Earned value management (EVM) is not a new concept, having its origins in United States government agencies during the 1960s as a way to ensure accountability among contractors working on long-term, complex projects. But in this century, EVM has become standard required practice. Learn how to get certified in earned value management (EVM) and compete for government aerospace and defense contracts.
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When managing fixed assets, you must follow Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) for financial statement reporting, and you must follow the IRS tax codes and regulations for income tax reporting. Each has its own set of rules and requirements. This e-book explains the differences between GAAP principles and IRS regulations for fixed assets management, and provides a list of best practices to follow.
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In the world of accounting, the savings potential of improved fixed asset management is often overlooked. Yet assets like land, buildings, transportation, and manufacturing equipment represent among the largest investments most companies make. Sub-optimal fixed asset practices can threaten the accuracy of financial reports and negatively impact your bottom line. This white paper outlines best practices for fixed asset management and suggests tips for implementation, including establishing an accurate baseline of fixed assets, selecting the right asset management tools, staying up to date with legislative changes, and producing targeted financial reports.
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Spreadsheets have become one of the most prevalent software applications used in businesses today, for everything from simple calculations to impromptu databases for tracking a wide range of information, including employee hours, expense reports, and fixed assets. And while spreadsheets are inherently useful in business, they are constantly being used for tasks in which they are ill-suited. Many companies use spreadsheets for financial tracking and reporting, but the negative aspects of using spreadsheets for tracking and depreciating fixed assets are substantial. This white paper describes fourteen ways that spreadsheets can fall short, and gives recommendations for implementing a dedicated asset inventory and asset accounting solution.
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Companies that fail to manage fixed assets can have difficulty complying with reporting regulations and complex, changing tax laws, and thus run the risk of misstating financial information and making mistakes in tax filings. A complete fixed asset management software solution should have tracking, depreciation, and inventory features, and should also provide the ability to conduct physical inventories of assets easily and reconcile the results to the fixed asset schedule. Finally, it should include easy, functional reporting to aid compliance, auditing, and preparation of financial reports and tax filings. This white paper looks at the potential ROI of fixed asset management software.
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Implementing a fixed asset inventory solution and performing proper accounting of assets can save time and money, reduce theft, improve planning and budgeting, eliminate “ghost assets,” and help an organization recover after a natural disaster. However, the importance of tracking and managing fixed assets such as land, buildings, transportation, and manufacturing equipment is often overlooked. This white paper discusses best practices for fixed asset inventory management and suggests tips for implementing a successful inventory process, including how to create an asset inventory process, implement a label and scanning solution for tracking of assets, establish an accurate baseline of fixed assets, and design a “go-forward” strategy for maintaining an asset inventory.
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When businesses implement an ERP system, they have to decide whether to manage fixed assets using an add-on module from the ERP vendor or a dedicated fixed asset management solution. The key differentiating factors can be functionality, ease-of-use, cost, and compliance issues. If you’re currently searching for a fixed asset management solution, this guide looks at the differences between the two types of assets and explains why a best-of-breed fixed asset management solution may be a more affordable, flexible, and reliable option than an ERP add-on module.
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Asset-intensive industries have a major challenge in adapting to changing business paradigms, while keeping pace with new industry requirements and simultaneously ensuring sustainable operations. See how new technologies such as mobility can help these organizations develop a collaborative partnership with their customers to improve the efficiency of their services, benefiting the customer, the company, and the community at large.
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Most ERP products have been designed from repetitive manufacturing, and thus lack the powerful asset management and project management functionality that mining companies require. But ERP is becoming a higher priority for these organizations. This white paper offers tips on selecting ERP software for the mining industry. Learn how you can you select ERP that can handle the entire mining project and asset lifecycle.
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Many organizations are turning to managed print services (MPS) and benefitting from greater expertise, lower costs, and reduced IT burden. However, some MPS engagements are falling short in delivering the expected service quality. This white paper shows how by ensuring governance is an essential part of any MPS contract, both parties can better set appropriate expectations and increase their chances of creating an effective and successful MPS relationship.
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Design-operate-maintain is an approach to asset management designed to maximize value over the entire asset lifecycle—from asset planning and design through years of maintenance and operation through to decommissioning and replacement. How can you select EAM software capable of supporting this enlightened approach? Download this white paper to find out.
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Most organisations are sitting on IT equipment that is not supporting the business optimally, yet the received wisdom is to sweat the assets to gain as much perceived lifetime value from them as possible. However, IT assets have inherent value which can change significantly through each asset’s lifecycle—whether this is through its hard resale value or just through its scrap value. By applying a full IT lifecycle management (ITLM) approach to the complete IT platform, a business-optimised platform can be created—one where business value overrides the embedded concept of sweating assets.
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This paper highlights the environmental impact of printing and discusses how a managed print service can support an organization's sustainability goals, while also lowering costs and driving business efficiency.
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While no technology can prevent normal equipment wear or the need for maintenance, predictive analytics and the latest advances in predictive diagnostics are now helping plants to overcome their challenges by detecting impending problems early and allowing plants to take control of their operations. Download this white paper to learn how you can put these advantages to work for your organization.
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Expense management in the legal sector can be complex and burdened with problems. Expense errors in claims sent to clients can not only result in time being spent in sorting out resulting issues, but can also impact the trust between the client and firm. Legal firms must ensure expenses are dealt with accurately, effectively, and in a timely manner. Download this paper for Quocirca’s recommendations for a chosen system.
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An ERP system is a major investment for any business, particularly a smaller one. A well-planned and implemented ERP system can change the way you do business and significantly improve profitability. But there are pitfalls if you have not prepared properly. In this white paper, Pronto Software outlines critical questions you need to consider in the search, evaluation, and implementation of an ERP solution for your business.
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Visual Asset Manager 6.3 is TEC Certified for online evaluation of computerized maintenance management systems/enterprise asset management (CMMS/EAM) solutions in TEC's CMMS/EAM Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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The Proximity Hotel in Greensboro, North Carolina, is the first hotel in the US to receive Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification at the platinum level from the U.S. Green Building Council. Combining luxury with energy efficiency and environmental sustainability, the hotel places the highest priority on guest comfort. The owner's goal is a sustainable, energy-efficient hotel that never compromises guest comfort. Learn more now.
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This white paper reveals the results of a survey that examined how companies can intelligently manage devices to create value, and to look at implications for improving energy efficiency. While recognizing there are challenges facing smart management of devices, one third of those who responded to a related survey also acknowledged that such efforts could help cut costs or increase profits significantly across many areas of the business. Learn more. Download this white paper now.
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Of the 30 billion invoices sent and received in Europe every year, more than 90% are in paper format. This is not only labour intensive and error prone, but comes at both a financial and environmental cost. Such manual operations slow invoice reconciliation, leading to poor relationships with suppliers and buyers and, potentially, poor cash flow management. This paper discusses the challenges posed by inefficient manual invoice processes, the need for e-invoicing, and how an organization can focus on its core business by handing over invoice processing to a managed service provider.
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To sustain the environment, manufacturing companies initially focused on the greening of the facilities and the materials used, but now are reviewing core processes. Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions help manufacturers get greener by reducing energy consumption, paper and supply usage, and carbon emissions. See how an industry-leading SaaS-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution can help you get greener.
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This white paper presents an overview of IFS Applications for asset management of nuclear power plants, including corrective, preventive, and condition-based maintenance functionality for safe work management in a hazardous environment. Also included are asset lifecycle management tools to track changes to the assets that affect operational limits and conditions (OLCs).
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The administration and management of printing can be time-consuming, often relying on manual processes. Many businesses are rethinking their approach to managing the print environment, by either adopting a managed service or implementing centralized print management tools. This can ensure the high availability, reliability and manageability of printing resources, while leaving IT staff free to focus on core activities.
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To effectively transform succession planning from a manual, paper-based process to one that is systematic and technology-enabled, CEOs must focus on laying a solid foundation supported by strong executive leadership. Read this CEO guide to get five key tips to jump-start your succession planning efforts to better manage risk and ensure business continuity and to know how a strong succession strategy can impact your company.
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Universities and other higher education establishments have to address the need for savings across the board. One area is expenses from faculty members and other associated with faculty. The complex mix of expense types needs a flexible yet solid means of managing spend as close as possible to the point of expense that encourages the individual to participate in the process without it being seen as an imposition. Know how.
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Electronically stored information is a key asset to any organization, but it is often insufficiently cared for. Failure to protect data can result not only in steep fines, but also in loss of competitive advantage of the company. To ensure the safety and integrity of information, read this report on data governance examining how well European businesses understand the risks and what steps they have taken to address them.
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PAS 55 compliance is a priority for asset-intensive companies that must maximize asset value. Learn how enterprise asset management (EAM) software can facilitate the practices in this specification, including the most demanding requirement—asset lifecycle management encompassing all asset stakeholders including contractors, suppliers, engineers as well as internal users.
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Companies must meet GRC criteria defined by internal and external policies, as failing to do so can have business and legal consequences. Although management of travel and entertainment (T&E) expenses is often seen as being of low importance for overall GRC, poorly managed T&E can lead to unforeseen issues with long-term business impact. See why using an external T&E management provider is the best way to adhere to GRC.
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The managed print services (MPS) market continues to evolve as vendors expand their service offerings beyond the office print environment. Today the business agenda is broader, and MPS must provide a route to business transformation as well as cost efficiency. Businesses thus must place their transformational goals on the agenda at the start of an MPS engagement. See what major MPS providers have to offer to your business.
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Comprehensive management and protection of information can be achieved only when both data centers and end points are controlled by managed service providers (MSPs). MSPs must change their thinking and embrace end point management, ensuring IT availability, data security, and business continuity. See how MSPs with the right tools and services are well positioned to strengthen customer relationships and grow market share.
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Competitive pricing, and its impact on revenue, is a mainstay of marketing in the highly-competitive hotel industry. The real-time nature of the Internet means that sales, pricing, and revenue managers must abandon inward-looking cost-plus pricing models in favor of more rigorous outward-focused knowledge-based strategies. A system that provides market intelligence data creates important advantages for pricing managers.
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Technology is at a point where organizations must make decisions about where the IT platform future lies. Will existing architectures be sufficient to see a business through the next few years, or will cloud computing—built on the proven approaches of Web services and service-oriented architecture—be a better way forward? By modeling and predicting future states, organizations can make the right decisions. Find out how.
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Reduced margins and heavy competition in delivery, distribution, and transportation service industries are creating a high level of urgency for every business to implement an effective fleet management system that can manage costs and provide a measurable return on investment (ROI). GPS fleet tracking technology can be one of the most cost effective means to manage fuel consumption. Find out more.
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The printing environment is now an integral part of the IT infrastructure. Organizations that use managed print services (MPSs) are seeing reduced cost and increased efficiencies. Using MPSs optimizes the way in which networked printers, copiers, and multifunction peripherals (MFPs) are managed to minimize the wastage of paper and toner. Find out how effective MPSs offer cost transparency and reliable service levels.
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Managed print services (MPSs) offer organizations the opportunity to control costs, reduce the complexity of managing a heterogeneous infrastructure, and improve business processes. With many organizations striving to do more with less, MPS can cut expenses by passing control of complex printing infrastructure to the experts, and leaving the organization to focus on its core business competencies. Find out more.
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This paper focuses on identifying the similarities and differences between Oracle Financial Analyzer (OFA) and Hyperion Planning (HP). For users who are migrating, or thinking of migrating, to Hyperion Planning, strategies will be discussed to ensure their existing functionality can be replicated in HP. The paper is aimed at users who are familiar with OFA or similar multidimensional database applications.
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For managed services providers (MSPs) aiming to serve small and medium-sized businesses, the ability to capture and retain lasting customer relationships is a determining factor for long-term profitability. Only by clearly and consistently communicating your value to your customer can you hope to attain the role of trusted advisor—a position that will help protect you from losing business to lower-priced competitors. Learn how an integrated, offline reporting solution can help ensure that your customers perceive your value in the ways that matter most to all managers within the customer organization.
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Service companies that want to thrive need to find a better way to deliver services and run their business. Automating IT services is the answer, and it should be the immediate goal of any company that aims to stay in business as market pressures increase. Looking beyond basic automation, becoming a managed services provider (MSP) should be the long-term goal. Discover ways to ensure your service company's survival in today’s competitive IT services market.
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Margins on profitable products and services erode as they become commoditized. And now, the same process is starting to happen to the IT services market. To avoid the commoditization trap and distinguish their services from their competitors, managed services providers (MSPs) need to develop a two-pronged strategy that involves delivering higher-value services that yield greater profit margins, and driving down service delivery costs so they can effectively deliver responsive, tools-based services to compete efficiently in a commoditized market. Find out how.
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Most IT service providers have always and continue to operate in a break/fix service environment. When a customer calls with an issue, the service provider drops everything to fix it. Under these circumstances, service providers have a difficult time forecasting monthly revenues and staffing needs, which has a huge impact on profitability. Add to this the intense competition, excessive customer turnover, low technician utilization rates, and shrinking margins that characterize today‟s market, and the result is IT service providers anxious to find a new way of delivering their services. Learn about innovative IT-as-a-Service initiatives that are defining the new IT value chain of the future.
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When companies have technology rollouts to deploy on a nationwide or global scale, service efficiency is critical. By understanding the details of the Rollout Services Model, they can avoid the potential nightmares of project implementation and increase the chances that projects are completed on time and within budget. Learn how to evaluate a technology rollout company effectively and ensure that you are getting the most efficient and cost-effective implementation system for your technology deployment projects.
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The rapid deployment of nationwide technology rollouts requires well-defined processes, robust management skills, and a unique understanding of how to get the job done. Without a proven technology rollout system, businesses run a high risk of project complications that can result in increased costs, missed deadlines, and an overwhelming burden on internal resources. Learn what a technology rollout system is, how it can lower costs and save time without compromising quality, and what questions to ask a technology rollout company.
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Now that the economic recovery is under way, many food processors are investing in enterprise solutions. This special report explores how food and beverage processors are moving to a predictive maintenance model; the critical role of computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS) in safety and compliance; how to “go green” without breaking the bank; and how to renovate processing plants for energy efficiency.
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Utility and energy sector executives face a litany of critical industry demands. Mandatory reliability standards and environmental compliance, along with expanding capacity requirements, must be factored into increasingly complex operating plans. Struggling to maximize your aging infrastructure and ensure every investment yields maximum return? Learn how you can get more done with asset investment planning.
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Today’s fast-paced lifestyle means many people spend a considerable amount of time in a mobile state, going between home, office, and meetings. With increasing pressure on time and mobility, the ability to secure important assets, both digitally and physically, has become critical. But there is an easy and affordable solution—learn how a surveillance system can be put into place using network attached storage.
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PepsiCo Italia needed an information management system to manage and track assets it loans at no cost to clients, such as coolers and fountains. It also sought to increase operational efficiency and trace every event involving every piece of equipment during the entire asset life cycle. Learn about the integrated enterprise asset management (EAM) system PepsiCo chose to supports all equipment asset management processes.
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Heinz Frozen Food Company was set on improving its manufacturing and maintenance process efficiency, and knew that implementing a new enterprise asset management (EAM) system would involve monumental change for employees. Heinz choose a Web-based system to help it gain better visibility into processes and work towards more progressive lean manufacturing and lean maintenance practices for greater efficiency. Learn more.
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Leading companies are reducing energy consumption and costs as a top-priority initiative—with benefits ranging from more efficient operations to increased shareholder value, improved environmental conditions, and new market opportunities. A global asset sustainability approach will give you opportunities to further lower costs while ensuring reliable operations in all your properties, plants, and equipment. Learn how.
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At Mohawk Fine Papers, a new Web-based enterprise asset management (EAM) system replaced a maintenance management system (MMS) to provide efficiencies for paper-making and converting equipment. Since implementing the new EAM, Mohawk has standardized its maintenance processes, streamlined work order flow, automated business rules, and achieved more detailed tracking of assets. Learn more about the EAM software’s modules.
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As you look for ways to get the most out of your existing operating assets, enterprise asset management (EAM) and computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) solutions are key. However, when it comes to researching, selecting, and implementing the right EAM/CMMS software, you need to avoid several mistakes. Discover 10 common errors you should avoid if you’re looking for a new or replacement EAM or CMMS solution.
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Most document security companies concern themselves solely with the prevention of unauthorized access to content. Online publishers, on the other hand, struggle to find a balance between document security and a satisfactory reader experience. A new approach to document security can give online content publishers the ability to protect their content without adding unnecessary complexity to document access. Learn more.
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Regardless of size or purpose, business processes within a company rely heavily on the dependability of assets for successful operations. Enterprise asset management (EAM) solutions can help companies monitor their assets, including a feature that allows documents to be attached to a work order. But printing the work order and its attachments is not always so simple. Learn how automated work order software can help.
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Information is one of the most valuable resources for facilities management departments, so it’s essential to have a process that lets you achieve full value from it, and to urge your company on from weak paper-prone processes. Facilities management systems can now integrate with other systems. Find out the points you should consider when choosing and implementing a computer-aided facilities management (CAFM) solution.
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The increasing use of virtualization allowed managed hosting providers to reduce costs by sharing infrastructure between customers, creating the earliest versions of what is now known as cloud computing. Platforms managed by specialists provide higher service levels, greater ease of secure access, and more manageable costs than many companies can achieve internally. Discover more about Europe’s managed hosting market.
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Currently, India’s population is approximately 1.0009 billion. The middle class is large and still growing; wages were low, but now are some of the best in various industries; many workers are well educated and speak English; and investors are optimistic and local stocks are up. Despite political turmoil, the country presses on with economic reforms. But for potential investors, there’s still cause for worry—find out why.
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For years, utilities have seen a growing need to enable a smarter electric grid, promote cleaner power sources, and replace aging structures. These issues came into sharper focus when US President Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). This legislation provides funding for many energy initiatives—however, strict compliance guidelines come with the stimulus plan. Find out more.
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The desire to be environmentally responsible—and save money—led Howard Community College (HCC) to green its campus. Seeing that there was room for savings in its computing technology, HCC searched for an energy management solution that would make workstations available when system resources are required, while conserving power during productivity downtimes. Learn how the solution HCC chose offered energy savings and more.
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High-performance digital video recorders (HPDVRs) solve a range of business and scientific challenges. The ability to capture, play back, correlate, measure, and analyze visual events can be invaluable for various industries. Learn key guidelines for selecting an HPDVR from amongst the multitude of DVR solutions on the market today—very few are designed and built to meet the demands of high performance video recording.
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It is an accepted fact that Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is the only consistent and comprehensive documentation of best practices for IT service management. Now, ITIL mentions facilities management in best practices for IT service management. Why? Because facilities have to be intact and operating seamlessly to manage the physical environment where the IT infrastructure is located. Find out more.
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Computerized maintenance management system (CMMS). Enterprise asset management (EAM) system. Computer-aided facilities management (CAFM) system. Integrated workplace management system (IWMS). Each type of facility management solution offers different functionalities and features, and one may be better than another for your company’s needs. Learn more about the differences and how an integrated solution is a “must have.”
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Facilities management software systems used to function in separate technology silos. Now, vendors are adopting Web-based services, as well as on-demand and other emerging technologies. As the technology that solves the inefficiencies of working with geographic information systems (GISs) and computer-aided design (CAD) rapidly evolves, new opportunities emerge for facility and property managers. Learn more.
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Hirotec has been supplying and caring for the assets of some of Australia’s biggest industries for more than 30 years. In 2003, Hirotec was on a strong growth trajectory and realized its IT system couldn’t support its expansion—but that deploying an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system across the company would require staff buy-in. Now, with PRONTO-Xi, Hirotec has reduced invoice cycle time by 20 percent. Learn more.
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Server-based computing has been seen at best as a way to provide those within highly task-based environments with a controlled desktop environment. However, changes in software, hardware, security, and management systems are driving the shift toward server-based computing being suitable for a larger proportion of a company’s user base. Learn how client-side computing can be more tightly controlled yet provide flexibility.
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Collecting, organizing, and reporting refrigerant gas usage is challenging and loaded with complexity. Often system auditing is confusing, and it’s difficult to remain in compliance with constantly changing regulations. Find out why staying in compliance is so important, and how you can save money, reduce emissions, and retain critical assets. Thrive in a carbon-constrained world while managing your refrigerants.
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Increasingly, companies in the aviation industry are outsourcing their maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) operations, especially for engine and component repair. However, many companies still report using custom, in-house applications instead of standard, off-the-shelf solutions. Learn how companies are balancing their outsourced and in-house MRO solutions, and discover the top three trends impacting the MRO segment.
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If you’re not up to speed on the key benefits of software asset management (SAM) solutions, this overview can help. Additionally, you’ll learn about the areas where an SAM solution can deliver the most tangible, quantifiable cost savings to your company. You’ll also learn how to calculate the potential return on investment (ROI) on an SAM solution in order to present senior management with a compelling business case.
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You can leverage economies of scale to increase production by using existing equipment and people, lowering cost per unit, and increasing profit margins. The same applies to providers of services. Using the talented personnel you have and expanding the quality and distribution of services and support are much easier than starting from scratch. Find out how you can take advantage of economies of scale for profitable growth and gains in market share.
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System planning is the Achilles’ heel of a data center physical infrastructure project. Planning mistakes can propagate through later deployment phases, resulting in delays, cost overruns, wasted time, and a compromised system. These troubles can be eliminated by viewing system planning as a data flow model, with sequenced tasks that progressively transform and refine data from initial concept to final design. Learn more.
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The average power consumed by an enclosure in a data center is about 1.7 kilowatts (kWs), but the maximum power that can be obtained by filling a rack with available high density servers, such as blade servers, is over 20 kW. Find out about the power density values of current and new data centers, and learn practical approaches to creating strategies for deploying high-density computing, with limitations and benefits.
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Data center commissioning requires tight coordination between vendors, facilities, IT departments, engineers, the commissioning agent, and others. Managed properly, commissioning can deliver an unbiased evaluation of whether a new data center will succeed or not. Managed poorly, it can lead to problematic data center performance issues. Learn 10 common data center commissioning mistakes, and find out how to avoid them.
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Oil company Energen wrestles with volatile energy prices and their effect on operations. Energen’s key challenges included reducing operating costs and improving efficiency. Many tasks related to plant maintenance and purchasing were done manually—both cumbersome and limited in analysis abilities. After an enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation, Energen has a system that is integrated and automated. Learn more.
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As financial resources become scarcer, maximizing return on assets (ROA) is becoming a key corporate strategy. Unfortunately, metrics governing asset performance are not always available in real time, and are often of low or mixed reliability. Improving visibility into asset performance can help management streamline processes and make better decisions that can ultimately deliver superior corporate results. Find out more.
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IT asset management (ITAM) can provide insight into your information infrastructure and enhance your ability to control IT asset performance. Through better management of IT assets, you can ensure that every piece of hardware and software is fully used. Get tips on how to spell out to your stakeholders the benefit of ITAM, including improving service levels to users and eliminating compliance risks, to your stakeholders.
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You probably know that managing your IT assets and infrastructure is becoming increasingly more complex, as your company operates on a broader, more global scale. But do you know what IT asset management (ITAM) is and how it can benefit your company? Learn about ITAM solutions that can help your organization gain greater control over the various components, including software and hardware, within your IT architectures.
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Globally, data center power and cooling infrastructure wastes more than 60 million megawatt-hours per year that do not contribute usefully to powering IT equipment. This is an enormous financial burden on industry, and is a significant public policy environmental issue. Find out about the principles of a new data center architecture that can be implemented today to dramatically improve the electrical efficiency of your data center.
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IFS co-founder Ulf Stern and senior advisor Anders Wilhelmsson discuss how project management functionality that is tightly integrated with enterprise asset management (EAM) and asset lifecycle management (ALM) tools is essential to executives of asset-intensive industries. Lacking this integration, valuable asset data is lost and asset utilization cannot be maximized.
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The main purpose of lockout/tagout (LOTO) procedures is to prevent accidents, save lives, and protect equipment from extensive damage. But it’s important that these procedures don’t become routine—in fact, you should consider how you can improve work safety to prevent errors and eliminate accidents. Learn how an automated lockout and tag out solution can help improve processes, and provide business and financial benefits.
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Small and medium businesses (SMBs) often don’t know how to engage and manage outsourcing initiatives. Both outsourcing provider and seeker should together address several questions when starting a project to outsource business or technology processes. What’s the cost benefit? What are the risks involved? Find out the customer and the vendor perspectives, and how to achieve cost savings and service-level improvements.
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For Sequa, a manufacturing company with 60 major operating units, the challenge was to replace its old fixed assets management system—which didn’t support tax law changes— with a remotely accessible solution to eliminate manual calculations. Sequa’s new Web-hosted solution allows accurate results, better reporting, and up-to-the-minute tax change support—with no need for IT maintenance. Learn more about the benefits.
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Progressive companies are discovering that they can optimize processes and assets to make the best use of resources, reduce negative impact on the environment, and strengthen business results—all at the same time. Improving enterprise asset management (EAM) processes provides opportunities for you to create less waste, reduce resource use, and decrease emissions. Find out how you can take advantage of EAM’s benefits.
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A school district in Missouri sought to optimize the booking and scheduling of its newly modernized conference and meeting spaces. Its old scheduling software was frustrating, as it was difficult to customize and configure. But after installing Meeting Room Manager, the schools are able to set specific room and equipment configurations, and post activities online as well as on a public viewing screen. Learn more.
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The best encryption and security policies will not protect your laptops against careless employee use. Learn about the latest innovations in tracking IT assets off the local area network (LAN), remotely deleting sensitive data, and physically recovering stolen computers.
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For many distributors, inventory is the largest and perhaps the most important asset. Inventory ties up more money than buildings or equipment, and is often less “liquid.” It is crucial, then, that distributors develop and use a comprehensive set of tools that allows close monitoring of the performance of inventory investments. Read more about simple measurements that can help you maximize your investment in inventory.
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HSB-Stockholm, a property management firm, manages more than 200 client work orders daily. The company realized its back-office solution couldn’t address customer satisfaction, and that a new solution would have to keep up with the growth of field operations. Learn how HSB implemented a mobile, Internet-based solution that increased the speed of service delivery and maintenance operations by 50 percent.
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Three problems are common to most complex environmental modeling efforts: they’re uncertain, multifaceted, and hard to communicate. Overcoming these challenges is especially important when modeling the performance of proposed and existing radioactive waste management facilities. Graphical simulation tools can help represent uncertainties, integrate all aspects of the system, and ease the presentation of complex models.
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Companies looking to expand their facilities and strategize their way into the marketplace often focus most of their efforts on bottom line results. During the process, they factor in infrastructure costs but often pay little attention on how to control them. Find out how a Web-enabled solution that puts infrastructure management sharply in focus can help you easily access distributed information while helping curb costs.
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Some managers have concluded that strategic planning is nothing more than an exercise in futility, to be taken out and dusted off at annual meetings. However, strategic planning can still help direct your company and improve earnings. The trick is strategizing well—which means having all the information you need, when you need it. Find out how to hone your competitive edge with integrated business planning capabilities.
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Many businesses today rely on telecom expense management (TEM) for mission-critical functions ranging from sales to service to customer relationship management. But despite its overall importance, nearly one-third of a telecom staff’s time is spent on processing orders and invoices. Maximizing the potential of a telecom system requires a data-driven approach. Find out how Map-To-Win is helping businesses do just that.
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While today’s regulatory environment poses significant challenges to businesses, it should be looked at as an opportunity—one that turns compliance efforts into capital gains. You can accomplish this with an internal audit of your change management policies. This checklist will help your business prepare for a high-level process audit while providing tools your IT managers can use for maximum results.
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The blade server market is one of many fast growing in the IT industry, helping large businesses resolve issues with power, cooling, and space constraints in their datacenters. But what about the mid-market customer whose needs are very different? Hewlett Packard (HP) addresses these needs with the launch of its new HP BladeSystem c3000—a complete blade server and storage solution designed with the mid-market in mind.
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Administrative errors can and do happen, but native tools do little to aid administrators in this area. While Microsoft’s Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) is a great tool for managing group policy, it has its limitations. Discover how to implement best-practice approaches to help successfully extend the deployment of group policy to your server security settings, while reducing costs and minimizing errors.
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Company employees, business partners, and customers all demand secure and low-response-time access to business applications—from wherever they are. While SAP addresses this need through its enterprise service-oriented architecture (SOA) solution, when security features are added the application response time is slower. So what’s the best way to test global SOA deployments? Read this white paper to find out.
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The amount of malware that is being released around the world is increasing at an alarming rate. To combat these cyber-crimes, new layers of protection are needed that take advantage of automating the entire malware protection cycle—from sample collection, analysis and classification, to remediation. By combing automation with Panda’s Collective Intelligence, targeted attacks can be detected more quickly and efficiently.
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Computerized numerical control (CNC) is crucial to the successful operation of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) application, but the road to success is sometimes rocky. To surmount the challenges of meeting your CNC needs, learn how an on-demand (or CNC managed services) model can improve your return on investment, and streamline and standardize your business processes.
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Virtual private networks (VPNs) are optimized to perform specific functions within the remote access architecture. But deploying the often complex mix of approaches for managed and unmanaged devices can affect your security. Blue Coat RA provides a new approach that bridges the gap between traditional and endpoint security technologies—helping businesses meet remote access requirements in a simple, cost effective manner.
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Today, more business than ever is done in branch offices or at remote sites, but very few IT resources are actually hosted there. To reduce costs, businesses often consolidate applications—but consolidation can lead to poor performance. With the right solution, however, acceleration techniques—like bandwidth management and protocol optimization—can be properly dispersed to remote applications, helping increase performance.
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Although secure sockets layer (SSL) is a ubiquitous enabler of e-commerce and outsourcing, it creates a special challenge for network administrators and security professionals because its encryption is known to decelerate data. In order to regain control over application delivery—when everything business-related is encrypted—organizations need to look toward SSL-aware solutions that can help decipher and accelerate data.
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Managing IT assets is a vital corporate function—and a source of potential liability if not performed properly. By effectively managing IT assets, businesses can be assured that each IT dollar has been well spent. With an asset management solution, your IT staff can monitor application usage and budgets more accurately, and improve in-house IT support and performance—resulting in greater efficiency and reduced costs.
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Explosive data growth, shrinking backup windows, and unreliable restores are just a few of the issues you have to manage on a daily basis—especially if you’re using a legacy tape backup application system. But you can still use your legacy system by extending its life and enhancing its reliability with a hardware-based disk compression solution. Find out how, and considerably reduce your backup and recovery times.
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The capacity of today’s storage systems is increasing at an astonishing rate. But the truth is: the more storage you have, the more you use. So, how do you create an efficient data storage system? And how much space can it really save you? Advanced single instance storage (A-SIS) deduplication can reduce storage consumption up to 95 percent—helping you conserve disk space, while keeping your system overhead low.
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E-mail archiving systems are no longer simply tools that focus on regulatory compliance, but instead are multifaceted systems that can help companies satisfy legal discovery requirements, improve messaging-related storage management, and assist in disaster recovery efforts. While there are several solutions available, a hosted solution can offer a number of important benefits you should consider.
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Does your business have a records management policy that addresses e-mail? Well if it doesn’t, now’s the time to consider adopting one. To meet Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) requirements, businesses must create and enforce a clear corporate messaging policy. With Fortiva’s on-demand archiving solution, your legal team can easily develop e-mail policies—making compliance with legal discovery demands much easier.
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It is widely acknowledged that unauthorized changes made to an IT infrastructure cause up to 80 percent of a system’s unavailability. So what key ingredient is needed to reduce that percentage? By adding change control to an existing or planned change management infrastructure, businesses can improve IT service availability, lower compliance costs, and accelerate their IT infrastructure library (ITIL) implementations.
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Corporate governance encompasses the processes and systems by which organizations operate—and it affects every business. To effectively participate in governance processes, businesses should consider closed-loop service oriented architecture (SOA). Although stand-alone applications for governance, management, and security exist, find out why they do not enable the demand and value management that closed-loop SOA offers.
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Corporate IT departments and independent software vendors (ISV) alike are faced with a number of similar business challenges. One such challenge is the problem of how to derive additional value from their existing Windows and UNIX software applications and create advantage with Web-enabled solutions. Discover the pros and cons of Web-based and Web-enabled applications—and learn about the solutions that lead the pack.
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The security provisions of the US Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) are complex and process-intensive, and non-compliant financial institutions and their officers have suffered penalties as a result. With QualysGuard’s vulnerability management and policy compliance solution—including on-demand auditing capabilities—financial institutions can easily meet the key security guidelines that are detailed in the GLBA.
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Despite the defensive efforts of firewalls, intrusion detection, antivirus solutions, and the like, criminals, careless employees, and contractors have exposed more than 158 million digital records of consumers personally identifiable information since 2005. With this critical need for stronger network security, Qualys has developed an on-demand solution that effectively manages these vulnerabilities.
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While most information vulnerabilities stem from external intrusion and theft of data, there remains a greater potential for information to be lost, stolen, or accidentally erased by internal sources—the employees. Don’t let this be the case with your business! Information vulnerability management (IVM) is a corporate issue—one that needs addressing. To learn how you can reduce your exposure, download this white paper.
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With a vast global network that supports over 60,000 employees, vulnerability and risk management programs are crucial for Oracle GIT. To further enhance its IT system risk management capabilities, Oracle deployed QualysGuard’s on-demand software vulnerability and compliance management solution. Since its deployment, Oracle has optimized its scanning capabilities and automated its demand security auditing processes.
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With the increasing complexity of the data center and its dependent systems, data center automation (DCA) is becoming a necessity. To replace the costly and inefficient human aspect of managing the data center, IT departments must adopt DCA solutions. Combined with utility-based computing architectures, these solutions can provide greater dynamics in the environment and facilitate speed of response to market demands.
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What can user-driven applications like Morello and Microsoft’s Office SharePoint (MOSS) 2007 do to help your web content management strategy? By combining the two, users can develop web applications and collaborative workspaces themselves rather than acquiring IT development input. In doing so, they unlock the silos of working practices and content stores, and add significant value to the web content management strategy.
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There are many factors to consider when purchasing a new phone system. In addition to planning the scale of your proposed system and how long you expect to use it, you should also think about the number and type of features you need, from call hold and speed dial, to computer telephony integration (CTI). Put your money where your voicemail is: find out about the latest phone system features and improve your bottom line.
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Small-business users of voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) have very different needs. But all users have similar concerns when it comes to cost, the range of features, and the level of service included in their VoIP plans. Does your provider offer remote office features? Fax support? E-911? And do you need a hosted or an on-premise service? Before you sign the contract, there are a few things you ought to know.
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For many years, S&C Electric, a global provider of electric power system equipment, used internally built tracking and Subversion data to manage source code and documents and to track viruses. But as it grew, its needs became more complex, and more maintenance time was required. A managed source control solution now manages and protects S&C Electric’s intellectual property, and saves the company a lot in man-hours.
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Software company Terra Technology’s development team often worked remotely, without a centralized development system. Managing documents manually was quickly becoming an unproductive use of the team s time—and increased its chances of making errors. Since using ProjectLocker’s document management system, Terra Technology has saved valuable time and money, and can now focus on its core competency—supply chain software.
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IT managers today face plenty of problems when it comes to protecting remote office data—problems that agentless architecture could eliminate. Many organizations outsource their data protection, which can be costly. But an agentless architecture disk-to-disk (D2D) software solution can offer your business bottom-line benefits that range from lower administrative costs to pay-as-you-grow scalability and increased security.
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What can a managed Subversion solution do to help .NET businesses solve their integration problems? Subversion meets the challenge of software development by allowing teams to use branching and tagging methods that help them work better with their QA organizations. It also saves .NET businesses a lot of money over setting up and maintaining a development infrastructure in house, which keeps the cost of ownership manageable.
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Software development best practices can save you money and make your team more productive. When software development teams don’t invest in a solid development platform, it makes their work harder and often ends up costing them more money over time. A hosted platform, however, provides a level of convenience and savings that makes it the obvious choice for today’s IT development, management, and consulting organizations.
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Today’s complex enterprise networks present unique challenges to those whose task it is to manage and secure them. Existing security measures that worked yesterday may not be sufficient tomorrow. But by combining Configuresoft’s Enterprise Configuration Manager (ECM) with Microsoft’s System Center 2007, businesses can secure their data, protect their bottom lines from costly downtime, and meet regulatory standards.
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IT is often characterized as distinct groups pursuing individual agendas and launching disconnected initiatives to increase operational efficiencies. To overcome this, organizations need a set of capabilities that can help improve coordination between IT and the rest of the business while facilitating effective service management. Adopting foundational technologies and a best-practice benchmark is a good place to start.
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Most businesses today depend on their own IT departments to satisfy corporate governance objectives and meet increasing customer demand. Unfortunately, many have failed to clearly demonstrate to themselves—and to their customers—that they are truly managing their business. Only when the IT department understands what the business wants can it benchmark itself and build continual improvement plans that can meet these demands.
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Developing a good disaster recovery plan (DRP) in today’s business world is a must. In fact, downplaying the importance of a DRP can be costly—especially if you’re a small to medium business (SMB) that is slow in adopting DRP. Recent studies have shown that 40 percent of businesses that have encountered a disaster close their doors within the following five years. To stay afloat, here are ten steps that should be taken.
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In order for a business to stay on top of compliance requirements required by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX)—and avoid financial penalties or possible jail time—it must take a good look at its IT environment and financial reporting processes. The collection, management, and analysis of log data are integral to meeting SOX requirements and as such, require a system that automates these processes across the IT infrastructure.
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Asset management cannot be successfully implemented by your accounting department alone (or any other single department). That’s why you should be on top of today’s asset management climate and the tools available to improve controls. Learn about approaches that are getting results, and find out what doesn’t work (and why). Finally, get the lowdown on best practices which have proved both effective and durable.
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Organizations of all sizes face similar challenges when managing storage—not enough capacity or protection. Help has arrived with Internet small computer system interface storage area networks (iSCSI SANs)—and they're steadily gaining momentum. With iSCSI SANs, businesses can effectively manage their storage needs, while lowering costs and increasing security. Find out why many industry leaders are choosing iSCSI today.
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Today’s extensive use of data collection tools coupled with the easy access to communication networks has woven more devices and systems into the fabric of our daily lives. As the scale of integration and complexity grows, so does the need for the appropriate paradigm to address it. In order to scale, system software architecture must be organized around a common-shared information model that can span multiple systems.
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Information lifecycle management (ILM) is rapidly gaining acceptance as a process crucial to the success of many IT initiatives. The reason for this is the importance of managing data. With the growing demand for ILM comes a variety of solutions that follow a disjointed, point product approach. By choosing an ILM software designed to scale to its needs, a business can benefit from software built on a unified platform.
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Every day, sensitive business information finds its way into the wrong hands—through external breaches or internal theft. Such data is highly regulated, and any risks of exposure can result in stiff penalties and legal liabilities. Many of these security risks lie in the test/dev environments, and as such require a solution that protects data application clones from unauthorized access without jeopardizing its integrity.
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The growth of application data has placed an enormous burden on IT organizations to maintain acceptable application performance and availability. The weight of managing and navigating through vast amounts of inactive data has caused outages and raised budgets, among other problems. Active archiving software, however, addresses complex data management issues and delivers lasting benefits to organizations and its users.
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Data breach is a very real problem in business today. Every day, organizations store massive amounts of data inside database tables—data ranging from credit card transactions to product inventories. This valuable information is what runs the business. In order to protect this data and stay on top of compliance, an enterprise data management solution that respects information privacy regulations should be considered.
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Fax hardware plays a crucial role in the sending and receiving of business documents. With high-volume use over time, instabilities in performance can occur. Therefore, how well fax boards and fax software applications perform together becomes an important consideration. With IQ Express intelligent fax board series, fax servers send and receive corporate documents electronically—reducing costs and improving productivity.
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Three strikes—your out; that’s what lockout management does. But employees often forget the many passwords needed to access information. What ensues is a flood of calls to the help desk that, over time, can become a huge administrative burden. Adopting a strong password policy is critical. By implementing a lockout management strategy via automated management solutions, businesses enhance security and improve workflow.
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When Naghi Group’s annual revenue began to soar, it realized that running core business operations on multiple systems was no longer feasible; its current solution lacked the integration capabilities necessary to communicate with its distribution and manufacturing departments. After only a few months since integrating VAI’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, Naghi has already realized its many benefits.
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Financial service institutions spend thousands of dollars every year on securing their networks from external breaches, but often fail to think about possible internal threats. Employee fraud has become a growing problem in the financial sector—one that many institutions are not fully prepared to handle. Implementing automated detection technologies, however, can be their first line of defense to eradicating this problem.
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Are virtual appliances really more advantageous than physical appliances? For businesses looking to decrease server complexity, increase load balance, and optimize scalability and mobility, the answer is yes. Virtualization has brought distributed computing to a new level and provides many key benefits. This white paper looks at four of those benefits and uncovers why more organizations need to consider making a change.
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While virtualization technology can simplify server management and reduce operating costs, in production environments it presents a disaster-recovery challenge. The problem: simply backing up a host server doesn’t always ensure that data within virtual machines is recoverable. With Acronis’s True Image, IT managers can rest assured their data, settings, applications, and operating systems are protected against disaster.
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To boot or pre-boot, that is the question. There’s no doubt that operating systems (OSs) are complicated given the sheer amount of code that must be flawlessly interfaced and the potential vulnerabilities that can ensue. While full disk encryption (FDE) is one step closer to a more secure OS, encryption without strong authentication isn’t enough. For security-conscious users, pre-boot authentication is the only way to go.
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Many manufacturers want to increase production efficiency and improve quality—but how can they ensure their efforts are successful? A process-oriented enterprise resource planning (ERP) system may be the answer. This white paper includes case studies on a variety of process manufacturing industries and provides valuable insights into the ERP capabilities required to successfully manage a process-oriented implementation.
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On top of the many challenges faced by IT managers today comes yet another challenge: ensuring efficient and secure user access to SAP. Because of the unencrypted communication between users’ workstations and the backend servers, the SAP environment—and the confidential data it stores—become vulnerable. With a secure single sign-on solution to SAP, however, you can significantly improve the security of this environment.
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Today’s business environment is more mobile than ever. With more employees traveling—using laptops, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and home computers to conduct business—vulnerabilities increase. Companies are now protecting their digital assets with full disk encryption (FDE). Recent advances in FDE allow businesses to protect data stored on users’ mobile devices, without jeopardizing intellectual property.
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Protecting your company’s data is not only wise, but often legally necessary. In order to beef up their data security programs, more companies are implementing full disk encryption (FDE). In the past, FDE was software based, which left it open to greater security risks. With the advent of new technology, however, it is now possible to migrate from software- to hardware-based FDE while still protecting your existing systems.
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What would you do if a critical error occurred during production—all because the wrong data was input into your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system? You’d probably be asking “how could this happen?” The ability to communicate information between teams can mean the difference between production success and failure. Avoid these snafus with a system that can integrate the data of both the design and ERP systems.
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With ever-changing technology, businesses often spend too much time and money trying to sustain their outdated systems. But is it possible to maintain a legacy system without the substantial costs of frequently updating it? By adopting service-oriented architecture (SOA)—which provides a suite of automated tools and services for migrating and extending legacy platforms—businesses can maximize quality and minimize costs.
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Server and data center consolidation has never been more important. Issues such as server sprawl and increasing costs have made consolidation the number one priority among IT managers. New virtualization technologies, however, are helping data centers combat these problems. Learn about the factors that are driving consolidation initiatives today, and find out what best practices can be used for ensuring its success.
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As your business grows, so too does the complexity of your data center. Along with this complexity, there are problems such as the inflexibility caused by operating systems, applications, and associated data, which are bound to the hardware they are installed on. Discover eight ways to optimize the infrastructure in your data center using virtualization products designed to work with your current technologies.
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Today’s data centers are an increasingly complex mixture of server platforms, hardware, operating systems, data, and applications that have accumulated over time. So how do you take your data center from a tangled mess of suboptimal servers which may be hampering your service levels, to one that can maximize performance? With the use of virtualization technology, data center optimization can become a reality.
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As management visionary and author Peter Drucker once said, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” No statement rings truer—especially when it comes to security risk reduction. By having an accurate depiction of your network, however, you can identify real-world security threats and learn how to evaluate your organization’s ability to respond to them. Find out how, with these seven essential steps.
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With the growing global epidemic of data theft, tougher regulations are being enforced by government bodies worldwide. As such, organizations need to work harder at proactive security. With the right technology, identifying network vulnerabilities and measuring overall security exposure becomes manageable. By using these eight steps as your guide, you can put an end to network security vulnerabilities once and for all.
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Supplemental product or technical data is typically delivered separately from the information contained within portable document format (PDF) files. This can make it difficult for users to locate the additional content for download. With the CopyFILE plug-in application, however, companies can integrate supplemental product information by using links within a PDF file—thus allowing content to be easily distributed.
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Registry cleanup is inarguably an integral component of PC maintenance. However, many PC users may be wasting time and effort cleaning their registries more often than necessary, depending on the age of their computers, as well as how often software and other utilities are installed. In order to save time and get the most out of your PC, there are a number of myths about registry cleanup you ought to dispel.
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The world is focusing on environmental awareness, and reducing greenhouse gases is now an inevitable part of doing business. But how can you conform to compliance regulations and still remain competitive? Green-centric asset management implementations—valuable tools in resource conservation—are helping companies increase productivity and improve their bottom lines. Maybe getting greener isn’t so hard after all.
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For cheese producer Mozzarella Fresca, producing multiple products was a scheduling challenge, and it needed a solution that could do more than Excel-based tools. The Zemeter Scheduler solution was able to add 15 percent capacity by optimizing scheduling processes. In fact, from molding to packaging, Zemeter Scheduler increased efficiency without Mozzarella Fresca needing to invest in new equipment.
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Forecasting and planning conventions dictate that planning far into the future is a necessity. But is long-term planning really the most productive way to organize your business? No, not really. Detailed forecasts and plans are needed only inside the “planning time fence”—a critical period for acquiring specific components and building certain products—and for many companies, only four to eight weeks into the future.
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There is no single antivirus engine on the market today that is the fastest and most effective at identifying viruses, spam, or other threats. According to a recent survey, 97 percent of organizations have antivirus software installed, yet 65 percent have been infected at one time or another since. One way to reduce the chance of virus infection is to install multiple antivirus scanners at the mail server level.
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Just when you thought you had all your security measures figured out, along comes the portable storage device to make you question them all over again. With the popularity of portable consumer products—and their ever-increasing storage space—comes a greater risk of losing sensitive corporate data. To secure corporate data, companies must not only focus on perimeter security, but on internal security weaknesses as well.
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Benchmarking is a process where companies compare their performance over time against their competition. In doing so, they can identify where their strengths lie and where improvement may be needed. The point of benchmarking is to focus on areas that will yield the best return. For companies to succeed in their benchmarking efforts and gain a sustained competitive advantage, five key steps should be considered.
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As with any hot market, point-to-point wireless is bait for the pathologically
opportunistic. In this atmosphere—often termed "anarchy"—trust can t be a matter of faith. To get in on the wireless opportunity without getting shafted, you need to know a few basic and incontrovertible facts concerning the difference between licensed and license-free wireless. In fact, a successful outcome depends on choosing the right one.
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"Wild West" is a metaphor often used to describe the wireless wide area network (WAN) business. But it s worse than that. In the Old West, everyone had a gun. In this business, customers are defenseless. What s going on? Well, for one, vendors are playing fast and loose with terminology that should mean something. Wireless is compelling, but how do you decide what s right for you—and who do you trust?
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For most companies, e-mail is an integral part of the business workflow and a primary channel for communication. For these reasons, e-mails can be considered legal business documents and should be retained for a predefined period to satisfy government regulations. With an e-mail archiving system, message contents and attachments are stored in a read-only format, ensuring they are archived in their original state.
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Research shows that between 65 and 95 percent of all e-mail is considered spam. On an individual level, spam is an annoyance more than anything else, but on a company-wide basis, spam causes significant problems—and the cost to manage it is sizeable. Spammers are always one step ahead of antispam vendors, so to combat this persistent problem, companies need a single-source product that can eliminate spam for good.
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Over the past few years, vulnerabilities have exploded across all types of platforms—leaving IT security and operations teams scratching their heads. Today, many companies use the scan-and-patch method for managing vulnerabilities—a reactive security process that should be avoided. By combining assessment and remediation, companies create a vulnerability management program that can rapidly respond to emerging threats.
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Although layer-two networks are a viable, cost-effective alternative to traditional wide area network (WAN) services, they have some major security deficiencies. One of the key drawbacks of layer two is its inability to handle identity authentication—which creates serious theft and vulnerability problems. With a layer-two data protection solution, however, you can mitigate these types of security issues.
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Storage area networks (SANs) are complex structures that contain an infinite number of configuration possibilities—making the process of configuring the devices to be installed into the SAN a lengthy one. To simplify the process, QLogic’s configuration wizard provides users with some basic tools to guide them through common SAN tasks, enabling them to easily build stable and secure SAN fabrics for their storage solutions.
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The days of storage area networks (SANs) built with hubs and based on private, arbitrated loops are gone. Today’s fully public switches—which include a variety of switch features—make managing large SANs a lot easier. The key to a flexible SAN is the switch’s ability to create zones, which allows the SAN to be partitioned into various groupings and enables SAN managers to allocate storage where it makes the most sense.
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The first step to a successful storage area network (SAN) implementation is preplanning. Architecting a SAN not only helps solve issues of storage consolidation, it facilitates day-to-day data center support and maintenance. A SAN investment should save support dollars, not require additional support resources. With a sound implementation strategy, costly upgrades—and many headaches—can be avoided.
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With data theft on the rise, many companies are forced to improve their network security. And although they spend millions of dollars every year on securing these networks, the focus has largely been on securing the access to the network rather than protecting the information itself. Secure information sharing (SIS) solutions integrate additional intelligence into the process—and protect your data without added overhead.
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Research shows that the occurrence of multivendor Internet protocol telephony (IPT) environments is on the rise. As such, an increasing number of companies are faced with the challenges of using multiple tools to manage these environments. With a single, specialized IPT management solution, companies gain a unified view across the entire voice infrastructure—which can significantly impact total cost of ownership (TCO).
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Now that you have planned and assessed your new system, it’s time to explore the next phase of the integration process: design and pre-deployment testing. Part 4 of this 4-part e-book series provides a basis for the exploration of network design. In addition, it includes a report card that will help you select the appropriate design and validation software tools for your Internet protocol telephony (IPT) system.
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When deploying any new system, preparation is key—and Internet protocol telephony (IPT) systems are no exception. Part 3 of this 4-part e-book series provides some basic steps you can take to successfully deploy voice and data network services. A complete capabilities inventory has been included to help you ensure that every feature of your current system will be considered for inclusion in your new system.
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Chapter 2 of this 4-part e-book explores the Internet protocol telephony (IPT) life cycle, and discusses how understanding the key phases of this packet-based system can increase implementation success. By harnessing your knowledge about this system's natural rhythms, you will begin to establish key concepts that you can put into action—facilitating the management of the system and reaping its long-term benefits.
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Data loss can be damaging to a business—hurting short-term stock prices, impacting customer relationships, and reducing revenues. As more companies conduct business via network communication, the need to protect their customer data and intellectual property becomes greater. With a data protection solution, organizations can secure their data in motion—without introducing unmanageable cost and complexity into the network.
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When it comes to security architecture, choosing a system that’s scalable and applicable to a broad set of security needs is a wise move. New security services for Internet protocol (IP) networks are emerging that enable new levels of scalability and manageability—while remaining completely transparent to the network. By applying this type of system, you build an optimal framework for future security applications.
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In this new era of corporate governance, risk avoidance, and responsibility, organizations are more than ever held accountable if their data is not properly protected. As such, many are finding new ways to address security risks, by developing multiple layers of defense to reduce points of weakness. Deploying data encryption technology is a good place to start—but the key is making the right choice.
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Heightened awareness of vulnerabilities in sensitive stored data has resulted in the increased application of encryption technology. To secure data at rest, a well-defined process for handling the keys used to encrypt data—as well as the keys used to safeguard the data encryption keys—is essential. With the proper key management controls in place, companies can ensure that data is effectively secured and recoverable.
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You can’t pick up a business or IT magazine today without seeing numerous articles about the growth of mobile and wireless technologies. Why are these technologies so trendy? The answer is simple: developments in mobile computing, wireless communication, bar codes, and other data collection and communications technologies help businesses extend visibility and control over the operations that really matter to them.
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It s hard to go anywhere these days and not see ads for mobile wireless carriers. But the technology is so confusing and the choices so overwhelming, it can be impossible to know which solution to choose. Before making the wrong choice, it’s best to have a basic understanding of mobile wireless communication—how it is currently being used in the industry, and how it can benefit your organization in the future.
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When it comes to two-dimensional (2D) symbologies, less is more. While 2D bar code symbols may be less costly to print, they are considerably more expensive to read, because of the complexity of developing decode algorithms. However, with the integration of public domain 2D symbologies into a range of application standards, solutions employing these codes are beginning to reach their full potential.
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For manufacturers, improving internal processes and supply chain responsiveness can help maintain profitability. That is why many are tuning into radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. With RFID, the benefits are immediate throughout the supply chain, and organizations that take the time to understand its capabilities and limitations can increase their inventory visibility while streamlining their operations.
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Imagine this scenario: an infected laptop within your company has accessed the network and is spreading malicious code to thousands of other devices. This incident could cripple any business, but with network access control (NAC) products, companies can rest a little easier. NAC’s ability to measure, enforce, and report on an array of security issues has gained it attention amongst security conscious organizations.
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Malicious hacking and illegal access are just a few of the reasons companies lose precious corporate data every year. As the number of network security breaches increase, companies must find ways to protect data beyond the perimeter of their businesses. But how do they build a data-defensible architecture that will protect data on an ever-evolving network? The answer: by first developing an in-depth defense strategy.
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Industry today demands more quality of manufacturers, and as such, ISO 9001—the yardstick by which quality products and services are measured—is forcing more and more companies to become ISO-certified. However, companies can use a browser-based tool to help bridge any information gaps they may encounter during the process—and to give them the head start they need to intelligently manage their ISO certification.
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What is compact, lightweight, ergonomic, and power-friendly? A microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)-based scan engine—an innovative scanning technology that provides outstanding reliability and performance. When it comes to supply chain laser scanning, the advantages MEMS scanners have over traditional lasers are unparalleled. While MEMS is not a new technology, it does provide a new option for bar code scanning.
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When it comes to workers’ safety, companies shouldn’t take any chances. The growing safety, security, and regulatory and reporting requirements are forcing many organizations to implement more sophisticated systems to monitor and manage their work environments. To help determine which mobile devices are approved and appropriate to use in your work environments, it’s important to have clear guidelines on what to look for.
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One of the first and seemingly simple questions that companies ask when making IT investments is “how much does it cost?” Many often find themselves wondering why—even after a successful implementation—their costs keep going up. When evaluating a mobile workforce automation project, companies should take the time to conduct a thorough total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis to detect hidden costs—and avoid nasty surprises.
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In the $1.8 billion market of document management services, only 10 percent is billed by dealers. So how can they increase their share of the managed print services trend? The dealer’s path to advantage lies in its service and supply organization. To make this transition, the dealer needs a tool that gathers knowledge of the client’s fleet and identifies where printing dollars can be saved.
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For a lot of companies, making the decision to replace an existing business software system can be a difficult one. The process can be so unpleasant that many organizations may be reluctant to even get started, coming up with a number of reasons why they could probably get by with the systems they already have. If your company is struggling with this tough decision, you may want to ask yourself these ten basic questions.
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Carefully tracking components and assemblies throughout the manufacturing process can prevent costly production and sequencing errors, but executing these procedures can be difficult. While bar codes provide accurate, efficient product identification, they are not viable in many common industrial processes. Specialized RFID tags, however, are optimized for use on or around metal, and are an effective and viable alternative.
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Going mobile has become a growing trend, with many businesses reaching well beyond the use of cellular phones as their only lines of communication. Why? Because these businesses realize that linking the mobile workforce with the enterprise and its data resources—using mobile applications—is key to enhancing productivity, profitability, and customer satisfaction. Choosing the right devices, however, can be very challenging.
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Today’s defense industry needs maintenance and logistics software that increases the self-sustainability of weapons systems and allows system operators to perform maintenance in the field—increasing uptime and readiness. An integrated maintenance and logistics (IML) solution provides critical information for multiple weapons systems in real time—thus increasing readiness without increasing headcount.
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In today’s global market, providing quality products and services is essential for any manufacturer’s continued growth—but maintaining a competitive edge is not always easy. For success, quality awareness must begin at the conception of the product and continue throughout the various stages of its development. To improve in this area, many manufacturers are now adopting the total quality management (TQM) approach.
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When considering any software solution, two things come to mind: flexibility and cost. With virtualization technology, multiple applications can now be hosted safely and securely on a single server, eliminating the overhead of running multiple operating systems (OS) per server. This capability can greatly reduce costs and help organizations deliver consistent service levels despite unpredictable workloads.
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Any organization that deploys multiple same-application servers with regularity could benefit from virtual appliances. Virtualization solutions eliminate the need to copy an operating system (OS) and application into each virtual environment, by creating a single, centrally installed master copy instead. It saves time on installation and enables greater levels of efficiency, manageability, flexibility, and resource use.
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Cox Communications, a leading cable provider, needed to find a way to centralize the IT requirements of its customer support team. With over a hundred users, its challenge was to move from single desktop applications to a centralized server which would offer many concurrent instances of the application—and minimize the cost. By deploying a virtualization solution, Cox realized a return on investment (ROI) of 300 percent.
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To be certain its materials management functions were up to par with industry best practices, a South African fertilizer plant obtained the services of an inventory optimization firm. In doing so, it was able to identify weak links in its inventory control processes, and achieved a savings of over $2 million (USD)—an impressive return on investment (ROI) considering it had invested less than 4 percent of that amount.
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An important question facing IT professionals today is how best to harness computing power to further improve automated business processes. This is especially critical in business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce. While service-oriented architecture (SOA) delivers the benefits of IT integration to business, it needs a programming language—such as Lisp—that can optimize its capabilities and scale in size and complexity.
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New Star Asset Management was looking to maximize its existing sales channels and drive more information gathering via the Web. In order to achieve its aggressive targets, it needed to find a way to make better use of the Web, while reducing costs. Since integrating a Web content management system, New Star has seen a significant drop in Web-related expenditure—with cost savings of nearly 68 percent in the first year.
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It’s no coincidence that the surge in counterfeiting over the past decade has coincided with a huge increase in Internet access around the world, and the more recent shift toward broadband connections. The Web provides a shop window to the world, yet it is impossible to police. New, intelligent, automated monitoring technologies are beginning to offer powerful solutions to this rampant online problem.
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Interactive web sites are event-driven. With each user click, a menu selection or keyboard action initiates a thread of execution that runs many lines of code. Many Web projects start as small code snippets gathered from open source sites, but as the web site grows, new developers are added to the mix. Without design and documentation tools, the project can become unmanageable, unreliable, insecure, and costly to expand.
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In 2004, Microsoft offered a midwestern-US-based financial services corporation a range of options to renew and replace its existing enterprise agreement. But without the right negotiating skills, how could it be certain Microsoft’s offer was the most cost-saving approach? The company engaged an independent consulting firm, and in less than three weeks recognized savings of 28 percent on a $3 million (USD) agreement.
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As a business employing IT, you may have encountered situations where the software application you purchased didn’t come with a help file. With no time to write complete documentation yourself and no budget to hire a professional technical writer to do it for you, what do you do? By applying the basic principles of cost-effective documentation, your business can develop impressive documentation quickly—for a minimal cost.
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In asset-intensive industries, the need for an overall equipment efficiency (OEE) system is driven by the need to capture real-time information. When equipment operation data is automatically collected and refined by the operator, the quality and quantity of data, and the ability to access and analyze it in a specific manner can greatly help to reduce costs and maximize productivity.
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The key to plant efficiency and profitability is open communication between those who design industrial facilities and those who operate and maintain them. Communication between these entities has long been lacking, however. Companies that use design, operate, and maintain (DOM) concepts can facilitate and standardize their proactive approaches to this open communication—whether collaboration takes place internally, or with outside designers. Learn more now.
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It’s common knowledge that asset downtime disrupts production and drives up both process and per-unit operating costs. However, executives often lose sight of this because they focus on output, not on the assets used to create it. The irony is that companies can use asset performance management not only to make more widgets, but to make each widget more profitably.
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Top performers optimize their assets. It’s true in any field—sports, the arts, and business. Yet in business, optimizing performance of capital assets often plays distant runner-up to the more glamorous pursuit of top-line growth. That’s not surprising, given the importance of increasing sales revenue. But it can cost you—and lead to operating surprises that are even more punishing.
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Lean manufacturing strategies and ever-lower tolerance for late deliveries are putting pressure on manufacturers to ensure that facilities and equipment operate at peak performance. While some companies are struggling to execute preventive and predictive maintenance procedures, better performers have implemented holistic asset management strategies enabling them to proactively ensure the health of plants, factories, and equipment across global manufacturing networks.
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Even though the technology has been around in some form since World War II, chances are that you think of Wal-Mart’s supply chain initiative when you hear the words “radio frequency identification,” or “RFID.” Wal-Mart is already seeing a return on their 2005 investment. But does RFID technology make as much sense for asset management as for supply chain management?
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In asset-intensive industries, the reliability of capital assets is essential to success. Maintenance of these assets can dramatically impact the overall performance and useful life of an asset. Accordingly, asset owner–operators and asset service providers are continually trying to improve their maintenance practices—which is why they’re deploying key strategies and technologies to refine the effectiveness of their operations.
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If you’re not using a service and maintenance application, you may have reached the point where manual systems no longer support the pace of business. Where to start? You should know the five important questions to ask before implementing. The ten essential features to look for. How to prepare for product demonstrations. And the five most common mistakes people make.
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Information technology (IT) executives are beginning to seriously re-evaluate their highly hyped, service-oriented architectures (SOA) strategies—and consequently, their IT outsourcing, hosting, and enterprise system management strategies. However, creating long-term strategies is complicated by the wide range of available service delivery models. That’s why it’s vital to uncover the important concepts—and decision points—relating to these different delivery models.
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Aerospace and defense (A&D) companies are constantly seeking better ways to manage complexity, cut costs, and boost productivity. One of the most challenging areas within the A&D industry is maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO). To introduce new efficiencies and reduce MRO costs, many companies are looking beyond standard business practices to new strategies that promise solid business results.
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Utilities have always held information about their assets, but traditionally this has been held in different parts of the business and not integrated into single coherent systems. Good asset management is increasingly about being able to feed information from business processes across the company into an asset management system, and using information from that system for financial and operational improvement.
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St. Marys Paper Ltd. is a pulp and paper mill located in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario (Canada). In 1989, it implemented a CHAMPS computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) to help reduce costs and improve efficiencies. In 1998, St. Marys decided to investigate potential vendors for a maintenance system upgrade. After reviewing several vendors, the mill again turned to CHAMPS.
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Like many health care providers, Wisconsin (US)-based Aurora faces pressures to improve care quality, while monitoring its bottom line. Asset optimization remains elusive for most such enterprises, but Aurora devised a plan to use a centralized service management call center to facilitate service requests, and dispatch resources. Aurora was thereby able to attain higher efficiency, and still strengthen service levels.
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Many external factors are forcing companies to focus on cost efficiencies to gain a competitive advantage. As a result, maintenance organizations are now being charged with the responsibility to contribute to the bottomline. The condition, availability and reliability of site assets affect a company’s ability to meet fluctuations in market demands, maintain quality and safety levels, and minimize product losses. Improving asset reliability impacts the bottom line. Learn how to develop a business case to justify reliability-driven maintenance.
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Creating an efficient centralized maintenance and operations program is made easier if you start with the right planning. This article addresses a tactical view to making your CMMS and EAM implementation work the first time.
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Asset life cycle management is an increasingly important strategic initiative for asset-intensive industries to explore. Innovative organizations can use their assets for competitive advantage and thereby improve the profitability of their business. Learn how advanced asset life cycle management strategies can contribute to organizational agility, security, and flexibility, and improve responsiveness in a demanding marketplace.
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