One advantage to using software as a service (SAAS) via the web rather than traditional software licensing are the constant updates that are included in the cost of the subscription. NetDocuments is in the process of rolling out a number of improvements to its leading document management service.  

In the coming weeks, NetDocuments will release a companion to its add-in Email Management Service (EMS). The new EMS Profiler allows users to profile emails from within MS Outlook 2003 or 2007. Users can profile multiple emails from their inbox or within a folder, they can open an email and file, or they can profile and file to their NetDocuments cabinet when sending or replying to an email.

Current NetDocuments EMS subscribers will be able to choose which EMS service to install and offer each user.

A new login page will be released which is the onset of upcoming user interface improvements. The new page is designed to smoothly present RSA two-factor authentication integration and login process.

Additionally, NetDocuments simplified the access to check-in all closed documents by separating the function from viewing the check-out list. This eliminates the need to use a keyboard Control function to check in all docs. The creation of categories for workspaces has been simplified, too. and administrator rights are no longer required to copy into a NetBinder. The right click menu customization feature has been refined to make it easier to drag and drop the selected options.

These are a few of the many refinements released on April 29th.

Please join us in giving Stacy Fischbach a warm welcome as SAGE’s new Vice-President of Business Development. Stacy will be heading up both the strategy and execution of our sales and marketing effort. For SAGE, this means enhancing our communication and education efforts. For our professional services community, this means helping them make better technology decisions that improve their bottom line.

Stacy joins us from the sales and marketing consulting company, Entrequest, where she assisted small to mid-sized DC based companies in their business development efforts. Her work there included sales strategy development, CRM system integration, lead generation design; and sales and sales management training. Foremost, Stacy’s customer-first approach fits perfectly with SAGE’s proven commitment to customer care and satisfaction and we are sure she will be a great asset to firms trying to meet their business and technology needs.

Stacy has worked with a number of organizations globally across a range of industries, including finance, technology, manufacturing, telecommunications, and retail. These previous clients include Dept of Homeland Security, Freddie Mac, Disney, Deloitte, and Georgia Pacific. Prior to Entrequest, Stacy led the North American Marketing and Sales organization for DuPont’s Lycra business. Earlier on in her career, she was with the Forum Corporation – a National Training and Development Company -- both as a consulting resource for Sales organizations and as an Account Executive in the North East region. Stacy received her B.S. from the University of Delaware. Her marketing and sales effectiveness work at DuPont-Invista was recognized by the Marketing Leadership Council, with excerpts published in the 2004 Best Practices Marketing Competency Review.

"Without Objectives, You Don't Have a Disaster Recovery Plan," an article by SAGE President George Nicholson, appears on the front page of the May 2009 ALA Capital Connection newsletter. In the article, George gives strategies for jump starting any disaster recovery plan that has been languishing in development for years (and there are a lot of them!) George tells firm adminstrators and management to focus on realistic recovery objectives rather than falling into the trap that "everything needs to be available immediately." There is much more in the full article, including specific strategies for developing recovery time and recovery point objectives.

Let us know what you think of the article in the comments below!

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.

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.

IT sometimes harkens back to 12th grade microeconomics class--namely, "opportunity costs." This post over at the Freakonomics's blog brings up the issue of lost time and productivity from a seemingly innocuous software update that cost the author an hour. The larger point that author makes is that the longer you wait to update, the more costs you can incur.

So are you asleep yet? Wake up!

The article highlights hidden costs in IT, where users wait for software updates or create time-consuming workarounds due to glitches, or little to no training. The longer one waits to resolve these issues, the higher the costs. Updates and patches that promise fixes or new features can often have unintended consequences that wreak havoc on your firm network or personal device. Testing, daily maintenance, prevention, and proper training are important to keep costs down, especially hidden costs.

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.

E-Week this week published their "Top 10 Disruptive Technologies Affecting the Data Center". The slideshow is a mix of heady, esoteric terms like "server fabrics" with more tenable concepts like "green IT", and closely parallels Gartner Research's top 10 strategic technologies of 2008. But what is a disruptive technology and how to respond to it?

"Disruptive Technology" is a fairly recent term coined to describe technologies that upset the current state of affairs--whether those are business models, industries, or workflow. Want some examples? The Internet has disrupted traditional media like newspapers and TV. Digital music and the iPod has disrupted the music industry. And Google is doing it to just about anything that touches the Web.

So how can you predict the next disruptive technology? Well, you can't. The fact that they come from "outside the box" means that there is little chance of seeing them coming. As this post points out, the next big thing is never a repeat. That is why disruptive technologies are unexpected and unpredictable.

So the best strategy is agility: responding quickly to this new phenomenon. This requires the ability to learn quickly and not stand on bureaucracy, parochialism, or convention. A capacity for reinvention will be a vital survival trait.

Want even more good news? The pace of change is accelerating. Look over the past ten years since e-mail went widespread: now we have Blackberries and iPhones with word processing, cameras and GPS. Imagine what the next ten years will bring. So industries once isolated or downstream of innovative industries will have to react quicker as disruptive technologies will sweep through like wildfires.

Submitted for your perusal is the sophistication of technology in a small to medium-sized businesses. Can one "tech guy" who comes in twice a month have the requisite knowledge and expertise to cover it all?

• Email and messaging (Exchange/Outlook, Blackberries and other mobile devices)
• Office software
• Printers/Scanners
• Remote access (Citrix, VPN, Terminal Services)
• Internet Access
• Firewall
• Storage
• Backup & Recovery (Tape, Disk, Online)
• Threat reduction (antivirus, spam filtering)
• Patch management
• Monitoring

Then throw in industry-specific and specialized applications like docketing, document management, accounting and finance, sales, CRM, and custom databases. Even more, on the horizon even small firms will have some form of server virtualization, online backup, and enhanced mobile communications.

Needless to say, this is too much for one person to handle. Best would be to have a medium-sized IT company managing your firm's IT. That company will assign an engineer representative for site visits and be the point of contact who intimately knows the client's system, but can call on specialists and experts whenever necessary.

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.

Here is another episode from our series “The Devil is in the Details.” This time, our setting is online data backup, that may be part of the larger world of managed IT services. Whether looking at online backup vendors or when it is bundled as part of a managed IT service, here is an important feature you should insist upon: Real time view and access into your backed-up data.

You want the ability to view and manage your backup data without needing an intermediary. For instance, you want to see your files and restore a file without needing to place a support ticket that someone fulfills for you most likely in a manner not-described as “timely.” You have options in online backup, decide on the one that gives you the greatest flexibility for the price.

While Litigation Support is a very technology intensive discipline, they don’t always see eye-to-eye with the IT department. The reasons are many: Litigation Support is often created and budgeted outside of IT and the practitioners largely come from the paralegal, attorney or administrative ranks. Although you would believe these two entities would find common ground, often their relationship is more noted for misunderstandings, misperceptions, and differing agendas.

IT and Litigation Support departments are tasked very differently. IT must provide quality, predictable service on a budget, whereas Litigation Support is tasked by the attorneys with getting the job done at all costs. For this and other reasons, Litigation Support and IT are separate entities in many firms, large and small. Litigation support is steeped in data. Their job is collecting, searching, and re-purposing data, that requires tremendous storage capacity, fast networking, and a wide variety of tools to search, extract, catalog, redact and “produce” that data. These demands sometimes run counter to IT’s mandate to provide stable, predictable, high-quality service for the entire firm. Large amounts of data on its servers or coursing through its wires can negatively affect performance. IT also has concerns about staffing a help desk that must know a couple dozen esoteric litigation support tools.

These are just some examples of the differences between IT and Litigation Support. Over the coming weeks, we will be exploring how to improve this relationship to realize the synergies and benefits of a close working relationship between the two.

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.

Here is an idea to think about and discuss. This isn’t an endorsement. Hopefully, it is the start of a conversation.

Chris Anderson, Editor of Wired Magazine and the main who coined the them “the Long Tail” has an interesting post about dual IT networks—one official, the other not—at Wired’s offices. One is the corporate network that is locked down and heavily managed to protect its core functions like accounting/finance, file storage, backup and Exchange. The second is an “open” Internet connection, providing full access to Skype, instant messaging clients, and Facebook.

Now Wired magazine is about living on the digital edge, and law firms and professional services firms are not. Law firms especially need to protect data because the professional and financial ramifications of not doing so are devastating. But innovation is required in any industry, and we have touted the many advantages of new Web applications and services like RSS, social bookmarking, wikis, and more. Giving employees a playground to experiment could lead to a better way to provide client service or an innovative approach to services via these new Internet technologies.

As Anderson mentions in his blog, many corporate CIOs are implementing or seriously considering this dual networking strategy, either with physically separate networks or virtual networks. Time will tell, however, what problems could arise from this intriguing approach. At the person and workstation level those networks converge, causing potential headaches like lost productivity to fantasy sports leagues; malware pickup up from risky web sites and apps, and random questions about obscure web applications into the help desk.

Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Sure, the Annual ILTA Conference is the premier legal tech event on the calendar, but we don't blame you for avoiding the August heat in Central Florida (not near a beach). We sent our rep to seek out knowledge and air conditioning, but with blogging, you don't have to.

Inside Legal Opinions and LexBlog have the rundown of people blogging from the conference. Thanks to these intrepid folks, you can get the latest news and ideas from the conference while sipping your coffee while wearing that comfy, ratty t-shirt in your home office after the kids are in bed.

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.

Your document management, accounting and finance, and CRM applications are probably using SQL Server for their internal database, making it one of the most common enterprise applications that you completely forget about. Until something goes wrong, and you are painfully aware of its presence.

SQL Server is a very stable and robust program, but that is no excuse to let it go neglected. Pop quiz: how many licenses/copies of SQL Server exist in your firm? Be sure to count those licenses for enterprise applications that use it to store their data. And while you are at it, where are the databases located? Are there maintenance plans in place and are the databases being backed up? What is their current size and rate of change?

These are just a few items you should know about your SQL databases. Becoming reacquainted with your SQL Server installations is the first step. Scheduled check-ups and a full audit will ensure that the rest of the firm can remain blissfully ignorant that one application plays such a large role.

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!

A good rule of thumb is that IT spending in law firms should be 3-6 percent of gross revenue. IT budgets in that range should provide a reasonable level of service and stability for the firm and its staff. To make the budget go farther, consider going with a managed IT service provider that can provide additional resources and high quality service. Managed IT solutions typically exceed the level of service that in-house resources alone can provide on a regular basis.

There are many different flavors to managed IT Services, however. This will be the topic of discussion during SAGE’s Learning Pavilion Sessions at Thursday’s ALA Capital Chapter Spring Educational Forum and Expo. It is important for each organization to find the service that best fits its needs. Subtle variations in service and support can mean the difference between having the service be the right fit or a disastrous and expensive foray. SAGE consultants with experience on both sides--provider and client---will discuss various factors beyond the "spec" sheet that firms often overlook, but should really be at the forefront of their decision making.

Please join SAGE for either the 11:30 a.m. or 3:00 p.m. session in the Learning Pavilion at the ALA Capital Chapter Educational Forum and Expo, and stop by the SAGE booth to learn even more.

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.

Firms looking to be more secure with their data both internally and with their mobile devices should focus first on the cultural barriers to greater security within their firm. Attorneys and professionals who don’t want to be inconvenienced by enhanced security like multi-factor authentication need to be persuaded that the risks far outweigh the inconvenience. Loss of client confidence, professional liability, and the potential for restitution damages are very dire consequences from not securing company, employee or customer data. Making busy professionals understand the trade-offs required for a more secure environment will lay the cultural groundwork that can lead to the introduction of heightened security measures like passwords on handhelds, encrypted drives, and SSLVPN connections for remote access.

We recently presented to ALISM on the topic of securing mobile data. Please talk to us if you have questions or concerns on this topic. We might be able to help.

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.

One pitfall people and companies fall into is: if I do something one way, I assume other people do it the same way. Much of the frustration we feel with interfaces, workflows, products, and services result from this faulty underlying assumption. Fact is, different people learn differently. They also approach problems with vastly different strategies.

Let’s focus on learning. Basically, people learn in three ways: audio, visual and kinetic.

• Audio people learn best by listening to people;
• Visual people learn best by looking at something such as diagrams, text, instructions, etc.; and
• Kinetic people learn best by doing something, such as taking notes or doing exercises.

So how do people’s learning methods get incorporated in the real world? Part of our OnSight service includes the Support Center (Help Desk), staffed by Specialists who—in addition to having saintly patience—will tune their learning approach to the individual. Some calls come over the phone where speaking and listening are important, but if the person needs a visual demonstration, we can remote to their machine and show them how to resolve the issue. The Support Center specialists spend a lot of time at client sites, where if someone needs to learn through doing, our specialist can watch over their shoulder as they do it and learn.

Being aware of these differences and tuning your approach to them will result in better training and processes.

Unless you are sell hardware or software, if you are in IT, you work for someone. Worse yet, IT is viewed as cost center. IT folk acting like they forgot these facts are the reasons for cartoons like this. IT exists for a purpose: to make people better at their jobs and more productive. IT doesn’t shine if the employees don’t shine.

[Rant ends].

No More XP on New Computers in 2008. News is filtering through blogosphere that Microsoft will end OEM sales of Windows XP come January 2008. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, as Microsoft is in the business of selling software. Developing it is just a step in the process. What it means to law and professional firms who tend to be behind the tech curve, is to start thinking about transitioning to Vista in the next couple of years. New equipment will only come with Vista, and soon licenses and then support will disappear. The X Factor in this equation is Exchange 12 and Office 2007, which take advantage of many Vista features.

Law.com Starts Its Quest. Google got into the legal research game in a tangential way with Patents and Trademarks search, now Law.com gets into the legal search arena with Quest (via Robert Ambrogi's Lawsites) Quest searches Law.com's own extensive network of web sites, publications, and blogs, and adds in a number of law firm web sites and other legal blogs.  If anything, it provides a more narrow scope to a search, but we will wait for the reviews to see if it has value for practitioners or just a way to bolster Law.com's advertising revenue.

Lessons from the Eye of the Storm. Since it's Friday the 13th, of course we come across a disaster recovery story. This article has some practical business continuity advice from law firms that have faced hurricanes in Miami. Their formula: a bunker(!), lots of laptops, and satellite office space for lawyers. Also on display is both sides of human nature, from managers instructed to call employees and ask them what they need in the wake of disaster, to clients who call to inquire about the condition of their documents without care for the attorneys or staff.

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.

The newest engineer to join the crack troops here at SAGE is Colin Marks, who as a certified Cisco Network Engineer brings a wealth of networking and WAN experience. One appliance he has found that can help large firms is PacketShaper. It allows companies to easily manage their bandwidth to maximize performance and ensure quality of service. PacketShaper and other like applications let you prioritize, segregate, and otherwise manage your bandwidth. For example, dedicate a certain percentage for the VOIP system and give priority to Citrix applications over web surfing, especially on draft days for fantasy sports.

Another advantage to this class of network appliance is the easy management, bypassing the arduous task of manually configuring your routers. A GUI (Graphical user Interface) to set priorities or limits, monitor performance and get reports makes optimizing performance a much easier endeavor.

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.

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.”

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.

If you are like us and are fanatical about customer service, then almost all of your energy and resources is focused on clients and customers. When focusing on others, you tend to let yourself go. We all figure our coworkers and employees will understand because the firm is focused on the clients. We always hurt the ones we love.

We suggest stopping the pain, or at least mitigating it, because ultimately the pain your employees and coworkers feel will affect their interactions with clients and customers. Employees frustrated with an unstable network or feel neglected because their software questions go unanswered will not and cannot focus on the client and work most productively.

This is our mea culpa. The SAGE Web site is—in a sense—busted. We are in the middle of a redesign and it was important to update the home page quickly, but client commitments have delayed completing the site. We are just now getting around to completing it, but what was supposed to be a couple of weeks has stretched to a few months. Not only are customers and prospects probably wondering what is going on, but a few employees have been waited for their pages to go live.

Try to find a balance between superior customer service and a little “me” time, because ultimately they are all connected.

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.

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 and be accepted in it.

…or IT Director, or Administrator whose duties include IT. It sure can be a thankless job: No one notices when everything is running smoothly but one little thing goes wrong like the Blackberry server crashing, and everyone points their finger at you. Here are some more professional hazards from both the top and bottom…

Are you leading changes in technology and how your company uses it, or are you just setting “acceptable use” policies? There is a tension between innovation and operations that IT Directors, CIOs, et al have to manage. Leadership wants a tight ship, but at the same time might want a few more suggestions out of you for productivity improvements. In a recent Forrester survey, 60 percent of CEOs like their CIOs, but less than a third of the time viewed them as leading the charge in innovation or process improvement.

The Young Bucks think you are the Dinosaur. Another tension is between generations within companies, between those who have learned IT on the job and those that have grown up with it. Those young people who grew up with Instant Messaging question why that port is blocked and why they can’t Skype their friend in Europe. They just don’t understand that to ensure a consistent experience for everyone, certain limits need to be set which means locking down the desktop.

So the lessons learned from these criticisms: keep the lights on but be proactive about have to help the business improve through technology; and be a little more open to ideas from the young ‘uns. So to manage all that you will probably need a little help every now and then from vendors and consultants unless you already walk on water.

A couple of posts we came across today in the blogosphere made us think about the type of people we hire at SAGE.

Since its inception over ten years ago, SAGE has always hired engineers and staff that are not only experts in their field, but excellent communicators, take the initiative, and place a premium on customer service. We feel that this has been instrumental in SAGE’s success, and why our OnSight service is taking off. You would expect communication and customer service skills in the great folks who man our OnSight Support Center, but it is just as important for an engineer to explain the business and operational implications of complex technical issues and understand the customer’s needs, usually expressed in completely non-technical ways.

This is the culture SAGE has fostered over the years. It doesn’t matter whether one works in IT, law, final services, or the restaurant business. Check out restaurateur Danny Meyer’s hospitality quotient for new hires (via Signal vs. Noise). Meyer sees the hospitality quotient as 51 percent of the job, the other 49 percent being technical ability. For the most part, this is what SAGE looks for in its employees.

• optimism and kindness,
• curiosity about learning,
• an exceptional work ethic,
• a high degree of empathy, and
• self-awareness and integrity.

We also look to our people to take the initiative, because many times they are on-sight at the client and must react quickly but intelligently. We don’t hire sheep. Seth Godin explained the perils of hiring sheep in this screed against what he has termed: “Sheepwalking.” It is a great read for any organization.

Mark Chandler, the General Counsel of Cisco Systems, Inc. threw down the gauntlet to big law firms and rising rates in a recent speech. He asserts that law firms have not changed their practices while the technology has changed the ease of access, acquisition and use of information. As a result, law firms have become roadblocks because they restrict access through the inefficient “billable hour.”

“The legal industry has spent millions on IT to up speed access to information. But the only way I can get that information is through an individual billing me by the hour. My in-house team often has more sophistication than the associates who mine the knowledge management system to generate a memo. We’re just not allowed to access the information without paying for someone’s time.”

In his eyes, this failure to make information more accessible to clients, will be the downfall of big law firms unless the remedy the situation. Chandler warns that standardized legal information systems like Google Patent Search will spring up to challenge the current model of “one-to-one consultative advice.”

The driver is cost. Chandler says that when law firm’s raise rates, they are oblivious to the cost pressures corporate America face every day, and misperceive the value of their services.

“From the law firm think perspective, “sales” too often means a one to one relationship with a lawyer who bills by the hour. As a client, I can tell you what I want to buy is access to information, strategy, and negotiation, and, in the case of litigation, to courtroom skill as well.”

Think he is crazy? Cisco does almost all of its legal work on a fixed fee basis, and has been paying less each year rather than more. He works with law firms in a number of ways to reduce costs, create efficiency, and improve service. Now how are you going to respond to his model before someone else does?

We have exhorted the use of simple sketches and mock-ups to help clients and users better imagine and comprehend complex systems or new ideas of which they do not have a common ground in which to relate. We uncovered an article from the June 2005 issue of Fast Company magazine that discusses how “design” in the broadest sense, helps form and communicate business strategy.

“People need to have a visceral understanding -- an image in their minds -- of why you've chosen a certain strategy and what you're attempting to create with it. Design is ideally suited to this endeavor. It can't help but create tangible, real outcomes.”

In other words, people need concrete examples to grasp the meaning and import of the strategy being pursued, whether that is the advantages of a virtual server room, or a new way to provide service internally. It clears any confusion over competing interpretations of however you explained the strategy in words. With that grasp, people not only can get behind the strategy, but also are better prepared to participate and advocate on its behalf. And it is a process—essentially a prototyping process—that unlocks ideas and suggestions in your people who otherwise would be unable to give feedback.

“Once you spot a promising idea, you build it. The prototype is typically a drawing, model, or film that describes a product, system, or service. We build these models very quickly; they're rough, ready, and not at all elegant, but they work. The goal isn't to create a close approximation of the finished product or process; the goal is to elicit feedback that helps us work through the problem we're trying to solve. In a sense, we build to think.”

The next time you find yourself proposing a new strategy to a client or internal group, a simple diagram or mock-up may be the difference between your plans being understood and supported, or withering away in obscurity.

We are thrilled to announce that for 2007 we are sponsoring ALISM, the Association of Legal Information Systems Managers. This deepens our support for the IT and legal community in the Washington, DC metropolitan region, as we already sponsor ILTA and the ALA Capital Chapter, as well as our membership in the LFVA. We are fully behind ALISM's mission to facilitate learning and communication among its members.

We'll be attending ALISM's meeting this Wednesday, January 24, 2007.  Also look for SAGE experts at ALISM meetings throughout the year.

In ALISM's own words:

ALISM facilitates the exchange of information regarding the technical and management problems peculiar to the legal automation environment, and to improve the standards and qualifications of information systems managers and their staffs. ALISM provides an environment where members share their experience with other members of the legal IS community and learn about new technology trends. ALISM members learn what other firms are doing, how other departments are run and networking with colleagues.

We are glad to be on-board and look forward to a great year with ALISM.

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.

We found some validation in ILTA’s 2006 Salary Survey today. SAGE has always focused on finding experienced people with great communication skills and an attitude to learn, investigate, and dig deep. Education and certifications have always been less important as they are no substitute for experience in the field and real world problem solving. This has run counter to many who have placed a premium on certifications and education levels.

No longer are we the lone wolves, according to ILTA’s 2006 Survey. According to law firms surveyed, this is how their ranked the criteria in hiring IT staff:

1. Personality and attitude
2. Technology experience
3. Experience in the legal world
4. Training and certification
5. College degree and formal education.

We would probably substitute “excellent communication skills” for “personality” as a criteria. For SAGE, excellent communication skills mean excellent client service, and the rest should naturally fall into place.

There it is. A blatant plug for one of our services. You knew it had to happen eventually. But we also want to boast about our great people here at SAGE.

Tech salaries came up the other day when talking with a client. Just so happens, E-Week ran a story yesterday on the shortage of specialized IT skills is pushing up salaries. That reminded us that an advantage of SAGE OnSight is that we provide the expert IT staff or augment your current staff. Our clients don’t have to fight for scarce tech talent and their consummate high salaries, because we already do that.

Our OnSight clients rave about the service because of the staff. Our Application Specialists manning the OnSight Support Center have the unique combination of extensive knowledge, great communication skills, and happen to be some of the most considerate people you will ever meet. Then our crack engineers are some of the most intelligent thorough and creative around. Frankly, there isn’t much they haven’t seen in network design and support. Not only are they terrific at troubleshooting issues, but they can explain it in laymen’s terms. We have already done the hard work to identify great IT talent, so you don’t have to.

First off, Happy New Year. SAGE wishes you the very best in 2007.

The New Year always brings out the fanatics, a strange sect that passionately awaits its annual gathering to speculate, spread rumors, and prognosticate over what the coming year will bring.  I’m referring to "MacHeads" and their annual confab of MacWorld. So why talk about Macs when almost every law firm runs on PCs?  While everyone uses a PC, few love them the way Mac users love their Macs, and in that is a lesson for providing customer service.

What if your users were as fanatical about the service they receive from the IT department? Your annual review with the managing partner or firm management would certainly better, and your reputation among the legal and professional services IT community would certainly rise. Increased trust between IT and the firm is welcome; not to mention the better communication and feedback you would receive that would start a virtuous cycle of new ideas and even better service.

The trick is becoming one of them, breaking down the barriers between IT and the employees. An attention to detail and viewing the world from the users perspective are ways Apple and others have created passionate customers.  Don’t expect to win over everyone, because if everyone loves you then a few hard decisions aren’t being made. (Look at Apple’s small, but growing market share). Winning over just a few brings the benefits of user advocates. Honesty and a true ear for their concerns can easily create a fan base.

If you would like to make “creating fanatical users” as your resolution, be our guest.

SAGE's President George Nicholson has a great saying: "if the client doesn't understand, then we haven't explained it correctly."

It reminds us that the users is the ultimate arbiter of what works and what doesn't. We can't scapegoat our poor design or overly complex solution on user's who just "don't get it." Whether it is helping them understand technologies that can have bottom-line impact, designing solutions that match the user's technical abilities, or providing support such as training or help desk, we in IT have to go the extra mile for the end user, not the other way around.

This post over at Legal Blog Watch talks about some reasons why lawyers and law firms don’t collaborate to the extent that Corporate America does. Citing culture, training, and nature of the work, the authors suggest the command-and-control structure of firms discourages intra-firm collaboration. We would add the conservativeness of the legal community toward new technology.

We don’t see law firms as the dinosaurs the post suggests. Law firms are slowly adopting extranets like MindPort for collaborating with clients, co-counsel, and experts. But if the deck is stacked against lawyers themselves, collaboration should be widely encouraged for other firm employees like paralegals, practice support staff, and other professionals and support personnel. As we have mentioned on the blog before, sharing knowledge and information is vital to productivity and work quality. Demolishing silos where information and expertise is locked up in practice areas or functional groups should be a top priority for any law firm administrator and management.

While many firms have been down the Intranet route (often poorly), extranets that are so successful externally can be applied to many projects and situations internally. New ideas in collaboration such as Wikis, social bookmarking, RSS, and more are coming to the forefront that are often inexpensive and easier to implement.

Here are a couple of ideas to get you motivated for another work week. This article on O’Reilly Radar discusses the importance of an ideal or mission in motivating your team. If your team believes in something more than just working for a paycheck, higher quality, better ideas, and more productivity will follow. Whether the ideal is “outstanding customer service”—our mantra here at SAGE—our “we do it better than everyone else,” there are a host of ideals for your team to aspire to. By giving your people something to believe in, your organization will get higher customer service, quality, and greater involvement. The trick is making them believe, but that stems from the management’s sincerity and adherence to the ideal itself.

So now that you have a motivated team, when was the last time you had a blank check on a project? Yeah, we have never had one of those either. While we like to bemoan the shackles time, money, and management place on us, Chris Anderson of “The Long Tail” fame talks about something we have known for years but too often forget: those constraints can be the source of inspiration. Ingenuity is about overcoming challenges, and IT and ingenuity should go hand-in-hand. So before you complain about a small budget or a small team, think about how your constraints can be a source of inspiration. Just one example: SpaceShipOne—human spaceflight on a shoestring team and budget.

Today brings a number of thoughtful blog posts from around the Matrix. Each probably deserves some commentary—but since we can’t decide which—today we will just point you to them. Hint: Look for these topics in upcoming posts.

People Search for Yahoo using Google. Many users don’t know the difference between the browser address bar and the Google search box, so they get to Yahoo by typing it in Google’s search box and clicking on a result. This is emblematic of IT’s inattention to users work habits and failure to guide and instruct them properly.

Following up on that thought, little things make a big difference in people’s perceptions. Malcolm Gladwell first popularized the “Broken Windows” theory of crime enforcement, where importance was placed on cleaning up small details (like broken windows) before they contribute to larger ills and everything spirals out of control. This post equates that approach to web site and software development, and stresses the importance of momentum. We would suggest that in applying “broken windows” to IT, such as fixing quirks like slow login scripts that annoy users, is about improving user and management perception of performance. Not to cover up bad performance or quality, but combat negative perceptions when performance and quality are really quite good.

A grassroots movement of using personal e-mail and IM accounts like GMail and AIM rather than corporate accounts appears to be gaining momentum. The boon for the user, not having to learn new software or deal with bugs each time a new client or back-end server is changed, plus more storage.

Finally comes this report that small and medium enterprises down under are balking at the high price of Windows Vista and Office 2007. Evidently the Australians believe “they got all they really needed from earlier versions…” What say us Yanks?

All these links are saved on the del.icio.us/sagesol network open to all our readers.

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.

Here’s an idea we have been kicking around since the elections last week… No matter what your political stripes, one clear lesson from the razor-thin margins in the last few U.S. elections is that each vote counts. Voting is just another form of feedback, whether the medium is an election, or user input about IT support. In the United States, there are significant elections every two years, because the world is a dynamic place and people and policies need to adapt. Generally, IT matters are decided by a single vote, (or executive fiat!) that are set in stone and never revisited until the next upgrade cycle.

Information Technology is just as dynamic as American politics (if not more so), not to mention changes in the business environment. Encourage your users and staff to constantly “vote” on the state of your IT resources, whether it is network performance, custom applications, or how you are providing support. Furthermore, let them know that their “vote” matters in the choice of technology or chosen course. Dynamic systems require constant feedback to perform optimally, so make sure to continually encourage voting on your IT resources and practices.

Here is an application that we are keeping an eye on: VMware Converter. Currently in beta, VMware Converter turns physical machines into virtual machines for consolidation, disaster recovery, or any other reason you would want a physical Windows OS machine to go virtual. Best yet, it will convert a number of physical machines on the fly, or even from other vendor’s VM products like Microsoft’s Virtual Server. Here is another scenario: thinking of upgrading to Vista? Convert your current Windows XP image into a virtual machine for safekeeping in case you need access to apps that are incompatible with Vista.

VMware Converter is certainly an app to watch, and we’ll be putting it into our lab to give it a thorough ringing out to see if it lives up to its promise.

Today, Doug Daniel and George Nicholson are giving a seminar on the maturation of virtual computing technologies for the ALA Capital Chapter's Information Services and Technology section. Server rooms of the future will be incorporating virtual machines in addition to physical servers. From the presentation, here are some of the uses for virtual computing:

• Test and development
• Server consolidation
• Production servers
• Remote office
• Disaster recovery
• No more “desktop” servers
• IT agility and responsiveness

Doug and George make the point that forget the hype of huge savings that many virtual computing vendors tout, the real payoff is in the agility and responsiveness that virtual computing affords the IT department.

We will be posting with more from the seminar, so keep checking this blog.

A while ago, we posted about the importance of mock-ups to overcome the lack of imagination most users have when it comes to new ideas and projects. This post at Creating Passionate Users about how reducing fear is the killer app, made us rethink the value of mock-ups.

Mock-ups fill that great unknown in the user’s imagination—and fear of the unknown is one of the greatest sources of anxiety. As professionals comfortable with technology, we sometimes forget the fears our users and customers jave when it comes even to the simplest technologies. Will I be able to understand the product? During training, if I don’t understand it, will I look like a fool in front of my peers. Will the technology project work, and if not, how much will that cost? People fear of being left behind, whether professionally, by the market, or their peers. And they fear of being caught unawares, or being “out of the loop”.

So if reducing fear is the killer app, your users deserve to be mocked much more! Use sketches, diagrams, and wireframes to vanquish that great unknown which is causing your users so much anxiety. If your manager is afraid a technology project won’t work, provide her with a proof-of-concept. Provide hands-on demonstrations to acquaint users to new software. Simply keeping people informed of developments—like the timelines for technology migrations or providing project status—will greatly reduce their anxiety. In fact, they will thank you because they have one less unknown variable to contend with in their busy schedule.

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.

Sharing bookmarked web sites within an organization can be tremendously valuable because it unleashes the collective wisdom of its people. Each person probably has a few gem web sites or pages that others would find very useful. Unfortunately, those gems are locked up in each person’s web browser.

Using the web service Del.icio.us, however, those bookmarks are freed from the browser and can be shared quickly and easily across the firm. Those shared bookmarks are then turned into RSS feeds that can be easily distributed.

Here’s an example. An employee finds a news article on a web page that discusses developments in your market. Using the Del.ico.us extension for either the Internet Explorer or Firefox browser, she bookmarks the page by clicking on a button. Up pops a dialogue box where the employee adds tags and summary information about the bookmark, and also adds it to the company’s master Del.icio.us account. Over the course of the day, 12 new bookmarks are added by various employees to the master account.

Employees (or even clients) can stay abreast of these new bookmarks through the RSS feed coming Del.icio.us, either in their newsreader, the firm’s intranet, portal or website, or to an extranet like MindPort. Even better, each tag within an account has its own RSS feed, so employees can focus on specific issues, news or client information. For instance, they can subscribe to the feed on a particular competitor to monitor its moves in the market.

This is win-win for everyone. The employee benefits because bookmarks are available wherever there is Internet access—from the office, home, or on the road. Sites and pages that they may have overlooked were spotted by someone else’s eagle eyes. Because sharing bookmarks are so simple, the organization benefits because all its employees scour the web on a wide variety of topics. Tags are a flexible organizational tool compared to folders, and can provide very targeted information.

In upcoming posts, we will explore other novel uses of RSS, such as re-mixing RSS feeds and using them to share with your communities of employees, clients, and potential clients.

This article over at CNET is a good reminder that technology is a tool for people, and people are crucial to any good process. Google, LexisNexis, Ask.com, Yahoo and other search engines will spew forth an ton of links in response to a keyword search, but your librarian will give you authoritative answers, knowing how to check credibility of sources and cross-reference with multiple sources. Even the web search companies know that there is no replacing people when it comes to searches requiring expertise, synthesizing information, or complex search strategies. They use people to augment their electronic searches with services such as Google Co-Op, Mechanical Turk, and About.com.

Also, your law librarians are changing with the times, providing great ideas for using new technologies and web services like RSS in the law office. So hug your law librarian today, and ask them for help with a search or how you can better use information in your organization.

A number of articles recently have discussed the shift in innovation in corporate IT departments from being led by IT professionals to users who bring their home tech into the office. With the freewheeling experimentation and innovation happening on the Internet these days (mostly under the far-too-generic rubric of “Web 2.0”) and the widespread consumer adoption of WiFi at home before the office, are your users bringing new ideas and technologies to you, or are you still leading them?

Law and professional service firms tend to be even more conservative than corporations in adopting technology, so such an infusion of new ideas is more limited. Younger associates and new hires, however, have pushed web collaboration and handheld adoption into firms. There is nothing wrong with getting ideas from your users as they experiment with tech at home. This idea exchange often leads to thought-provoking discussions, like what can a web-based application like Netvibes give me for a portal solution that more traditional and entrenched players like BEA/Plumtree and SharePoint can’t? IT departments shouldn’t feel threatened that they are not bringing all the technology ideas to the table, but should embrace them. IT is better able to discern which ideas will work and provide value in the organization.

Here’s another great insight from Kathy Sierra at Creating Passionate Users: what would we actually do if we really followed through on statements like “helping users is our top priority.” Seems obvious, right? But what actions are we currently taking to back up that statement?

IT departments for any legal or professional services firms are in the business of providing service. Certainly, user satisfaction is an important standard of performance. But are users truly satisfied? Have you asked them recently? When they answer, do you really listen, or do you already know what they need? Too often we follow a rulebook, the “accepted practice” that worked for someone else or was touted in some article (or blog!). Two things can be similar, but are never the same, however. Make sure the rulebook applies to your circumstances and users. You will find out if it does if your users are asked.

We often pride ourselves as experts in IT, but that can be a trap. Studies show that experts make mistakes and overestimate their capabilities just as often as non-experts. Too often we think we know what our users need, but more often we don’t, and react with surprise when they bring that fact to our attention. In fact, experts tend to propose solutions stemming from their specialty, whereas another solution outside their field may be more appropriate. The more we work to get real feedback from our users, and are conscious of the shortcomings our expertise brings, the more truly satisfied our users will be.

So what are you doing right now to make sure your user’s are satisfied?