This article is going to be the first in a three-part software engineering best practices series on code reviews. Here, we will focus on what a code review is and why it’s an integral part of a mature software development lifecycle (SDLC) process. In the following...
Infrastructure
Deploying Exchange and Outlook 2010 Settings Using MSP, GPO, and ADMX in 15 minutes
Let’s be realistic: Windows users use Microsoft Office and Microsoft Office requires configuration. You’ve probably used the Microsoft Office Customization Tool to create Microsoft Software Patch (MSP) files to automate installation, but you should consider using...
Running Pro/INTRALINK 3.4 on Windows 7, 64-bit
I recently came across a forum post asking for advice on the combination of running Pro/Intralink 3.4 on Windows 7 64-bit. In short, I’m happy to report that we’ve been using this combination without incident: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit SP1, PTC...
Common issues using OVF Tool to transfer VMs from the ESXi Shell
Chances are if you are in IT management or providing IT services you have had to deal with virtualization hosts. When it comes time to retire your old hardware and move to a new host, there are a number of different ways to go about it. One in particular for ESXi lets...
Requirements Management in the PTC Medical Device Solution
One of the major points of pain in any development process is how do you prove that the product you’ve built for the marketplace actually does everything you want it to do. The simple answer of course is “Why you test it to make sure.” But the simple answer isn’t...
Decoding the Tensions Between Azure and AWS
The cloud is a hot space right now. How hot? Forrester predicts a global public cloud market of $178 billion by year’s end. That’s up from $146 billion last year. After 2018, Forrester pegs the compound annual growth rate at a whopping 22 percent. The Undisputed...
How Amazon Came to Rule the Cloud Kingdom
In our last article we discussed the affinity engineering organizations have for AWS as their preferred cloud platform. Now we’re going to delve a bit deeper into that topic. Amazon Web Services Rules the Cloud Kingdom AWS is the undisputed king of the cloud platform...
Despite Being Second Fiddle, Azure Steadily Gains Market Share
Last time, we talked about why engineering loves AWS so much. Now we’re going to look through the other end of the telescope: Why does IT have such an affinity for Azure? Microsoft’s Cloud Market Share Is Growing While Azure has long played second fiddle in the cloud...
Why Do Organizations Pick AWS or Azure?
In previous posts we’ve discussed the significant market share gap between top dog Amazon Web Services and its closest competitor, Microsoft Azure. We’ve talked a bit about why engineering skews toward AWS while IT tends to prefer Microsoft Azure. Still, all things...
How AWS Became the Favorite of Engineering
AWS, with its commanding market share in the world of cloud, relies heavily on engineering organizations for its success. We’ve explored the reasons for this in previous articles. What it boils down to is that Amazon’s cloud platform is more geared toward the way...
How to Best Recover your Infrastructure Systems in Case of Disaster
Every system administrator's worst nightmare is having a total disaster of their infrastructure systems. Disaster could take many forms, such as a natural disaster or even doing a physical move of a server and dropping the server, destroying it. The goal when disaster...
How to create Column Contexts for PTC Integrity documents
One handy feature of PTC Integrity is the column context. Through the use of the column context a user can easily change what document columns are presented to them in the document view based on the role or task they are performing. For example, by default a column...






