• A picture is worth 1,000 words!!  Whenever possible, meet with the sales person at a location that has programs occurring. 

This ensures that the sales person gets a personal glimpse of the programs that you provide. That impact is priceless and is a moment that will stay with him/her.

• Provide the sales person with a “take away” packet.

This could include a pamphlet, newsletter or annual report.  Any item that they can read when they have an opportunity or could provide to someone else in the company who may have decision making authority regarding contracts or pricing.

• Take a minute!

Before the meeting turns to services, contracts and numbers; take a minute to talk about the agency.  This discussion should include a high level overview of where the budget is at and how you rely on their expertise to support you in staying within budgetary guidelines.  This sends a clear message from the start that relationships and collaborations are important to you. 

It is really important that the vendor understands your organization and the budgeting constraints that are placed on non-profits.  The more they understand your agency, the better they will be at supporting your agency with sound business recommendations that make sense for your organization today as well as positioning for future growth and success.  This will ultimately result in savings over the long-term.

Time to look at a sensitive, exponentially issue-inducing question: who should police the internet and how much policing should they, or anyone, be allowed to do? In this blog, we will be looking at the topic of domain name policing in particular.

 We are constantly reminded of the anonymity and opportunity the internet affords its users. These freedoms are one of the founding principles of the internet: that it be an open canvas on which anything can be painted and anyone we want can view it. The internet was supposed to be a virtual land where the most typical, average person could stake a claim and make a small piece of it their own.

 Like all newly-settled worlds, however, it cannot remain so forever. Various organizations have come about to monitor the internet and keep its users and their information safe. The Internet Corporation for the Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit in contract with the U.S. government, exists to manage internet addresses and oversee the addition of new domain suffixes. The most popular suffixes currently in use are .com, .net, and .org.

 A recent article on CNET.com once again brings to light the issue of domain name – and ultimately internet – governance. The United States government, among other governments both national and local, is looking to gain more power to allow or deny domain names. This has been a battle that has been raging in the internet background for as long as it has existed, and is a topic filled with shades of gray. For the past seven years, the domain suffix .xxx has been contested over by three camps: those who wish to use it, those who wish that it not be used at all, and those who wish not to be forced to use it.

 Many adult content webmasters want to have the suffix .xxx be as useable as .com or .org, to give them their own space on the internet and make them easier to find. Currently .xxx is not a functioning domain. The United States government and many conservative organizations do not want the .xxx domain to exist, seeing it as comparable to allowing an adult video store on the same block as the white house.  On another end of the argument are those who see this new domain as a way to keep all of these adult content websites in one centralized location, so no one can accidentally stumble upon them or so they can be blocked more easily. Some adult content webmasters, and some webmasters who have sex education information on their websites, or others whose main purpose is not adult content but some exists on their site, do not want to be forced to join this new domain.

 Over 115 new domain name proposals are expected this year, and some raise controversies, such as the .gay domain. Whose responsibility – or right – is it to say whether or not the .gay or .freetibet domains can be used? If the former were used, it may upset millions of conservatives. If the latter were used, it may upset a government with rule over billions of people. Yet what about the people who want to use those names? What about their rights? They aren’t breaking any laws.

 The debate over domain name allowance is explosive because it induces issues about freedom of speech and how much of a role governments should be able to play in the direction and access of the internet. Another example of governmental power over the internet is seen recently in Egypt, where the government shut down the internet in the entire country in an attempt to control its people. Is it right for a government to control something that belongs to no one, and yet belongs to everyone?

• Agility – Virtualized environments provide an incredible platform for adapting your company’s technology quickly in support of changing business goals and direction.
• Scalability – Adding new functionality to your company’s technology almost always presents numerous, critical, and complex concerns ranging from loss of productivity to significant capital expenditure. Virtualization simplifies this issue by eliminating hardware concerns from the equation.  In fact, a properly designed virtualization infrastructure will support relatively large changes in your company’s technology with very little complexity or out-of-pocket expense in comparison to a non-virtualized environment.
• Disaster Recovery – The ability to take an “image” of your server has been around for some time.  This ability is valuable from a disaster recovery standpoint because instead of rebuilding your server from scratch, you can simply reinstall the existing image of your server on a different piece of hardware which saves incredible amounts of time.  However, taking an existing image and installing it on a different hardware platform has always been at best difficult, and at the worst, nearly impossible. With a virtualized environment, however, this concern is eliminated because virtualization breaks the one-to-one ratio between your server hardware and software.

Note:  Management – Managing your company’s technology is a significant expense regardless of the size of your company or the market you’re in.  Yet, because technology is critical to productivity for almost every business these days, it is an expense that is absolutely necessary.  Virtualization doesn’t necessarily add to the management time required, and in certain circumstances, it can help reduce management time by removing the complexity of managing different hardware platforms.  However, it can also add some processes to your existing management routine, and if you don’t have professional, in-house IT support, you may need to leverage the services of your existing IT consultant a little more.

At first glance it may not seem that revolutionary, but virtualization is changing the way technology is used across all market segments. Really.

Virtualization as a technology has been around for quite some time, but it has only become prevalent within the SMB community over the past few years.  There are many reasons for this including cost, market viability, network infrastructure requirements, and more, but those barriers have been mostly removed over the past few years, making virtualization one of the most interesting and potentially valuable technologies for business today.  Yet, as we enter 2011, many businesses still don’t understand the values virtualization can provide them, nor do many businesses understand how to analyze whether virtualization is a good fit for them.  Well, read on and find out the practical aspects of utilizing virtualization technology for your business.

E-mail is a business tool that may very well be more important to most businesses than phones these days.  It is so critical to business operations not only because of the direct communication it provides with customers and internally, but for many companies, it also provides calendaring, task management, and time management tools.  With the critical nature of e-mail to business operations, it’s no wonder that e-mail was one of the first technologies to be delivered through “cloud” technologies.  Gmail, ymail, and others are all cloud-driven e-mail systems.  So how does this translate to value for your business?  To see the value cloud-based e-mail provides, it may be a good idea to compare traditional onsite e-mail with its cloud-based counterpart.

Traditional onsite e-mail

For the purpose of this article, let’s assume we have a business that has 35 staff members.  The business is considering deploying an e-mail server onsite that is powered by Microsoft Exchange.  This is quality solution that many businesses use today and it’s one that I’ve recommended often.  If we take this solution and compare it to a similar cloud-based solution, we can see the operational differences between the two…

For any technology, (e-mail included), there are hard costs and soft costs that we bear, and for those costs we receive operational value (oversimplified a bit, but sufficient to derive the comparative value between on-premise e-mail and cloud-based e-mail). As is the case with nearly all cloud solutions, the overall cost of a cloud solution is going to be greater over time than its onsite counterpart.  However, there are some definitive and tangible benefits for this greater cost.

Benefits of Cloud-based E-mail

• Administration – there is still some internal administration necessary in a cloud-based environment because internal resources are used to access your e-mail (Internet, desktops, etc.), but the bulk of the administration burden is transferred to the hosting company.  This reduces risk in many cases and reduces internal administration costs
• Accessibility – The very nature of cloud solutions require them to be highly accessible.
• Availability – Most cloud solutions, including e-mail, are hosted at a data center, often with a second data center available for failover, which gives you a much higher level of e-mail uptime over an onsite solution.  Additionally, most cloud-based e-mail providers will give you an SLA, stating their uptime requirements
• Initial Investment – though nearly all cloud solutions will cost more over time, there upfront cost is far lower than an onsite solution.

There are also drawbacks to cloud-based e-mail, as well:

• Cost – greater cost over time
• Integration – many software programs today interface directly with your e-mail system to capture messages, calendar data, and so forth.  Most of these programs won’t be able to integrate with cloud-based e-mail.
• Speed – Almost every program that is hosted remotely (or in the cloud) is going to respond just a little slower than if that program is running onsite.
• Control – whenever you move functionality offsite, you lose some degree of control of that function. 
• Backup – The frequency, type, and depth of your e-mail backup is something that needs to be redeveloped when you operate your e-mail from the cloud.

Ultimately, cloud-based e-mail is something that is becoming a better option for businesses, though admittedly, it isn’t for everyone.  Yet, there are some undeniable operational advantages that will only grow as time passes.  Either way, for many businesses, it’s probably evolved to the point that it is an option worth looking into.

Traditional Onsite Backup Issues

• Media (tapes or drives) must be tested regularly to ensure data integrity
• Reliability – most onsite backup systems (software & hardware) fail to backup all of your data.  Often a few corrupt files, or an open database connection can derail the backup process
• Lifespan – a quality backup system will last between 2 and 4 years depending on the quality
• Maintenance – In order to have confidence in the backup system it needs to be maintained regularly.
• Security – For any given onsite backup solution, there needs to be an off-site option.  Often, this amounts to an employee taking the backup media home with them.  Obviously, this presents significant data security concerns – especially if the employee needs to be terminated at some point.

Make no mistake, onsite backup is a good thing – it’s just that there are some undeniable drawbacks.  Consequently, more businesses are turning to automated offsite backup as a solution (i.e. backing up to the cloud).   The one notable drawback is that you have an ongoing monthly cost, yet the advantages often outweigh the concerns about ongoing cost – especially considering the fact that costs have fallen significantly over the past 12 to 18 months.  And the operational benefits are undeniable:

Benefits of Offsite Backup

• Security – Encrypted data transfer means that automated offsite backup is often far more secure the traditional onsite backup
• Automation – No switching tapes, drives, or transporting backup media to other locations
• Reliability – Today’s online backup systems are highly reliable.
• Retention – retaining data for more than two weeks is easy to accomplish, and for even longer retention periods, offsite backup is significantly less expensive than onsite data storage

Like all technologies, backing data up to the cloud isn’t for everyone.  And even if you do decide to invest in cloud-based backup, it doesn’t mean you need to abandon your onsite backup.  In fact, having some onsite backup never hurts because when it comes to your data, you have to be 100% certain that you can recover what you need when you need to recover it.

In essence cloud-based web defense solutions provide:

• Protection against harmful links, sites, and spyware
• Granular control of the websites staff members can access
• Integrated reporting showing web activity for staff members
• Low-cost, zero maintenance solution

As always, this solution should be reviewed in context of your specific business needs and goals, but cloud-based protection against spyware have proven to be quite effective.  And with the additional control you get for managing your outgoing web traffic, cloud-based spyware protection is quite a powerful solution.

Technology Slowing you Down?

ITP works with many nonprofit organizations and although running on the latest and greatest technology isn’t always an option for most nonprofits, I found this article from The Philanthropy Journal to be somewhat surprising.  In my experience there are always improvements that can be made to an organization’s technology, but for many well-run nonprofits, their technology is a reliable, key factor in creating a productive environment – and it is properly aligned with the execution of their mission. Furthermore, based on some pretty significant experience deploying and managing technology for nonprofits, I think this can be the case for all nonprofits – especially considering the resources available to them for acquiring state-of-the-art technology resources.  If you’re one of the people that read this article and it all rings true to you, take a moment to review the information and resource on this blog, or even better, give us a call.  Because the days of nonprofits living on poor technology are behind us.  Truly.  And when it comes down to it, isn’t your mission is too important to be hampered by poor technology?