Your business works hard for you and you work hard at your business.  Since it is the season of giving, we thought it just felt right to identify some cool and practical technology gifts your can give your organization.  Remember, your take care of your company and it will take care of you and your team.

1) BOOK - “Making Technology Investments Profitable: ROI Roadmap to Better Business Cases”
Not too technical and a must-read for small and medium sized business owners trying to understand how to maximize return on technology investments.  Although it is aimed and IT Managers, CIOs and vendors like us, it presents excellent information on how NOT to make bad technology decisions, mostly by example of those who have.   There are checklists of do’s & don’ts, many of them not obvious.  The great takeaway is that knowledge is power.  Well-reasoned technology investments will give you a big advantage  in your business operations and also in knowing what questions to ask your technology vendors.
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 For most small business owners, email is their lifeblood. In fact, in a Gartner and Symantec study, it was determined that up to 75% of a company’s intellectual property resides in its email and other messaging applications.  As a mission-critical part of your business, email simply has to work, be fast and always be accessible from the road or home. Today, this means being able to access your email and calendar directly from your cell phone, BlackBerry or other mobile device, so you’re never out of touch with your business.   But as critical as email is to most companies, it is important to remember that managing your email infrastructure (i.e., mail servers) is not usually directly related to the products or services you sell. To be successful, you have to focus on growing your bottom line, not on making sure your email is working, which can be both time consuming and expensive. 

 The good news is that a variety of hosted services are available for small businesses – services that were once only reserved for the biggest corporations.  Hosted services, also known as Software as a Service or SaaS, are software applications that you access through the Internet. Hosting vendors store the information on their own servers and manage the entire system for you, helping to drastically reduce the time and energy you spend on keeping your email up and running.  Primed for enormous growth and widespread adoption, Gartner Consulting predicts that SaaS is growing from just 5 percent of software revenues in 2005 to nearly a third of all software revenues by the end of the decade. 
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If you’re new to the world of online collaboration, the basic concept is that you can upload files to vendor-owned large storage servers that exist in data centers.  Pricing is usually based on space and different vendors have different software available for features such as file sharing, version syncing, online group editing, etc.  Building on its existing service for minimizing the need for a business to run their own servers, Egnyte is launching an all-in-one solution for addressing three of the major technology challenges that small businesses face–storing data, sharing information, and backing up their files.  

With secure online file storage, Egnyte has always been an attractive alternative for sharing files amongst team members or clients, with a virtual desktop system that mimics your own PC or Mac.  However what separates Egnyte from the pack is the inclusion of both more robust file storage and online backup.  Also,  Egnyte is the only solution that provides you access to your critical data in a variety of ways; using a web browser on your computer; directly as a drive mapped to your computer desktop; and using your mobile phone (including iPhone support).

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Lemons & Lemmings: Does Your Company Have to Toe the Windows 7 Line?Wednesday, Dec. 9, 2009
11:30 AM - 12:30 PM
Location: Your computer

Most businesses have faithfully toed the Microsoft party line and upgraded their desktops and servers with each new OS release.  Vista may have been the beginning of a desktop rebellion.  So what does that mean for your small our mid-sized business?  What’s in the Windows 7 box?  How does another operating system (and probably hardware) upgrade benefit your organization? 

In our latest RevITup™ TechEd Webinar  we separate the hype from the truth and give you the tools you need to make informed decisions so you don’t drive your technology budget off the cliff.

During this webinar you will:

• Find out what’s in the Windows 7 box; the good, bad and ugly
 
• Discover what you really need to know if you plan to upgrade.
 
• Gain an understanding of what the future holds for windows desktops, small and mid-sized business networks and what questions you should be asking now.
 
• Learn the 5 key questions to ask ways to ensure you are making the right technology investments and identifying the best tools for technology management.

All registrants will receive a FREE RevITup™ Technology Savings Kit you can use in your company today.

For more information contact Megan Meisner at mmeisner@launchpadonline.com or (813) 920-0788 x210.

Energy consumption and the dollar amount that comes every month on the power bill is a concern for many small and mid-sized businesses. Generally companies will have multiple servers running to keep their programs, email and data functioning around the clock and they fall victim to server bloat. How much money are you really spending to keep your servers running? Want to find out?

The E.E.D. Watts Up Pro Monitor is a single device monitor for only $115.00. With one power input for monitoring simply connect your battery backup device into the unit and start receiving your data on power usage. Using the device is simple. Plug the monitor into an three-prong grounded electric outlet. Plug the device to be evaluated into the top of the monitor. The monitor will immediately display the wattage demanded by the electrical device. If the monitor is left plugged in for a period of time it will display the cumulative amount of electricity consumed or the cumulative cost of the electricity used (based on your local electric rate).

Up to 2,000 records (or 3,000 if only recording watts) are processed which may be downloaded to a PC computer with the supplied PC software via a USB cable. The software allows access to the data table, offers charting and payback analysis, and permits the export of data in a comma-delimited format.  Information provided includes current watts, minimum watts, maximum watts, power factor, cumulative watt hours, average monthly kilowatt hours, tier 2 kilowatt hour threshold (used to calculate secondary kWh rates), elapsed time, cumulative cost, average monthly cost, line volts, minimum volts, maximum volts, current amps, minimum amps, and maximum amps.

So, how can you use this information to minimize your power consumption?  What options are available for reducing the energy footprint of your technology systems?  To find out, sign up for our Free RevITup Easy-to-GreenIT Technology Audit.  We’ll provide you with a Green IT Scorecard, Quick Green Recommendations and a Green IT Roadmap to help you get on course for greener technology pastures.

Randy Todd
Client Solutions Manager