Demarc extensions have been a recurring gray area in the telecommunications industry for years. There is often misconception when it comes to who actually performs the Demarc extension. This confusion can lead to finger pointing and eventually a bad reputation for those involved. Understand the issues surrounding the Demarc extension and how they can be resolved from the very beginning.
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With nearly 200 million Web sites vying for traffic, there’s more to marketing a Web site than waiting for the masses to discover it. Search engine optimization (SEO) techniques can help, but your site will be competing with millions of other sites. Discover how one of the most powerful SEO techniques—link building—can persuade search engines like Google to value your site over others lacking quality incoming links.
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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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Wireless broadband systems are becoming ever more complex at an unprecedented pace. Verification of such an intricate system in a short development cycle is a challenging and tedious task. This white paper throws light on the need for automated test frameworks required for a wireless broadband system. It discusses two approaches that can help accelerate the verification process of physical layers and higher layers respectively of the protocol stack in wireless broadband systems.
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As software-as-a-service (SaaS) spreads rapidly as a business model among independent software vendors (ISVs), the importance of SaaS configurability has come to the fore. With increasingly competitive deployments, the ability of individual tenants to configure their own options, business processes, and data structures will become the key differentiator among otherwise similar offerings—and will often prove critical to
the success or failure of a SaaS deployment. Discover the variety of configurable options, typical technical challenges, and common approaches for optimizing SaaS configurability.
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Today’s mobile software companies face a daunting challenge: How can they achieve quality while getting to market swiftly? After all, speed is king in the mobile market. The trade-off between speed and quality in mobile software development is an illusion—or should be. Get a closer look at the situation with a framework that presents a way to use quality assurance (QA) processes to accelerate development.
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Today’s technology and application leaders are pressured to deliver functionality that drives efficiency, innovation, and growth—while reducing costs. As a result, technology and application portfolio management (APM) are top business priorities. Learn about a framework for implementing an APM program that can enable your company to monitor and analyze the impact of application changes and reduce portfolio complexity.
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Acts of cyber aggression could lead to a cyber war or worse. Capitol Hill is giving attention to this security issue, and vendors are creating new offerings and expanding existing programs—creating new opportunities in the defense industry and opening doors for new players. Learn more about the blurring between information security vendors servicing the private sector and those in the defense and intelligence industry.
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Search engine marketing (SEM)? We’re talking about tactics for Web site promotion—increasing both a site’s visibility to Google (and other search engines) and the site’s prominence in search engine results. We’re talking about pulling visitors through search engine optimization (SEO) and improved organic listing and using paid placement to push visitors to a site. Learn more about how to develop an effective SEM process.
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Retaining good IT staff for clients is no easy task. They face issues regarding competitive rates, contracts, benefits, liabilities, and more. So how do companies determine if they have the right model of retained staff? Or how much of a firm’s IT should be outsourced? What are the typical billing models used by service providers? Get help with these and other questions, addressed from the service provider’s perspective.
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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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To do their jobs, knowledge workers use the gamut of media and technologies. However, although the proliferation of new means to locate and access data has multiplied the amount of information available to these workers, it’s also made the efficient dissemination, management, and processing of data more burdensome. Find out more about how collaborative tools are—and aren’t—being used in the information-sharing workplace.
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Successful businesses start with a plan, and begin with the end in mind. A Web site is no different—it simply functions in the online world, rather than the physical world. The Australian government tells us that over 11 million Australians frequently use the Internet—why not take advantage of this? Here are seven key strategies that can help you decide what type of environment to create as you plan your online business.
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Business networks have come to the fore in the past decade, as the power of customers and consumers has increased relative to the manufacturers and retailers that serve them. These networks enable these companies to deliver faster innovation to customers at lower costs by sharing investment, assets, and ideas. Find out how information technology and communication (ITC) systems can help you unlock new market opportunities.
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IT has long been one of the best ways to address business challenges. Yet significant obstacles at the level of IT infrastructure stand in the way. Siloed IT operations and rigid IT management processes can impede business agility. When IT partners with the business to act less as a technology provider and more as a service provider, business objectives can be achieved more efficiently and cost-effectively. Find out how.
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In a business and technology environment that evolves faster all the time, a key challenge for franchise operators is to continue finding ways to improve. Some recent advances in the architecture of Web-based business tools have major consequences for franchise operators. Find out more.
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Oxford University Press (OUP), the largest university press in the world, publishes over 4,500 books per year. OUP has long used electronic data interchange (EDI) for inbound orders, invoices, and credit and delivery notes. Learn why incorporating a value-added network (VAN) to its existing EDI software helped OUP improve its warehouse efficiency, boost trading partner adoption, and reduce annual VAN costs by 60 percent.
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Web-borne malware is now more common than malware entering a company through e-mail. The number of Web sites carrying malware increased by 400 percent in 2008. This can cause serious issues for your business. You need to proactively protect your networks both by instituting acceptable usage policies for employee Web usage and by implementing a solution that can effectively combat these malware intrusions. Find out how.
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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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The new capabilities of web-based technologies and the burgeoning digitalization of the battlefield have positioned the military to adopt complete cross-service logistics solutions. This interoperability is key for integrated logistics system (ILS) projects—as is the need for ILS to include a deployable aspect. Learn more about the importance of ILS deployability to enable “foxhole to factory” supply chain capability.
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Want to know more about distributed agile best practices for software development projects? Find out about the challenges and lessons learned from this implementation of distributed agile for teams distributed across US, Europe, and India. Discover how this large, globally distributed project for a large telecom vendor realized such benefits as better collaboration, higher quality product, and on-time delivery.
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Connecting company networks securely to the Internet has been the role of the venerable network router. Companies seeking to securely link trusted networks with external users and Internet resources—like software-as-as-service (SaaS) applications—are discovering that identities must be unified across internal and external networks. Discover the benefits of a new device created to meet this need: the identity router.
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Mobile and Internet technologies are now the de facto standards for daily communication. Service providers take the opportunity to launch innovative solutions. One such is femto cells: small base stations and access points providing last-mile access and better coverage in densely populated areas. Learn about the differences between unlicensed mobile access (UMA) and second generation/third generation (2G/3G) femto cells.
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Long-term cost savings and extensive feature sets make voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) phone systems an attractive option for many businesses. But with prices for a single VoIP phone ranging from $150 to $700 (USD) or more, switching to VoIP can be an expensive proposition. Find out what to look for in a VoIP phone system, how to buy, what you can expect to pay, and how to get the most out of your investment.
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As companies come to grips with current fiscal realities, choices may result more from reaction than the use of sound judgment. Removing vital resources and reducing services can create an even lower return on investment (ROI) than existed before downsizing. Outsourcing may offer a solution. Learn about the effects that the present financial situation will have on the outsourcing community, including buyers and suppliers.
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Whatever you offer as a service provider, success depends on how well you manage key accounts to ensure long-term relationships and the highest possible margins. But with today’s challenges, it’s difficult to maintain market share, let alone grow. SAP’s All-in-One fast-start program offers a solution that can help you maximize client and service-line profitability by supporting industry best practices. Learn more.
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Lower IT costs, faster return on investment (ROI), and better security—just a few of the promises the software-as-a-service (SaaS) business model makes. SaaS can help small-to-medium businesses manage customer service and support cost-effectively. But there are a few concerns to consider if you’re thinking of an on-demand service. A vendor that offers the best of both on-demand and on-premise solutions may be the answer.
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The constant launch of new telecommunications products creates stiff competition, and to manage increasingly complex product portfolios, you should ensure your processes are optimized, your data is accurate, and your solutions are integrated. The first business area you should focus on is order management. Find out how you can better address the challenges of the order-to-cash cycle, decomposition, provisioning, and more.
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The publishing industry is experiencing dramatic changes that are forcing companies to re-examine their operations, and to implement new processes and technologies to help them in the future. To handle the new cyclical flow of content in digital media, publishers will have to discover new ways to produce and deliver content to meet the changing demands of the market, using an integrated publishing model. Learn more.
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You need a new Internet protocol (IP) phone system—but you’re not quite sure which features and functions would best meet your business operation’s needs. It’s important to know if you’re better off migrating to a hybrid IP PBX system or to a pure IP system. Answer this question and 10 others so you can be prepared to talk with resellers and vendors about IP phones for your voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) system.
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Looking for a new business phone system? To find a premise-based private branch exchange (PBX) solution that meets your needs, you should ask yourself several key questions about your current situation. Be sure to specify your business requirements up front to PBX providers—and know which you’re prepared to drop in return for a lower cost. This checklist can help you ask the right questions and keep track of the answers.
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A hosted Internet protocol private branch exchange (IP PBX) system can provide an easy way for small to medium businesses (SMBs) to move to voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) and get a new range of features and capabilities. While there are several IP PBX options, hosted applications are usually quicker and cheaper to install. Discover the critical features and services your SMB needs in a new hosted phone system.
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A national health insurance company’s spreadsheet-based telecom management process was leading to time and money wasted as staff tried to make up for lack of spend visibility. Further pressure to prepare the telecom function for upcoming merger activity pushed the company to find a technology that would effect immediate cost savings and long-term telecom expense management. Read more about the solution the company chose.
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Internet protocol (IP) and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) systems allow inexpensive transport, cheap phone calls, and simple management of a single network. But the true value is in the new applications IP enables, such as unified communications (UC). How can you use UC to further decrease costs, enhance productivity, and improve customer service? Learn how to go beyond messaging for real-time call control and more.
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Although Active Voice is a global provider of business telecommunications, it didn’t have a dedicated solution for sales automation or customer service. Sales reps lacked what they needed to follow up on leads and were losing valuable opportunities. But when the company implemented an e-customer relationship (e-CRM) solution, its users gained mobile access to valuable customer information. Learn about the other benefits.
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Dramatic progress in communication and media industries are pushing service providers to seek new differentiation strategies. Next-generation services can play a major role in your future as a service provider. But first you need to understand the implications for your operational- and business-support systems—in particular your billing system. Learn how to make the most of next-generation services to generate revenue.
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Internet protocol multimedia subsystem (IMS) is transforming service providers’ networks by helping roll out blended voice-data-content services for wider markets. But before you implement IMS architectures to deliver more complex offerings, you need to know how IMS impacts your IT environment—and to address vital questions related to profitability and pricing, return on investment (ROI), and quality of service.
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Today’s reality for service providers is about dealing with falling voice revenues—and keeping existing customers. Some providers look for alternative sources of revenue via digital content and gaming. But as this happens, the product offerings become more complex, and the role of partners more and more important. Automated partner settlement solutions can play a very crucial part in your partner strategy. Find out how.
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Like other successful technology solutions, once proven in an enterprise environment, virtualization spreads quickly. While virtualized resources can address your growing capacity needs, they can also pose significant challenges—with long-term success depending on how well you can manage the virtualized system. Learn about what tools you’ll need in order to provide seamless physical and virtual server management.
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What does it take to give your clients a better customer experience? While there are many answers to that question, a common answer these days is “through a customer relationship management (CRM) portal.” Learn everything you need to know about CRM portals, including their key characteristics, the different kinds of CRM portals available, who is using them—and most importantly—how they improve customer service.
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To be successful today, companies must form and maintain strong profitable relationships with their customers. Failing to maintain a complete 360-degree view of all customers’ interactions can leave a company in a weakened competitive position. While customer relationship management (CRM) can improve customer interaction, it’s important to know which system will provide you with the best total cost of ownership (TCO).
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With today’s varied communication technologies, there are more ways than ever to stay in touch—and more pressure to respond immediately. This and the need to prioritize multiple messages prove that companies must provide employees with tools suited to managing an increased flow of messages. Learn more about second-generation enterprise communication solutions and how your company can deploy them for maximum benefit.
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In today’s competitive market, creating and maintaining successful customer relationships is vital. That’s why everyone involved with the customer must work together as a team. In most companies, sales, engineering, and marketing often use separate systems—causing communication gaps in customer support. Discover how sharing information through integrated customer relationship management (CRM) can help bridge those gaps.
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Most businesses recognize the strategic importance of customer relationship management (CRM), but some small to medium businesses (SMBs) continue to use basic contact managers or simple spreadsheets to track customers, manage leads, and collaborate on sales. Achieving great results requires more than just installing CRM software. Learn how assessing your business’s CRM maturity level can help build your road map to success.
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In the computing world, a dramatic shift is taking place—enabling a new way for IT departments to manage services. The promise of a leaner, more efficient data center has many businesses clamoring to go virtual. In the rush to virtualize, however, they have forgotten the painful and expensive lessons learned from introducing risk into the physical environment. Find out how detective controls can mitigate those risks.
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Do you think great IT performance is achieved through luck or chance? You can bet real money it’s not. But regardless of how you measure up to high performers, there are a few steps you can take to improve your processes—starting with controlling change. Find out how this simple and significant way to improve performance and processes can help you achieve your operational effectiveness and efficiency objectives.
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It seems that these days you need a password for everything. And with so many to remember, it’s no wonder helpdesks are bombarded with calls that tie up the IT department’s resources. Password inflation and the resulting fatigue increasingly frustrate not only end users, but the support teams that deal with the fallout of strict password polices as well. Find out how some businesses are putting an end to this madness.
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There’s no disputing the fact that content management systems (CMS) and service-oriented architecture (SOA) are closely related. From reuse, the ability to loosely couple service and functions, to being able to combine services into a new form, SOA and CMS share many common threads in the enterprise world. Find out how the forces that have made SOA so important today are now doing the same for CMS in web site management.
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Most companies are aware that the buying processes of the world and its buyers are changing, but many have yet to recognize the need to make changes within their own sales force. Often sales professionals don’t have the proper skills or tools needed to be successful. But by integrating the four sales process components, they’ll be able to capture information that can be used to place them high above the competition.
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As the growth of electronic records continues, two major trends in the world of document and content management have now become intertwined. In view of these trends, companies are beginning to assess their current record management practices, and what has resulted is the clear need for electronic records management (ERM). Discover how ERM can provide a cost-effective solution for your growing business.
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Billions of dollars are spent each year on business travel worldwide, of which over 5 percent is spent on tracking and reporting expenses. But is it possible to complete an expense report with virtually no human intervention? Now, automated corporate travel and expense management solutions are making this possible—reducing both direct and indirect costs, and providing significant savings to your bottom line.
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Although information technology service management (ITSM) is not a new discipline, many organizations have yet to adopt it as a part of their IT service improvement strategy. To be successful, businesses must start by building a custom road map. Read about how focusing on long-term, strategic objectives—including a realized return on investment (ROI)—can greatly improve your IT service delivery and support.
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In the public sector, where it’s often more about process than the business case, recompeting a current outsourcing relationship doesn’t always make the most sense for ensuring continued value. Due to the cost and time investment in the recompete process, it can often cause more problems than solutions. In many cases, outsourcing agreements simply need to be updated to meet changing business requirements. Find out how.
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In the past 10 years, business process and IT outsourcing markets have become globalized, raising some key issues for outsourcing buyers. How can you develop a service delivery model for your business that fully exploits global sourcing opportunities while supporting overall corporate strategies, goals, and principles? By developing a set of integrated capabilities and processes as part of your core competency.
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Empirical evidence demonstrates that the benefits of a distributed IT services model are considerable—yet many companies still resist the change. If IT professionals took the time to fully understand the positive impact of distributed services models on both cost and value, they’d be better equipped to fight organizational resistance and develop a road map for successful change. Find out how you can build yours today.
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A contact center is a mission-critical component of any organization’s operations—regardless of who they service. Yet stakeholders often remain dissatisfied with its performance. In the past, contact centers benefited from advances in information and technologies, yet many companies struggled to determine how they could take advantage of these benefits. Find out how embracing both old and new technologies today can work.
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For many organizations, undertaking IT and business process outsourcing involves everything from finding and assessing providers, to selecting locations, to determining which services are required. But the hardest part of outsourcing occurs after the deal is done. To help businesses ensure consistency in outsourcing governance, there are nine critical factors to keep in mind that can help guarantee its success.
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Collaborative tools are becoming essential to sharing data in today’s office environment. You need a solution that can grow to accommodate new projects and uses—and a storage system that is flexible enough to meet initial demands and adapt to changes. Find out how a multiple-node storage area network (SAN) can maximize the scalability and functionality of your collaboration tools, and ease storage administration.
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To retain the integrity and availability of your key operational data, your server infrastructure must provide effective data backup and recovery. When used with a storage area network (SAN), a data protection manager (DPM) can help increase your storage space, reduce time needed to create backup, and allow for quick recovery of data when disaster strikes. Learn more about this scalable and cost-effective solution.
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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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The days of telephone switchboard operators are long gone. In today's electronic age, through private branch exchange (PBX) technology, operators have been replaced with Internet protocols that automate the switchboard process. But how can you make the most of your modern phone system when you're not really sure how it works? Discover some tips and tricks that can help you understand—and optimize—your business phone setup.
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In recent years, the BlackBerry smartphone has transitioned from being a small-scale productivity tool to a widely used mission-critical platform. This shift has prompted IT organizations to explore what key technical capabilities and internal process standards are needed to ensure superior performance and availability. Discover why traditional monitoring technologies have failed, and what new approaches have emerged.
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Every enterprise must be prepared to confront an incident that threatens the security, privacy, or general operations of the company or its customers. But how is it possible to respond to an incident quickly, without interrupting corporate operations? By building an incident response team (IRT) with the right skills, authority, and knowledge to properly deal with a range of known—and unknown incidents. Find out how.
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While there are numerous strategies for dealing with the restoration of functions through a recovery process, there is only one for continuing operations with minimal interruption. It’s called a reserve system, and it’s vital for business continuation. It’s fast and easy to activate, simple to move, low in cost, testable, available, and highly reliable. Find out how it compares to some of the more traditional strategies.
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Once a revolutionary concept, data warehouses are now the status quo—enabling IT professionals to manage and report on data originating from diverse sources. But where does log data fit in? Historically, log data was reported on through slow legacy applications. But with today’s log data warehouse solutions, data is centralized, allowing users to analyze and report on it with unparalleled speed and efficiency.
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As part of their compensation strategy, many businesses today are looking for software products that can manage commissions, sales incentives, and bonus programs. But with the number of companies now offering a variety of viable solutions, it has become even more difficult to know which one to choose. To help you select the right solution for your organization, consider these key evaluation factors first.
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Telephony is a key element of convergence—and the primary reason for the hype surrounding it. But why is telephony so important to convergence? Voice or telephony traffic is very sensitive to latency on the network. The fact that converged networks must provide timely and reliable delivery of voice traffic makes it a key component to a successful converged solution implementation. Learn more about how it all works.
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Is your business tangled in a maze of voice data networking equipment that burdens your staff and is cumbersome to support? If the answer is yes, then you may want to think about network convergence over Internet protocol (IP)—the foundation for IP telephony, unified messaging, and multimedia customer contact centers. Find out more about how your business can benefit from data and voice convergence solutions today.
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Most spam, viruses, phishing, and e-mail denial-of-service attacks can be traced back to a single common cause: lack of e-mail protocol authentication. This lack of authentication means that a receiving mail server cannot reliably verify that a particular message is in fact from the sender it claims to be from, making it harder to distinguish friend from foe. Find out more about new standards that can help.
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While a great deal of attention has been given to protecting companies’ electronic assets from outside threats, organizations must now turn their attention to an equally dangerous situation: data loss from the inside. Given today’s strict regulatory standards, data loss prevention (DLP) has become one of the most critical issues facing executives. Fortunately, effective technical solutions are now available that can help.
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The media industry is undergoing radical and rapid change driven by liberalization, privatization, and digitization. Broadcasting is no longer highly regulated, but is ever more dynamic and competitive—and the logistical challenges of production planning for TV and radio ever more complex. Implement a composite resource planning and scheduling solution to maximize your equipment, facilities, and employees.
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Today, all retailers that process, store, or transmit cardholder data have a fiduciary responsibility to protect that data. As such, they must comply with a diverse range of regulations and industry mandates. However, many retailers struggle with the task of implementing the proper policies and controls. Discover how log management and intelligence (LMI) can help you simplify and accelerate the compliance process.
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Understanding the full scope of risk in today’s complex business environment is a must for achieving compliance with governmental mandates and industry regulations. However, many companies have a limited perception of risk and struggle to make compliance an enterprise-wide, integrated process. Compliance is no longer a one-time isolated project; it’s an ongoing effort—and you’re just tens steps away from discovering why.
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Developing business acumen isn’t easy, but it is fundamental to business alignment. What does that mean exactly? It means understanding what it takes for a business to make money, and it involves the financial literacy of how strategies, decisions, and actions impact the bottom line. Through classroom-based training, your managers and employees can learn how these connections are made to the business. Find out more.
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There’s a war going on, and many companies are fighting it—and losing. It’s a war to attract and retain great talent. While projected economic growth is fueling demand, companies of all sizes are finding it difficult to get and keep skilled employees. What can be done to stop this talent crisis? Organizations must make talent management a top priority. Find out how this simple tactic can lead your organization to victory.
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Organizations today, in the face of increased global competition, need educated managers and employees who can solve problems, understand complex issues, and learn new skills quickly. This means that training organizations need to provide learning opportunities that effectively address these issues in ways that produce high retention rates. But if lectures don’t work, then what does? Enter discovery learning.
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DIRECTV is one of the largest broadcast satellite providers in the US. Faced with increased competition, the company decided to transform its supply chain by synchronizing its material requirements with its main equipment providers and automating its return materials authorization (RMA) process. With the help of SAP Solutions and Services, DIRECTV has improved its processes and reduced nonqualified returns by 20 percent.
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Managing growth is a monumental undertaking—and one that Valero Energy Corporation has mastered. But as one of the largest oil refinery companies in North America, with revenues exceeding $90 billion (USD), the company needed to find a way to fit new applications into its existing infrastructure in a quick and cost-effective manner. By switching to SAP’s NetWeaver platform, Valero saved $480,000 (USD) in the first month.
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A recent study by Jupiter Research found that e-mail marketers using Web analytics click-stream data to generate targeted e-mail campaigns produce an impressive average click-through rate of 14 percent, and a conversion rate of 3.9 percent. Can your business claim numbers this high? If not, find out how you can with Web analytics tools that will help you gain insight on your subscribers’ behaviors while increasing sales.
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In the past, training was seen as a preventive action or default activity. Then learning came into the forefront as a proactive initiative that was more strongly linked to enhancing performance. This radical change from training to learning has created a new awareness of measurement that chief executive officers (CEO) need to take note of. Discover the 7 key learning indicators that can get you started on the right path.
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Look at any office around the world and you’ll see how the workplace has changed dramatically in the last decade. Rapidly changing technology coupled with geographical dispersion has meant that organizations need to be more flexible than ever. Workers too have had to face this constant change and need to retool themselves to not only adapt, but survive. Discover how collaborative technology is becoming their saving grace.
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In today’s fast-paced business environment, providing customers with timely support when problems occur is critical. But in order to do so, information must be readily available throughout the enterprise. By integrating your customer support, defect tracking development, and knowledge management systems, your business will benefit from improved customer satisfaction and retention, as well as increased staff productivity.
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The University of Maryland School of Medicine had already experienced VMware technology as a way to consolidate its servers; what it didn’t realize was that the company’s solution could also address its disaster recovery needs. By combining two storage technologies—creating a common storage area network (SAN)—the school has reduced unexpected downtime from hours to seconds and has saved thousands of dollars in hardware costs.
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As the Microsoft Exchange environment continues to grow, building and managing the underlying IT infrastructure becomes increasingly difficult for Exchange administrators. Adding more and more storage can lead to frequent system downtime and slower response times. Discover seven ways your administrators can spend less time on day-to-day Microsoft Exchange management—while planning for future growth in the process.
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The pressure to reduce costs, increase network performance, and improve productivity has been a constant battle for IT and telecommunications groups alike. While new technologies have emerged to help solve some of these requirements, in many cases they have proven to be inefficient and expensive. Find out how Layer 2 link balancing technologies can help your organization build a faster, smarter wide area network (WAN).
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Many companies spend an inordinate amount of time and money ensuring their documentation meets regulatory standards. But in order to streamline the document submission process in a cost-effective manner, companies should adopt document management technologies coupled with collaborative document transformation tools. Learn how these tools can help your company accelerate its submission-compliant document workflows.
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Is it possible for a business to ensure uninterrupted, secure, and high-performance access to network-based business applications and web sites? Yes. With network load balancers, user requests are evenly distributed among available servers so that individual servers do not become overwhelmed. Learn about the basics of load balancing and how it can improve the performance and security of your business applications.
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As the global marketplace continues to become more competitive, enterprises are struggling with how to retain their competitive edge. While many have transferred their databases to internet protocol (IP) to replace outdated systems, some have yet to upgrade their phone systems as part their strategy. Discover how migrating to voice over IP (VoIP) as part of an overall telecommunications strategy can help your business.
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Customer information system (CIS) projects in the utilities industry have earned a reputation for being disruptive to business, very expensive, and always behind schedule. As a mission-critical cash register for utilities, it pays to examine CIS more closely. Learn about the perspectives on strategic CIS assessment frameworks and how a structured solution can help you improve the agility of CIS without a huge investment.
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Today’s configuration management tools focus on collecting and reporting statistics, logs, and failures, but fail to address the need for analyzing this data to determine best practices for improving efficiencies. That’s why Configuresoft has developed software that enables you to link core systems configuration and change management disciplines into actionable analytics. Find out how it can work for you.
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Microsoft Visual SourceSafe (VSS) is a popular tool for the Windows platform that offers essential version control features and helps promote team collaboration. However, while it performs certain functions well, it’s not optimized for remote access, lacks many critical security features, and suffers from stability problems. Find out why many developers are now switching from VSS to SourceAnywhere Standalone.
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Tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) helps ensure that projects are delivered on time and within budget, and creates a system for improving accountability. Once KPIs are established, there needs to be a way to easily track this data—otherwise it will become an arduous task that may be done improperly. Learn how leveraging integrated project management software can help drive your business process improvements.
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According to Web services provider IronPort, over 92 billion spam messages are sent around the world daily. While it may seem like an uphill battle, several strategies are available that can help. To combat these threats, many organizations are implementing new technologies to secure their inboxes by blocking unsolicited messages. Discover what other tactics your business can adopt to help e-mail deliverability.
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Managing a newly deployed voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) integration project is not as easy as some IT managers believe it to be. Delivering voice traffic over the IP network is time-consuming, and requires the right tools and a proper budget. To fully understand the costs associated with IP telephony implementation, businesses must first conduct a thorough evaluation of their management options—prior to deployment.
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Human resources (HR) systems have been around for many years, providing robust and efficient solutions for companies of all sizes. When properly designed, implemented, and maintained, these systems allow companies to engage and nurture their employees and critical processes. When these systems are neglected, however, the result is a loss of competitive edge, increased employee dissatisfaction, and unnecessary costs.
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Many companies struggle to adapt to their ever-changing workforce, as employees start the job and then leave for better offers. Competition is fierce—and retaining highly skilled job candidates has never been more difficult. In order to achieve their business goals and stay competitive, many companies are turning to integrated talent management (ITM). Find out how you can get started on your ITM development plan today.
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Why choose on-demand when there are so many integrated software solutions on the market? Because on-demand packages provide a number of benefits that can help IT focus on innovation and creating true business value, rather than dealing with network headaches. But along with the benefits there are a number of challenges. Read more about these challenges and how you can manage your on-demand implementation project.
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Microsoft Windows Storage Server 2003 is frequently deployed in small or midsize applications. And while many customers view it as an excellent small network-attached storage (NAS) solution, they often move to larger, proprietary file server appliances when their needs expand beyond its capacity. This approach, however, adds more expense and complexity. But with Sanbolic’s Melio Cluster, capacity can be added as needed.
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Microsoft System Management Server 2003 and Operations Manager 2005 storage monitoring solutions provide the necessary tools to centrally manage and monitor Windows client and server infrastructure. Now, Sanbolic’s LaScala clustered volume manager and related products offer a complementary toolkit which enables administrators to centrally configure and assign storage assets in a storage area network (SAN) environment.
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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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Effective IT disaster recovery (DR) and planning is essential for every business. However, IT environments have become so complex that safeguarding the business against disasters can present some major challenges. One way to improve your business disaster recovery planning is by pre-testing DR scenarios using network simulation. Find out how a simulation testing solution can help you better protect your business.
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Are you on top of data security compliance? Is your source code secure? Are you looking for a new approach that can help ensure these things are taken care of? With SourceAnyware Hosted solution—which provides 128-bit SSL encryption—your data is protected and your source code is secured from attacks. Find out how SourceAnywhere can help you lower total cost of ownership and improve your development team productivity.
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As businesses become increasingly dependent on the effective delivery of IT services over global networks, technologies that optimize application performance over wide area networks (WANs) become more competitive. But how do you know which WAN to choose when there are so many solutions on the market? By learning about WAN best practices and principles, and by making comparative evaluations of competing vendors’ offerings.
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The nature of software is that it constantly evolves, requiring regular updates throughout its lifetime as new features are introduced. But managing and implementing these changes is often left to experienced administrators who are often overwhelmed with other projects. Find out how moving to a delegated administration model can help your business improve its administrative productivity, system availability, and security.
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When you connect to the Internet, you do so through the Windows Socket (Winsock) layer. While this layer is an integral part of the Windows operating system and acts as an interface between your computer and the Net, it cannot distinguish the difference between good traffic and bad. MicroWorld Winsock Layer (MWL) technology helps by sitting on the Winsock layer and analyzing the traffic—before it gets to your computer.
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Today, more and more companies are purchasing goods from overseas. But once those goods are on the water, many companies find it difficult to keep track of where they are at any given time. Ineffective container management leads to extra costs, but with Sage ERP X3’s import tracking functionality, business functions are tied together in a single database—enabling real-time access to information and improving productivity.
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In a 2006 SAP survey, 93 percent of respondents experienced data management issues during their most recent projects. The problem: many organizations believe that they are using master data, when in fact what they are relying on is data that is dispersed throughout the enterprise. Discover the importance of master data and how the ideal master data management (MDM) solution can help your business get it under control.
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Spam has become a global epidemic. And because it is constantly evolving and mutating, spam makes it difficult to separate good e-mails from the bad. While most mail servers have mechanisms to combat spam, they often require third party solutions to eradicate spam from the network. Find out more about the shortcomings of established filtering methods, and how one community-based approach to filtering can work.
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Have you ever received a call from your existing long-distance phone company asking you to switch to its service and wondered why they are calling? Chances are the integrity of its data is so poor that the company has no idea who many of its customers are. The fact is, many businesses suffer from this same problem. The solution: implement a master data management (MDM) system that uses an accurate data matching process.
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Ensuring the quality, accuracy, and security of customer data has never been more important than it is today. The growing potential for privacy breaches and tighter compliance regulations have created unique challenges and responsibilities for many data providers. Here we discuss some of the key privacy issues surrounding data management, and how partnering with a provider of master data management (MDM) software can help.
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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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Businesses today are increasingly committed to Web-enabled applications as a cost-effective way of delivering critical business solutions. But as more and more businesses follow suit, it becomes increasingly apparent that better performance and availability across the Internet must be realized by the early movers in order to maintain their lead. With the deployment of advanced products and services, this can be achieved.
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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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According to Symantec, 40 percent of malicious attacks target your browser. With Web content threats quickly on the rise, there’s an opportunity for businesses to enhance their Web filtering strategies. Enforcing appropriate use policy and providing robust Web content security, however, requires a dynamic filtering solution that can mitigate a variety of content security threats—not only today but in the future as well.
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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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A clear customer focus is an essential part of improving business effectiveness and efficiency. But how can businesses achieve global customer visibility in today's competitive market? With the implementation of a master data management (MDM) solution, businesses can gain multidimensional, real-time visibility of their customers, resulting in improved competitiveness, higher profit margins, and reduced business risk.
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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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Storage system administrators are constantly battling with growing volumes of data. But can you create more space-efficient storage? You can. With a data virtualization solution like NetApp Snapshot, administrators can create point-in-time copies of data volumes—consuming only a fraction of the space normally required. Find out how using data virtualization tools can help reduce your ongoing data storage management costs.
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Every company faces different challenges and has different needs in regard to enterprise resource planning (ERP). Choosing the right ERP system can be difficult because there is really no one-size-fits-all ERP solution. However, there are certain basic principles that apply to nearly every company’s situation. Find out what they are, and learn how you can increase your chances of a successful ERP implementation.
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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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With the recent amendments made to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), businesses must take a closer look at how they manage their electronic data. Recent studies have shown that many companies are not prepared for how these changes will affect their business. To improve their governance procedures to meet these new requirements, businesses must invest in technology that can adequately preserve electronic data.
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It’s no secret that there is a bevy of deployment options available with most customer relationship management (CRM) solutions today—ranging from customized to out-of-the-box. But with choice comes complexity. In order for CRM buyers to choose wisely, they must find a deployment approach that best matches their needs while delivering superior performance, application integration, and functionality. Find out how.
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Wi-Fi has become the access method of choice for users at the office, at home, and on the road. According to research, nearly 200 million Wi-Fi chipsets were sold in 2006 alone. But can Wi-Fi work effectively in a wireless local area network (WLAN) environment? Yes it can. To deliver Wi-Fi more reliably to increasingly diverse devices requires a self-configuring platform that covers larger areas and higher user densities.
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For consumers, fixed/mobile convergence (FMC) means a world where integrated voice and data services are available anywhere through a single mobile handset. For carriers, FMC represents a lucrative opportunity to leverage inexpensive technology. This technology, however, has its technical challenges, making performance hard to predict. To be successful, carriers need to understand the factors that influence this behavior.
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Today, dozens of independent operating companies and international carriers offer Internet protocol TV (IPTV) services to homes around the world. But IPTV for in-home distribution has been a weak link in the IPTV delivery chain—until now. Ruckus Wireless multimedia systems can help overcome current Wi-Fi limitations and enhance subscriber experience by uniquely enabling a whole-home network for video, voice, and data.
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Radio communications are subject to unpredictable behavior due to environmental dependencies and various types of interference. But with the proper operating parameters and an agile antenna system, many of these impairments can be mitigated. Using smart antenna technology like Wi-Fi, with its adaptive real-time system, you can greatly improve the transport of demanding applications in challenging wireless environments.
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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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There are key systems in every infrastructure where unapproved change can pose significant business risk. These guidelines show you how to properly categorize these systems in order to identify those that have risk characteristics. By learning how to identify critical change control failure points in your infrastructure, you reduce the threat of costly downtime, potential security breaches, and compliance weaknesses.
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Before an organization can truly realize the cost and agility benefits of enterprise service-oriented architecture (SOA), there are a few concepts it should know about. By understanding the various stages of SOA adoption and by knowing what technologies are available, an organization will stand a better chance of succeeding in its SOA initiatives. With these seven steps, effective SOA can be realized.
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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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Linux operating systems are taking the world by storm, and have seen double-digit growth rates for seven consecutive quarters. With its promise of higher performance and better stability and security, Linux has become the alternative to traditional Windows-based servers. By deploying Linux in key strategic areas and taking advantage of application publishing solutions, you can lower your costs and speed time-to-market.
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As one of the largest Internet marketplaces, eBay proclaims that the trust it enables between buyers and sellers has been the key to its success. To ensure continued success, eBay wanted to standardize its network security auditing and remediation processes, and turned to QualysGuard’s vulnerability management solution. With Qualys’ automated solution, eBay can now quickly and easily remediate any network vulnerabilities.
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The communications landscape has never been more complex nor offered so many choices and solutions as it does today. As more employees go mobile, companies need to be able to offer better communication capabilities to their people. The convergence of technologies involved, however, can cause service provider issues and create confusion for customers. To solve these issues, several questions need to be asked.
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When it comes to data and storage management, midsize organizations often face similar issues to those of their larger counterparts. Rapid data growth, business continuity, and data archiving are just a few of the problems they must deal with. By coupling IP-based storage area network (SAN) technology with Ethernet-based SAN connectivity, however, organizations can gain higher levels of efficiency and effectiveness.
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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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For small businesses with limited budgets and IT support, customer relationship management (CRM) has been out of reach. Until now, these small companies have missed out on the benefits provided by CRM because most applications were built for larger companies. New technology, however, has now emerged that levels the playing field for these smaller businesses by providing a fully customizable and affordable CRM system.
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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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Non-profit organization The March of Dimes realized that to continue its success, it would need to find more efficient and effective ways to work. Its human resources (HR) department was doing most of its HR and payroll processes manually—for over 1400 employees in various locations. To automate these processes, it turned to a Web-based application and has since significantly cut down on processing time and expense.
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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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Any geographically distributed business with three or more remote sites has likely dealt with tape-based backup systems. If this sounds like your business, then you certainly understand the complexities involved with managing growing data—not to mention the risks. The good new is that an agentless, multisite backup and recovery software solution is available that can offer a high-speed alternative to tape-based systems.
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Would spending millions of dollars and countless hours securing your data center be enough for it to pass a compliance audit? While many businesses work hard at securing their data centers, they often forget to secure remote office data. With the consequences of non-compliance ranging from financial penalties to job loss and worse, it could mean the end of your business. Don’t let compliance become your Achilles heel.
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Online advertising has grown so fast that it has surpassed billboards, magazines, and cable in spending. Local advertising is growing even faster, and the need to provide competitive services to advertisers is becoming imperative. As demand for local listings increases, a tool enabling advertisers to manage their own web site listings will not only save them significant operating dollars, it’ll provide a competitive edge.
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Today’s IT professionals are often challenged by unrelenting changes in the enterprise, increased data growth and compliance regulations, and geographic distribution of assets, to name a few. Keyboard/video/mouse (KVM) over Internet protocol (IP) can help by providing an effective tool that can remotely manage servers—regardless of their physical location. When looking for a KVM over IP solution, you should consider some basic requirements first.
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An estimated 55 percent of users of business critical applications work in remote locations. With so many users working remotely, networks become congested and user productivity suffers. Until now, wide area network (WAN) monitoring and shaping has required special appliances, but there’s a new alternative software-based solution available that leverages the power of the user’s PC—providing unprecedented traffic control.
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Is it possible to easily migrate from legacy tape devices to encrypting tape drives and still keep costs to a minimum? The answer is yes. With a comprehensive key management storage security system, a manageable and affordable migration process is achievable with a simple 3-step process. This process includes many benefits, such as a complete feature set that enhances system auditability and minimizes operational costs.
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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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What does Visibility’s .NET enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution have that others don’t? .NET technology. And because it contains no legacy code, it provides a system that’s accessible using a web-browser and has a user interface equal in functionality to a client-server application. In fact, any client PC with Internet Explorer 5.5 or later can operate it—without compromising the quality of the user experience.
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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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How can you get the most out of a customer relationship management (CRM) solution while reducing operating costs and increasing overall profitability? By purchasing a hosted CRM solution that’ll provide the benefits of an on-premise CRM solution without the need for a complex implementation or the assistance of an in-house IT team. Hosted CRM is a cost-effective solution that promises a quick return on investment (ROI).
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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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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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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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Are virtual appliances really more advantageous than physical appliances? For businesses looking to |