Tag Archives: Robert Frances Group Inc.

About 2056 days ago Computer Security

What’s the Deal with ‘The Dude’?

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Not too long ago, a product came out of the Baltic states that got people to take notice — a little thing called Skype. It went on to become the rage in free voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) calling. But, as of late, people are talking about another Baltic import. This time it’s a new network monitor application by Latvian company, MikroTik. This product’s name? Simply, The Dude. The company claims it can dramatically improve the way IT manages the network environment. It works like this: This freeware program automatically scans all devices within subnets and develops and lays out a map of your business networks. The Dude enables you to monitor services of your devices and send out alerts — even text messaging your phone — in case there are service problems. The company, which has been making router hardware and software, mainly for ISPs and WISPs (wireless ISPs) since 1996, made The Dude network monitor initially for network monitoring and administration of routers using its RouterOS, as a free tool. Says CEO John Tully, an American, “We added features to help monitor other routers and host — even if the user does not use our products — so that we could get some advertising and connection with the customer.” Well, it worked, and one customer for whom The Dude is well suited are small and mid-size businesses, which MikroTik says will benefit well from the extensive features and the advantages of “a very nice quick network map along with the sophisticated discovery and real time monitoring,” says Tully. Here’s why small or mid-size businesses may want to take a look: Knowledge is power To make The Dude work for you, you’ll need a resource to put the software on, and ideally that piece of hardware should be dedicated to the task of network management. It’s important, though, that someone in your organization understands how to configure and maintain the software. Without the understanding, your company won’t be able to take full advantage of The Dude’s ability to poll for information. However, even if your sophistication level in this area is pretty basic, The Dude allows for understanding of how different elements are connected and knowing whether they are connected at all. That, in and of itself, is better than not having any information at all, which is sadly the case for many small businesses. The Dude could save money Considering that small businesses can’t afford a lot of the things that bigger company can — money, people, processes — yet they have the same needs, they’ll need to save money. This can be done by not buying things and by automating processes where possible, points out Jerald Murphy, the director of research at the Robert Frances Group. However, says Murphy, keep in mind that getting free software needs to be balanced with the cost of using the software, i.e. the learning curve it comes and business value that the software, free or not, provides. And, because it’s free, if you have problems with it the company doesn’t provide service. However, there are freelance consultants, such as Steve Zilis, a “Certified Dude Consultant,” based in Houston, Texas, who would be happy to help. It’s customizable and extensible Says Zilis, The Dude offers the capability to customize the application for your particular line of business, or type of network, or equipment vendor, giving it total freedom to make it monitor network devices, almost all the way “to washing the windows.” This is helpful not only in your own network, but also extends out to your customers. According to Zilis, say, you want to get signal strength of a radio, or name, address, and phone number of the customer who has a failing device, you can program it to do that.

About 2178 days ago Computer Security

Time to Consolidate Your Data Center

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More and more small-and medium-sized businesses are thinking about consolidating their data centers, as a result of having grown haphazardly or through many mergers and acquisitions. According to a 2006 report by tech research firm IDC, 80 percent of U.S. IT organizations are consolidating and in 2009 global spending on IT consolidation should hit $25 billion. “Most of these things aren’t planned and then executives wonder how in the world they’ve grown to the number of servers they’ve got,” says Cal Braunstein, chairman and CEO of research at the Robert Frances Group, a Westport, Conn. IT consulting firm. “They need to add another application, and somehow before they know it, each of these applications are on different servers.” And, oftentimes those different servers can be in different rooms, on different floors, and even in different cities. M&A activity sparks consolidation One big driver of data center consolidation is the rash of mergers and acquisitions that leave the new entities with IT systems that are often incompatible, sometimes burdening even forward-looking companies with outdated systems from a company being acquired. “CIOs are telling their CEOs, ‘Could you please buy a company with the same IT platform and infrastructure?’” says James F. O’Grady, the director of technology value solution for Hewlett-Packard Financial Services. Why consolidate when it’s an expensive undertaking? Let’s start with those systems that are the product of mergers and acquisitions. All the little band-aid fixes to make these systems work together may be costing your company money — not to mention resources — that could be better spent elsewhere. Even without mergers, small and medium-sized businesses tend to be sitting on a lot of older servers being kept around in order to save money on costs of new equipment. However, since many of these machines have poor utilization rates, they aren’t necessarily the best use of money. Braunstein estimates various utilization rates of different systems as follows: mainframes (75-90 percent), Unix (10-20 percent although some achieve up to 60 percent), and Windows-Intel systems (5-12 percent). High maintenance and licensing fees On top of having all this old equipment around, there are high maintenance costs and licensing fees, not to mention the issues of power and cooling for all your machines. “Two years ago no one cared about power and cooling,” says Braunstein. But now that energy costs have skyrocketed, businesses are starting to be more aware. Costs for power and cooling could run 40 percent of your run rate for operational components for your data center. Consolidation can mean lower power output, says HP’s O’Grady. If you have five data centers all over the country and you really only need three, not only will consolidation save on power costs but will also save on labor costs. Those are big numbers that could be made smaller through consolidation. On average, says Braunstein, hardware costs tend to be 15 percent of overall costs. What it means to consolidate Consolidation can mean different things to different businesses. For some, it’s reducing the number of data location center locations and moving equipment to places that have lower operating costs, according a March 2007 report by HP, titled “Data center consolidation: Financing options address more than just cost.” Two spaces in midtown Manhattan dedicated to holding IT are more expensive to maintain, than say, combining them both into a new one in northern New Jersey. With telecommunications advances, it’s more feasible to locate the data centers away from your office. Another approach is to consolidate at the current site by putting in a converged voice-and-data network. Or you can save space by installing racks. With a vertical rack, instead of buying servers, you buy components that altogether look a little like an entertainment system. Blade servers work on the same concept as a rack but are even more condensed. A blade comes in a smaller box, so it slides in vertically. You can get a number of these going across a couple of rows, giving you a tremendous amount of capacity in a small space. And, then there’s the virtual approach. Companies can virtualize their servers by running many systems in a single box. Not only can that save space but it can also up performance; instead of running at about 10 percent utilization, it can be at least 40 percent. Paying for it No matter how you undertake it, consolidating your data center is going to cost money. According to HP, often you’ll have to keep the old data center running as you’re setting up your new one. Or, you can set up a temporary facility — using the same type of old equipment — as you’re taking apart the old center and setting up the new one. So, you could potentially have up to three data centers running at the same time before you get everything sorted out. Companies, like HP, and IBM, and to lesser extent, Sun, who are all in the data center consolidation business provide financing options, including leasing, short-term equipment rental, and help with the recovering of money from asset sales. They also work with the customer to apply some of the costs to covering the purchasing of new equipment. Another approach, says Braunstein, that may make sense, is putting the new data center inside one of your current spaces. “You could consolidate it piecemeal so you don’t have to go beyond the bounds of existing data center,” he says. “It takes longer this way, however, it’s a good approach because you get to see what works as you go along.”

About 2298 days ago PCs, Laptops, and Notebooks

Should You Buy or Lease Computer Equipment for Your Business?

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Buy versus lease. For most, hearing that phrase evokes a car purchase, but for more and more small business owners that term applies to computers. It used to be that one’s first instinct would be to buy. Sure, you think, you can use the machine for as long as your want and you own something. Sounds good, right? Well, not so fast, says Adam Braunstein, senior research analyst at the Robert Frances Group. There are several reasons to consider leasing instead of plunking down cash for an outright purchase. Taking baby steps with capital Leasing prevents paying out so much capital upfront. This can help a company’s cash flow management, particularly a start-up or rapidly growing company. So, instead, the cost of having the computers becomes an operating expense. Another financial advantage is that by leasing directly from a manufacturer or vendor, a small business owner needn’t go to a bank or venture capitalist for a loan — with all the paperwork, business future strategy, and red tape that entails. “Leasing provides them with operational flexibility that they don’t get from traditional sources if they have to pay cost for something,” says Irving Rothman, president and CEO of Hewlett-Packard Financial Services. Most small businesses are wise to preserve a revolving line of credit for inventory and customer receivables, according to Joseph Pucciarelli, research director for pricing and leasing evaluation services, at IDC, the Framingham, Mass. research group. Keeping up with technology The usual lease runs about three years, which is about the same time that technology usually gets upgraded. Leasing computer equipment “pushes you into more structured refreshing of your technology,” says Lars Mieritz, an analyst with Gartner, of Darien, Conn. That way, a company isn’t caught behind the times, hanging onto an out-of-date computer or operating system. Leaving the patch work to someone else Since many small businesses don’t exactly have a huge IT staff, they can’t spare anyone’s time — much less the money that their time is worth — to tinker on computers to get them up to speed. “When you own a system, the biggest cost component is patching, update support and warranty issues. All the administration and effort to ‘keep this thing running’ far outweighs the cost of the system,” says Braunstein. He figures that for a $700 PC purchased, about 15-20 percent at most is the total cost of ownership — and that’s if you have great support. When you lease a computer, the company providing you the leased equipment is the party forced to always keep up with the latest developments –  leaving your company to focus on its primary business. “We are always improving individual components,” says Mike Maher, a spokesman for Dell Financial Services, which leases computers. If a company has a lease agreement, they can upgrade technology a lot easier and a lot quicker. You don’t depreciate me Computer equipment depreciates rather quickly — and it’s no fun pouring one’s money into an asset that loses value in order to update it, especially if you’re a struggling small business. Sunny disposition With the getting of something new one must also consider the getting rid of something old. Throwing out a computer isn’t the easiest thing. “The disposal has to be done in an environmentally appropriate way,” says Rothman, “so that the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] doesn’t come knocking on your door.” With leasing, the company you have the lease with takes care of disposal for you and even helps get your sensitive company information off the machine. Unless you are very savvy, you’ll really need a professional to wipe that slate literally clean. If you buy computer equipment, there’s arguably some value left in that old piece of machinery, but just how much can vary. “You would be lucky to get three percent when selling it to a reseller,” says Braunstein. “However, you can get seven percent of your original expenditures if you wipe it clean and put it on eBay.” But, as a small business owner, is that exactly a good investment of your time? For most small businesses, the answer is, “No.” “They’re concentrating on growing the business,’ says Rothman.

About 2360 days ago Business Software

How to Choose Office Productivity Software

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When choosing office productivity software — the suite of functions, including word processing, spreadsheets, presentation software and an e-mail program — the knee-jerk reaction is to first look at Microsoft Office. After all, it is the most ubiquitous. But popularity doesn’t matter to everyone. Derek Featherstone, founder of Further Ahead, of Ottawa, a Web development firm, uses a combination of Apple’s iWork on his Mac, which includes the Pages application for documents and Keynote for presentations. He also uses OpenOffice, an open source office productivity suite, “because it was free, compatible with pretty much every other office suite out there.” Featherstone says that he works on three computers at a time — a Mac, a Windows-based PC, and an open-source Linux machine. “I wanted to be able to have a tool that worked no matter which computer I happened to be using at the time and not to have to pay for three licenses,” Featherstone says. “As a small business, minimizing costs is essential. OpenOffice lets me do just that.” Featherstone is one of a new breed of entrepreneur who believes that when it comes to office productivity software there’s more than one choice out there. Small businesses miss out on upgrades Right now Microsoft Office dominates the small and mid-size business market. However, many of these packages were purchased years ago, and were not upgraded, even though Microsoft refreshed the offering in 2003. What that means is that small businesses using an older Office version may be missing out on features enabling them to increase productivity. As it is, many small businesses don’t use many features beyond the basic functionality. “Ninety percent of MS Office’s higher functionality isn’t used by most users, who simply want to keep track of finances, write office letters, and put together small presentations, etc.” says Adam Braunstein, senior research analyst at the Robert Frances Group, a business advisory to technology executives. “That’s too bad,” Yankee Group analyst Gary Chen points out, “because Office comes out with cool things that people almost never discover — such as support for tablet PCs, collaboration tools, and locking down sections in a Word document that can’t be edited.” And yet, Microsoft has been spending a lot of time focused on the small business market, and currently has a free product out for small businesses. In addition, Microsoft is coming out with its newest version yet, Office 2007, with even more updated versions of its features. The bottom line is that the customers still aren’t getting everything they could out of their product. “That left the door open for other start-ups to get in there,” says Chen. One of those is the commercial version of OpenOffice, the free office suite and Open Source project that Featherstone uses, called StarOffice. StarOffice is spear-headed by Sun Microsystems. It’s a neat alternative, says Chen, and supports much of what’s available on Microsoft Office. Sun is trying to lure people in with snazzy features, such as multiple toolbars, migration aides, Web publishing tools, etc. It’s giving Office a run for the money. CFOs are happy with it, though; StarOffice is a fraction of the cost of Microsoft Office. Battle of the productivity programs “With the many different formats out there you can send a file and the receiver can’t open it or if they do it looks weird,” says Chen.  Right now, Microsoft is the format that everyone can open. OpenOffice is a cross platform. It can run on Linux. So, people can use whatever platform they want. And it’s free. Also, the online versions are not tied to an install on a particular computer, says Forrester analyst Michael Speyer. “You can use them anywhere that has Internet access.” Another thing to consider with the Open Source products is that there is an emphasis on introducing new, exciting features. There are a lot of OpenOffice choices and more coming. Look out for Google to make some waves in the area. Right now, Google offers some business applications over the Web, and considering the huge cash hoard that the company is sinking into research and development,  their products will only get better. Right now, their offerings are free, and in the get-what-you-pay-for kind of way, there are lots of ads. Reading distracting ads, however, isn’t the ideal situation to increase productivity at work. The areas where the rival products still trail behind Office, says Andrea Peiro, CEO and founder, Small Business Technology Institute, are mostly related to collaboration — such as documents version control, integration of the revision process with -email programs and interaction with some server-side technologies.  “In a multi-employee environment with highly structured document management processes, these features can be extremely important, but for most other situations these alternatives represent excellent low-cost options,” says Chen. How to figure out what suite is right for your business Chen recommends that small business owners ask themselves the following questions: How much do you use the office suite? Which features and functionality do you use and need? Take a look at the complexity of the documents you use and produce and look at what level of support you need. Something to consider if you use free products is that if you want support you’ll need to pay extra. What is your budget for the product and for support? Office is much more expensive than its competition, running several hundred dollars per computer. If you are looking for something else to cast your vote for, Peiro suggests considering the following, which offer a high degree of compatibility with Office in terms of file formats: OpenOffice This is a free multiplatform office suite and an Open Source project that’s compatible with all other major office suites. WordPerfect Suite This old standby — remember WordPerfect anyone? — costs about $250.00. 602 PC Suite Low-cost alternative started in the Czech Republic. It includes a word processor, spreadsheet, photo editor, and photo album organizer. ThinkFree Web-based office application. It’s free but doesn¹t include a database application.

About 2390 days ago Computer Security

Why You Need a UPS

It should be apparent to anyone who suffered through the blackout of 2003. And it should be apparent to any business impacted by the brownouts that are increasingly a fact of life during summer months, ice storms that knock out power lines in the winter, and other disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina. A power outage can wreak disaster on a business. It can shut a company down for days. It can zap your data. It can disappoint your customers. And, ultimately, it can run you out of business. That’s one reason that businesses need to invest in a device called “uninterruptible power supply” (UPS). This is an intermediary device between a power source and the machinery for which the power is being provided, typically a computer. That device can apply to anything from a battery to a generator. There are three kinds of UPSes — one that’s always on, the most common type, one that’s on standby, going on as soon as power is cut off, and one that’s really a hybrid of the two. A backup power supply Think of a UPS as a backup power supply, says Cal Braunstein, the chairman and CEO of the Robert Frances Group, a Westport, Conn. technology consultancy. That’s the advice he gives to small business owners who are considering UPS. “Some alarm clocks today have the ability for a battery to be plugged in so that when power is lost, your alarm clock continues keeping time,” Braunstein says. “A UPS is just a much bigger version of that for computers. This way if power dies, systems and disk drives don’t crash, which could cause real data corruption or file corruption problems.” On a basic level, the UPS is some energy that provides the user with a few extra minutes of power, in the case of an emergency, so that they can save what they were working on, print it out, and turn all the machines off.  More powerful ones, says Andrea Peiro, the CEO and founder of the Small Business Technology Institute, a non-profit organization that promotes technology usage by small business, can be used to actually continue working for several more hours while the user is waiting for the grid power to return. Tips for buying UPS When buying one or more UPS devices for your business, there are several factors to consider. “The primary factor that influences how many pieces of hardware can be supported by a single UPS and for how long is the capacity of their batteries,” says Peiro, noting that the capacity is measured in Volt-Amperes (VA). “The bigger the number, the better.” Costs for buying a UPS can range from less than one hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars. But in the long run whatever you pay will be small compared with what could happen if one’s data disappears. If cost is a concern, however, consider that today’s prices represent a decrease from where they used to be, and also that laptops usually do not need a UPS, since they can operate on their own internal battery in case of power failure. However, no matter what the price is, a UPS should be part of any small business office, says Peiro, who considers them a very important investment, especially when they are connected to the company’s networking equipment.  “UPSes are a critical element for the reliability of any computing environment, allowing for non-disruptive shut down of workstations, servers and peripherals.”

About 2390 days ago Wireless Networks

Should Some Computers Be Off the Network?

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Is there a magic bullet to make your business computers secure? “The most secure computer in the world is one that can’t be used by anybody,” says Paul Stamp, senior analyst at Forrester Research, of Cambridge, Mass. That’s a nice sentiment, but he admits that it’s not really practical these days, unless you are running a computer museum. More realistically, today’s small business owners should concern themselves with balancing the need for security with access. And, at every step of the way they have to make the risk tradeoff. Just by being on the Internet will invite attempts, says Toby Weir-Jones, the director of product management of BT Counterpane, of Mountain View, Calif., which provides managed security services. And attempts are the definition of risk. And that could be a cost. “If a machine doesn’t need to be online it should be,” Weir-Jones says. Networking depends on the PC’s function Whether you have a computer that should be kept off network, says Cal Braunstein, the chairman and CEO of the Robert Frances Group, a business technology consultancy in Westport, Conn., will also depend on the company and the type of function being performed. For example, you may have multiple networks at a company, rather than one. You may have a mini-network in research and development (R&D) and may not want any of those machines linked to the outside world in order to better protect your company secrets. Many R&D facilities, Braunstein says, have multiple PCs per user there. Some are for the R&D network or standalone boxes and others are linked to the rest of the company. “Not all of these machines should be linked together into a single network,” he says. “There needs to be someone who understands the security issues for the company who is looking at all these assets and deciding their networking rights.” Besides security, says Andrea Peiro, the CEO and founder of the Small Business Technology Institute, a non-profit devoted to encouraging technology adoption among small business, another reason to consider putting a machine off the network, is that if it “performs a very specialized task – such as direct e-mail marketing distribution – and may be faster if directly connected to non-shared Internet access.” Hidden costs of off-network computers Having a computer that is not attached to the network can protect sensitive data and provide one less avenue for malware, but it can also be an inconvenience. It’s a cost from a time perspective. It takes a lot longer to go over to another PC and burn the information onto a CD or put it on a USB drive than to e-mail it over the network or allow the computer user to download it from the Internet or an intranet. On the other hand, says Stamp, it takes a lot of time to wipe spyware off a PC, or worse. “In business, you have got to make the call,” he says. If keeping certain PCs off the network is too much of a hassle, Peiro suggests that a small company can configure its firewall and gateways differently and assign different levels of access to different users. “Sometimes a simple repositioning of the network firewall and the Internet gateway,” she says, “creating multiple sub-networks with different levels of access to resources, may elegantly address the concerns and maintain the benefits of the network for everybody.”