CCO's consultants have been working with Microsoft networking technologies for almost 20-years and have literally written the book on Windows Server 2008 Active Directory by authoring several best seller books on the technology (including Windows Server 2008 Unleashed, Hyper-V Unleashed, Windows Server 2003 Unleashed and Windows Server 2003 Insider Solutions.

Some of the services provided by Convergent Computing relative to Windows Server 2008 and Active Directory include:

• Assisting with the design of a Windows 2008 Active Directory environment
• Providing guidance on how to successfully migrate to Windows 2008 Active Directory (from Windows 2000, Windows 2003, Novell NetWare, and other network operating systems)
• Prototype testing of Windows 2008 features and functionality
• Helping organizations successfully migrate and implement Windows 2008
• Providing recommendations and hands-on assistance at extending Windows to include distributed file system (DFS), encrypted communications transport (IPSec)
• Implementation of Terminal Services 2008 for the latest in thin-client computing
• Integration of Windows 2008 as a the base operating system for Exchange 2007 and SharePoint 2007 environments
• Integration of Windows 2008 for LDAP and Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD/LDS)
• Architecting and implementing Windows environment disaster recovery
• Debugging, problem solving, and supporting Windows problems

Other examples of services provided by CCO for Windows Server 2008:

Windows 2008 Active Directory Planning,  Design, and Implementation	CCO was one of a handful of organizations on the Windows 2008 Technology Adoption Program (TAP) that helped organizations migrate from Windows 2000 and 2003 to Windows 2008. By the launch event in February 2008, CCO migrated hundreds of servers (in production environments) to Windows Server 2008. CCO's Consultants Rand Morimoto, Michael Noel, Ross Mistry, and Chris Amaris wrote and published (though Sams Publishing) the #1 selling book in the world on Windows 2008 (1432-pages) titled "Windows Server 2008 Unleashed" that released 2-weeks before the Windows 2008 product launch based on over 3-1/2 years of early adopter experience with Windows 2008. CCO's helps organizations understand what's new in Windows Server 2008 to either migrate a single server, or an entire Active Directory to the new operating system.
Active Directory Group Policy Review, Planning, Design, and Implementation	One of the most valuable technologies built in to Microsoft Windows Active Directory is Group Policies. Group Policies allows the administrators of a network to centrally manage user and desktop configurations such as allowing users to drop to a CMD prompt or load software, the ability to modify system parameters, or the ability to push software and updates to systems. However to successfully design and implement an effective Group Policy structure is an art that someone with prior experience with Group Policies can provide significant value to anyone working with Group Policies for the first time. CCO has found best practices on what works and how the most common structure can be designed and implemented.
Active Directory Design Assessment and Healthcheck Optimization	With Microsoft Active Directory firmly being the root for security and application integration of Microsoft products (ie: Exchange, SharePoint, Office Communications Server, System Center, SQL, etc), having a properly designed and implemented Active Directory is critical for organizations.  CCO performs Active Directory suitability assessments where it reviews business operations, IT administration practices, and application usage, and makes recommendations how Active Directory can be restructured and optimized to meet the needs of the organization.  Most AD reorganizations can be done without having to "re-do" Active Directory, just simply making backend changes to Organizational Units, Groups, and Site configuration settings that make all the difference in helping an organization leverage Active Directory to their benefit CCO also provides Active Directory Health Checks to determine whether an organization's existing Active Directory is working properly.  This involves using tools like replmon, repadmin, DCDiag, and the like to validate AD replication between Global Catalog servers are working properly, file replication services is sending group policy updates across all catalog servers, AD objects that are supposed to be on the network are on the network, or removing stale or obsolete objects from Active Directory to properly clean up the environment.  This is a crucial step not only to keep AD working properly on a day to day basis, but is absolutely important before the organization extends the Active Directory schema (when adding a new application) or upgrading to the latest version of Active Directory.
Netware eDirectory-NDS / Windows Server Migration support, and  Integration and Co-existence Planning	CCO is a Novell Gold authorized integrator and as a Microsoft Certified Gold Partner, CCO has expertise in both networking environments. This allows clients to receive expert assistance at integrating or migrating from Novell eDirectory / NDS to a Microsoft Windows Active Directory environment, or to fully integrate the two directories together. CCO helps organizations plan, prepare, and integrate directories and operating systems to provide cross-platform services.
Server Consolidation and System "Rightsizing" Planning and Implementation	Over the years many organizations have repeatedly added more servers to their network to serve the needs of specific departments, or to satisfy the performance demands of the growing organization.  However as server technology has improved that allows a single server to host a significantly larger base of users, plus organizations consolidating information access requirements with organizational servers instead of departmental servers, the ability to consolidate or "rightsize" server allocation can drastically lower the overall cost of operations for an organization. CCO authored the 100+ page "rightsizing" guide for Microsoft that helps organizations understand methods of minimizing the number of servers used in a file/print or messaging environment utilizing technologies like Distributed File System (DFS), Network Load Balancing (NLB), and by adding multiple databases to a system.