Tag Archives: Forrester Research Inc.

A Network Tune Up for Tough Times

The U.S. economy may be tanking, but Lilli Wiggins is as busy as she’s ever been. Wiggins, the vice president and customer care manager of Gainsville, Fla.-based Computer Network Experts, is taking in more business than ever. Small and mid-sized businesses are flocking to the nine-employee IT solutions company to find ways to make their existing network equipment and systems last longer. “Usually, when equipment gets to a certain age… about four years out, you’re on the edge, and thinking you’ll buy something new. Most people right now, though, are fixing rather than buying new. They’re not throwing anything out,” notes Wiggins, whose best customers are companies with fewer than 50 employees. October’s grim news of the housing market’s collapse sent stocks tumbling around the globe, creating recession woes and a credit crunch that’s making banks leery of lending to any but their best customers. Faced with the prospects of less available capital and fewer sales, businesses big and small are holding off on many major outlays, experts say. In a mid-October report, Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research forecast that computer and communications vendors will “bear the brunt of IT cost-cutting” as companies tighten their belts. How to make your networks last But just how can businesses make their networks last longer? The experts offer these five suggestions: Be proactive. Smart companies are taking a look at their networks now to make any fixes so that crucial systems don’t fail, says Wiggins. Clean out the hard drive and take care of any basic maintenance. “In this economy, people can’t afford to have a crash,” says Wiggins. Keep malware and spyware up to date. Yes, it’s basic, but so important, and many companies forget to keep things updated, says Wiggins. For companies lacking the staff or know-how, hosted spyware solutions are offered by MessageLabs, Cisco’s Linksys, and others. Keep close tabs on Internet use. Hammer down those inter-office and remote-worker policies about Internet use, and make sure employees aren’t downloading freebies onto the network. “There’s a fine line between open-source and free, and people are still downloading things that carry viruses and malware. It’s a quandary for many businesses,” says Wiggins. Schedule a check-up. Consider bringing in a consultant to independently review your networks and make sure there isn’t something you’ve overlooked in terms of maintenance. Consider upgrades. Adding memory, adding CPUs, or switches may be a good option for some companies wanting to use what they’ve got for a while longer, notes Jennifer VanDerHorst-Larson, CEO of Minnetonka, Minn.-based Vibrant Technologies, a business-to-business IT reseller that offers technical support. Consider buying them from a reputable reseller: by buying used, companies can save 50-80 percent on quality parts, says Larson. CNE’s Wiggins notes that most of these suggestions “are just common sense.” But in this tough economy, common sense is something few can afford to be without.

Is it Time to Toss Your Servers?

Abaca Technology Corp., which launched in 2005, offers physical and virtual anti-spam appliances. The company uses Amazon’s EC2 cloud computing service to host the software that works with its appliances. Without EC2, it would have been much harder — and much more expensive — to launch Abaca, according to Bill Kasje, vice president of Business Development. “As a small company, we were able to get our servers up and running quickly,” he says. “We didn’t have to invest in a big infrastructure environment, or have backup power and redundancy, all the things our customers expect from us because email is a mission-critical application.” Though Abaca does deploy in-house servers, it would need at least four more, in a cluster configuration, if it were hosting its software in-house, he says. This way, Abaca’s IT team could focus on the company’s core competency: filtering spam. For many small companies, the smorgasbord of newly available off-site or “cloud” computing offerings means they can reduce the number of servers they purchase and maintain in-house. In fact, according to James Staten, principal analyst as Forrester Research, they may no longer need servers at all. “There are now options available over the Internet that didn’t exist before,” he explains. For instance, companies used to use servers for file sharing, but there are many Internet-based options such as Microsoft Windows Live, Dropbox, and so on, that provide the same options over the Web. “Backups can be done over the Web too,” Staten adds, “and it looks almost exactly the same as when you back up to a server. A lot of people have print servers, but that’s not really necessary any more either, with today’s network-based printers, or wireless-enabled printers with built-in print servers.” In fact, Staten believes, many small companies no longer need any in-house servers at all. Better without servers Why reduce or eliminate servers? “The number one advantage is it gets you out of the IT business,” Staten says. “You don’t have to worry about high availability.” [A high availability configuration ensures continued function by connecting two or more servers in a cluster so that one can “fail over” to the other in case of a problem.] You no longer need to worry about off-site backups, emergency power supplies, or how your company would preserver its data in a widespread disaster like a hurricane, since all these protections are now provided by an off-site by a service provider, and defined in your contract. You can also get by with fewer IT staff, Kasje says. “We would have to have IT staff monitoring systems around the clock. All we have to deal with are the software issues, so that’s much easier. There is a whole class of problems we don’t have to address.” Not having servers on site means much lower upfront costs, though it also means ongoing costs to pay for a service or server space. “You’re trading capital expense for operating expense that you can adjust up or down, depending on your needs,” Staten says. And while the day-to-day costs may be similar, or perhaps lower for owned equipment amortized over several years, off-site servers can provide lower cost if you take risk into account. “There are so many more things to account for,” he says. Three off-site options For companies that want to cut their server count and turn to Web-hosted options instead, there are three different basic options to choose from: Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) In this approach, an application is provided by a SaaS provider and runs on its servers. Your employees (or customers) use the Internet to log into the software. Well-known examples include Salesforce and Google Documents. Hosted servers In this approach, you contract for server space — or even an entire (real or virtual) server at your provider. In many ways, you can treat this off-site server as if it were a regular server, loading applications and data onto it as you see fit. However, the hosting provider maintains the server, usually providing backups, security protections and such. Rackspace and Hostway are two examples of this approach. Raw cloud space “Cloud” is a relatively new term that is often used to describe any Web-hosted offering. Strictly speaking, it simply refers to the architecture by which software and/or data reside in a network or “cloud” of servers connected by the Internet, rather than on a single machine. You can lease raw space in the cloud, for instance, from Amazon’s EC2 service. In this setup, you are still responsible for managing your own server space. If your provider had an outage, in the case of SaaS, the application would be up and running as before once the outage was over. In a hosted server setting, the provider would restore data on the servers, providing the configuration you had before the outage. In a cloud computing outage, once the outage was over, your IT staff would need to reconfigure and reload your online server with the applications and data that were there before. You would be responsible for ensuring backups, and also the security of your data. Because of these added tasks, Staten doesn’t recommend pure cloud computing for small companies unless they also have solid in-house IT expertise. On the other hand, he says, “If you’re really tech savvy, these are great new options to avoid ever having a server within your walls.” Whichever option you choose, Abaca’s Kasje recommends giving off-site computing a try. “You can step into this very easily,” he says. “And you should be able to figure out very quickly whether it’s something that can benefit your business.”

Document Classification Tools and Strategies

It’s official: humanity is creating more digitized data each year than places to archive it. It’s no wonder that so many technology companies are jumping on the band wagon to build massive data storage facilities. Even in this economy, data storage is a red hot business. That’s not likely to change given a recent study put out by IDC Research earlier this year projecting that the amount of digital data will increase tenfold by 2011. Finding a place to put all our information is one challenge. But there’s another problem that looms just as large, especially for the small to midsize business with limited IT resources. “Archiving is less about where to put data and more about getting it back when you need it,” says Andrew Reichman, a senior analyst from Forrester Research. To quote the Old Bard himself, “Therein lies the rub.” How to organize and retrieve The big problem for most companies is organizing its data in the first place and then finding the best strategies for retrieval. “Typically where they go wrong is that they start out with one, two, five people in the business sharing one drive and now it’s 10 years later with more than 20 people all dumping their files into that same drive with no thought to organization,” says Matt Dubois, managing partner of D2 Business Solutions in Costa Mesa, Calif. Dubois would know. His company is often called in to clean up the mess. “We can spend up to two weeks full-time straightening it out. It’s not just confusing folders and subfolders or missing files that cause confusion. We had one client, a law firm, with an attorney frustrated that his file had not been updated by another employee. The employee claimed the file had been updated. They were both right. The problem was there was a duplicate file and they were working off two versions without realizing it,” says Dubois. So for the business looking to spring clean their data storage, Dubois offers the following steps: Develop a naming structure. Does this sound familiar? One employee leaves and his/her replacement inherits a Byzantine filing system of oddly named folders and files that have no bearing on its content or importance. It may seem cute to name all your file folders after NFL teams. But what does that have to do with accounts receivable? Business managers need to establish a protocol for naming folders and files that make sense and that are literal enough that anyone can jump in and find what they need, when they need it. “It needs to make sense. It needs to have some logical structure,” says Dubois. Backup your data before you start. “When you’re ripping things up, things are bound to get lost,” says Dubois. Additionally as a company dissects its share drives, it’s not likely to know exactly what it has anyway. It’s wise to keep a back-up copy on hand just in case someone needs to go back and find something that got lost in the shuffle. Chunk it down. Don’t clean up your filing system all at once. Dubois recommends doing it one department at a time. For example, start with accounting, and then move on perhaps to sales. Prioritize which departments need a digital intervention the most. Reorganize files by department. As data is teased out and organized one department at a time that is likely the best way to structure it in the future — by department. “Give all your employees access to the ‘S’ drive – ‘S’ for share — but limit who has access to which files. Typically, only two people or so need access to each folder,” says Dubois. Bottom line: the fewer people with access to a file system, the fewer people with the ability to spiral it out of control again. It also makes it easier to hold employees accountable for sticking with the naming protocols. Tagging. The vast majority of small to mid-sized businesses these days are using Microsoft Sharepoint, which allows assigning tags and meta tags for search and retrieval. For companies storing their data on a third party “cloud,” chances are the cloud computing provider is using Sharepoint, as well, or a similar solution. Just like employers need to have naming protocols, there should be tagging protocols, as well, with suggested key words for certain types of data. Where to put it all According to a recent study by EMC, 53 percent of all small businesses are still backing up their data on tape. This can’t be very efficient when it comes time to find a file from three years ago that is now buried in a tape rack with a whole other filing system that may or may not make sense. Tape is out, digital storage is in. Dubois sees most of his clients centralizing its data through products like Microsoft Sharepoint. Sharepoint is bundled in with Microsoft’s line of small business servers each costing just under $1,000. Businesses also have the option of storing their data with third party storage providers. Big name companies like Amazon and Google are renting space on their clouds at prices affordable to smaller businesses. There are countless smaller data storage vendors, as well. All have the added advantage of being off site. So if your building burns down or becomes inaccessible due to weather or a local disaster, the business can be up and running from a remote location. Businesses shopping for a third party storage provider should be mindful of the features important for their business. How much space is needed? How often will it be accessed and by how many? What kind of security measures are in place to protect the data? How sophisticated are the retrieval tools to pull up files and can they be customized for your businesses specific needs? If that sounds like a lot of questions to answer, consider this: it beats trying to find last year’s invoices under that Dallas Cowboy folder.

Before You Virtualize Servers: A Checklist

In the Fall of 2007, the IT department at Campbell Clinic Orthopaedics faced a problem: several servers were due or overdue for replacement, so the clinic would have to purchase up to 10 new ones during the coming year. “We could have gone the traditional route and bought 10 servers,” says Justin Lauer, director of IT. Instead, the clinic bought three physical servers and installed virtualization software on both new and existing machines. Today, Campbell Clinic has 20 to 25 virtual servers running at any given time. The number varies because Lauer and his team create extra virtual servers as testing environments for new software, and then delete them when they’re through. Virtualization has worked out great, he says. “We did it because of an aging infrastructure, but we all got the benefits of consolidation and the flexibility to create new servers at will. And we didn’t realize until we did it how good it would be for our disaster recovery plan.” Since a virtual server is stored as a single file, it’s easy to reload that file on new hardware and get it up and running in case of need, he explains. But while virtualization brings major benefits, it also comes with a few challenges that should be addressed right from the start. Before you virtualize, make sure you have answered the following questions: 1. Will our servers need more RAM? The answer is almost certainly yes. “RAM is the key. I can’t stress that enough,” Lauer says. “RAM is the most used resource in a virtual environment, so don’t expect to get a server and throw a couple of gigabytes of RAM in it. You’re going to max out the RAM. It’s common for servers hosting virtualization to have 32 gigabytes.” 2. What about other resources? For x86-level servers (the low-end, desktop-computer-like servers most small companies use), virtualization can strain more than just RAM. “You have to plan for all the different hardware requirements,” Lauer says. In addition to RAM, these could include more processing power, network input/output (I/O) capacity, and bandwidth. “If you’re trying to run 10 virtual servers on a physical server with only two network cards, that will create a bottleneck,” he says. 3. Are we prepared to cool “hotspots”? One of the best arguments for virtualization is reduced power consumption: fewer physical servers will draw less power, and also require less cooling. While all this is true, your newly virtualized servers will be working much harder than your servers did before, and this can create isolated “hotspots” where temperatures can rise rapidly. “The amount of heat you need to dissipate can increase by factors of 10, especially if you’re putting in blade servers or high availability hardware,” says Bob Waldie, CEO of Opengear, which provides infrastructure management. “You were using hundreds of watts, and now you’re using kilowatts on that one device.” 4. How will we deal with hardware failures? “When you had a larger number of servers running one or two applications each, a hardware failure would only have removed a little piece of your functionality,” Waldie says. “When you have eight or 10 servers running on one physical device, you could lose a lot more mission-critical function if the hardware goes down.” This is why many smart companies put in high availability solutions, with failovers in place in case a server does down, at the same time that they virtualize. 5. Can IT staff deal with increased complexity? “If you had 25 servers before, and now you have far fewer, it may seem like you’ve reduced the complexity,” Waldie says. “In fact, you’ve increased it. You still have exactly the same number of servers running, only some of them are now virtual. In addition, you have the virtualization software itself to manage.” How will your team cope? Training is the best strategy, according to James Staten, principal analyst, Forrester Research. “Make sure whoever will be responsible for the virtualization software is certified on that product,” he says. “If not, you should send them for certification.” 6. Are we ready for the future? Waldie advises reviewing the physical environment and architecture you’re currently planning to use for virtualization, with a view to the next three years. Will your racks and other equipment be able to handle the densities, workload and cooling needs you’re likely to encounter, especially if your company is growing? “Even though adoption of virtualization is ramping, the tools don’t generally work across platforms,” he says. Yet mergers or other developments may force you to work with different brands of virtualization software. “You should get some expert advice about how to architect your virtualized system to gain flexibility,” he says. “It seems simple, but it’s not.” In time, it will probably get easier to work with two or more brands of virtualization, and “platform-agnostic” tools will be developed, he says. “The thing about virtualization is, it’s still very early days.” SIDEBAR: Want to Try Out Virtualization Software? To truly reap the benefits of virtualization, you’ll want to install a hypervisor that replaces the operating system as the “bottom-of-the-stack” on your server, and runs everything in a virtual environment. If you need to quickly add a virtual server to an existing setup, or just want to give virtualization a try to see how it works, other software options will allow you to add one or more virtual servers to an existing setup. Many providers offer low-end versions of both types of software as a free download. Here are just a few: Citrix XenServer: Built on the open-source Xen standard. Microsoft Hyper-V: Released in June, works with Windows Server 2008. VMware Server lets you add one or more virtual servers to an existing server. VMware ESXi is a hypervisor.

Play Hardball Over Software Licenses

Software vendors are waking up to the fact that software negotiations aren’t one-sided anymore. In fact, small and mid-sized businesses may even be able to use conditions in the software market to their advantage and gain the upper hand. The fact that software is now being sold over the Web as a service, combined with the growth of the open-source movement, has sent the cost of a lot software lower — in fact, some programs that small businesses can use are even free. Meanwhile, competition in the software market is booming. There are “some incredibly fast-growing software vendors that are building a better mousetrap and no one knows about them,” says Michael G. Oxley, former US Congressmen (R-OH), and co-author of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX), which requires public companies to certify the integrity of their financial records, is now an attorney with Baker Hostetler in Washington, D.C. Oxley says that software companies need to take advantage of the proliferation of software vendors out on the market today. Vendor selection smarts Although IT managers may not have as much experience as a sales rep when it comes to the negotiation conversation, a few key pointers can make all the difference for gaining favorable contract and license terms. Start with a wide field and then narrow it down. Once you have two prime candidates, you can start the negotiations. Your goal should be a contract that allows for growth, flexibility, and price protection. Just hold your cards close so that you’re not giving away your bargaining chips. What you should try to demand Better definitions of users. There should be a provision in the contract that allows for additional users if the company grows. Ideally, the software vendor should set up the equivalent of a shopping cart to make it easier for the company to add additional licenses, but R. “Ray” Wang, principal analyst for Forrester Research, says that most of all, businesses need to quickly establish price protection. When this is established, companies will know exactly how pricing and vendor discounts are determined. Don’t buy all of your seat licenses at once. For instance, if you only need 25 seats, make sure you negotiate for 50 so when you lose 25 (this is accounting for the give and take of negotiation), you’ll have achieved your initial goal. Wang says that you also don’t want to pay for more software than you actually need. If your software becomes shelfware (unused software) or if you fall short in the number of users, then the vendor should give you a full refund. He also adds that companies should negotiate 25 seats over the course of three years, rather than deploying 100 seats at once. Wang says, “Be cautious with your comments to the sales reps…. If I’ve got 100 seats, I’ll need software for less than that.” Better ownership rights. Give affiliates and contractors access to the software, which can also include managed hosting providers and other third-party providers. Full disclosure in contracts and vendor financial records. Companies should have access to customer lists, legal and performance issues, bugs, as well as financial performance. Maintenance. Wang adds that companies need to keep their maintenance costs low at around 20-25 percent, which is the equivalent of purchasing new software every four to five years (in a 10-year software lifecycle). According to Wang, vendors should also price fix regular maintenance updates and that these updates should be tracked. Deals on other software. If the manufacturer has other products your business could use, try to negotiate a package deal for both. Both Wang and Oxley agree that it’s important to hire legal counsel whenever there’s a contract involved, but having extensive knowledge about the negotiation process will help you get the best possible deal since IT managers work directly with all involved parties. Draft your own contract Although writing your own contract is a lot more work that using the one provided by the vendor, the results will be worth the time and effort. In today’s economy, IT managers are the go-to people to solve business and technology issues, as they are the ones who understand their software’s lifecycle best. It’s crucial that IT managers understand the importance of education, research, and discussions amongst their peers to make wise software choices and save money for their businesses.

Multiple Locations? MPLS Is a Networking Key

Let’s say you’re a mid-sized business with a number of locations. Do you juggle multiple networks and multiple phone numbers? Are you afraid you’ll lose quality of service if you make a change? Maybe multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) is for you. Different from frame relay or ATM systems, MPLS is an Internet protocol-based service over a virtual private network (VPN) that has the ability to tag and prioritize whether voice, video, or Internet traffic is moving over the system, and assign it the correct class of service. The result? Phone calls, even voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), have optimal sound, because they are correctly assigned the best class of service. Video service is less jumpy. Internet service, phones, and video can run across the system at the same time without a total meltdown. “Voice and video traffic needs a class of service that is low jitter and low latency,” notes Lisa Pierce, a vice president with Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research. “MPLS can provide this.” Disaster recovery an advantage MPLS also offers built-in advantages with regard to disaster recovery. “You can store critical business data at different locations around the country, and if something happens at one location, you can go over to the other database,” says Sal Cinquegrani, spokesman for Vancouver, Wash.-based New Edge Networks, a full-service WAN provider and Earthlink subsidiary. There are also cost advantages. MPLS can be a good choice for a growing business with multiple locations that isn’t ready to pay higher prices for a T1 line. “In this slumping economy, businesses might not want to invest in T1” which costs roughly $500 a month, he says. New Edge offers MPLS over a DSL connection for about $240 a month, he says. However, Dan Hoffman, CEO of New York, N.Y.-based M5 Networks, says the process can be complex. “Mid-sized companies should really hire a consultant for this,” he says. But he admits that there can be real savings involved. “The real dollar value in MPLS is saving five receptionist salaries and avoiding having five phone systems.” M5 is a leading VoIP and hosted networks provider that also offers MPLS services. MPLS not for everyone If you have only a couple locations, however, MPLS is probably more technology and expense than you need, cautions Forrester’s Pierce. “For an [small or mid-sized business] with two or three locations, it’s probably too expensive…. It’s probably better just to use good old long distance, along with a VPN without the class of service,” she says. An exception, she noted, would be a smaller company that relies heavily on voice and video conferencing or data applications such as PeopleSoft that demand better latency. For most smaller businesses, hosted network services continue to represent the best value, adds Pierce. “They can be managed by a third party, there’s no commitment to equipment, and they can provide the applications a business needs without overkill,” she says, for about $10-$80/month per unit price. So, is MPLS for your business? If you’re growing, and need to make long-distance links, it just may be.

Can Outsourcing Better Protect Customer Data?

“Is it inherently insecure to let someone else handle your own security?” mused an October 2007 report by Forrester Research. Not if a reputable firm can do the job better and for fewer greenbacks than you can, experts say. In today’s marketplace, your company must meet a dizzying number of compliance regulations, with acronyms to match, if you store your customers’ personal or financial information. Everything from the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) to the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) to Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requirements. High-profile cases of laptops containing such data being stolen have added to the angst. Meanwhile, many smaller businesses just don’t have the manpower to handle these added security concerns. “You might have someone on-site who can put in a firewall or a VPN [virtual private network] gateway, and then forgets about it,” warns Guy Fardone, chief operating officer and general manager with Wayne, Pa.-based Evolve IP, a managed security and compliance services firm. “So no one is looking at it, and no one is updating it…they never inspect it.” As a result, there is no threat detection and the system is at risk, he says. Does this sound familiar? Providers come in several flavors If it does, hiring a managed security services provider (MSSP) may be the solution. They can step in and install and manage firewalls, VPNs, vulnerability management, Web filtering and anti-spam, security intelligence services, and wireless and mobile functions. According to the Forrester report, there are several types of these providers, including: Managed services specialists, such as Evolve IP, SecureWorks, and Solutionary; Security product or service vendors, including VeriSign, McAfee, MessageLabs, and Google’s Postini, which offer either security services or products; Telcos and managed services providers, such as Verizon Business, AT&T, and Sprint now offer some of these services. Which type of MSSP should you choose? That, experts say, depends on how extensive your needs are. For example, do you need consulting, hardware, and services, or only some of these? Telcos do not provide compliance consulting, “but if requirement number one for PCI [compliance] is that you need a firewall, you can get one through a telco,” notes Doug Barbin, director of product management with Mountain View, Calif.-based VeriSign. VeriSign, which offers a full range of MSS products and services to enterprise customers, currently services the small business market only through telco partners such as AT&T, Barbin says. Other service vendors may cover specific security needs (for example, MessageLabs offers email protection and archiving services) but not a full range of service. A so-called pure-play MSSP, such as SecureWorks or Evolve IP, can provide a wide range security and compliance systems and consulting, notes Evolve IP’s Fardone. The cost can start at $100/month for a managed firewall and run over $1,000/month for a threat detection service, but is still “cheaper than hiring someone,” he says. Choose wisely and get everything in writing The next big question: whom to choose? “Like choosing a doctor, the customer’s lack of specified knowledge in the field makes trust an essential issue,” the Forrester report notes. Many companies tend to rely on word of mouth. Whomever you choose, make sure the service-level agreement (SLA) you draw up with the company is crystal clear and is done with legal help. This IncTechnology article on avoiding security pitfalls with subcontractors can help. Experts recommend that the SLA includes enforcement rights, consequences, and a policy about how sensitive data will be destroyed after use. After all, a good security agreement with the correct firm can save you time, money — and your bottom line.

Multiple Locations? MPLS Is a Networking Key

What Can Managed WAN Offer?

Three offices, three different states, 100 employees. They needed a secure, managed wide-area network (WAN) to link them – fast — and didn’t have the staff to do it themselves, recalls Bo Breneman of DVFG Companies. “We had a very short timeframe to put these systems in place, and no one in the office to do it,” she remembers. In a company that sells life, property, and casualty insurance, investment products, and health care benefits — and works with sensitive customer data — finding a trusted partner to configure a secure network was a must. Breneman, an IT director, solved the problem by bringing in Evolve IP, a Wayne, Pa.-based managed technology service provider. Faster, better than homemade “They were awesome,” she says, handling the company’s wiring, phone systems, offline exchange, backup, and customizing their T1 and data service between regional offices in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. “They did follow-up, they made additional suggestions, things we didn’t even know to ask them. They made it easy,” she says. Breneman is not alone. According to a May 2008 survey by Forrester Research, 21 percent of enterprise firms surveyed used managed services to handle their network and telecommunications needs in 2007. For smaller firms, the needs can be just as great. External WAN management can help small businesses achieve the same level of service and security as a much bigger company, without the price tags that come with in-house staffing and duplicative hardware. “If you’re a business with multiple locations, you may wonder, ‘Do I need three networks? Or one?’” notes Scott Kinka, senior vice president of network services for Evolve IP. With a WAN, he notes, businesses can do more with less — video, voice, and Internet connections — but not without dedicated, knowledgeable staff. “It requires know-how that existing staff might not have,” Kinka adds. “The answer to everything used to be, just get more bandwidth. But this is not always the solution now.” Offices may not need as much connectivity as before, but they need systems that can manage fluctuations in demand for voice, video, and Internet data traveling over the same systems. Making this work, he says, “requires different management.” A good option for small businesses While small and mid-sized businesses often seek out hosted services for many individual functions, such as an Internet connection, voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), or even the newer multiprotocol label switching (MPLS), “It’s difficult in the WAN world to purchase a hosted service,” adds Guy Fardone, Evolve IP’s chief operating officer and general manager. Breneman adds that working with an external managed provider has given the company’s network a custom-made quality they never could have achieved themselves. “I can access my system from home through the tool bar on Windows, and make changes to it,” she says. The bottom line? An externally managed WAN can save you time, money, and worry.

Stop E-mail Marketing from Resembling Spam

Using e-mail marketing effectively can increase business, especially if the lists you target contain former customers who might be interested in hearing about sales and new products. A well-crafted, targeted e-mail can receive a 10 percent to 15 percent response rate or more, according to Gartner. However, taking the wrong approach — sending out mass e-mails — is tantamount to walking a tightrope. Any unsolicited bulk email is considered spam, and can turn off customers or result in Internet service providers (ISPs) blocking your e-mails in the future. On the positive side, sending e-mail is practically free. Costs can be lower than $1 per thousand emails sent, compared to average costs of $15, $500, and $1,500 per thousand impressions for online display ads, direct mail, and television ads, respectively, says Julie Katz, an analyst with Forrester Research. On the negative side, e-mails may be blocked by the recipients’ spam filters and not make it through. More than 15 percent of permission-based e-mails are blocked due to poor e-mail hygiene, according to Gartner, and that rate may increase as spam filters get tougher in the future. Make sure your e-mails get read Here’s how to ensure e-mail marketing reaches targeted customers and avoids the spam inbox: Make sure that recipients want to hear from you. Move to an opt-in policy, rather than an opt-out policy, Gartner says. “Avoid sending e-mail to customers unless you explicitly ask them permission to do so,” says Peter Firstbrook, Gartner analyst. Some experts advise adopting a “confirmed opt-in” policy, where subscribers must return an invitation before they are cleared to be added to a mailing list. Create lists wisely. Never buy e-mail addresses from another company, advises Chris Thompson, a volunteer with the Spamhaus project. “No legitimate company will ever sell you a list of ‘opt-in’ e-mail addresses,” Thompson says. “Anyone selling you lists of e-mail addresses is very simply a spam outfit.” Tend your lists. Respect customers’ wishes and quickly remove them from lists if they unsubscribe, checking this at least once a week. “If outbound e-mail programs and e-mail servers are not meticulously managed, then it is likely that normal business e-mail will be disrupted by business partner and consumer spam filters,” Firstbrook says. This needs to be addressed company-wide, from all departments participating in e-mail marketing. Stay out of spam inboxes. Don’t look or act like spam. Spam filters look for certain words, phrases, or spelling, such as words spelled out in all capital letters. Embedded images, especially those retrieved from a Web server, or large files sometime trigger spam filters. So does the use of carbon copy or blind carbon copy. “Some ISPs will increase the spam score of e-mail that is not specifically addressed to the actual recipient,” Firstbrook says. “You can manually check your e-mail against some open-source solutions to see if they will trigger false positives.” Don’t alienate your ISPs by racking up complaints from those receiving your messages. It’s super easy to report spam; with some ISPs, it’s a one-click move. Monitor complaints. E-mail marketing software can automate this. Don’t alienate customers. Some customers will report e-mail as spam simply because they don’t like it. “That doesn’t affect our listings,” says Spamhaus’ Thompson, “but it might affect the sender’s deliverability at specific ISPs.” Let recipients know who sent it Authenticate your e-mails so that recipients can verify who is sending them. Some companies are providing services that improve delivery rates and responses because they have trusted relationships with ISPs and public networks. Pet supplies retailer Petco recently claimed it saw a 40.5 percent improvement in click-through rates and an increase in profit of 3.5 cents per e-mail since it began using third party email authenticator Goodmail Systems. It’s not always easy, and senders need to be careful to provide satisfying content to subscribers, making sure that unsubscribes work, and that technical parts of e-mail delivery are also obeyed so that they don’t annoy the postmasters of receiving networks, Thompson says. “But done properly, non-spam bulk mailing can be highly effective at retaining customers and enhancing customer satisfaction.”

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