Thursday, August 19, 2010

Value in voice

Now that I've been back in the voice game for a couple of years I've had a chance to reformulate my opinions about this market.  I've been working with all different sizes of customers on voice solutions.  More specifically VOIP (Voice Over IP) phone systems and the connections to the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network).

You'd never guess but..........nothing has really changed.  Sure the way that the phone call is getting from one place to another has changed.  The types of devices we are talking on has changed.  The way we interact with each other has changed.  What has not changed?  The need for value.  The need for excellent service providers. The need for a true consultative approach.  I guess I'm kind of predictable and I'm sorry for that.  I've seen product after product in the technology market become a "commodity".  Then I've watched as countless companies go to consume these products only to find out that nothing works quite like "they" said it would.  You can go online and search for VOIP providers and find all sorts of low cost options.  If your office is small and not growing these may serve you well.  Depending on your business model.  When your business grows to a point of true reliance on the VOIP solution you will expose it's weaknesses.

Don't get me wrong.  I get that startups have limited dollars to work with and will have to make sacrifices.  I support that.  I did that with my first business.  I'm speaking more to the established businesses that have established budgets to work with.

I'm seeing that even though VOIP is effective its not simple.  Long term perspective is required to make the right choices with your technology dollar.  It's important to consider the overall impact on the IT resources and network.  What happens if the internet goes down?  If the firewall crashes?  If someone gets a virus?

What I've seen is that some companies in the market are taking a commodity approach to selling these products "turnem and burnem"  others still know they are building long term relationships.  They are working to become the trusted advisor.  The second approach is the one I support.

Thanks for reading ~pz

Thursday, August 5, 2010

WPC 2010 - Worldwide Partner Conference - July 11-15, 2010

Love watching Steve Balmer. He's always inspired. I'm encouraged by what he has to say. Microsoft will continue to give Google a run for their money

WPC 2010 - Worldwide Partner Conference - July 11-15, 2010

Interesting News about Microsoft

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20012806-245.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

SEC and FINRA compliance

Recently I've had the opportunity to work with one of my customers helping them get ready for bringing a dealer broker group into their business.  This means that they will need to be SEC and FINRA compliant in their IT practices.  I have to say its been an interesting journey.  I've come to really appreciate the value of Email archiving.  I've also gained an appreciation for the size of the job these Two regulatory agencies have to do.  After the recent recession a lot of people have been critical about the regulation of our financial markets and rightfully so.  We've said there needs to be more accountability and more historical tracking of information.  We expect the organizations responsible for our dollars to be able to go back in time and find information about transactions, conversations and agreements among other things.

I'm happy to report that the IT industry has stepped up with tools that will make that a possibility.  The question is, how quickly will these businesses adopt the new technologies?  I think that they will do it because they have to.  I think they will because the cost of not doing it is too high.  This started me thinking about what other industries should require this kind of compliance.  I think education and healthcare will be next.

I discovered in my research that the legal cost of email discovery is 50% of the total when dealing with legal problems where email is involved.  With the new email archiving tools that are available that could help companies reduce risk and cost considerably.  I'm always encouraged when IT solution providers find a way to make business more efficient and help them save money.

Thanks for reading ~pz 


 

Sunday, August 1, 2010

File Storage

It's funny how things never really change that much.  10 years ago the first thing I was dealing with was customer's electronic file storage and sharing challenges.  Now the challenge is still one of the main things I help my customers figure out.  The basic problem is that we have all this electronic information.  Some of it is important.  Some of it is private.  a lot of it is not worth hanging on to but we don't have the time to figure out which is which.

Today their are a lot of great new ways to address this problem.  Microsoft has taken their products put them in the cloud they are called Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite or BPOS for about  $10.00 per user per month. (http://www.managedsolution.com/CloudSolutions/thirtydaytrial.html) Google is providing Google Apps or more specifically Google Doc's and this comes standard with a free google account or the $4.75 per month per user price will get you their premium solution.  (http://docs.google.com/demo/edit?id=scAAFE2hvYCWG-9BtSKhcMXGD#document)

These tools are unique in that they will allow you to create your entire company file storage and email solution in the cloud.   The entry price is low so it's easy and painless to get on board.  There have been several large organizations that have adopted these solutions and there is definitely an ROI to be achieved.  So why are more small and medium businesses not diving in to this solution?

I've been using Google docs for over a year now as a personal solution and it works great. I'm also equally confident in the Microsoft solution.  I think that there is a great unknown that a lot of business can't get past.  What if things change?  What if these big players decide they want to change the price, or the platform or the whole game?  it could really cause some discomfort for a small or medium business that had just moved on board.  For those companies I wholeheartedly support the traditional client server model where the company installs a server and joins the computers up to the domain and keeps everything local.  (except the backup...but thats another blog for another day).

Bottom line is that there are more solutions than ever to provide secure shared storage of files.

Thanks ~pz