Celebrating 5 years delivering happy customers to happy cloud platforms

Celebrate good times, come on! Looks like we’ve hit a milestone here. SADA has had such a tremendous 2010, and really - a transformative last 5 years. Cloud computing has been making waves in the IT world and SADA is certainly riding the biggest waves.

In 2006, we were one of only 10 partners to join the Google Enterprise program in 2006. It all started with a random phone call from Google headquarters asking if we wanted to help bring people into the next generation of technology. And now, we are delivering businesses and organizations like Virgin America, the City of Los Angeles, Northwestern University, World Widlife Fund and more to Google Apps. Check out the Google Apps press release SADA issued in February 2007, as both the product and our partnership launched into the ecosystem - together, transforming IT as the world knows it forever.

In 2009, we dived headfirst into the Microsoft cloud. As a Microsoft partner for over a decade, it was an easy decision for us to get involved with the latest Microsoft business offering. With Office 365 rolling around in the coming months, it’s hard to imagine that we’ve already migrated over half a million mailboxes to BPOS (Business Productivity Office Suite) and Live@edu. With clients like LACCD, one of the country’s largest community college districts, PSOMAS Engineering and LRW, we anticipate a long and fruitful career providing Microsoft services and developing solutions like our award-winning Authentication Magic for Microsoft Online password sync tool.

As we look to the year ahead we are excited, pumped and hungry for the aggressive roadmap we have laid out before us. We are fortunate to be surrounded by the most open, channel-minded, and flexible organizations in the business that support our team and the unorthodox and clever ways that we deliver happy customers to happy cloud platforms!

Here's to another 5 years of the cloud!

SADA Systems to speak at Cloud Intelligence Technology Conference 2011

SADA is proud to sponsor the Cloud Intelligence Technology Conference. We are happy to team up with the good folks at QuickStart Intelligence to share our knowledge of the cloud computing space with Southern California companies who are looking into SaaS, IaaS, PaaS solutions to increase business productivity and work efficiency. Our very own Director of IT Services, Niv Dolgin, will be leading the discussion on the best time for companies to migrate to the cloud. The easy answer obviously is "NOW," but Niv will evaluate different scenarios leveraging experience with our past cloud migration projects (focusing on our BPOS and Live@edu experience and our outlook on Office 365) to paint a complete picture of the cloud platform migration and deployment process.

Interested in joining the discussion? The Cloud Intelligence Technology Conference will take place:

When: March 15, 2011

Where: Anaheim Convention Center

800 West Katella Avenie

Anaheim, CA

We hope to see you there!

AuthMagic for Microsoft Online password sync featured on BPOS Solution Showcase!

Our BPOS (now Microsoft Office 365) password sync solution has been featured on the Microsoft Online Services Partner Solutions Showcase Migration Solutions! AuthMagic for Microsoft Online (AMMO) is a comprehensive enterprise level solution provides secure, fast password synchronization for BPOS customers.



Download the AMMO white paper to learn more about what this solution can do for your company!

Google Apps Gmail Can't Interpret Emails Sent by BPOS / Microsoft Online Services - winmail.dat issue

As the pace by which organizations are migrating their email to the cloud, all types of anomalies and gotchas are discovered by our engineers - and this is expected. This is all new, after all.

One of the most surprising, however, is the simple fact that email sent by the BPOS / Microsoft Online Services exchange servers is unable to be interpreted by recipients who use Google Apps Gmail. Since its creation, email has had the key benefit of being very standards based - users from any platform X have been able to send emails to users on any platform Y with general ease.

Now, we’re not the first to report this issue - in fact, discussions around the Google Apps Gmail & MS Online issue seemed to have been taking place since December 2008. Also, Google Apps Gmail is not the only destination server which seems to have this problem when receiving email from BPOS (interpretation issues from Groupwise & Lotus Notes have also been reported). This is a known issue in Microsoft Exchange servers - however, in the on-premise world, this is a setting that’s possible to configure. In the BPOS world, it is not.

What does it look like?
What do emails in Gmail look like when sent from the BPOS platform? See below:



Essentially, all content (text images, etc...) gets translated into a illegible winmail.dat file.

You read the same email inside of Outlook, using POP3, IMAP, or even the Google Apps Sync tool for Outlook, and the email looks just fine.


Technical Cause
The reason this happens is because BPOS servers default to sending email in a Microsoft-proprietary Rich Text Format called TNEF. And on the recipient side in Google Apps, this is only reported when mail flows through Postini / Google Message Security servers. In fact, when BPOS sends emails to retail Gmail addresses, the emails are interpreted just fine.

• BPOS to Retail Gmail = Success
• BPOS to Google Apps Gmail, no Postini = Success
• BPOS to Google Apps Gmail, with Postini, email read via Browser/Default Interface = FAIL
• BPOS to Google Apps Gmails, with Postini, email read through Outlook (POP or GASMO) = Success

Proposed Solution
Below is a proposed solution as posted on the TechNet blogs. We have attempted this, and worked closely with Microsoft and Google for a resolution, but there does not seem to be a known resolution at this time.



No resolution: Reply from Microsoft Online Services Support
Concerning your service request 100609-000749 thank you for the message header. I appreciate it. I researched this issue further and unfortunately, the issue why you cannot receive e-mails sent from a Microsoft Online company is that TNEF data sent by our servers is not supported by Postini, your message filtering service with Google. TNEF data is not a ratified standard data format for message data by the RFC organization. The best point of contact will be Google and see if they can enable support for TNEF data on your filtering service.

Issue Workaround:
• Due to TNEF data not being supported by Google, BPOS users sending to Google e-mail account is not supported.
• Please contact Google to discuss enabling TNEF compatibility on your Postini filtering service.
• Migrate completely to Microsoft Online will resolve issues also.

No resolution: Reply from Google Apps Support
This is a known issue with the TNEF format messages in Gmail shown as winmail.dat attachments (sans search will bring up a lot of results). The solution is not to send messages using TNEF format to Gmail recipients. This is the KB describing how to setup Exchange not to send Winmail.dat file to Internet Users:


http://support.microsoft.com/kb/138053

It is impossible for Gmail to fully support TNEF format since limited information about this format is disclosed. As the MSFT support puts it: "... TNEF data is not a ratified standard data format for message data by the RFC organization ..."

You will need to open a support request with Microsoft Online Services to configure these settings. Actually I found this post online about the similar issue:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/onlineservicesexchange/thread/5392fd81-471f-4338-9559-a79f9f2bd828

Tony Safoian Discusses the Strategic Value of Online Space

Bytes by TechNet, an IT Professionals and IT Solutions discussion forum hosted by Microsoft, recently invited SADA Systems CEO, Tony Safoian, to talk about data migration and implementation of Microsoft's cloud based services. SADA is one (1) of only nine (9) Elite Accelerated BPOS Partners in the Country specializing in Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Services (BPOS) suite and related cloud migration and integration services. Listen as Tony discusses common concerns and challenges that routinely plague enterprises as well as small businesses with on-premise solutions and the outstanding successes to be achieved by migrating to cloud based technology.

For example, password resets and management are a huge strain on IT resources. SADA Systems provides a quick and painless solution with AuthMagic for Microsoft Online Service/BPOS that seamlessly synchronizes passwords any time an end-user changes their Active Directory password. Easy for users, easy for IT.



What are some immediate benefits to moving to the cloud?

• Reduced IT costs
  
• Increased efficiency
  
• Improved strategic value of IT initiatives
  

And we'll leave the rest to Tony: