►Be Prepared for Anything—Not Just Disaster
reprinted with permission from HP

Most companies spend time anticipating and planning for disasters. But in a global economy, where opportunity and risk go hand-in-hand, other events can be as devastating to the unprepared as any hurricane.

The corporate landscape is dotted with potential landmines that can take a toll on businesses:

• Skyrocketing energy costs and environmental mandates are forcing cuts in energy consumption.
• Security audits can distract IT staff if the organization is not sufficiently prepared.
• E-discovery requests can hijack resources and negatively impact productivity.
• Loss of key personnel can be a setback if a company doesn’t have a succession plan in place.
• Lost storage media, like a stolen laptop, can lead to tarnished reputations and lowered revenues if removable media isn't encrypted and digital keys well-managed.

Read more
 

A high school teacher
hung this sign under the
clock in her classroom.
"Time will pass . . .  Will you?"

~James E. Myers
 

►Just for Laughs

This isn't another lecture about minding your e-mail manners. This is a story about a new subset of e-mail etiquette. Call it wireless politeness.

An increasing number of e-mail messages are being received on small, wireless devices with limited screen space — devices such as Windows Mobile-based Smartphones. Being polite is still important. But so are a number of other considerations, including brevity, diction and consideration for bandwidth.

Reader Terri Thornton aptly sums up the frustration with today's wireless transmissions. "I hate checking my e-mail and having the subject line be so long that it scrolls forever until I can figure out what the topic is, or whether it's important," says Thornton, a Cincinnati marketing executive. "Worse is the one-word subject line that says nothing and you have to open it to find out what it is and discover it's 30 lines of nothing."

So what is the etiquette for sending e-mail messages to and from wireless devices?
Here are seven tips.

Businesses today wrestle and grapple with the thought of hiring their own technology support staff to support their daily need for IT support without fully understanding the risks and the costs associated with having their own team of technology professionals.

Business owners, C level execs and Managers are attracted to the idea of having a team or a consultant readily available within shouting distance down the hall, basically having an IT resource committed to them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. However, many of today’s business owners across the country are not aware of the total risks their business is exposed to by electing to bring their technology support in-house.

More often than not it is purely a cost based decision, on the surface it may appear to be more cost effective to hire a consultant or employee who is committed as a full time employee. CFOs and Accounting Managers often look only at the cost of having their IT outsourced and or attracted to hiring someone for a few thousand dollars a month as part of their staff will save their company in the long run. This is not the case in reality and by having a full time employee will actually end up costing business today more in the long run.

So what are the advantages of having an IT Partner who focuses on delivering a complete managed technology solution? There are a number of immediate benefits over having a full time employee.

These benefits include:

You’ve no doubt heard a lot about cloud computing (or the cloud). What you may not have learned is how this misty concept can help with the real problems of operating your business, especially in hard times.

In short, cloud computing offers attractive options for small and midsize businesses that need critical IT upgrades, but may lack the cash for a large capital investment.

Through the cloud, you can add new, vital applications or you can supplement the capacity of an existing infrastructure. Because cloud services are delivered via the Internet (often the Web) you only pay for the features and functionality you use and don’t pay for extra hardware, software, staff and maintenance.

As a result, your business can grow its IT capabilities, often at a lower cost than doing everything itself. And you can pull the cost from your operating budget rather than your capital budget.

So what is cloud computing exactly, and why is it significant to small and midsize businesses?