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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...Would you really need that laptop?  As more applications go to the web browser, this question isn’t so crazy anymore, especially since we await the Apple iPhone and now Microsoft’s—well, not answer but suggestion—called Deepfish. (Before you moan, it’s much better than “everything.NET” and “WPF/E”). Both Apple and Microsoft’s approach aim to put a web browser that displays complete web pages on a mobile device instead of the crippled, downsized offerings presently available. Both rely on zooming on parts of the web page, while Apple’s forthcoming iPhone allows widescreen viewing and a high resolution screen.

E-mail is the original killer app for mobile devices. With advances in screen and sensing technologies, can the web browser be that far behind? It greatly expands the information available while mobile in a much smaller package. Research information, directions, e-commerce (making travel reservations, anyone) and more becomes easier from a handheld device. The downside is that a full-featured browser, if it lives up to the potential, only adds to the mobile addiction some of us are trying to break.

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.”

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

More information can be found on the SAGE web site.

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

If you are interested,  sign-up online here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just a quick plug for our SAGE Wisdom Webinars that we conduct every Wednesday afternoon at 2:00 pm Eastern time.  This week we are discussing managed IT solutions using our SAGE OnSight service.  In particular, we will be emphasizing how you don't have to give up control of your IT infrastructure and assets will getting the benefit of managed services, like remote monitoring, support center, and site visits.

If you are interested,  sign-up online here.

Upcoming SAGE Wisdom Webinars will cover Sentinel, our tool to perform daily server checks and some monitoring; 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.

The Wisdom Webinar schedule can always be found at this link and is updated monthly.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Remember in The Graduate where Dustin Hoffman’s character was told to get into plastics?  Today, we’re telling you “Newsfeeds” are where you want to be.

Need intelligence for clients? The scoop on competitors, or information by industry? Soon, newsfeeds will be the focus of any organization’s business intelligence and operations, providing unprecedented access and control over information. Once there was the photocopied news clippings distributed throughout the company, supplanted by e-mail subscriptions to a number of web sites and Google News Search. Now newsfeeds--XML files broadcasting the latest news, developments, or information straight to Google Reader or a similar newsreader--will be the channel through which business intelligence comes into your firm.

Soon every website, blog, and search engine will have a newsfeed. Most already have at least one (we have two and growing). Want to know what the client is up to? Subscribe to their newsfeed of press releases and news stories. What about the competition? Create a custom search on Google News or Technorati and get a newsfeed on any stories about your competitors. What are co-workers bookmarking on the Web? The newsfeed from the firm’s Del.ic.ious account will let you know. Want to be informed of updates to the client matter folder or extranet? A newsfeed could keep you informed.

Newsfeeds promise your organization access to vast amounts of information that can be funneled to departments, practice groups, and even individuals. What newsfeeds deliver is also the promise of targeted personalized information that have been the Holy Grail of Intranets and portals since their inception, but be far easier to manage. Stay tuned for more about this exciting technology.

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.

We get our fair share of Acrobat PDF questions in our OnSight Support Center. Some of the most asked questions we receive also seem to be on Adobe’s priority list for Acrobat 8. From Adobe’s Blog Acrobat for Legal Professionals are a couple of valuable how-tos:

Creating a Transparent Signature Stamp: since many documents never touch paper these days, knowing how to place your “John Hancock” on an electronic document is valuable. This post walks through the steps for creating a stamp in PDF that is transparent so it will fit in boxes and on lines in forms.

How to insert an image into a PDF document. Why this wasn’t easier to do before floors us, but the process has been streamlined in version 8.

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

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

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

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

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