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January 2009
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Strategic Technology Horizons
Ideas and Information for Your Business
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Welcome!
As we move into the New Year, many of us face
new challenges as the economy drifts. While the
media focuses on stories of downturn and pundits
argue about correction, recession, or depression, we
see new opportunities.
Businesses are looking hard at costs. More that "how
much", companies are asking themselves "how are"
they spending. The latter focuses on the value of
investment and expense to the overall health of the
business.
At the same time, emerging trends that offer the
potential to increase efficiency and lower costs are
rapidly maturing. Hence, the focus of this month's
newsletter.
Best Regards,
Allen
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Money Saving Technologies |
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Allen Falcon
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Solutions for 2009 and Beyond
We are all looking to get more out of each dollar
we spend, especially with information technologies.
Here are a few directions with proven track records in
saving money while enhancing operations.
- Server Virtualization: The concept is
simple: run many servers in a virtual environment
while sharing the resources of a single, larger
computer. While there is a capital cost to get started,
you save in hardware, maintenance, and facilities.
Make sure your network administrator is
trained.
- Software-as-a-Service: Often known as
SaaS, you pay a monthly or annual fee to use software
running on the vendor's systems. Why buy the server
and the application when you can use the application
on a pay-as-you-go basis? Salesforce.com, Google
Apps, and ConstantContact are a few examples from
a selection of thousands of solutions.
- Unified Communications: Combine
telephone, fax, voicemail, and email into a single,
streamlined service and reduce overhead
and "admin" time for your team and lower your total
cost of communications. Unified communications
can run on internal systems, as part of your network,
or as a hosted service with no up-front
capital.
- Conferencing: With High-Def capabilities
and
dropping prices, web and video conferencing services
can offset regional and long-distance travel.
Combined with a telecommuting policy, these
services can give your team "more time" by
eliminating some of their commute.
While these are not the only cost saving ideas and
technologies, they are a good place to start. If you see
others that can help your business, let us know.
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Danger! Danger, Will Robinson! |
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Chris Caldwell
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New Massachusetts Law = Privacy Compliance Challenge
For those of us that do business, or work, with
Massachusetts residents, be warned. Massachusetts
has passed some of the most stringent privacy
legislation in the nation. As with any new laws and
regulation, it is a good news, bad news
situation.
Good News:
- The law will help protect private information
- Most business already do most of
the actions required by the new regulations
- Enforcement has been delayed until May 1, 2009,
and legislation is in process to delay some aspects of
the regulations until January 1, 2010
Bad News:
- Intended to protect consumers, the law as written
covers Massachusetts residents, including
employees and contracts
- Compliance is more than improving your
technology, it requires policy and procedures
- Aggressive enforcement is likely
More Good News: We will be publishing a
special edition of Strategic Technology
Horizons with an outline of what you need to
do to comply.
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Things We Like |
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Allen Falcon
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Google Apps Premier Edition
While the media focuses on whether Google
Docs
and Spreadsheets will replace Microsoft Office, we
see a great hosted email service and suite of
collaboration tools. Before upgrading your Exchange
server or renewing your existing hosted email
contract, take
a look.
Google Apps provides 25 GB per mailbox of storage,
runs great with Outlook or any email client, has
personal, shared, resource, and event calendars,
secure instant messaging, and free Blackberry and
PDA integration. The service also includes Google
Sites, which provide easy to build Intranet sites and
secure customer and project portals.
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Share the Knowledge |
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Contact Information
phone:
508-329-2058
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