Technology News You Can Use

September 2007 – Issue XXX

In This Newsletter

• Letter from the Chair
• Doing More on the Go: Mobile Workers Tie in With Hand-Helds
• Email Security and Management
• What is Virtualization
• Browser Wars
• Managing your Contacts
• Contact Us
• Archived Tech Newsletters
• IT Resource Guide

Letter from the Chair, Zandra Pulis, CPS Energy

Don't miss:

Tech Lunch Bunch - Backup & Recovery Made Simple

Thursday, Oct 11th, 11:00 - 1:00 pm, Hallmark College of Technology

Hosted by the Technology Council and facilitated by Bruce Howard, UTSA, this program is an IT knowledge series specifically designed for small business owners. Come learn about today's hardware and processes for back up systems as well as elements of a disaster plan. More Information and to Register Online

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Doing More on the Go: Mobile Workers Tie in With Hand-Helds

Mel Indyk, Indyk and Associates; Michael Espinoza, Technology Coaching and Demetrus Hayes, AT&T Mobility

Three months ago, an urban university campus run jointly by Indiana University and Purdue issued Motorola smart phones to its maintenance workers.  But they were not just for phone calls and email: using technology developed by start-up Jumpstart Wireless Corp., the hand-held devices also enabled workers on the Indianapolis campus to push a few buttons to connect to their department’s central computer system.  They could find out their next task and update a job’s status and fill out time sheets.

The school is one of numerous employers taking advantage of new software that can upgrade hand-held devices like Blackberry’s and Palm Pilots so employees can perform a wide range of work-related chores outside their offices.  The technology is enabling sales teams to check and update client lists. Medical personnel use the devices to access patient’s records. Warehouse workers are monitoring inventory.

There are an estimated 50 million “mobile” workers in the U.S., those who have no desk or spend more than 25% of their time outside the office, according to Frost&Sullivan, a research firm for business and consultancy.  Increasingly hand-held devices are replacing laptop computers to get the same information as they have in the office.  AT&T purchased technology from Antenna Software to make its 1,500 national sales force more productive on the road. Starting this past July, AT&T employees are using their BlackBerry’s to view and create customer accounts and review contracts. The sales force is able to do such things as give customer’s instant discounts by looking up their purchase history. 

For several years, demand for mobile technology was less than expected as companies focused on getting their employees connected to the corporate email networks.  But now demand is picking up. Some employers cut their costs: the Indianapolis University workers hand-held devices cost $35 a month, but it saves $18 a day per employee through increased efficiency.

Other technology companies that link corporate databases with hand-held devices include Maximus Inc., Vettro Corp. and Apresta Inc. Many of them are cutting deals with Microsoft and RIM and Palm, Inc., which build the operating systems that power the devices. Wireless carriers like Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel Corp. have gotten into the act in their efforts to sell business services.  AT&T ‘s wireless unit plans to sell a service it developed with Antenna Software. Customers want their employees to have access to more than email. Wireless carriers and technology companies developing new mobile services for businesses are focusing their some of their efforts on small and midsized companies that don’t have their own IT departments. Besides buying technology, these smaller companies are more likely to buy services to keep it functioning properly. 

For now, most technology companies have focused on the corporate market. But some are exploring applications in the consumer market. JumpStart Wireless is working on software that would allow customers to hook into a business’s computer system to do something like order a pizza.  Menus loaded with various pizza selections would be displayed on a user’s screen along with payment options. JumpStart hopes to be selling this software soon.

Let us end this topic with a little bit of IT techie advice:  when your Company plans to sally forth with Mobile CRM (Mobile Customer Relationship Management), you need to plan for handheld computing with a business process enabled and an operating system like Windows Mobile 5.0, and ERP warehouse integration like SAP, Oracle with Intermec terminal emulation software, systems such as Red Prairie, Highjump, Catalyst,and  ACSIS.  For server based architectures, Intermec i-Browse and speech and RFID.

Email Security and Management, Blessings Chipande, Tellus Computer Solutions

• How much of your business do you conduct by email?
• How often do you send and receive important documents by email?
• How vulnerable are you to the various risks associated with email and email borne malware?
• How would a loss of email affect your business?
• How often do you find yourself looking for information in an old email?
• How well are you complying with best practices and the various legal requirements that touch on email?

The use of email has become so pervasive hardly any of us even stop to ask those questions. A substantial portion of our business and personal lives is conducted by email. In this article we are going to explore some of the challenges posed by email and look at some real world approaches to meeting those challenges.

The inherent lack of accountability and the ease with which various aspects of an email can be faked have always been a cause of concern. Viruses, worms, spam and phishing attacks have all exploited this weakness. An email may say it is from a friend or your bank, but that does not necessarily mean it is from the person or organization. I’m sure we have all come across that scenario. An effective way of bringing a level of accountability into the process has been to actually take a look at the origin of the email or the host in technical language. By setting up some sort of a score based reputation system like Ironport Systems’ Senderbase.org; the sender of an email can be evaluated based on past behavior. Think of it as a credit score for email senders which can produce great results with little in the way of false positives. Some of the most effective spam filtering solutions on the market are based on such reputation scoring mechanisms.

The content of email is another challenge we all have to grapple with. Email can carry at the very least time wasting or damaging content with the same ease it can carry the terms of a business deal. Being able to filter out bad email and manage the useful email has to be at the core of any email management strategy. Content filters examine the actual words within an email and can be somewhat effective.  The increasing sophistication of spammers and others has always made it a cat and mouse game, with increasing time being spent trying to block every word variation not to mention the challenges posed by PDF and image based spam. Outside leakage of sensitive email is also a threat to businesses and needs to be managed.  A robust set of policies and some way of ensuring that email leaving a company does not carry any material which may be damaging to the business or its reputation is necessary.  A combination of text based filters and signatures which look at the characteristics of an email as a whole, such as those implemented on Ironport, Sophos and Trend Micro’s Email Security Appliances, do a great job at managing both incoming and outgoing mail for threats and content.

Now that you have received your spam and virus free email, this would be a great time to think about archiving. For some organizations archiving is a legal requirement and for some it is just good practice. There is a wide variety of archiving solutions out on the market. A good solution makes it easy to access your old email without burdening your infrastructure or staff. It is important to make sure you have the right solution, one that best fits your needs.

In conclusion, when tackling email it is best to take a cohesive approach that covers everything in your organization rather than a piece by piece look. To deal with every email issue in detail would require an entire book. I hope that what has been touched on in this article will offer a few .

What is Virtualization Marcia Custodio, Accounting Principals/MODIS

Virtualization is a trend that is sweeping Enterprise IT and taking the stock exchange by storm.  The company that is laughing all the way to the bank and making promises that they seem to be keeping is EMC Corporation who bought VMWare, out of Palo Alto , California , back in 2003 for $635 million in cash.  They just recently went public with just 10% of their shares on August 18 and had an initial public offering (IPO) of $29USD a share, which closed at $51USD the same day.  This IPO turned VMware into the most successful IPO since Google. It has also left the company with a market value of $19 billion. Not a bad investment.  With all that hype you are probably asking your self, “Where was I?” and then asking yourself “What is Virtualization?”

Virtualization is a concept that has been around since the 1960’s and was specifically used to partition mainframe hardware.  Now fast forward forty years, and keep in mind all the developments and advances that have taken place in technology, and the time to truly utilize virtualization has come.  Virtualization simply stated is the creation of substitutes for real resources, turning hardware into software.  Let’s take a closer look at what makes this new technology the one to watch closely.

Imagine having 800 servers and consolidating them to 60.  Yes, that is what this technology is able to do.   I am sure you can already see the savings in not only hardware but also data center and facilities cost, operational, management and maintenance costs.  Now you may be asking “how?!”.  Well, according to a VMWare representative, the capacity/utilization of any server hovers around 5%-10%, leaving about 90%-95% that is underutilized or not utilized at all.  Virtualization takes advantage of the remaining space to run separate environments (databases, business applications, web servers, e-commerce applications etc…) side by side on a single machine fully isolated and fully encapsulated.  This means you can run, on a single machine, multiple applications and operating systems each with their own CPU, memory, NIC and disk.  VMWare has developed the technology which makes this possible and it is proving to be a benefit to anyone who uses a computer.

Last week at VMWorld, a week long conference hosted by VMWare, there was one Fortune 100 company stating they have already saved 79% on their energy bill alone.  That is amazing!  Can you imagine what can be done with the savings?!  Freeing up that kind of capital could go a long way towards other business expenses, like, say for example, staff.  Plus you gain an ROI of 3-6 months which is practically unheard of in the IT world, especially for software technology that promises so much.

So if you are looking to streamline, consolidate, optimize and save tons of dinero…"VIRTUALIZE IT".

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Managing Your Contacts, Matt Reedy, Armida Technologies

Are you able to identify which of your customers generate most of your profits?  Would it be helpful for you to share customer contact information among several people in your office?  How accurate are your sales projections?  Are you in need to get better customer information, sales data or share ongoing customer relationship information with other staff?  If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you are ready for a “customer relationship management” (CRM) system.  CRM is a fancy name for a computerized database where you can store, manage and report on customer sales, contacts, emails, advertising and direct mail campaigns, among other things. 

Sometimes the computer system you use to run your business has this capability.  For example, many accounting systems have customer contact modules built-in which allow you to see and analyze customer data alongside your financial data.  Often, point-of-sale systems have customer modules as well.  If you are not using your existing CRM system to better serve the needs of your customers and more efficiently run your business, then you might be missing out on additional revenue opportunities.  CRM systems have been shown to reduce data entry errors, help businesses run more efficiently, and most importantly, provide better customer service.  Unfortunately, these systems can’t work magic – you must commit to spending the time and effort to input all the relevant information about your customers into the CRM system. 

If you don’t have a primary computer system for your business, then you have a quite a few choices when it comes to CRM.  First, there are a number of software packages you purchase and install directly on your main office computer.  In fact, if you are using Microsoft Office products, then you already have a rudimentary CRM system in the form of Microsoft Outlook.  If you need a more powerful and flexible customer contact system, then consider products such as ACT! or Goldmine.  These tools are specifically designed to capture and report on every customer contact, from your first contact with a prospect, through your ongoing dealings with long term customers.

Over the last few years, several web-based CRM alternatives have become widely used.  Products such as salesforce.com provide the same functionality as ACT! or Goldmine, but you don’t have to install or manage any software on your office computer.  In addition, web-based products automatically provide sharing of data among all your employees and offsite backup and disaster recovery options, saving you additional time and expense.  You typically pay a monthly or annual fee to use these products, which can add up to much more than you might spend to purchase a product if you use them for many years. 

When evaluating CRM packages, be sure to look for these features:

*  Easy to learn and use for all your employees

*  Ability to track all customer contacts, from phone calls and emails to word documents, invoices and proposals

*  Integration with your primary accounting system

*  Flexible reporting options to let you analyze the information you have collected

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Browser Wars, John Tomblin, DataTitan

With a powerful tool such as CRM in your office, along with an information sharing culture, your office can be much more productive and able to maximize your revenue per customer.

It’s 8:00am.  You’re in your office sipping your morning coffee.  You’re on the web admiring your new website that just stepped onto the web last week.  You’re quite proud of yourself and your development team…and all the work they did.  The phone rings.  It’s one of your most valued customers…and they begin giving you an ear-full and specifics why your new site is not working correctly.  Suddenly, you are no longer in a happy place.

This month we’re going to discuss the Browser Wars and why you need to understand the different browsers available in the marketplace, how they impact your website and how they can impact your business without you evening knowing it.

As a business owner or company manager, it is your responsibility to ensure that whether you have your own in-house development team or you hire an outside design firm, the final product must be viewable and compatible with all the major browsers.  To this end, let’s examine the major browsers you need to be familiar with and why this important to your bottom line.

Internet Explorer:  I.E. for short, remains today’s most popular web browser.  According to Wikipedia, since 1998, Internet Explorer has dominated the marketplace as the most popular browser.  When launched in 1995, it was second to Netscape; however, as of July 2006, I.E. held 86% market share and today has 92% market share.  The fact that many computers purchased today come pre-loaded with I.E. is a major reason this browser continues to retain a high percentage of the market.

Mozilla Firefox:  Launched in 2004, Firefox quickly gained in popularity among the web community and businesses alike, and continues to grow in popularity.  Today, Firefox maintains a healthy 12% market share.  Most of this growth has been taken away from I.E. which prior to 2004 maintained 95% of the market.  When debuted, Firefox captured notoriety with its multiple “tabs” feature and “ad pop-up blockers” which quickly made it a browser of choice, particularly among those it the “tech” world.

Safari:  An Apple product, Safari is now attracting a whole new audience and has already pushed Netscape into last place.  Today, Safari has nearly 3% market share and according to CNET.com, Safari, like it rivals, offers many of the same features with the added feature of reading web page text content out-loud.  Yes, websites can now talk to you.  The verdict is still out…but competition will drive the dominant players to enhance and continually improve new versions of their browser products.

Opera:  Today, Opera has less than 1% market share; however, as cell phones, Apple’s I-Phone and other leading PDA gadgets grow in popularity we will see more consumers and businesses accessing the Internet with handheld devices.  Here is where Opera enters the race.  Touted as the fasted web browser for hand held devices, Opera now offers Opera Mini…a web browser for your phone.    

The bottom line.  Make sure that for 99% of your viewing audience, you provide them the same experience regardless of the browser they use.  This is accomplished by ensuring your site, during development, is constantly being tested with I.E., Firefox and Safari.  Remember, what you see on your computer screen may not be the same as what your customer sees.  And it doesn’t matter how big or small your market is.  Even in the smallest communities, different computers will have different browser software…so proper testing and compatibility are essential.  So, whether you are updating your site or creating a whole new web presence, be sure the site is developed and thoroughly tested with multiple browsers to ensure the experience is consistent for everyone. 

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