E-Newsletter July 2007

This month, Dan Zaremba and I attended Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference in Denver Colorado during the week of July 9. I view this as one of the most important events we attend all year for 3 key reasons:

1. We get to hear firsthand about Microsoft's strategic thinking and direction. This week features speakers from the highest levels of Microsoft's executive ranks including Steve Ballmer himself. One of the key themes of these speeches has been the trend towards Software as a Service (SaaS). This is the trend which takes IT assets that currently reside in house with our customers and moves them off premise. I think that SaaS will rapidly begin to overtake the market with many of our smaller customers that want the full functionality and feature set of a robust network system without a significant upfront investment. Look for an announcement this summer of our new offerings in this area.
   
   
2. This conference is a great opportunity for us to meet new vendors and discover new technologies that can help us help our customers. I sat through a demonstration yesterday of software that allows us to offer remote management of mobile devices – a piece we have wanted for some time. I spoke with another vendor that offers a rapid application development platform for mobile devices, allowing us to create solutions in days rather than weeks or months. These are just a couple of examples – I am coming back with a THICK stack of brochures, and looking forward to using these tools.
   
   
3. Probably one of the best opportunities that comes out of this conference is the opportunity to network. There is no other time of the year where so many Microsoft employees and partners from around the world come together in one place. I have had the chance to see many of my friends from Europe and Latin America, and learn about their businesses and challenges (which are very similar to ours). I have also had a wonderful opportunity to spend more time with members of my peer group who always have something new to teach me. One of my favorite things from this week was a new tool that will allow us to develop desktop graphs and charts that can be docked as a gadget in Windows Vista. We will be rolling out a wide variety of these gadgets internally next week to show us key indicators of our business such as number of service tickets in each status, and average service ticket age by customer type. I'd encourage you to ask our engineers to show you the data they will now have available at their fingertips 24/7.
   
   

We always leave this conference full of energy and dedication to our customers, and I know this year will be no different for Dan and me. We hope our enthusiasm will be contagious and that you allow us to share with you what we've learned. We also hope you'll allow us to work with you to apply our new knowledge to your business to help you realize the strategic value of the technology in place at your organization. Have a great month!

The world of a typical employee has changed dramatically in recent years. We often hear terms like "empowered" to describe employees, and while that term may be overused and cliche, it is a fact that modern companies expect more from every individual employee. Long gone are the days of mindless drones sitting around responding to orders that come down from above.

Today, everyone is responsible for business performance management. In essence, we have all become CEO of our own little part of the company. The only way to do this is through gaining real Business Intelligence. We need to turn the mountains of data we now access into more than just information – we need to turn it into true insight.

No vendor in our industry is more keenly aware of this than Microsoft. While it may sound like a slick marketing campaign, Microsoft truly does build tools for the People Ready Business. These tools enable information workers to understand the data they are bombarded with, analyze and optimize that data, and use it to drive the business forward. The very foundation upon which these tools are built is the Microsoft Office System, and the release of Office 2007 advances these efforts light years forward.

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Notes from the Network Engineering Department:

Note to readers: As our network engineers work with all of you across our entire customer base, they observe trends and issues that many people have in common, or that many customers will find helpful to know about. This section is designed to give them a mechanism to communicate those issues to you, with the hope that YOU might benefit from.

This month, we'd like to share a lesson that we learned together with one of our longest time customers. The lesson is about the cost of not involving our team as soon as a problem is discovered.

This client has been with itSynergy since its inception over 10 years ago. We have helped them move through many generations of technology, and worked with them to provide a stable infrastructure over the long term.

Recently, the client noticed they were running low on space on the C drive of their server. They weren't a subscriber to our itSynergize monitoring service, so we did not receive any early alerts of the low space condition. The client didn't want to bother us with such a trivial matter, and decided to address the issue without consulting us. Our client started moving some files over to the larger D drive of the server, but wasn't able to make a significant impact. As the problem got worse, we did get some of the default Small Business Server notices, and emailed the client offering help. At this point, however, our customer still felt the issue didn't warrant our expertise, and so they continued to work on the issue on their own.

Finally after several weeks, the client raised the white flag, and asked for our involvement. Unfortunately, by the time we became involved, several key system files had been moved, and significant portions of the system weren't functioning. It took two engineers several days and even a call to Microsoft Product Support Services to get the issue resolved. The engineers involved estimated that if we had been involved at the outset of the issue, we could have freed up more than enough space with 15-30 minutes worth of effort.

Our key learning from this series of events:

1. Even our lowest level monitoring service on a server doesn't cost much, but gives us very early warning to hundreds of potential problem conditions.
2. Problems like running out of space are very common, and we deal with them all the time. We know which files are OK to move, and which aren't, and we know where to look to find the programs that are hogging space. Our experience allows us to be very efficient in solving such problems.
3. We don't know a single small business owner that writes their own contracts without an attorney or prepares their own taxes without a CPA. itSynergy is another member of that team of professionals, and we are eager to help with everything from a trivial issue such as running out of space all the way to thinking about how to strategically leverage your technology as a competitive advantage.

We're here to help!

July 2007
In this issue....

 □  Welcome
 □  Gain Business Insight
 □  Tech Corner
 □  Make Your Data Jump
 □  Protect Your Back at Work

Make Your Excel Data Jump

• With the revolution of Office 2007, Microsoft has put a great deal of effort into helping you do your job faster and easier, and helping you get the information you need quickly and clearly. Nowhere is that effort more apparent than in Excel 2007.
  
  One of the coolest new
  
  
  enhancements is the evolution of conditional formatting. Your data has an important story to tell, but in a worksheet with row after row of numbers it's not always easy to see patterns and trends. With conditional formatting, it only takes a glance to compare worker productivity, sales figures, product performance, or other measures that are important to your business. Excel 2007 makes it easier than ever to apply rich conditional formatting
  
  Watch this demo to see how data bars, gradient colors, icon sets, and other conditional formatting can turn raw data into information you can act on.

Protecting Your Back At Work

• 
  Back pain is one of the most common medical problems in the United States. The cause is often poor posture and body mechanics in the workplace.
  
  A supervised program of back protection and exercise may be the key to alleviating and even preventing such problems.
  
  Correct posture and body mechanics play a vital role in preventing back pain because pressure on the discs and strain of the muscles, ligaments and back joints is aggravated by incorrect posture and body mechanics. At the same time, when your posture is good and you move your body correctly, you reduce the strain on your back.
  
  Sitting down on the job
  Sitting is often the greatest cause of back pain. When sitting either in a relaxed position, driving, or while at work, support your lower back. Use a rolled towel, small pillow, or a specially designed seat support, available at medical supply stores.
  
  
  Read more

Quote of the month

"The brain is a wonderful organ.  It starts working the moment you get up in the morning, and does not stop until you get into the office."

Robert Frost (1874-1963)

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