As reported on WBEN, Globalquest Solutions in Amherst NY has renewed and expanded their Microsoft Gold partnership with additional competencies.  In addition to their Advanced Infrastructure Solutions and Information Worker Solutions competencies they have added the Small Business Specialist certification for 2009.

A shift is beginning from the traditional mechanical, spinning disk magnetic media (aka Hard Drive) to solid-state flash memory for mass storage.  There are some serious advantages to using flash memory including performance, power consumption, weight and size.

These are the same memory chips that are in your cell phones, iPOD’s (non-HDD types) and cameras.  Whats changed is the manufactures have gotten better at making them and there are more plants to manufacture the chips.  The hardware manufactures have also gotten on board and are making money selling flash hard drives, so the price is going down (although it is still about 20x more expensive per GB).  These drives are not a fairly standard option for most business class systems for around $200-$500 more.

This will be a big change for the industry and its just starting now.

Karl Weir

Director of Consulting, Globalquest Solutions Inc.

By now you have probably heard about Amazon’s new Kindle 2, the electronic book reader.  It’s a fascinating little device with built in G3 wireless and an amazing display specially designed for reading books on the device.  Personally I don’t know anyone who owns one, but in my travels I’ve seen people using the devices in airports.

This may be one of those paradoxical shifts in progress that no one will really notice, until  your newspaper decides to no longer print your daily paper, but rather to deliver it to you on a device like a Kindle.  The thought here is simple.  Electrons are cheap, paper, printing presses, ink, distribution and scrap is expensive.  There are some newspapers and publishers out there now are now actively considering delivering their ‘news’ only electronically.  It could represent a huge saving to them and keep their paper in business.  After all a newspapers job really is to report on the news, not necessarily run printing presses.

If you look forward, the day may not be far off when our kids will no longer have those 2 inch thick books to lug around in their backpacks. It may be devices like the Kindle and they have all their books for school and recreational reading on the device.  We have already seen the shift in the technological world from big, thick manuals to either on-line or PDF’s delivered on a CD.  (When was the last time you saw the printed manual for Microsoft Word delivered in the package?).

The death of paper.  Saving a tree.  Hay, electrons are cheap.

Karl Weir

Director of Consulting, Globalquest Solutions Inc.

In one big, bold move Citrix and Microsoft have teamed against VMWare to capture market share.  All this is good for the consumer.  You see, the virualization of computer systems is the only way to really capitalize on the hardware investments companies have made.  Up until now that required an extra expense in software to handle the virtualization layer.

Citrix is now going to release XenServer (the virtualization core) for free and only charge for support and advanced tools, now called  Citrix Essentials and includes dynamic provisioning of large numbers of virtual machines from single master images; StorageLink technology that improves use of storage with direct access to features in storage arrays; the ability to control storage from the virtualization console; rapid delivery of virtual machines from a centralized image library; and links to any third-party backup or management tool.

So, now more than ever the next time you feel (or are told) you need another server, or to replace one, consider the move to virtualization.  In the end it can the savings will be felt in acquition costs, maintenance and power as well as you will have established a far more flexable enviroment.

Karl Weir

Director of Consulting, Globalquest Solutions Inc.

Lets talk about what documentation for your technology environment is. If you don’t have good documentation, then you are being held hostage by your technology people.  All too often we talk to business owners and managers who are afraid to make a change because the techies are the only ones who know whats going on with the systems.

From a system level its, whats the function of each server, who does it serve, what data is on it (or were is it), who maintains it, what is the maintenance cycles (software and hardware).  Its need to be ALL the information about that system, in a binder, with a lable.  Ohhh, and its a living document that should be updated EVERY TIME something is done to the system.  You are keeping server log sheet right?

Think you desktop environment escaped that, nope.  Not that you need to document each system, but you need to have a baseline of what each desktop in your environment needs to have on it.  Office with Outlooks (version), Firefox (set book marks), Adobe Acrobat (version), then in the document state which roles (not people) are ’special’.  Accounting get access to Quickbooks; Engineering gets access to AutoCAD.

Lets take this to one more level, is the Business documented at a transactional level.  I’m talking about how do you process an order to cash?  How do you go from opportunity to order?  What is the procurement, inventory and make process?  This is on a different level, but going through this Business Blueprinting process as an owner/manager can find efficiencies and standardize how you do business.  That leads to efficiencies and in both people process and automation in your systems not to mention easier training and back fill.

If you don’t have documentation for your technology systems or business, make 2009 the year to start the process and commit to maintaining it.

Karl Weir

Director of Consulting, Globalquest Solutions Inc.

Intel recently announced it was going to be producing several of its new processors using 32nm technology and not 45nm technology.  So what does this mean, well following Moore’s Law and previous posts, this means more transistors and those transistors are more tightly packed on the die.  In theory, this leads to higher processing speeds and more cores per chip and/or less power requirements.

For Intel this represents a $7B investment and they are hedging their bet that PC sales will pickup by 2010 and they will stay the market leader in terms of the technology.

For you, I don’t believe this represents much.  Most of the CPU cycles in your desktop/laptop are idle and wasted doing nothing.  It will take some leaps in software to fully utilize more cores in the CPU and even then.  Take a look at a prior post for more insight as well.

Karl Weir

Director of Consulting, Globalquest Solutions Inc.

If it seems like I am a Google fan, well I am.  It’s not because they are the best, they just innovate, combine technologies into useful things that really just work.  Not a lot of thinking, guesswork or expense.

Take the latest from Google, Google Latitude, see the CBS News play.  Not without its shortcomings, this is a location based service that provides you a map and the locations of people who will let you know where they are.  There are others like Loopt and of course the ones offered by the cell phone companies for some extra fee per month.

What is interesting is the term “My cell leash” now takes on a new meaning.  Now you know where the kids are, which mall.  You know where your employees are (assuming its a company phone and you can make them run the app).  Companies and people in general who start to leverage these technologies can do a lot.  Now, for a not a lot of money, servicing companies can make much better dispatch decisions, including estimating time of arrival.

Of course the social implications are huge too.  On the down side, Google can now start streaming proximity based ads to your phone like, “The Papa Johns on your right has a special on pizza today.”  There is no doubt this technology is in its infinity, but will only continue to expand as the younger generations really don’t mind having limited privacy.

If nothing else, its a technology for the masses that should be watched.

Karl Weir

Director of Consulting, Globalquest Solutions Inc.

Globalquest Solutions Inc expands its Smart Card offering signing an agreement with AET .    SafeSign Identity Client middleware is designed to integrate digital signature tokens into numerous certificate-enabled applications in order to provide secure two-factor authentication on all major platforms including support for Windows, MAC OS X, Sun and Linux.

This robust software solution allowed Sonwil Distribution to integrate their HID door access system and single signon solution for technology systems on to one card for employee access to computer systems and facilities.

According to the FBI’s National Crime Information Center, laptop thefts increased 48% for the last two years.  The Pomenon Institute estimates that 12,000 laptops stolen from airports every week!

So, what can you do to protect yourself?  Well there is always the obvious, keep track of your laptop at all times.  But what if it gets stolen?

1) Make sure you have a good backup of your data.  This is one of those things that needs to ‘just happen’.  Here at GQ we use the Mozy backup server and also resell the service with some value add.  The beauty of these services are they just work, and do it all in the background.  Everyday without my knowledge or intervention, my critical data gets encrypted and backed-up to a remote data center.

2) If you have valuable or sensitive data, encrypt it!  We all hear the news stories about a kid getting a used iPod form a pawn shop with some organizations HR data including social security numbers on it.  We all need to do a better job about controlling the data on our laptops and for that data we NEED on our laptop that is sensitive, it should be encrypted.   As a warning, not all encryption programs are created equal and you should talk to someone before you do this.

Two simple things that can 1) ensure your data is still available to you and not lost forever and 2) the data on your stolen laptop cannot be accessed by anyone else.

On a side note… Be careful backing up or storing sensitive data on USB Drives.  Not all USB drives are created equal and since you can not store loads of data on them you need to be careful.  Companies like Sandisk and their Cruzer Enterprise will encrypt the data automatically and password protect it, all without user intervention.

There is a theme here, make data security a part of your companies everyday life.  Make it seamless and easy.  Create the process so the users cannot get around it.  If you don’t have a security plan, create one.  It doesn’t need to be long or complex but having one can go a long way.

Hope this helps…and be safe out there!

Karl Weir

Director of Consulting, Globalquest Solutions Inc.

With the current economic times I thought I would share an article that came out in the Economist that talks about Moore’s Law.  You know, the one that basically says every 18 months the processing power will double at the same price point.  The point of the article, and this post, is that we don’t necessarily buy at the same print point because we don’t need as much processing power.  To say this another way, most of the CPU cycles in our desktop and server computers are idle, most of the time.  So if you are were typically paying $1500 for a good new laptop, your next may only be $800 to maintain the same level of performance.  The article also goes on to explain that the software manufactures are finally starting to write better code that also does more with less, so we can buy less.  In the end, you save money.

As a small to medium sized business you should be looking at these trends and consider them when making purchases.  Of course we are always there to help counsel you through them.

Karl Weir

Director of Consulting, Globalquest Solutions.