Author Archive
Monday, May 5th, 2008
The IT Reseller Channel: How to Navigate the Complexity, Cost and Frustration
While maintaining our original business model for telecommunications contract and negotiation management (where our clients receive free management and consulting services from IV), Innovative Visions, LLC is considering adopting a new stance for the IT hardware and software reseller market. We are hoping to get some active feedback on this proposed model, before launching. This [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Channel, IV General Posts, Managed Services, Outsourcing, Vendor Relationships by Jake Carey-Rand
Thursday, March 8th, 2007
A Friendly Reminder for Daylight Saving Time
It is coming this weekend… are you ready? IT consultants have been scrambling for the past two weeks to complete the necessary transitions in this “mini-Y2K” and no doubt will be burning the midnight oil this weekend, thanks to the usual last-minute customer calls. Here is a quick list of valuable links to educate yourself [...]
Comments Off - Posted in Daylight Savings, IV General Posts, Productivity, Reference, Software, Technology Planning by Jake Carey-Rand
Thursday, March 8th, 2007
Microsoft Trounced Again; This Time by the FAA
Although it’s not yet a done deal, David Bowen (CIO of the FAA) said recently that he’s taking a very close look at Google’s application offering (to be run on Linux), in place of Microsoft’s Office Suite and Windows Vista. The idea is to have Dell (the FAA’s primary hardware vendor) supply them with PC’s [...]
No Comments » - Posted in IV General Posts, Microsoft, Software, Technology Upgrades, Vista by Jake Carey-Rand
Tuesday, March 6th, 2007
I Just Proved the Importance of Backing Up Your Data!
You may or may not have noticed that our blog was down for a short time recently and just came back online. It went down when we tried upgrading the backend of the system and it didn’t match up well with the database. However, thanks to a backup of the data (both in a SQL [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Disaster Planning, Disaster Recovery, IV General Posts by Jake Carey-Rand
Friday, March 2nd, 2007
DOT says NO to Vista, Office 2007 and IE7; Just the Beginning?
Well, here we go… Chalk up another stumbling block for Microsoft to hurdle in its plans of world domination. They were hoping organizations would begin to upgrade to Windows Vista, Office 2007 and Internet Explorer 7 by now, however apparently the Federal Government doesn’t agree. I’m sure Microsoft didn’t appreciate hearing Daniel Mintz (CIO for [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in IV General Posts, Microsoft, Software, Technology Upgrades, Vista by Jake Carey-Rand
Friday, March 2nd, 2007
NetVibes2Go
Of all the things to come out of “Web2.0” (some useful and some entirely useless), I think one of my favorites is NetVibes. For organizing your RSS feeds from across the web (i.e. blogosphere, news sites, product reviews, email, weather, etc.), NetVibes is a wonderful tool I’ve been using for about 10 months. I have [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Aggregators, IV General Posts, Internet, Productivity, Reviews, Software, Startups, Web2.0 by Jake Carey-Rand
Friday, March 2nd, 2007
ThinkPad Battery Recall; again…
“The defect occurred in the joint design of the battery packs, not because of an internal battery cell problem,” this according to spokespeople from both Lenovo and Sanyo (thanks to Reuters for the clip). Just a quick note to anyone who wasn’t caught up in the large-scale Sony battery recall last year: turn over your [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Batteries, IV General Posts, Law, Lenovo, Recall by Jake Carey-Rand
Tuesday, February 27th, 2007
Before you Upgrade, Try Training
While many companies will often look at the direct costs associated with a technology upgrade (hardware, software, telecommunications), they rarely take into account the “soft” costs associated with training their employees on a new system. Even more important, companies are just starting to realize the real benefits and increased revenue from training their employees on [...]
No Comments » - Posted in IV General Posts, Productivity, Technology Upgrades, Training by Jake Carey-Rand
Tuesday, February 27th, 2007
IT Training, Outsourcing and the “Threat” of Globalization
ComputerWorld.com released a special report last July discussing the future of IT jobs and what we can expect in 2010. I recently came across the various articles produced by the results of this study and want to share some relevant insight. The researchers’ primary focus concentrated on how to keep up with the outsourcing trend [...]
No Comments » - Posted in IV General Posts, Outsourcing, Productivity, Training by Jake Carey-Rand
Monday, February 26th, 2007
Linux vs. Microsoft: The OS Debate
In Bexley Ohio, school district officials announced last week that they will migrate all computers to Linux from Microsoft Windows by 2010, apparently saving them $412,000. (This number should be argued, as I doubt they considered the true cost, but more on that later.) While this decision was based on a number of issues (cost [...]
