000 words coveri...

Well, I didn't win PowerBall, so I better keep writing. :-) Two BRAND NEW releases to share for my IT Pro Solutions series. I really like the covers on the IT Pro Solutions books. Beautiful, IMHO (and I hope you agree). It's the first time I've had full creative control. The interiors are just as gorgeous too. Your support needed to spread the good word so please let others know and share if you can. You'll note something new on the cover too: Recognition of my son's contributions. Will has been my go to technician and check reader for years, setting up my development environments with each and every product build and performing preliminary technical review. He's the guy triple-checking every reference, step-by-step and procedure from GUI to shell, after my own double-check. As I stated in my Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 book published by Microsoft, he's instrumental to my writing process and now he has an expanded role in the full process from sta...

This is the fourth in a series of articles based on the popular Cloud Matters lecture series I’ve been giving to executives and their top staff at global Fortune 100, 500 and 1000 companies since 2012. These articles are for working pros at all levels and are delivered without icing and sprinkles.  Cloud Matters lunches happen, so do Cloud Matters lectures. Before a lunch or lecture with management and their teams, someone usually introduces me to everyone. I’ve only been introduced one time as “that guy that wrote all them books that are sitting on your desks,” but I kind of liked it. Much better than the usual about how I was Microsoft’s top author for nearly twenty years, wrote a hundred plus authoritative books, or how I’m one of the world’s leading authorities on Microsoft enterprise and cloud technologies. The numbers aren’t why I write or lecture, but people really seems to like the numbers. Ten million "William Stanek" readers. Check. Twenty years of "William Sta...

This is the second in a series of articles based on the popular Cloud Matters lecture series I’ve been giving to executives and their top staff at global Fortune 100, 500 and 1000 companies since 2012. These articles are for working pros at all levels and are delivered without icing and sprinkles.  The title question is a zinger, delivered with a grin when I’m told a client has gone with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and states they are paying X dollars for Y number of servers with Z discounts (or whatever other arrangements they’ve made). Of course, to be fair and honest, I do the same when clients tell me they’ve gone with Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, VMWare, OpenStack or whatever. Because clients paying X for Y with a side of Z are getting gouged every day. As an outside advisor, I don’t negotiate deals or terms for my clients, though I probably should. Companies like Cloudyn and its many lookalikes are charging a commission of 2 to 3 percent of the cloud-bill for the same, and mi...

This is the first in a series of articles based on the popular Cloud Matters lecture series I’ve been giving to c-suite executives and their top staff at global Fortune 100, 500 and 1000 companies since 2012. These articles are for working pros at all levels and delivered without icing and sprinkles. Whether your organization has moved, is moving, or wants to move to the cloud, odds are your management is congratulating themselves over all the money they are or will save now that they have or can fire all the IT staff, decommission all the servers, stop having to pay for so much tech training, etc. Just today, in fact, I saw another sky’s the limit graph in my LinkedIn feed showing the copious cloud savings for enterprises. The graph showed a partially submerged iceberg. On the old school side of the graph, the iceberg was half out of the water, representing all the money enterprises were spending on IT staff, servers, training, etc. On the new school side of the graph, just a little t...