I’m pleased to be able to announce that Denny Cherry & Associates Consulting has become a Microsoft Silver Partner for Data Platform (also known as Microsoft SQL Server). This is an important milestone for DC&AC because it shows that Microsoft puts trust in us as a company, and that Microsoft has vetted us through our projects which we have completed for our clients.

This also means that we can do something that we haven’t been able to do before for our clients, get them setup directly with Microsoft licensing and Microsoft Azure products without having to wait for a third party to get involved. When our clients need Microsoft Azure services we’ll be able to handle that as a part of the project and keep the project moving along without our client needing to get setup in the Windows Azure systems or contact their normal software vendor for quoting prices. And the same will apply to the “box products” as well such as Windows Server, Microsoft SQL Server, etc. We’ll be able to get quotes for those products to the client directly without having to wait for the sales team at some other company to get things done.

You’ll see that Microsoft Partner logo that we’ve earned displayed proudly on our website, and we hope that you’ll let us help you with your data platform needs.

I’m pleased to announce that Joey D’Antoni will be joining Denny Cherry & Associates Consulting as a full time employee starting in January. Joey and I have consulted on projects together for several years now, and we have decided that the next step for both Joey and DC&AC was for Joey to join us full time.

Joey is well versed in SQL Server performance tuning and database infrastructure design with over a decade of experience working in both Fortune 500 and smaller firms.  He is a frequent speaker at major tech events, and blogger about all topics technology. He believes that no single platform is the answer to all technology problems. He holds a BS in Computer Information Systems from Louisiana Tech and an MBA from North Carolina State University.

We are incredibly proud that our first full time consultant is someone with Joey’s skill level and wide knowledge or IT systems including Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, VMware, Hyper-V, EMC, NetApp, Dell Compellent, Dell Equalogic, 3Par, and Pure Storage to name just a few.

You can find Joey on Twitter at @jdanton or blogging at joeydantoni.com or via email at joey AT dcac DOT co.

Please join me in welcoming Joey to Denny Cherry & Associates Consulting.

That’s right, I said free.  On July 1st, 2014 at 9am Pacific/Noon Eastern I’ll be presenting an hour long session titled “Table Indexing 101” in which we will review some of the basics of SQL Server table indexing and how these indexes can be used to improve performance of your Microsoft SQL Server database applications.

As I stated above, this session is free to attend, all you need to do is sign up in advance.

Registration is limited as the conference provider only supports so many people attending, so please get registered if you wish to attend.

Thanks,

Denny

As we watch the fires which are raging in the San Diego area we should be reminded that now is the time to review our disaster recovery plans. Even if your home or company isn’t located in the San Diego area, the speed at which these fires came up and are spreading through the area should remind us that we should have backup plans for running anything critical in our lives, both our work and our personal lives.

As I sit here in the Houston Airport coming home from TechEd North America the news is my primary source of information about the destruction which is happen around my own home. Thankfully in our case we’ve already got the pets out at a friend’s house, several changes of clothing with us, and our laptops with us. Our data is all backed up to the cloud and is accessible if needed. Not all companies are so lucky. Some of my clients have offices located within the evacuation zone for the current fires and I know what their disaster recovery plans currently look like for the systems in those offices. Some have full disaster recovery plans, while some don’t. Hopefully this will show those companies that do not have disaster recovery plans that it is time to change that policy.

Just because a system isn’t a customer facing system doesn’t mean that it isn’t a critical system. An example would be your email servers. If your internal Exchange system goes offline for several days, how much of a problem is this? Can your remote users continue to work and function without email? Can your company keep ordering supplies at other offices or continue to pay vendors if the finance system isn’t available? I’m guessing that the answer to these questions is “a big one”, “no” and “no”.

Every system that a company has to run its day to day business is a critical system to someone within the company and keeping those systems up and running when the office isn’t available for days at a time is critical to keeping the business running smoothly.