Now that you have hung your shingle you are thinking about your IT needs. Not just the laptops and Internet connection for you and your partner or two, but a year or two down the road when the practice takes off. That was the topic that SAGE's fearless leader, George Nicholson, spoke about at the 2008 DC Judicial Bar and Conference last Friday, April 11, 2008. George's advice to small firms and those attorneys looking to strike out on their own: address as many IT requirements as possible with the resources you have available.

For any small firm, IT purchasing is a matter of walking the line between getting by with the IT that will work today, or buying IT for tomorrow's growth. The accounting and finance package that works great for three attorneys will fall apart when there are twenty. The cost to upgrade to the mid-market package includes the price of the software, plus the cost of converting the current data from the old system, training, consulting, and any impact on productivity and billable hours. Viewed from that perspective, does it make more sense to buy the mid-market package from the outset?

This calculus--part crystal ball, part gamble, part investment--is the balancing act that George spoke about as part of the panel discussion. Having a good technology partner becomes vital to help you come up with a calculus that is right for your firm. Come back because we will have more posts about this topic.

Our creative director, resident futurist, and agent provocateur, Peter von Elling authored the article "Future Technology That Breaks With Tradition" appearing in the Jan-Mar 2008 issue of NoVa Network. The article focuses on technology trends currently incubating that will change how we work in the near future.

• The accelerating pace of technological change: change not only happens, that change is occurring faster than ever before. This trend holds true even for legal technology.
• Ultra-mobility where people are not just always available - like we are today - but "always capable" - able to perform any task on their mobile device.
• "Cloud computing," which is data and applications reside on the Internet rather than a desktop or laptop and accessible anywhere there is an Internet connection.
• Information management through social networking tools -- the torrent of information available will only get worse in the coming years. Surprisingly, searching, sorting, and filtering it will fall on groups of highly interconnected people and not intelligent software.

The article is currently available online at alanova.org, the web site of the Northern Virgina Chapter of the Association of Legal Administrators.

Cisco has announced the plan to discontinue the Cisco PIX. After July 2008, PIX will no longer be available for purchase, with accessories sales ending in January 2009. Cisco will continue to honor only existing support contracts after July 2009, and will honor those commitments until 2013.

Models on the chopping block include: Cisco PIX 501, PIX 506E, PIX 515E, PIX 525, and PIX 535.

Why? Even though many network admins would say "mine gets the job done." Cisco says there is a greater need to support Payment Card Industry Data Security, HIPAA, and SOX standards and the PIX doesn't cut it like their new ASA device does.

Rumor has it that the biggest complaint is that the Java-based user interface (PDM) doesn't play nicely or at all with the latest Java virtual machine. (Cisco doesn't make any mention of this).

Engineers are from Microsoft; Designers are from Apple, or so the old chestnut goes. While corporate America and many law firms take comfort in their conservative approach to technology and Microsoft is a comfy cardigan, Apple often upsets the computing status quo but is forever resigned to suffer small market share. With the iPhone launch almost a year on, what impact has it had on the mobile and handheld computing market?

Again the answer is that Apple's impact far exceeds its market share. With Palm and Motorola on life support, and Microsoft wandering aimlessly on the sidelines, the future looks to be a Blackberry - iPhone battle. Blackberry has ruled the mobile e-mail arena for many years, but the iPhone will become a corporate contender come June. Here is why:

1. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  Those roaming the halls of CTIA, the annual mobile phone industry confab, have been struck by all the iPhone knockoffs. Touch interfaces "are in" in a big way. Even the iPhone's look has been ported over to the next Blackberry model.

2. Apple has released an SDK (Software Development Kit), which will allow third party developers to create applications for the phone. Heavy hitter Salesforce.com has already announced iPhone applications.

3. From remote wipe to remote configuration, the iPhone's 2.0 version coming in June meets corporate IT manager's wish list through the bizarre twist of Apple licensing Microsoft's ActiveSync technology. Stranger yet, first impressions suggest that Apple will greatly improve on Microsoft's functional yet uninspiring product when it appears on the iPhone.

Whether the iPhone eventually becomes the blockbuster like the iPod is irrelevant, actually. If the iPhone holds small marketshare but influences mobile computing for the better, so be it. It appears clear, however, that your next phone will come with some sort of touch screen.

Almost as a reflex, I refuse those extended service warranties the consumer electronics retailers push to boost their bottom line. Because of them, most people view warranties as scams rather than the insurance policies they were originally intended to be. Unfortunately, this thinking gets extended to the critical hardware in the server room. E-mail servers, file/print servers, domain controllers, and more sit in server rooms years past when the manufacturers warranty expires.  This is a bad situation.

What happens when an extended warranty is purchased?  A client of ours had a system board die in their warrantied file/print server. Within four hours, a technician arrived with a replacement system board and the server was back online, all covered under the warranty and free of charge.

Without the warranty, the alternative scenario plays out like this: a replacement system board has to be ordered via overnight mail, which may arrive in 2 business days depending on the ordering deadline for next day delivery. If you don't have IT in-house, you coordinate with your IT consultant to install the part, at their regular hourly rate.  Besides the costs of the part and service, figure in opportunity costs for lost productivity or billable hours for the day or more that the server is down.

What is worse than the scenario above?  Not knowing whether your servers and network equipment is under warranty or not. At the very least, you should perform an audit so you know the risks you are running.

Our post last week discussed how "time-to-restore" is the primary factor in data backups. Here are some solutions for speeding up the process.

D2D2T - Disk to Disk to Tape. Many of our clients use this solution. In the event of a server failure (and not a disaster that destroys the server room), the last backup is local and can be restored from a local resource rather than pulling it over the Internet or having devices couriered to the site. These backups complete much more quickly since internal connections (LAN, USB 2.0 ESata, Firewire) are faster than the Internet connection. Meanwhile, the remote backup can be pulled over the Internet for redundancy. 

Bare Metal Restores. When a server fails, getting the server back up and running is time consuming before the restore can even start. It might take 4 to 6 hours to install Windows and its service packs, install applications (Exchange, SQL), then install the backup agents and start the restore. This type of "rebuild" always has long time delays finding the software media as well as configuring the machine (drives, install paths, data paths). With bare metal restore capabilities you typically can boot to a CD and begin restoring the machine much quicker.

eDiscovery in litigation cases means data, data and more data. The end of days of delivering data on CDs and DVDs are fast approaching.  For the past 2 years, we have been using portable hard drives to transfer data from one entity to another.

• The clients provide their data to the law firm.
• The litigation support team sends data to the vendors for processing.
• The vendors deliver the processed data to the litigation support team.
• The law firm produces their data to the government agency or opposing counsel.

In late 2005, our Director of Litigation Support Services worked on a Second Request litigation case where she ended up with 70 portable hard drives in her office containing data received from the vendor on a rolling basis. The data on them was then copied onto the server and loaded into Concordance for attorney review in house, at the insistence of the attorneys.

Your litigation support team should have a stock of portable hard drives in their possession. There is nothing worse than having to run out to a store at the last minute to purchase a drive. Lost is the opportunity to get volume discounts or good Internet sales, and what if the store is sold out?

The smaller 3.5 inch portable hard drives are very functional and easy to transport. They are small, lightweight and range in size from 60 to 320 gigabytes.  They also have nifty carrying cases available in different colors.  At the very least, you should try to stick with the same brand and purchase a variety of disk sizes.  The well known brands like Western Digital, Seagate and Lacie are usually a safe bet, although we have all heard stories about “smoking hard drives” and “bad disk drives”.

If the hard drive is used for production, the client can be charged for the hard drive and a new replacement hard drive can be purchased for in-house stock.  The hard drives can be recycled over and over again for different sets of data in one case.  If the hard drives are used for different cases, a disk wiping software like BC Wipe should be used.

If you have any other tips on using portable hard drives in litigation support, please share with everyone in the comments.

You think you are protected: RAID to guard against hard drive failure; dual network cards with separate Ethernet switches, and redundant power with a couple of UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) systems in case of a power failure. But what about your telecomm closet?

Doh! Here is the scene we have seen repeated countless times: Internet router, firewall, and even your Ethernet switches are just plugged into the wall outlet! Your vital link to clients and the outside world rests on an unconditioned wall plug and an electrical grid in dire need of upgrade.

Make sure all your network electronics are protected by a UPS. This alone will save you from losing components due to power fluctuations and outages. You may need two for heavier loads. UPS's fail too, so an online spare won't hurt. With respect to potential of losing hours of productive/billable time, UPS systems in your telco closet are insanely cheap.

So how about extending server-based virtualization to notebooks? Neoware (and Wyse) has been building them for a while now, and has found a suitor in computing giant HP. HP has been pushing virtualization from the hardware and storage sides, but looks to be making a bigger play in the arena with this acquisition. Between the Internet and virtualization technologies, the mainframe may be making a comeback!

How about running that database on a virtual server? Maybe not. Databases require good I/0 performance, which may not be available on a virtual machine.  This Q&A reiterates a point we have been making in our presentations on virtual computing that stresses I/O intensive applications are not the best candidates for virtual machines.

So how do I compare performance on virtual machines? VMware is glad you asked, because they just developed a benchmark to test virtual machines. So now we can await the results to see if VMware continually beats out other virtual computing competitors like Microsoft, Xen, and others using their “open” benchmark.

We have updated our separate newsfeed of IT news for law and professional services firms filtered by the experts at SAGE. You can also view it online here (Thanks to the wonder that is Google Reader).

We read a ton of newsfeeds to stay updated on the constantly changing information technology field, and we comment in this blog on just a small fraction of what we read. There are a number of stories that just don’t make the cut for the blog, but are newsworthy nonetheless for IT pros and Administrators in law and professional services firms. Those stories are available through the feed, and you don’t have to wade through all the stories we do in a given day.

Some stories appearing just today in the feed include:

• Smarter Ways to Work With PDFs
• Spam Filter Causes Lawyer to Miss Court Date
• Court Ruling Could Have Major Impact on E-Discovery
• Microsoft eyes new ways to sell Office

What Would You Do With a Bargain Basement Supercomputer? While Microsoft continually seeks out new markets and new competitors to conquer (old Star Trek riff), they have set their sights on the supercomputing market with a “low-cost” solution for small companies. If you have a spare $50K laying around for the software alone, MS says you can get your own cluster of servers acting like a supercomputer.

Why would law or professional services firms want a supercomputer? Conceptual searching and relationship analysis for litigation support, for one. What would you use a supercomputer for?

Collaborating on the Web? Read the Fine Print. Between Lawyers has a post and comments on using online web services like conferencing or data storage. The issues include possible data breaches like when GMail was hacked and having a third party between lawyer and client.

Blame Tech Problems on the Planet Mercury: Here is a little chuckle for a Friday. Currently, the planet Mercury is in retrograde, an optical illusion that makes it look like the planet has reversed direction in the sky. For astrologers, this is a bad time of year as accidents happen, things go pear-shaped. So when Yahoo! Messenger went down on Wednesday, the culprit was not bad code or human error, but the zigzagging planet.

We are not in the hype or bandwagon business, but a follow up to our post yesterday about the iPhone’s potential place in business is in order. In an interview with USA Today this morning, Apple CEO Steve Jobs had this to say about corporate e-mail and the iPhone:

Q: What about corporate e-mail? I understand that's an issue for many consumers, who may not be able to hook up to their company networks?

Jobs: You'll be hearing more about this in the coming weeks. We have some pilots going with companies with names you'll recognize. This won't be a big issue.

There you go. If we were to read the tea leaves, likely candidates are Microsoft and Motorola (who recently acquired Good). RIM, the company behind Blackberry, is less likely because their system uses dedicated data centers. Whether the iPhone can be remotely managed and wiped still remains to be seen, but Apple apparently wants to remove any barriers to the business market.

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.

Here are a few tidbits worthy of your attention on the Web today:

Security Honcho "Wants People at Microsoft to Think Like Criminals." Wow, can you have fun with a line like that.  Anticompetitive practices aside, this article over at CNet talks about the mindset needed to defend against cyber evil-doers. The trick, evidently, is to think like a hacker, rather than a developer or user that view security vulnerabilities as yet another bug to squash.  The  article is part of a series on web security that is worth a read.

Preview of Top EDD Providers. So if you are into Top "N" lists (that's geek shorthand for any number like 10), The Common Scold has a preview of the top 10 EDD service providers and software vendors, with details to come in the August issue of LTN. Again, if you are into that sort of thing...

...So About That iPhone Post Yesterday.The first reviews coming in suggest the hype may well be warranted, increasing the chances of a partner purchasing an iPhone and wanting to get firm e-mail on it. So if that happens to you, we have an article about security and the iPhone, and a post trying to clear up some misconceptions floating around on the "Internets." The big problem may be the inability to remotely wipe the iPhone.

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.

This article on CIO Insight’s web site recounts how a small web hosting firm used virtualization technology to compete against its far larger rivals. How?

Flexibility. Virtualization allowed the company to dynamically allocating resources, devoting its (virtual) servers to H&R Block during tax season, then moving them to other clients when it was over. Virtualization also allowed them to offer utility computing solutions.

Reducing Power Consumption and Cooling Costs. The lesson everyone quickly learned as data was moved to the Cloud (a geeky way of hosting information on servers rather than desktops) was that electricity is expensive, for both the processors and the equipment to keep them cool. While chip manufacturers now see the light with lower consumption chips, there were still underutilized servers eating watts and requiring AC. Consolidating servers saved the company 50-70 percent in cooling and power costs.

CNet yesterday ran a helpful FAQ on virtualization technologies covering what it is, why it’s catching on now, and who are the players in the virtual arena. The article is a handy primer on the technology that is gaining significant steam in IT these days.

If that whets your appetite, we do a little roadshow here at SAGE called “Exploring the Virtual Computing Frontier” on virtualization technologies going mainstream.  The roadshow is going to the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of ILTA this Wednesday, April 25 in downtown Washington, DC. Our uber-engineer Doug Daniel provides a run down of the technology and delves into the costs and benefits, addressing the often touted myth of large cost savings. Based on his experience, Doug will also share the pitfalls to avoid when going virtual, and where virtual environments are heading in the near future.

The seminar is open to ILTA members and the general public. Sign up on ILTA’s web site. You even get a free lunch!

As we all gear up our mojo for another work week, here are a few places to check on the web that are actually work-related.

Holes in Vista’s Sandbox. From the “Devil is in the details” department, Vista’s new sandbox feature “Protected Mode” turns off in a number of instances leaving machines vulnerable to hacks like the recent animated cursor attack. Trusted Sites and turning off the highly annoying User Account Control are just two instances. Webware’s article highlights all the scenarios where Microsoft kicks the user out of the sandbox and leaves open some vulnerabilities.

Dreams of a Web Operating System. Web applications are becoming more a part of our daily work activities—think GMail and Outlook Web Access—leading many to dream of an operating system based entirely in a web browser. (Never mind that an OS is still required to run the browser). This CNet article has a rundown on current developments and the technical and market challenges any web-based OS faces. Either way, look for webware to force an evolution into the staid thinking about operating systems.

Blackberries To Keep up With Home, Too. While many spouses and significant others have bemoaned the corporate tether that is the Blackberry (and its brethren), a new poll suggests that the workers are revolting and using their company-provided smart phones and laptops for personal reasons as well. We guess that turnabout is fair-play.

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:

• 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.

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

Posting a title like that invites the cynical among us to insert terms like “cost” and “expense.” But let’s look beyond the budget line to the business value of IT. This post at ZDNet’s Between The Lines gives a few measures and ideas for defining, calculating, and getting the maximum value of IT. We couldn’t agree with the post more when they state that there is “no such thing as an IT project. They are all business projects.”

IT Projects should not be defined by whether something was simply installed, or deployed, but whether the installed application or system creates leverage that creates efficiencies or opportunities. Value comes from impact: are processes faster and smoother because of the IT project, saving time and money; or does it generate value for the customers which translates into sales or fees?

How do you know? Use metrics such as cost reductions and increased revenue. Time savings is often a gold standard in law and professional services since it invariably directly equates to billable hours or overhead. You will have to be creative in finding metrics for returns because the generated value aren’t easily quantified, unlike the upfront investments that are measured in cold, hard cash.

They also echoed something we have mentioned many times before, the value of marketing your successes. So while every project may be a “business project,” blame for poor projects becomes easily assignable. “Every time it’s wrong it’s and IT project.”

Blogs love to tantalize readers with posts on future technologies that will do our work for us and let us fly around on jet packs. This isn't one of those posts.

Here are more mundane new technologies that will have a greater impact in the short term.

Seagate announces encrypted hard drives. Not a day goes buy without a story about confidential or personal data getting loose because of a stolen or misplaced laptop. Encrypted hard drives promise that while the notebook or phone falls into the wrong hands, the data won't.

Intel's Quad-Core-powered servers mean more "power" while using less power. The power required to operate data centers is truly phenomenal. The largest data centers are now being built by hydroelectric power stations for cheaper energy.  Intel's lower power quad-core cheaps promise to make your measly data center less of a cost center.

Intel ready to launch flash memory drives for storage in laptops. Ready for even smaller laptops that won't be as much of a hassle to get out of your bag for airport screening?  Intel, SanDisk and Samsung are all pursuing flash-memory based drives of 32GB and greater for laptops, tablets, and other small form factor computers. Initially expensive, the longer term payoff is lighter weight, quicker start-up, and less power consumption to last through those international flights or a decadent coffee binge at Starbucks.

After our post about how the upcoming Apple iPhone could start a sea-change toward handheld computing, we are reminded that technology can be used for good or evil. The simple fact that there are nearly 1 billion cell phones makes them a tempting target for all sorts of malefactors. There have been a few cell phone viruses, but they haven’t done any real damage.

The real threat comes from theft of PDAs, laptops, and portable media, according to this article. The kicker is that an estimated 60 percent of laptops and PDAs contain unprotected sensitive or confidential information. That means potential liability if that information is customer or personnel data.

So lock down your portable devices, using physical locks, data encryption, strong passwords, and a harsh glare if necessary. We have more than a few horror stories of clients calling us to do audits because they think some computer equipment has gone missing. Usually, their intuition is correct, but the problem is even worse than they thought.

If the Apple iPhone’s innovative “multi-touch” interface stands up in real world use, it may usher in the shift in computing from desktops to handhelds. Laptops are already poised to overtake desktops the business world in the next few years, and sales have surged for smartphones like the Blackberry and Treo. The iPhone promises to overcome the last hurdle to widespread adoption of handhelds for most computing tasks: the interface.

We’ve discussed handheld devices and the supporting “information cloud” of data, information, and reference material that Blackberries/Treos make possible. Even laptops cannot compete with the mobility afforded by fitting snugly into a pocket. High speed cell networks and Wi-Fi have solved the bandwidth bottleneck, so the last hurdle to accessing the information in the cloud on a handheld was the interface: the stylus, small keyboard, and small, low-resolution screen. According to one tech pundit:

“[Apple CEO] Jobs is breaking the tyranny of the keyboard and trying to break the tyranny of the cursor as well. We've been able to get computers into our pockets for a very long time, but the issue has always been, 'what do you do with it?' You don't have a keyboard, you don't have a stylus and your thumbs are too big to type. This is the first serious attempt to break the tyranny of input. Until now, everybody's always focused on output -- is the screen big enough or sharp enough -- and the screens are high-resolution and bright. We've conquered that. Now the limiting factor is input.”

Simple input, fully capable high-speed web browsing, and reading documents on a widescreen display are all major advances in handheld computing. So whether you think the iPhone is the real-deal or over-hyped, if you or your employees want to be unchained from the desk, you should be rooting for the iPhone to succeed.

Here are few items that peaked our interest on the web today (including one that sucked us into Apple hype machine).

• Inside Legal Opinions has a great post about innovative lawyers and law firms that is well worth a read. Industry pressures, technology, and plain old unconventional thinking are pushing these law firms and lawyers in new directions, even proposing to get rid of the partner-associate structure.
• Say what you will about Apple in corporate (or business) environments, you have to give them credit for pushing the envelope. Today they unveiled the much anticipated iPhone and appear to have exceeded people's unrealistic expectations for the device. Sporting a new “multi-touch” interface that does away with physical buttons, the iPhone rethinks the whole mobile phone/mobile computing experience. Plus you get an iPod. We’ll watch the initial previews of the new interface, but if the phone lives up to its promise, Apple and Cingular could find people clamoring for these phones in June.
• Microsoft’s new Office 2007 releasing Jan. 30 also comes with a new document format, the clumsily named Office Open XML (or OOXML for smooth-sounding acronyms.) Problem is, it will not be backward compatible with earlier versions of Office unless an upgrade pack is applied to those pre-2007 versions. Still it remains unclear how the document conversion will happen between Office 2007 documents and older versions of the software.

Virtual computing environments are one of the most exciting developments in IT in years. Recently, SAGE hosted a seminar on virtual computing with the Capital Chapter of ALA.  The seminar was a big success, and now we are taking that seminar to you.

The session starts with an overview of the technology and its applications, and provide a survey of configurations, products, and platforms. We share our insights into the best applications for virtualization, and the various platforms and software currently in the market. The session delves into the costs and benefits of the technology, addressing the often touted myth of large cost savings. Based on our experience, We will also share the pitfalls to avoid when going virtual, and where virtual environments are heading in the near future.

The seminar covers:

• What is virtualization? Common configurations, products, hardware platforms and system requirements.
• Uses for virtualization, including development, consolidation, disaster recovery, etc.
• Pros and cons of virtual server environments.
• Maximizing performance in virtual computing.
• Myths and realities regarding the economics of virtualization.
• Real costs of going virtual for firms of various sizes.
• Complementary technologies for virtual server rooms like SANs, and remote power control.

If your firm is interested in learning more virtual computing, please contact Karin Magness at SAGE and we will bring the roadshow to your company.

We are still ironing out some of the details so the formal announcement hasn't gone out yet, but we can let you know of a new seminar. SAGE’s Doug Daniel will be giving an overview of virtualization technologies for the Information Services and Technology Section of the ALA Capital Chapter on October 25 from Noon to 2:00 PM. 

Doug will guide attendees through the virtual computing landscape. He will provide an overview of the technology and its applications, and provide a survey of configurations, products, and platforms. Furthermore, he will share his insights into the best applications of virtualization, and the various platforms and software currently in the market. Doug will delve into the costs and benefits of the technology, addressing the often touted myth of large cost savings. Based on his experience, Doug will also share the pitfalls to avoid when going virtual, and where virtual environments are heading in the near future.

The seminar will cover:

• What is virtualization? Common configurations, products, hardware platforms and system requirements.
• Uses for virtualization, including development, consolidation, disaster recovery, etc.
• Pros and cons of virtual server environments
• Maximizing performance in virtual computing
• Myths and realities regarding the economics of virtualization
• Real costs of going virtual for firms of various sizes
• Complementary technologies for virtual server rooms like SANs, and remote power control.

The venue is still not set, but will likely be hosted at Wilkinson Barker Knauer, LLP office in Washington, DC. For more information, or if you are interested in registering, e-mail Peter von Elling at SAGE, or Kenny Mitchell at Wilkinson Barker Knauer.

By the end of the year, SAGE will be making available Sentinel to all OnSight clients, letting them view the status of their network and us as we perform daily checks on their servers. OnSight clients will have their own user names and passwords and can see everything SAGE engineers and managers can see for their own network. This provides IT managers and firm administrators the means to monitor their network and our performance.

We don't mind the accountability that comes with the transparency Sentinel provides to our OnSight customers. When managing a firm's network, we have the responsibility for its continuous operation and optimum performance, and our customers need to to have confidence that is indeed happening. The way we look at it, providing Sentinel to customers gives them that assurance, which translates to peace of mind that their network is in good hands. Lastly, the more eyes present to spot problems whenever and where ever they may occur is never a bad thing.

We wrote an article a while ago about the real value of providing a second monitor to users with specific needs in law and professional services firms. This article on Slate’s web site yesterday and other research studies only reinforce our view that adding more screen area can significantly boost productivity. Coders, researchers, and other data entry tasks enjoy significant productivity improvements using dual monitors or large screens because of less time spent switching between applications, less mistakes because a reduced reliance on memory, and immediate feedback on quality. Find yourself “alt-tabbing” all the time, you should probably invest in that 24” monitor, or more economically, dual 17” monitors and a dual-head video card.

We are surprised that more firms do not adopt dual monitors or larger monitors for certain personnel. Our guess is that Accounting and Finance summarily dismisses them as duplicative and wasteful without really investigating the return on investment. Then again, having two monitors does look extravagant, and surely leads to pangs of jealousy from those stuck with a single monitor.