Innovative Visions

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 on how this will affect your organization (whether or not you’ve already made the necessary updates). Please let us know if you need assistance on these, but scheduling is tighter than ever across the country right now. Yesterday a customer had an emergency for an onsite router configuration and it took quite some time to track down a partner with the available time to do this quick job.

What will this upgrade cost? http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=4609

Microsoft charging for “older” patches? http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=288

List of affected Microsoft products: http://support.microsoft.com/gp/dst_prodlist

General info on the upgrade: http://blogs.zdnet.com/topic/Daylight+Saving+Time.html

More useful information: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2096765,00.asp

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The following was taken from an article on StartupNation.com, of which IV is a contributing member. Written by Marcia Layton Turner, it has some decent things to say which I feel are worth passing along. The full article can be read here.

1) Identify the problem

When EndSight saw its customer satisfaction, efficiency and employee satisfaction levels plummeting, management knew it was time to make a change.

But even if your company isn’t experiencing problems or bottlenecks, there may still be opportunities to improve overall efficiency and productivity.

Eric Hobbs, president of Cary, N.C.-based Technology Associates, Inc., suggests companies start by looking at “whatever they do repeatedly for customers.” Then seek out technology that can help the business do that work faster or better. “Inefficiency is expensive,” Carroll agrees.

2) Determine What You Need

Once you’ve zeroed in on processes needing improvement, the next step is finding the technology best-suited for the situation. In most cases, small business owners shouldn’t be making such choices themselves, although many still try to “cobble it together,” Hobbs says, maybe by asking for help from a colleague or neighbor.

Like Carroll, Hobbs strongly advocates hiring an information technology consultant to recommend equipment and a plan for the future.

Even EndSight, a company of IT specialists, hired a consultant for help in choosing the most appropriate equipment. Recognizing its lack of familiarity with phone systems, the firm decided to leave its integration to the experts.

One place to start looking for qualified IT vendors and consultants, Hobbs suggests, is Microsoft’s Small Business Center. He also advises sticking with name-brand hardware and software to avoid most major problems. “Ninety percent of a small business’s needs can be handled by off-the-shelf products, many of which are already seamlessly integrated,” he says – meaning, as Florin Pal of Business Communications Solutions puts it – that they’ll “play nice with other equipment.”

3) Develop a plan

After choosing your IT vendor or consultant, the next step is creating a plan for getting from where you are to where you want to be tech-wise. A timeline, equipment list and critical steps should be part of that plan, including how employees will be brought into the loop.

“One of the key things people overlook is their personnel,” says Pal, customer service manager at Business Communications Solutions of Irvine, Calif. While you may be ahead of the curve in your familiarity with different technologies, don’t assume your employees are right there with you. Some may actually be tech-averse. “Don’t jump too far ahead with the technology,” Pal says. “Take incremental steps and everyone can use the new features and benefit from them, rather than being frustrated.”

4) Install the Equipment

Likewise, “the fewer systems the better,” says David Koretz, CEO of BlueTie, of Rochester, N.Y. “Sixty percent of enterprise software sits on a shelf unused,” he says, reinforcing the importance of investing in software that will improve your company’s performance. “Don’t implement technology for technology’s sake – do it to make more money,” Carroll adds.

Training should also be a part of your roll-out plan, as well as access to consultants for post support.

5) Keep It Maintained

“People forget about the maintenance,” says Pal, but keeping software and hardware up-to-date will assure that your technology and your business run smoothly – and continue to grow together.

Previously, I have discussed the state of our domestic broadband offerings and the danger it poses to future generations’ ability to innovate and compete in the world market. Prices are high for services which are slow… and this is all compared to what you can get in Lithuania! In the process I directed your attention to this piece, written by FCC member Michael J. Copps in last November’s Washington Post which tells the story behind why the US ranks 15^th worldwide in broadband Internet adoption.

Well, here is the next chapter, but this time it directly involves the FCC. Nate Anderson (from ArsTechnica), wrote on Monday about the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) taking the FCC to task in federal court to release their database of Form 477 filings.

“CPI wants the FCC database of Form 477 filings. These documents are filed with the FCC by every telecom company in the US, and they give the agency data on each company’s line deployments, broken down by ZIP code (and generally unaudited by the FCC).”

The FCC is protesting, saying this will reveal confidential competitive information about all carriers and their future plans. Every major telecommunications’ lobbying group agree. However, The CPI may have a good point here. They want to determine, for themselves, how competitive the broadband market really is and need to data to do so.

This is a crucial step in the process to increase competition, thus improving services while decreasing costs to consumers and companies. The problem is that the GAO (the federal agency in charge of internal auditing) has repeatedly chastised the FCC for its inaccurate reporting of actual broadband availability and adoption. However, without these filings, there is no way to hold the broadband providers accountable. If successful, the CPI hopes to publish the data on its telecommunications/technology/media information site.

IV works with all of these carriers on a daily basis and some of our revenue is derived from these partnerships. Why, you ask would be we want to encourage the release of this information? Because not only is widespread broadband adoption necessary, but crucial for the US to remain competitive in the global marketplace. This will help us all! I will say it again: The US is currently ranked 15^th in the world in broadband adoption and will only drop in these standings if competition continues to remain stagnant (with the help of the FCC). Will we be hearing more about this or will it be swept under the rug with a handshake? Thanks to the CPI, I think it might have a chance in the national spotlight.

Are you experiencing information overload when trying to research a particular subject or project? What sort of information management system do you use to organize and direct your search towards the most appropriate result? There are times when I will put the direction of my search in the very capable hands of Google, however if I want specific, relevant links which the “tech community” perceives as such, I use Del.icio.us. If you haven’t yet experienced this form of search and management, I suggest you give it a try. Start by going to our tags at: del.icio.us/IVforBusiness and let me know what you think. Now, I must warn you that you too may become enthralled in the various island living arrangements or great dog training facilities that I have also tagged on this site, however the majority of our tags will open you to a dynamic way of searching for the references which matter most to you and your company.

Throughout my years of experience in channel building, management and development I have come across the good, the bad and the really, really ugly in vendors of all shapes and sizes. Some of them sell routers designed to work with cable/DSL modems, when you actually have full T1’s coming into your offices. Others develop Microsoft licensing schemes bordering on the insane, not to mention illegal (a legal liability). But there are plenty of vendors out there who are really, really good at what they do; from analysis and design to procurement or delivery and installation, to the ongoing management. There are gems in the haystack. But how do we determine who’s who and more importantly, how do we decrease the impact on your bottom line profitability and efficiency, resulting from a potentially bad decision?

Do you get new vendors on a referral basis? Perhaps your rolodex goes back through 20 years of industry experience and that is enough to fulfill your needs… Well, however you accomplish this task today, this world is changing at a new rate of speed.

First, let’s look at the different type of vendors that exist today. There exist the hardware and software “value-added” resellers or VAR’s, also known as box-pushers (such as CDW, Insight, PC Connection, etc.). Then there exist the IT management shops who will help the SMB customer manage its Exchange network or remote connectivity environments (such as All Covered on a national scale or the thousand other shops built like it around the country). Additionally, there are CLEC’s spread across the country (not often known by name, they will resell blocks of phone minutes at a discounted price). Then we get into the “managed service” providers, or MSP’s. This is where the water gets muddied and the quality of service you will receive can take your business to new, previously unimaginable levels, or embarrass and throw your company’s technology (and consequently business environment) into a brick wall. Let’s try to avoid this scenario, shall we?

Michael Vizard, from eWeek’s Channel Insider, helps to navigate the unknown of the MSP world for channel partners (i.e. the VAR’s, IT shops, CLEC’s and of course MSP’s) in his recent column entitled, “A Managed Services Means to an End.” While making some rather good points about what is most important, this article is of course written for the traditional VAR or “solution provider” and their desires to move into the managed services space; primarily because without additional channels of revenue they will die by their own hand of horribly low hardware and software margins.

Let me stop here for a bit and explain a couple of things about how the VAR channel works (and additionally what most every other channel is modeled after). First tier is the manufacturer. Second is the distributor (Ingram, Tech Data, Synnex, D&D, etc.). Third are the VAR’s (and at times the IT management shops). By the time you get to the third level (from whom most companies will purchase their hardware and software, telecommunications services, etc.) there is little difference in service or price. It essentially comes down to your sales rep’s ability to manipulate the process as best he can. There is a constant fight to keep declining margins from toppling their strung-out sales’ forces and therefore they need to diversify into other offerings whenever possible. Buyer beware…

This is where, as Vizard points out, VAR’s can use a platform (such as Silverback, N-Able or Level Platforms) to create packaged, managed services for remote management, design, backup and recovery, etc. However, due to the nature of their business structure, VAR’s cannot accomplish this task or actually sell ANY of these services without SKU’s. So, the feared “C-word” or “commodity” comes into play here as it always has in this environment. In other words, if you have sku’s, than anyone can sell it, thereby reducing the increased competition and reducing any possible margins which once existed for them. While trying to diversify their portfolio of services, these “channel companies” are creating another commodity channel which will self-destruct, just like the rest of them.

As you can imagine, this is becoming a growing problem for companies needing to determine who to use in order to complement or replace their existing capabilities. How will these VAR’s (and other “MSP’s”) complement your business? Do they know your environment? Your competition? Your short and long-term business strategy? These are very valid questions which must be asked every time we venture out for additional help. Why do you think IV is in business?!? The potential savings or chance of disaster makes the stakes very high for all involved. Perhaps we can be considered a Channel Broker, as I mentioned yesterday, but as long as that definition is defined without concrete walls; because, to quote a fairly famous musician from the last 60 years, “The times they are a-changin’”.

Today, November 9^th, marks the last day of the third annual Web2.0 Conference (just renamed Web2.0 Summit) held at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. While there have been many interesting new projects announced, joint ventures ventured and creativity using the Internet is obviously booming, I have my doubts about the true use of some of these companies. So many of them are innovative, but is there really a market demand for 3D web browsing and a system to divide and monitor shared expenses?

Personally, I’m all over exploring these things because this is my life, 24/7. But how many people outside the world of technology will find these innovations useful in the next couple of years? My point is that there are other companies out there which are changing the way we live our daily lives TODAY. Web2.0 is about converged, interactive and highly available content and I want these things now. As Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos commented at the Summit, “Amazon’s Web Services will be meaningful business.” Note that he’s speaking in the future tense.

Webware.com has done a nice job delivering the news from the Web2.0 Summit and it’s certainly worth a read to see where we might be headed in three years, but let’s talk about what’s changing now, how all of this might come together to make a meaningful change in our lives today and into tomorrow and of course let’s think about the many revenue-generating opportunities this creates.

I have wanted to write about this subject for about a year and a half, ever since I first watched “Epic 2014” which discusses the future of the “Google Grid” and its hypothesized takeover of all media, content, advertising and delivery. Then, a couple of weeks ago I was reading more about IPTV/Internet Television and the possibilities of this form of content delivery, and that’s when things really started to come together in my mind.

Brightcove.com, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts has already developed a model to deliver custom and targeted advertising to IPTV viewers and created the video marketplace to provide the content as well (useful competition with YouTube?). Michael Kanellos with CNET News.com wrote at the end of October, “For example, a news site on extreme sports could get a feed on foreign surf competitions from an established news agency like Reuters, resell or syndicate its own clips to online outdoor-clothing merchants, and put ads in the videos it produces.”

Another company leading the way is Spot Runner which “provides commercial production, media planning and media buying services to help local businesses make ‘ads’ cheaply for local TV.”

And, Spot Runner just received another $40 Million in funding from such advertising and media giants as WPP, CBS Corporation and Interpublic Group. Imagine Brightcove and Spot Runner coming together to provide their services in a combined, converged format? And imagine how far they’ve come with their offerings since these pieces were written! This is where we are leading…

On October 31^st of this year, Om Malik of GigaOM.com discussed the possibility of an IPTV boom in the making. In it, he quotes Jeff Heynen of Infonetics Research, ‘“IPTV is still in the ‘kick the tire’ phase, with service providers doing trials rather than mass deployments, but there’s no question that IPTV is going mainstream.”’ Many imply (including Malik) that, like many other technology innovations (such cellular services), Europe and Asia will probably be at the forefront of this wave. However, with companies like Spot Runner, Brightcove and ChoiceStream adapting their thinking in the US, we may have a chance to claim this one first.

DirecTV announced this week that they have partnered up with the Cambridge, Mass. based company ChoiceStream, to enable their customers to rate programming and receive personalized recommendations. Erica Ogg, of CNET News.com wrote more about the implications of this move yesterday. This is just one of ChoiceStream’s partnerships (others include Yahoo and eMusic) to provide customized advertising and content delivery.

Now, all of these companies, their services and many, many others are combining to create the future of information access, media and content delivery and the associated and relevant advertising to boot. Donna Bogatin of ZDNet, has researched and writes about this age of ultimate convergence on a daily basis. One of her recent blog posts summarizes a part of this path (IPTV) quite nicely I think:

“The proposed framework for combining mass media with a highly personalized Web-based experience “listens” to ambient audio and connects the viewer with services and related content on the Web via three-components:

· a client-side interface

· an audio-database server

· a social-application Web server

“Will we soon see Google ITV?”

While Google ITV is a possibility, there will be other options available before that happens. With the increasing adoption of bandwidth in the home and the encroaching FIOS (Fiber to the home), “Triple Play” will take on new meaning very, very soon. Telecommunications and cable companies are already going head to head to be the first and best to market with their offerings, but the channel to deliver the services is only part of the package. It will be companies like Spot Runner, Brightcove, ChoiceStream and many others that will really make the difference in providing the “complete experience.”

Your comments are more than welcome.

Available here (and I will provide the full text on demand), this is an article which is a must-read for anyone having anything to do with business (technology or not). Written by Andrew McAfee and published in this month’s Harvard Business Review, it is a compelling piece titled, “Mastering the Three Worlds of Information Technology.” McAfee subtitles it, “There are three categories of IT, each of which provides different organizational capabilities—and demands very different kinds of management interventions.”

One of the key points made is: “I believe that executives have three roles to play in managing IT: They must help select technologies, nurture their adoption, and ensure their exploitation. However, managers needn’t do all those things each time they buy a new technology.” I would elaborate more, but I believe McAfee has done as good a job as any I have seen in explaining the true ins and outs of this profession and the world we live in.

Again, here is the link for your reference. I would love to hear your feedback.

You might notice that I’ve included a “Recommended Reading” section to our blog which can be found on the right as you scroll down. This is a fluid list, so please do let me know if you have any suggestions or comments. I’ve also listed them here for your reference. Have a great day!

• “Happiness Is.” By Shawn Christopher Shea
• “The Seven Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works” By Ricardo Semler
• “Maverick” By Ricardo Semler
• “Straight from the Gut” By Jack Welch, with John A. Byrne
• “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” By Robert Kiyosaki
• “The Tipping Point” By Malcolm Gladwell
• “Blink” By Malcolm Gladwell
• “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” By Franklin Covey
• “The Goal” By Eliyahu Goldratt
• “Trump: The Art of the Deal” By Donald J. Trump, with Tony Schwartz