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.

Here is this week's gems from around the Web:

"Core" Multiplier: Intel says look for thousands of computing cores on future chips. Intel has staked its future on multiple computer cores on a single chip. While a new 8-core chip will soon, debut, an Intel official tells software developers to "start thinking about tens, hundreds, and thousands of cores now." Now everyone needs to figure out how to program for them.

MS Tests Office Subscription with "Equipt". Microsoft is testing the waters with an MS Office subscription service at the consumer level. For $70/year, consumers can get the Home and Office version of the suite with MS OneCare security software. Could a business version be far off?

Hyper-V makes an early debut, set to turn up the heat on VMWare. In a move surely to presage the coming apocalypse, Microsoft released a product early. MS' new Hyper-V server virtualization looks to take on market leader VMWare. C|Net blogger discusses some ways MS can penetrate the virtualization market. In true Microsoft fashion, one strategy is to throw money at it. Surprise!

Have a happy Independence Day and enjoy the long weekend!

SAGE will have not one, but two speakers at the Annual Conference of the Association of Legal Administrators next week in Seattle, Washington.  Speaking on topics ranging from getting more out of Microsoft Office to future trends in technology, be sure to attend the sessions Monday and Tuesday hosted by SAGE President George Nicholson and Tony Buffkin.

SAGE President speaks on Monday, May 5, 2008 from 2:15-3:30 on "Future Tech That Breaks With Tradition." He will discuss how the pace of technological change is accelerating and what that means for mobile computing, tapping into the power of the Internet computing, and managing the torrent of information that will be available to us all. George opens up his crystal ball for a fun and enlightening look at technologies being tested today that will change how we work in just a few short years.

On Tuesday, May 6, 2008 from 2:15-3:30 PM, Application Specialist Tony Buffkin will discuss how to get more out of Microsoft Office for your law firm needs. From accounting to marketing, lawyers to administrators, Tony shows ways to use MS Office to make your office more productive and capable.  He will describe new uses for old standby's like Word, Excel, Access and Outlook, and illustrate what can be done with newcomers InfoPath, OneNote, and Groove.

If you are attending the ALA national conference, be sure to sit in on George's and Tony's sessions.

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.

A friend of ours working in the e-discovery processing business recently received an 18 gigabyte PST that had to be processed. In the e-discovery arena, a first step with electronic data we receive is to search for any PSTs and determine their size. The larger the file, the longer it will take to process for attorney review. In this instance, the immediate problem was that the file could not be copied to the network server. Every attempt failed as the copy process kept timing out.

Our friend went to “The Oracle”, as he likes to call Google, and searched for a software solution. He found a program called GatherBird Copy Large Files. After installing the shareware version, he copied the file without issue. Whew! Today’s technical glitch solved.

We all need to be prepared before we find ourselves in a similar situation. If you know of other products available to the litigation support and e-discovery community capable of copying very large files, please post a comment and share your experiences.

The sales numbers have come in from Windows Vista, and they are not good. Despite Microsoft's spin on Vista sales, it is not the blockbuster product it was touted to be, whether in sales or capabilities. That has left many tech and business pundits to ponder why: Was the previous version XP that good that there is no reason to switch? Is Vista that bad? Or is the technology and industry shifting to reduce its relevance?

Here is a question to ponder in the New Year: Is the operating system as important as it once was?  And will it continue to be so in the future?  In fact, it could be argued that operating systems have diminished in the public's psyche while the web browser has ascended. Most people use online e-mail applications like GMail and Yahoo! Mail, while headline grabbing social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace exist only online. Applications once only found on PCs have been migrating to handhelds -- like e-mail. While Apple's iPhone stole the spotlight from Vista in 2007, business people have been e-mailing like crazy on Blackberries while Gen Y is all thumbs sending billions of SMS messages. Then there is the success of Salesforce.com and the many applications hosted over the Internet, whose only interface is the web browser.

There are more reasons why the days of powerful, high profile operating systems may be on the wane. Basic staples of computing like word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations going online with Google Docs. If you are part of the 94% of Americans who have no idea what Google Docs is, you may still use Word or Excel remotely via Citrix over the Internet. New virtualization technologies allow that same hardware to run multiple operating systems, and different operating systems simultaneously. (This article was written in Google Docs on a Mac that has a virtual copy of Windows XP running on it.)

So will 2008 mark the decline of the operating system?  We will see.  Share your thoughts in the comments!

In late 2006, Google purchased online wiki provider JotSpot, leading to speculation to when the search engine behemoth would launch “Google Wiki.” Fortunately, many eager for the supposed service didn’t hold their breath, because nothing has happened since. Until last week, that is, when JotSpot reemerged in a somewhat different form, to be called “Google Sites.” In short, it’s Google’s competitor to Microsoft’s SharePoint.

Before people start creating PowerPoint charts and Excel spreadsheets proving that SharePoint has many more features, understand this is Google’s vision of a SharePoint competitor much like its Google Apps are a different vision of the standard office suite. It is stripped down and networked, but goes after the same functionality: the ability to create intranets, extranets, and project management tracking sites. Just like SharePoint.

The question we have: will this be a “platform” or a “product.” SharePoint is a “platform”—here are the blocks, now build what you want—like a box of Legos. Before Google swallowed JotSpot, it was mostly wiki and collaboration products—built web applications for specific purposes—a Lego car or spacecraft kit. SharePoint suffers from the perception that it is an intranet application out-of-the-box, which isn’t the case. If Google Sites provides some instant gratification and makes it easy and secure to set up Intranets, wikis, and extranets, then SharePoint has a serious competitor on its hand.

Another day, another prediction from uber-research firm Gartner that software licensing costs will fall significantly over the next decade. The study cites seven reasons; one is software and applications delivered via a web browser through the Internet. Such services are usually priced on a subscription basis-either monthly or annually. This is definitely a trend to watch as it will save you money and overcome disadvantages of traditional

Software by subscription has been called by various names, such as ASP (Application Service Provider) and SaaS (Software as a Service), but are defined by provisioning through a network (such as the Internet) and usually on a subscription basis (monthly or annual). The advantages are:

• the software is dynamic – constantly improving and changing without having to wait for a shrink-wrapped release and launch party. No need to wait 18-36 months for a box with new features and updates, they become available when the developer has them tested and ready.
• No deployment to desktops and laptops.
• It is available anywhere there is a web browser rather than trapped on the office desktop or the laptop you left in the hotel room.
• Sometimes subscription fees can be tax deductible if deemed an operating cost (insert standard disclaimer about talking to your accountant or tax lawyer).

What are the downsides? The Internet connection become even more important, although the new Firefox 3 browser and Google Gears are developing ways to work offline. Web interfaces have made tremendous strides in the past year, but still have a ways to go before the match their desktop brethren. Finally, let the bean counters look at the long term costs and whether it makes sense compared to traditional upfront licensing fees (don’t forget the service agreement at 20% annually)!

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.”

We have been off the blogging for a week, so if you were out over the long holiday weekend like we were, here is what you may have missed.

Windows Server 2008 Delayed too… 2008. Surprise! Microsoft has delayed the launch of a major operating system.However, this slip pushes back other Microsoft products, like its Viridian Hypervisor for server virtualization that is supposed to get them into the virtualization market in a big way. And as we all know, it means that much longer until the first service pack is released, which is when most people make the jump to a new operating system.

Speaking of Service Packs: Vista SP1 Coming Winter 2008. Rumors of its arrival have swirled for a few months, but Microsoft makes it official, hoping that it will drive sales of the troubled OS. Shortly after its release, Microsoft is expected to release Service Pack 3 for Windows XP.

…Speaking of the Virtualization Market.This EWeek article has a rundown of the latest developments in the industry where VMWare had a successful IPO and is flush with cash, Citrix bought XenSource, and Microsoft is still looking to make inroads.

The Next-Gen Web Application, in Five Easy Steps. AJAX, Web Services, Dynamic Data, Offline Availability and data flexibility are hallmarks of the next generation in web applications. Indeed, now is a time of great experimentation in web sites and web applications and each of these characteristics are in use today to varying degrees. Combine these with the next generation of mobile devices like Apple’s iPhone, and the Web will be where you work, no matter where you are.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is our Friday installment of what is being said on the Internet that administrators and IT pros at law and professional services firms should know.

Where did my Excel commands go? The transition to Office 2007’s new “fluid interface” is causing some consternation with many who have become accustomed to the keyboard shortcuts and menu commands in Excel 2003. Computerworld published this handy cheat sheet mapping the old locations for commands from Excel 2003 to 2007. For more on what has changed and what is new in Office 2007, check out our free online webinar “Compelling Enhancements in Office 2007” on August 15, 2007 at 2:00 p.m. EDT.

Businesses cautious on Vista upgrade. A new poll says that only 2 percent of businesses are running Vista, and only 9 percent more planning on upgrading in the next three months. Now, we know firms that just went to XP last year, so this wait-and-see attitude doesn’t surprise us. Some reasons cited include old hardware that won’t run Vista and training.

Contracts online, should lawyers be worried? Business 2.0 has an article on a Spanish company putting contracts online to cut out the lawyers. More than that, they are throwing in some value-added with their dashboard that has a timeline of negotiations, comments, and more. Inside Opinions sees the move as complementary rather than completely disruptive.

Census Bureau information to your newsreader. Following up on our post on great government web site mash-ups, Robert Ambrogi points out that the U.S. Census Bureau has RSS feeds and podcasts on a number of statistics like “Aging Population,” “Foreign-born Population,” and more.

For more stories filtered for administrators and IT pros in legal and professional services firms, get our supplemental newsfeed, available here through Google Reader.

Better Google Searching Tips: We humans are lazy. That is the genius behind Google. By just entering a keyword or two into a search box, it works really well. For those of us who don’t have the luxury of laziness, like paralegals, this article at Law.com’s Legal Technology has great advanced searching tips in Google.

• Choose or exclude search results from particular web sites;
• Choose the number of results per page;
• Learn how an asterisk can “fill in the blanks”; and
  
• find all the web sites linking to page or site.

30 Acrobat Tips: It’s only for Version 8 and it is promoting an online webinar for Adobe, but this PDF of 30 tips in Acrobat has some gems.

• Better conversion of TIFF and PowerPoint files;
• Choosing sheets from Excel files;
• Search PDFs in a directory;
• Optimizing file sizes; and
  
• Comparing documents.

Let’s face it: selling is a finely honed science, complete with product demonstrations and presentations aimed to disarm the most cold-hearted penny-pinchers out there. We have seen hard-nosed negotiators swoon during sales pitches over enterprise applications like document management, ready to fork over hundreds of thousands of dollars in the heat of the moment. Cooler heads often prevail, thankfully, but applications always look great in general, when looking at the level of “features” and “benefits” only. When it comes to really knowing how great a fit an application is, the devil is –as they say – in the details.

Here is a tip to better evaluate software.

1. Make a list of the “killer” features that you believe will be most important and/or beneficial to your firm.

2. Have the sales rep provide references of other firms using those same “killer” features.

3. Call the references and talk about their practical experience using those “killer features specifically. Focus on the benefits they have realized; hidden costs; and user complaints and compliments.

Keep discussions specific. People can be overly complimentary when talking in general about an application. When focusing on particular items, they can be brutally honest. And that is what you need to make a fair evaluation.

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.

First Service Pack for Windows Vista May Land Any Day Now. According to this article at Yahoo! Tech, Microsoft is rushing out the door Windows Vista’s first service pack to fix many nagging problems and hopefully bolster sales. Speeding up file copying and shutdown times are evidently the first order of business to put some shine on the OS that has met a tepid reception critically and commercially. Many firms and corporations having been waiting for this service pack before even contemplating upgrading to Vista, which is why Microsoft may have pushed it from their announced 2008 release date. Still, many patches can create more problems than they solve, so the advice remains the same: wait and see.

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

On Wednesday, July 18, 2007, SAGE and the IS&T section of the ALA Capital Chapter will hold our second session in a series of presentations on the ins-and-outs of Microsoft’s Office 2007 Suite. This session covers the exciting new feature enhancements to Word and Excel 2007: what is new, what has changed; and what that means for your everyday tasks.

SAGE’s Director of Consulting David Carns and Application Specialist Tony Buffkin will guide attendees through common tasks and show how the new versions of Office and Excel improve productivity and compare to the older versions. They will also discuss issues such as integration with other systems like document management, among others.

The session will be held at the offices of Hobbs, Straus, Dean & Walker, LLP, located in downtown, Washington, DC at 2120 L St. NW - Suite 700. To register, please contact Kenny Mitchell at 202-383-3402 (email: kmitchell@wbklaw.com) or Scott Forrest at 202-822-8282 (email: sforrest@hsdwdc.com).

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.

If something worked fine, used to be that you would endure its minor glitches and idiosyncrasies that came with many years of faithful service until it just rusted out, fell apart, or blew up. Unfortunately, software isn’t like that. Case in point: those trusty Windows 2000 servers chugging along, hosting our apps from accounting to terminal services. Problem is that Microsoft dropped free support for Win 2K licenses two years ago, and paid support will go black in June 2010. In other words, we are halfway to no support whatsoever.

Those workhorse servers should be upgraded to Windows Server 2003. Soon. Especially if they are hosting mission critical applications like accounting or document management. Quite simply, the cost of supporting them will outweigh the benefits, as any issue that requires Microsoft’s involvement will likely cost you. The greater danger is that the equipment that the Win 2K Server sits on is aging as well.

Drop us a line in the comments or e-mail us if you have questions about moving specific server applications from Windows 2000 Server to Windows Server 2003. BTW, free support for Windows XP will expire in January 2008!

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.

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.

This Wednesday, June 27, 2007, SAGE and the Information Systems and Technology Section of the ALA Capital Chapter kick off  a series of presentations on the ins-and-outs of Microsoft’s Office 2007. The first meeting covers the basics about Office 2007: what is new, what has changed; and what it all means.

SAGE’s Director of Consulting, David Carns, will cut through the confusion over the many versions of the office suite, the “ribbon,”, the new file formats, and other changes for which your firm should prepare. This session sets the stage for more in-depth reviews of each application: Word, Outlook, Excel, and PowerPoint. The focus will be on preparing your staff and firm for the transition to Office 2007.

The session will be from Noon to 1:30 p.m. at the offices of Hobbs, Straus, Dean & Walker, LLP, located in downtown, Washington, DC at 2120 L St. NW - Suite 700. To register, please contact Kenny Mitchell at 202-383-3402.

How many times have you heard about the next great collaboration technology? We have done it before in touting out MindPort collaboration application for documents. But wikis are getting hard to ignore since they make so much sense for business. Why? They overcome the “inbox” problem. E-mail communication is great, but having multiple copies distributed throughout a dozen people’s inboxes is inefficient to say the least when those e-mails need to be referenced at a later date. A wiki provides a single, highly accessible place to coordinate activities and share information.

For the uninitiated, the Common Craft blog has a great video (a bit “campy” though) that explains what a wiki is and how it works. Applications we are seeing clients (and ourselves) implement are knowledge bases, client information, operations manuals, and project planning. There are a number of legal specific wikis covering circuit courts, tax law, IP and more. And in case you haven’t already made the connection, the online encyclopedia Wikipedia is one big wiki.

There are some challenges, mostly changing the culture of writing on the wiki rather than an e-mail. Getting the right wiki software and ensuring that it is widely accessible but also secure requires some thought.

Adobe’s “Acrobat for Legal Professionals” blog announced that they will be conducting a webinar on May 24 on document security that may be worthwhile. They will cover discerning whether PDFs have been tampered with, revoking PDFs and other security features. Many of the basics like restricting printing and copying will be covered as well. Registration is through Adobe’s web site.

Surprise, Microsoft if pushing integration among its products!  The latest kick is “business intelligence” the idea that databases serve data and content throughout an organization through Intranets, web sites, documents, and mobile devices. Microsoft’s take: publish everything through Excel spreadsheets, because the average Joe knows that if they don’t know SQL server. Otherwise, it is the common refrain from Microsoft that the combination of SQL Server, SharePoint 2007, and Office 2007 will send your users into blissful states of productivity and profits to stratospheric levels. But this time the dream includes a new application PerformancePoint Server 2007 that will provide dashboards, scorecarding, and other analytic tools.

Next SQL Server Goes Unstructured (sorta) . MS also announced the next version of SQL Server, codenamed “Katmai” will allow data integration with Office apps, allow unstructured data, and be released next year. (Bets are now being taken in Vegas whether it will be late). Unstructured data includes documents, XML, and geographic data.