SAGE will be hosting webinars this Summer on a number of hot topics. These webinars are free and all are welcome to participate. Each webinar happens between Noon and 1 P.M. EDT, so please spend your lunch with us.

First up is our popular Metadata 101 webinar, "Your Documents, Your Undoing" (7/15) which discusses the risks from metadata and sensitive content in your documents. We discuss methods and strategies to mitigate those risks using tools like Workshare Protect and best practices.

Next is our webinar on Getting the Most From Your IT Budget (7/23). In it, we provide some benchmarks for what your IT budget should be, and how to stretch it to extend your capabilities. During the webinar, we discuss where IT provides maximum value to a firm and how to balance user support, projects, and regular maintenance.

MS Office is more than just spreadsheets and documents. In August, we debut a new webinar on Doing More with MS Office (8/19). For this webinar, we describe new uses for accounting, CRM, and HR from old standbys like Word, Excel, Access and Outlook, and illustrate what can be done with newcomers InfoPath, OneNote, and Groove.

Sign-up for SAGE Wisdom webinars on our web site. If you have any topics that you would like to learn more about, let us know in the comments or drop us a line.

Silence from users about IT is a sign of trouble rather than success. In a sense, IT should be invisible, where it fades into the background. But is the system really running great or are people just making do? Here are some probing questions to determine whether your IT system really is computing nirvana or a sleeping dragon.

Is your team actually preventing IT problems, or just more efficient at solving a recurring problem?  Kudos to the team for getting the firm back up and running quicker after that pesky outage that happens at least once a month, but what are you doing to prevent the outage from ever happening again? Sometimes in IT we get caught up in solving the problem, rather than preventing it in the first place.

What workarounds are users creating to deal with IT issues rather than complain? We had one client who was amazed at how fast their systems booted after an image refresh. Why had no users been complaining of a slow boot process?  For one, they didn't have a standard to compare against, so they just assumed it was normal. Also, they adjusted their work schedule to accommodate the quirks and failings of the system.  So before the image refresh, our client's employees started the login process and then went to the break room for 10 minutes for coffee and kibbutzing. When they returned, the computer would be booted up.

Are you asking them? Despite the many complaints that IT professionals hear, most people will silently bear minor inconveniences. They may not know how to explain the problem or think the time to solve it will be greater than the small dings on their productivity. They may not even see the cumulative costs of those productivity hits personally, but have tremendous effects when viewed from the firm's perspective.

Today brings black clouds for the IT department in the form of a new book by noted IT critic, Nicholas Carr.  Mr. Carr, who made his bones last year with an article contending that corporate IT departments don't provide any strategic advantage, has a new book where he predicts that future IT departments will be operated by one person sitting at a computer issuing commands to outsourced providers via the Internet. Alas, the lonely system administrator gets even less respect and will be the Maytag repairman for this century.

This seems to overlook the fact that software and systems have not evolved to be intuitive and easy to use for the end-user. So who will have the skills to help people with IT, freeing them do whatever it is they do best? As a managed service provider (in other words, outsourced IT provider) we know the value of having great technical staff directly aid our customers whether it is with a question about a word processing program or troubleshooting their messaging system. We provide site visits to facilitate interaction with our customers and build relationships of trust and mutual respect.

Now if that is the evolution of the IT department -- a greater focus on the end-user and better customer service -- we are all for it.

We are conducting a survey on IT and Litigation Support and would like your input!

In our experience, there are many ways that IT and Litigation Support can work together for the overall benefit of the firm. There are a variety of ways that they can learn from each other and share ideas that would benefit them both. This brief survey (10 questions) asks about IT and Litigation Support issues and a forum to discuss them.

We would value your input, whether you are IT, Litigation Support, or Administration.

Please follow this link to take the survey: Click Here to take survey

Thank you in advance for your feedback. We will post the results in about a week, so please check back soon.

Growth happens, sometimes in spite of all our actions! Many small firms rely on individual IT consultants or large IT companies specializing in small firms. So what are the signs you are outgrowing your current IT provider? We list the indicators below, focusing on moving from one person IT consultants to larger IT consulting firms with a broader array of services. In a future post we will discuss the decision to bring IT in-house.

One obvious indicator is that they can’t keep up with your demands for services and support. Your growth places increasing demands on them that they may not be able to meet. In the case of large IT companies catering to small firms, you may simply outgrow their targeted services. A growing firm’s technology also becomes more sophisticated, broader, and more specialized all at the same time. A wider array of services in litigation support, message, VOIP, DMS, web sites, and enterprise level applications are required. At the same time, law firms have very focused software applications that require careful setup and support. Larger IT firms with engineers, application specialists, and programmers can provide the breadth and depth of expertise to meet these demands.

Finally, a surefire giveaway that it is time to move on is if you as a firm manager or administrator are leading your IT firm or bringing trends to their attention. If so, time to start looking for a partner knowledgeable in the latest trends in IT like mobile computing, virtualization, online services and others.

This blog post over at 37 Signals about the preoccupation with the number of features in software development made us think of the flip side: the allure of a multitude of features in purchasing software for a firm. Rather than focusing on benefits to the users, we are guilty of tallying up the features added since the last release. Other pitfalls include:

Different features appeal to different constituencies. When looking at putting software on everyone’s desk or expensive enterprise applications, justifying the large expenditure means getting majorities on management committees to sign off. So we play to our audience, touting different features to different principals to get them to sign-off on the purchase.

Even incredibly smart people fall for the “more is better” argument. Quantity is viewed as value when the price is similar. That value is completely lost if the software becomes too complex or confusing to use. Microsoft’s latest release of Office is notable for its rethinking of the interface after market testing found that users were requesting “new features” that were already in the software but hidden behind menus.

The devil is in the details. Next to lawyers and politicians, sales people are great parsers—saying less to portray the product as delivering much more. Once in users hands, features that looked great on the spec sheet and the tightly scripted demo do not work as promised or their benefits are not as great as expected.

The end result is usually confusion and never-ending calls to the help desk. As consultants, administrators and IT managers, we have to manage the purchasing decision much better. We must frame the purchasing discussion around critical features, not an accounting of a myriad nice-to-have ones. Software purchasing decisions should focus on benefits to the firm rather than appealing to building coalitions through feature-“pork.”

This Tuesday, we spoke to the Small Firm Management section of the ALA Capital Chapter on IT trends for small firms. What we encounter is that small firms have many of the same IT challenges of large law firms, just not on the same scale.

Both small and large firms alike are paying close attention to these IT trends:

Getting more for your money – Everyone is looking to stretch their IT dollars, so small firms are looking to managed IT services and large firms look to outsource basic tasks like daily server checks and monitoring. Firms are also looking at application services providers (Internet providers) for critical systems like time & billing, backup, e-mail and spam filtering.

Virtualization of desktops and servers – flexibility and ability to recover from disasters quickly makes this one of the hottest trends to watch.

Data vaulting – whether the firm administrator is tired of bringing back-up tapes home every night or an integral part of a disaster recovery plan, data vaulting—online backups—are the way to go.

Mobility – Including remote access, laptop and handheld computing, staying in the office is so last century.

Security – While constant struggle against malware rages on, now everyone should also pay attention to stopping data breaches that can cost your firm both money and its reputation.

What are the IT trends where small firms are sitting on the sidelines? WANs; desktop management and software deployment; and Storage Area Networks (SANs).

A common question our clients ask about IT in law firms is how much they should be spending and on what? While the specific answer varies greatly by firm, at the very least you should be spending 3-6% of gross revenue on your IT needs. Then we talk about getting maximum value for that money based on their business goals. For many companies, managed IT services can be a way to get more in the way of service, support, and productivity while spending the same amount.

We put together our thoughts in a white paper called "Getting More from Your IT Budget." It discusses where IT provides the most value to the firm and whether managed services are the right fit for your organization. In it, we cover the many different ways managed services are provided, and what it means to manage your IT provider. Throughout are tips and ideas on how to maximize your IT dollar.

Download the sample, or get your complimentary copy of the complete white paper, a 25 page, full-color PDF.

We have been booked for a number of speaking engagements in the next few months, and it seems they all want to know about IT trends for law firms. We thought it would be fun to crowdsource our reader’s thoughts on some of the trends we see. This is what we are following:

Server Virtualization (also tied closely with disaster recovery). Virtualization technology has matured and makes real sense for firms of many sizes. Most important, it facilitates disaster recovery and business continuity efforts that many firms are implementing today.

Data-vaulting. The future of back-ups are online. Time to throw away those back-up tapes you forgot to swap anyway.

Managed IT services. Remote monitoring and management of IT for 24/7/365 coverage. Small firms get experience, expertise, and the complete package for maximum value for their IT budget, while larger firms can get preventive measures like daily server checks that would otherwise be neglected.

Online Services. Work is moving to the web. Many applications have already moved online like accounting, IP, and CRM, and more are coming. Meanwhile, newsfeeds (RSS) and search are revolutionizing information like e-mail revolutionized communication.

Outsourcing. The timeless sturm-und-drang of in-house vs. out-source extends to practically every corner of the firm, including litigation support, facilities, and even secretarial.

Paperless. Ah, the holy grail. The paperless office seems closer today than ever, but it means some drastic changes in workflow and a rethinking of your equipment and IT.

Vista/Office 2007. From the meat-and-potatoes department, the shift will eventually happen, although no one seems very excited about it.

Give us your feedback on the comments. How would you expand on our points? What are we missing?

Here is a quick update on where you can find SAGE experts speaking on IT topics of interest to the legal and professional services communities.

A Mighty Outlook and PowerPoint 2007 – September 19, 2007 at Noon: SAGE’s Dave Carns and Tony Buffkin wrap up our three part series on Office 2007 for the Information Services and Technology Section of the ALA Capital Chapter. The focus this time is on the latest version of PowerPoint and whether Outlook 2007 is up to the daunting task of managing our email, information, and contacts.

IT Solutions for Small Law Firms – September 25, 2007 at Noon. The Small Firm Management Section of the ALA Capital Chapter is hosting this event. The question for small firms is always how to do more with less? Outsourcing, web services, and mobility provide exciting opportunities for small firms, letting them act big while still maintaining their agility. We will look at these opportunities in detail while also discussing “bread-and-butter” issues like Windows Vista and Office 2007.

We are also firming up speaking engagements on disaster recovery and other topics in October and beyond.

(At least not about your network.)

SAGE OnSight monitors your firm servers and vital systems 24/7/365, alerting SAGE’s crack team of engineers and support certain staff in the event of critical failure. Should something happen, SAGE will know about it within minutes and often can have the issue corrected remotely within an hour. In not, we will dispatch an engineer to your site to get you up and running as soon as possible, hopefully before the managing partner notices anything is amiss.

Check out our demo on this page (Click on "Time is Money Saved..."). In most cases, we will be alerting you that there is a problem with your network, rather than the other way around.  And once it is fixed, you can report to the managing partner that everything has been resolved.

This translates into very real cost savings for your organization. Under the old “break-fix” model, most problems were discovered when people arrived in the morning.  By time an engineer arrived on site and resolved the issue, it was early afternoon.  All the while, your people are idling and billable hours are being lost. With OnSight’s 24/7/365 remote monitoring, level 1 alerts can be resolved in 1-2 hours, meaning your people are back to work and billing much quicker.

We have mentioned before that employees are bringing the technology they use at home or on the road into the firm, a reversal from a few years ago when most people were exposed to new technologies at work. New technologies facilitate new ways of working. This article at Law.com discusses the ability of the “Internet Generation” to multitask and take on responsibilities that were once offloaded to support staff.

“…I inquired whether they were using their secretaries to type letters, make edits to briefs, enter time, etc. The response we got was not unexpected. Why would they give work to somebody else when they could do it just as fast, if not faster, themselves?”

The flip side is whether our support staff and IT are keeping up with them. Supporting staff should keep lawyers and professionals as productive as possible. What could be accomplished if those multitasking capabilities were not wasted on typing and entering time? What can the most connected generation teach the firm about online collaboration and building community using the Internet and digital tools? Of course, the mythic ability of young workers to multitask is a stereotype (like the other stereotypes that they require praise just to do what is expected of them), but can we afford to ignore the ideas of a generation that grew up with computers and the Internet?

In the past week, the first reviews of the IPhone have come in and Apple has released videos, FAQs,and press releases almost daily. So the days of speculating about its features and functionality are finally over. Only wild speculation and misinformation has matched the mammoth hype, especially when in it comes to how the iPhone may fit into business. So here is our balanced opinion on the iPhone in a business setting (we have Mac and PC fans here who work together quite peaceably).

Why Should We Care? In the past few years, consumer technology has been the primary driver of new technology into the workplace. While the iPhone is primarily aimed at the consumer, there are a number of compelling features appealing to business users: ability to select a voice mail rather than listen to all in sequence; ease of use; and full web browser with wi-fi, to name a few. Throw in the iPod features and don’t be surprised a partner walks in with one.

Following are issues where the iPhone is not quite ready for business. The caveat is that Apple is treating the iPhone as a software system and has vowed to push out software updates upgrading its features and functionality. Just because it doesn’t have it now, doesn’t mean it won’t in the future.

Email. Push Me, Pull Me. The killer app for business in mobile phones is e-mail, and to a lesser extent calendaring, which is why Blackberry rules the roost. Blackberry, Good, and Microsoft’s ActiveSync are “push” technologies, sending the e-mail to the mobile device when it is received on the e-mail servers. The iPhone has push e-mail, but only from Yahoo! mail because it uses “push-IMAP,” a protocol MS Exchange server doesn’t support. Otherwise, the iPhone “pulls” e-mails using IMAP, where the iPhone periodically checks in with the e-mail server to see if there are new messages.

Rumor has it that Apple has licensed ActiveSync from Microsoft, meaning it would have push e-mail compatibility with MS Exchange. If so, the iPhone would be on par with Blackberry and Good.

Control Issues and Remote Erasure. Blackberry and Good are corporate darlings because of configuration, control, and the ability to remotely erase the data on handhelds. So far, the iPhone lacks these features. Controlling the configuration allows the IT department to ensure quality service because they do not have a myriad of different handhelds with different software and settings configurations. And the ability to remotely wipe data on a smartphone is priceless when the employee leaves the phone with confidential e-mails in the taxi or the plane.

The Slippery Slope of iTunes. iTunes is required to sync not only songs, photos, and video to the iPhone, but also contacts and calendars as well. This raises the question of whether putting iTunes on business computers will invite streaming music over the Internet, which iTunes allows, or employees putting personal music files and videos on firm equipment. Who is then responsible for backing up their personal music? These issues may be resolved with an “Acceptable Use” policy and disclaimer, but the implications should be thoroughly considered.

So, if you need justification for turning away iPhone toting members of your staff, these are:

• no "push" e-mail functionality compatible with our e-mail infrastructure.
• no ability to wipe data remotely to protect sensitive data in the case of a lost iPhone; and
  
• iTunes is not sanctioned software for a computer that IT will manage.

Remember, however, that the iPhone is in its infancy. Should Apple repeat its runaway success with the iPod or merely match Blackberry’s initial acceptance, it may be a wave that IT departments can’t resist. If that is the case, IT will be tasked with figuring out how to accommodate it rather than dismissing it.

You could accuse us of trying to make bank on the iPhone hype, but don’t say this scenario is implausible: In a couple of weeks, the superstar partner walks into IT with her brand new iPhone. And after surfing a few web pages on the firm wi-fi and watching a clip from The Office, she then says, “I want to get my work email on it.”

So what do you do? Can you really suggest the bare bones Outlook Mobile Access (OMA) after she demonstrates flicking through her GMail? Are you forced to enable IMAP after all these years?

Now, the iPhone won’t be replacing Blackberries in the law firm any time soon, but the point is personal technology encroaching on “work” tech. Like instant messaging and wi-fi, these days new tech is being introduced in the law firm from attorneys and staff bringing it from home rather than from the IT department. You probably went with Blackberry back in the day because a hot shot partner saw a colleague's device and wanted one for himself.

To quote a Zen saying: “the only constant in life is change.” In IT and administration, your job is to maintain a consistent, high-quality level of service. Sometimes that means saying no. But the other mandate is to provide tools that make the firm and its employees more productive and effective. That means saying yes and using a little ingenuity. The iPhone promises a very easy user experience for calling, voice mail and others beyond e-mail, which is Blackberries forte. Should it deliver (a very big if), then it is time to reevaluate the firm’s policy—and embracing change.

If not the iPhone, it will be something else.

As you may know, yesterday we did a couple of short presentations on the many flavors of managed IT services at the ALA Capital Chapter’s Spring Expo. Well, before we could talk about the variations, we made the case for how managed IT services like SAGE OnSight provide more value for your IT budget dollar. In fact, we have a chart that illustrates the case.

The chart compares the functions typically performed in a small to medium sized firm against what a managed IT solution like OnSight provides. The chart depicts a real world scenario, where preventive measures like daily server checks, patch testing and monthly maintenance aren’t performed, usually because of special projects that eat into time that should be devoted to operations. With a managed IT service, you also get the preventative measures, strategic direction and access to expert resources.

Now keep in mind that we are talking about working with the same IT budget. And it’s not a situation where you have to fire your current IT staff. Often managed services complement existing staff. Taking all of the above into account, managed IT services provide tremendous value. We just needed to make the chart to really drive home the point to ourselves as well!

Across the pond, a study of IT claims that UK businesses lose 31 days from poor IT management. Of course, that’s the attention grabbing headline [it works, doesn’t it?], and the findings are not nearly so catastrophic. The lesson learned is that IT is a great asset, but like any asset in an organization, it requires time and money for maintenance and upkeep. Failure to do so has dire consequences, like diverting resources and lowering productivity.

The culprit is not the hardware or software, but management and maintenance. In fact, any gains in productivity, efficiency, or quality degrade over time because of poor upkeep. In the survey, 77 percent cited that insufficient upkeep wasted an estimated 13 percent of their investment in IT.

Why? Projects are high profile while operations are considered monotonous and ho-hum. Smaller firms offer divert resources from operations for projects, and service suffers and gains aren’t fully realized. Operations, however, are what keep people productive and work going out the door.

So besides giving operations its due, split IT staff along projects and operations responsibilities if your organization is large enough, or call on outside help for projects when necessary.

Sure, we like to think some relationships will last forever, but they are really the exception to the rule. People change. Companies change. Industries change. Things, umm, change. When SAGE got into the managed IT services arena with OnSight, we recognized change as a given. That is why we built in quarterly technology reviews, for instance, but we also made it easy for clients to quit if circumstances changed and the relationship no longer worked.

OnSight doesn’t lock in clients the way other managed IT services do. Clients own their own equipment and infrastructure, so if they decide to go in another direction they don’t face sticker shock of “rebuilding” the network from the E-mail server to the Citrix box. And while we work with lawyers, we didn’t get a team of our own to write draconian contracts that lock in clients for long periods of time. If OnSight isn’t providing the right service for a client, than a document should not be the only glue binding us together.

We like to pride ourselves on our integrity here at SAGE, but we can't blame you for thinking that touting the advantages of managed IT services seems a little self-serving. (SAGE OnSight is our take on managed IT, one that seems to work great for our clients).

So don't take our word for it.  PC Magazine has a complete rundown on what constitutes Managed IT Services and what small and medium business can expect.  Points the article covers are:

• What to expect in terms of service and capabilities;
  
• The advantages in terms of improved operations, technical expertise, and allowing the company to focus on their business;
• Whether your small and medium sized company is a candidate for managed IT services; and
• Tips on implementing managed services

Well worth a read if you are considering testing the waters or just learning about it.

There are many different flavors to managed IT Services. SAGE OnSight falls into the category, but managed IT services come in many flavors and it is important for each organization to find the service that best fits its needs. Following are some more subtle points to consider when looking at managed IT service providers.

Personal Factor. Trust and confidence in your IT provider is vital in managed environments. You want someone on the other end of the line who is not only knowledgeable, but also responsive and trustworthy. It’s also nice to see them in person too.

Lock In—or Barriers to Exit. These can be contractual or monetary. Contracts can range from a few months to three years or more, and according to many lawyers we know, some are rather ironclad. Good service providers will require only a one month termination notice if the relationship is not working out after the initial contract period. Also consider the cost of creating a network if you decide to separate from a provider that completely outsources your IT. The infrastructure you once had now has to be rebuilt, from the E-mail server to the Citrix box, and it all comes with a price tag.

Speed and Responsiveness. While the Internet is great for working over great distances, network latency can affect the speed and responsiveness of your systems. Slow systems mean frustrated users.

Turnaround Times. How quickly will the service provider turn around new user accounts or have workstations set up for new employees? Good service providers know your time is valuable and people need to be productive as quickly as possible.

Control Issues. Many administrators who once lorded over the domain are sometimes locked out when the outsourced IT provider takes over. Instead of rolling up the sleeves and figuring out the problem, you are sending a service request. Many service providers monitor your systems and often know of a problem before you do, but you want prompt service if you are no longer in the driver’s seat. Also, having eyes into the system only increases your confidence if you can verify what the service provider is telling you.

So much of today's technical news focuses on when technology fails us.  Security breaches, lost laptops with social security numbers and emails that contains "too" much information are on the minds of business people around the world. Law firm clients are acutely aware that poor technology management can lead to unintended results and they are asking their firm's to take note.

Here are some of the steps that firms can take to avoid being in the headlines:

Blackberry and Handheld Management How many of your partners have lost their Blackberry in a cab or at a restaurant?  If unprotected, a Blackberry's emails and contacts are free for the taking.  Firms should consider the following to avoid an incident:

• Require that each Blackberry has a four character password at minimum.
• Each Blackberry should prompt for a password after an hour (or less) of inactivity.
• Ensure your IT staff knows how to remotely "wipe" a Blackberry.  That lost goldmine traveling around in the back seat of a cab can be erased from the Blackberry server to mitigate data loss.

Laptop Encryption. Surprisingly, laptops are just as easy to loose as Blackberrys.  We have heard stories of laptops disappearing in the court room, at a hotel or in a cab.  Even if your laptop requires a password to login, your data is still accessible to a criminal with basic computer knowledge and some free tools you can download from the internet.  Encryption has become an attractive countermeasure, but a solid standard has yet to emerge.  Here are some options, however, to consider:

• PGP WDE (Whole Disk Encryption)
• Voltage Secure Disk
• PointSec
• Guardian Edge
• Microsoft Vista's BitLocker Technology

Make users understand the "gotchas" with encryption.   From performance loss to unrecoverable data, if encryption technology is not implemented properly you can get your firm in a world of confusion. In the end, there is no single, easy answer to protecting against data loss.  A solid network design and thoughtful computer policies will provide the foundation you need to secure your firm's data.  We have helped many firms establish and implement better computer policies.  Let us know if we can help you.

We're happy to announce that EMP Global/EMP Africa have choosen our SAGE OnSight service to manage their IT needs here in Washington, DC and their offices throughout the world. We welcome them into the fold and look forward to providing them world calss service along with our other OnSight clients.

More information can be found on the SAGE web site.

This Wednesday's SAGE Wisdom Webinar is about improving network performance through proactive maintenance, namely daily server checks.  A tool we developed, SAGE Sentinel, can cut the time spent on daily server checks in half, as well as provide accountability and network monitoring through an easy dashboard. To learn more about Sentinel and how to keep your network running at peak performance, please join us this Wednesday afternoon at 2:00 pm EDT.

If you are interested,  sign-up online here.

The Wisdom Webinar schedule can always be found at this link and is updated monthly. Upcoming SAGE Wisdom Webinars will cover managing tech migrations for minimal disruption to the firm, and using extranets like SAGE MindPort for internal projects as well as external ones. Future webinars will cover topics like virtualization, Windows Vista and Office 2007, Exchange 12, and managing newsfeeds.

Many of you reading the title are probably chuckling at the perceived paradoxes in it. Who would think “network administrators” and “creativity” would appear in such proximity? This blog post makes an excellent case for constraints as the engine of creativity for technical folk like system engineers and network administrators, and why they gravitate to “emergencies” because they have clearly defined boundaries rather than blue-sky projects that do not.

In the post there is a fun little thought experiment that makes the point about creativity and constraints. Other notable points and suggestions include:

• Everyone wants a stable network and network engineers would like to initiate projects and proactive solutions, but tend to work on the fixes and emergencies since they have clear problem to solve.
• To overcome this, managers should challenge network engineers with “specific forward-looking issues” and ensure they spend time on it.
• Don’t be afraid to throw “business” problems to the engineers (if there really is such a distinction between IT and business these days) along with constraints to focus their efforts on longer term network performance.

People in traditional “design” disciplines like architecture, art, industrial design, etc. have long known the vast power that constraints have to spark creativity. Constraints like budgets, materials, and time have led to more innovation than a blank check and no deadlines. Even in the business realm, Wal-Mart attributes their success in creating the world’s most efficient distribution system from the fact that they had to build everything from scratch in the Arkansas backwater. They had hundreds of constraints—mostly lack of resources—which they eventually found elegant solutions that lead to business success.

So many of you are pondering whether to make the jump to Exchange 2007 and all it entails, like the fact that there is no upgrade path since it requires a 64 bit server. You are weighing the pros and cons, deciding whether it’s worth precious budget dollars or trying to justify it to upper management. We already mentioned that the new Outlook Web Access (OWA) is one in Exchange 2007’s favor, but here are a few more if you are looking for justifications, or even rationalizations.

Replication and Disaster Recovery. Exchange 2007 allows the duplication of information stores for offsite clustered servers making replication and disaster recovery easier. Also, users can have mailbox functionality while database recovery is occurring, getting people back to work faster.

Different roles in a clustered environment. Different servers in an Exchange 2007 cluster can take on various roles, such as one sitting in the DMZ as an Edge Transport Server. Other roles include Mailbox, Hub Transport, Client Access and …

Unified Messaging. Integration with your VOIP system to allow voice mails to be stored in mailboxes and the ability to listen to e-mail messages on a mobile phone.

We will be featuring more useful features that make the upgrade worthwhile in upcoming blog posts. A full list of the new features in Exchange 2007 and other propaganda is available on Microsoft’s Exchange 2007 evaluation site.

We describe our OnSight service as “Managed IT Services,” but this means different things to different people. So we figured we would be clear on our vision of managed IT service, especially because we think it is a bit unique.

SAGE approaches OnSight from a value perspective first and foremost, not just a cost perspective. You will still save money compared to managing your IT assets yourself, but you really get maximum value when you factor in our site visits and proactive approach like daily server checks, monthly maintenance, and quarterly technology reviews. We feel that the personal touch is essential. That’s why SAGE application specialists and engineers make periodic visits; interacting first-hand with users and management and seeing any problems and opportunities at the ground level.

We also insist on client independence. Our clients own their servers, workstations, and other equipment, we just keep it running in top shape and help them plan to meet business needs. While you may want to give up some responsibility when it comes to IT, you don’t want to feel like you are giving up control. We don’t live up to your expectations, the cost to switch is minimal. We like it that way. It pushes us to keep providing outstanding service; that means outstanding value for clients.

So when we talk about OnSight managed IT services, we mean you manage us. We don’t manage you.

Taking stock every now and then is important for performing better in the future. Problem is, there never seems to be the time! Whether your firm is small with no dedicated IT director or a large firm with many on-going projects, many don’t stop to check to what technology path they are on and where it is leading. The difference is anticipating demands in IT and proactively addressing them or simply reacting under tight time pressure.

As part of our OnSight service, we conduct quarterly technology reviews with our clients. This is invaluable for them since many don’t have personnel focused on strategic IT issues. However, a periodic technology review is good for organizations of any size. Our OnSight technology reviews cover four areas:

Feedback on current service. How are users needs being met? What areas need improvement? How stable is the network? What are users requesting?

Business issues impacting technology needs and infrastructure. How will the firms growth (whether organic or through a M&A) affect IT needs? If not growth, is the mix within the firm changing that could affect where and what IT resources are available? When are leases on equipment coming due? Are their tax implications about equipment purchases that need to be considered?

Project management requirements for upcoming technology projects. For upcoming IT projects, do you have the staff and are they qualified to perform the project correctly and on-time? If you need help, is there money in the budget and extra help scheduled?

Survey of technologies that could have positive impact. What technologies are out there that can benefit the firm, such as VOIP, document management, or server virtualization? What alternatives do you have to your current technology and infrastructure.

Technology reviews are integral part of developing a technology plan that keeps firms ahead of their technology needs rather than always putting out fires and playing catch-up. How many firms out there perform periodic technology reviews and what do you look at?

We could fill volumes in this blog about everything that went wrong with creating a workable technology solution for the change in Daylight Savings Time, but less than a week out here is the harsh reality: any technology fix at this point will be a cure that is worse than the disease. For the three week span between the new and old DST, the best fix will be a decidedly low tech approach, calling or emailing your meeting attendees to confirm the time of the appointment.

This is not to say that network administrators will get a free ride. There are still servers to patch and workstations to upgrade so that each computer will recognize the time change. But each of us must not rely on a technology solution to make sure your calendar appointments will display the correct time.

Changing the date is a surprisingly complicated problem given all the ways calendar events are created and shared. What device created the event? In what time zone is the person who created the message? What state is the person in who created the event (like Arizona that doesn’t do daylight time)? How many people inside and outside the organization are on the appointment. Changing the correct time in one platform like Exchange could lead to a myriad of meeting update requests that are readily ignored by users deluged by update requests.

One suggestion is to include the start and end times for appointments in the subject lines. We would add picking up the phone to confirm the time. That has the added benefit of the personal touch.

When Congress changed the date for Daylight Savings Time last year, few could foresee the problems, hyperbole, and misinformation it would produce in tech circles. In its infinite wisdom, the IT world couldn’t fathom the possibility that Congress could ever change the date for Daylight Savings Time, even though it is convention among humans and not a fundamental law of nature. Thus followed the very faint echoes of fear and loathing we heard during Y2K.

Here is the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly about updating computers for the new date for Daylight Savings Time:

The Good: The available patches work and are stable.  Do not fear using them.

The Bad: The patches aren’t a 100 percent fix. Some calendar entries will be off during the interim period between the new date and the old. Plan accordingly.

The Ugly: In a head-scratching move, Microsoft decided to make a big deal about not supporting Windows 2000 Server and older operating systems. So they made a patch available for the older OS’s, but charged thousands of dollars rather than make it freely available. Needless to say, this caused a brouhaha in the tech world, with many looking outside Microsoft for a fix for the older operating systems.

Here are a few gems from the World Wide Mind that should interest you on a Wednesday morning.

Businesses Could Thank YouTube One Day. Nowadays we enjoy our T1s in the office and broadband connections at home, and perhaps pine for some more bandwidth when you can't get your e-mail because your co-worker is watching a video on YouTube. Don't rat out your mate just yet, because YouTube just may be making it worthwhile for telecoms invest in bandwidth and up your connection speed. It seems you have Napster to thank for what you have now, but the real payoff comes when the online document review with co-counsel in three different states moves at light speed.

Don't Go Changing, To Your Clients, Customers...In another great example of pushing a metaphor to the limits without jumping the shark, here is great post on not letting your client-firm relationships become like a bad marriage by changing. Everyone one is so attentive and considerate while dating (selling), but then don't listen or send flowers once the deal is sealed. Avoid this by paying attention to detail, really listen to what they are saying, and behave like you want to marry them all over again. (Where was this post on Valentines's Day?)

You Told Me to Do It, So It's Not Going To Happen? Ever wonder why clients and customers don't take the advice for which they paid us hard money? The psychological terms is called the Principle of Reactance: reactance: a person's tendency to resist social influences that they perceive as threats to their autonomy. This explains why many people act contrary to good advice, even if they commissioned it, and can occur unconsciously. The anecdote is to couch the advice in terms that doesn' appear to encroach on their freedom, but expands it.

Don't Practice Law, Be A Manager. This post discusses the pros and cons of using non-practicing lawyers in management positions like CMOs and CIOs. While they bring business and management experience and skills practicing lawyers often lack, often it is hard for them to fit into the culture a