Business Insider Magazine-2008-2009 Technology Guide

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The Benefits of IT Investment in a Down Economy BY R. BOYD ZACK

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URING AN ECONOMIC DOWNTURN, CUTBACKS ARE OFTEN UNAVOIDABLE.

However, IT is among the business cate-

gories in which cutbacks can actually cost a company more in the long run. As a business owner, it is

extremely likely that you are seeing price pressures all around your office. Insurance costs seem to be on a space race to the moon. Energy costs to power our offices and factories are becoming very noticeable line items on our financials and blowing our budgets beyond belief. Not to be left out, even the post office is getting into the practice of raising rates.

Another area where technology investment can provide a high return is through server virtualization. The computing power of today’s computer servers is so great that through the use of special operating system software we can deploy several logical (or virtual) servers on a single physical server. Virtualized servers not only provide a higher level of reliability and availability, but they also consume less energy.

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While the price of the technology may not seem to go down, the amount of usefulness of the technology will go up at a higher rate than the actual cost, thereby reducing the effective cost of the technology. In other words, a $500 computer might cost $500 or even $550 in the future, but what that future computer can do will exceed what the current $500 computer can do by far more than the price increase. This fact will help offset other rises in the cost of doing business. History has shown that companies that make strategic investments during down times often emerge as leaders at the time of the upswing. In recent years, declining revenue in the entertainment industry has been very rough on some of the giants in the field, allowing for the rise of underdogs such as Apple with its iTunes technologies. While icons such as Warner Music Group were slashing costs in every area of their business, Apple was investing heavily in its unproven technologies in an area it had not previously even had a presence. Some areas of technology investment in tough economic times can be easy to show a reasonable ROI in labor costs alone. Take system integration: the process of connecting systems together in such a manner that they can share data and become a common source of information. By integrating systems together, reductions in labor costs through a decrease in redundant data entry or elimination of work or errors can be realized. At the same time, increases in production or in features can be achieved without increasing costs associated with providing the products through increases in efficiencies. Another area where technology investment can provide a high return is through server virtualization. The computing power of today’s computer servers is so great that through the use of special operating system software, we can deploy several logical (or virtual) servers on a single physical server. Virtualized servers not only provide a higher level of reliability and availability, but they also consume less energy. This means they generate less heat, which can further reduce energy costs associated with server room cooling. Again, when calculating the ROI from such an investment, we cannot assume that energy costs will remain

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constant or even increase as they have historically. Instead, we must assume they will increase at an ever climbing rate. Additionally, we should expect and even plan on making greater use of our computer and technology resources to enable us to do more with less. With current versions of Outlook, users are finding they can retrieve voice message through e-mail and hold meetings without leaving their desks. Through the use of remote desktop applications, workers are finding increased productivity operating from home, while still having the full computer resources found in the office. And with current cell phone (and PDA) technology, we can access our e-mail anytime and anywhere. Lately it seems we can’t pick up a paper, watch the news or visit any on-line news source without hearing about the economic forecast. Are we headed toward a recession? Are we in a recession? How bad will it get and how long will it last? The answers to these questions become crystal clear only after change has taken place. And we know we are through the worst of it when we see a sustained improvement. One challenge we must face and try to understand is that what we do and how we respond while we are in it has a dramatic effect on the downturn itself. Sometimes a seemingly logical response to a bad situation does nothing more than make that bad situation even worse. For example: A logical response to a downward trend in sales may be to cut costs across the board. The problem with this type of response is that it can very easily make the trend worse. If sales have declined due to additional features of a competitor’s product, an increase in product development funding could have a much more positive effect on the overall health of the organization. If the decline is the result of perceived value, an increase in marketing or even an increase in price might better align the company with its targets. Unfortunately, business is not always as simple as analyzing the situation and brilliantly coming up with the solution that is counterintuitive. When faced with higher costs, we tend to look at either 3

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passing the increases to our customers or cutting back in other areas. One problem with taking either of these two approaches is that they are simply unsustainable. When we pass our increased costs to our customers, it forces them to either do the same with their customers, cut costs in other areas or reduce their spending with us. Similarly when we cut costs in reaction to increases in costs in other areas, we tend to be perpet-

uating the issue in those areas. What we need to do is find ways to get more from what we have without the wholesale cutting and slashing that diminishes our value to our customers. Often, accomplishing this can be challenging at best and downright painful or potentially fatal at worst. One example of a counterintuitive approach to raising costs is to invest

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Network more efficiently for your business flow Benefit from custom programming & support Vacation fill-ins for your regular IT staff Fast response & quick solutions Experience with a wide range of industries

DME Computer Consulting Services

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(310) 991-1464 18402 Hawthorne Blvd., Suite C, Torrance, CA 90504

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BENEFITS OF IT INVESTMENT continued from Tech Guide page 3

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ment of a system (or systems) can save you a significant amount in labor costs through increases in efficiencies. When evaluating returns on such investments, we cannot take prior constants as constants. The world is changing and will continue to change at an everincreasing rate. Prices for many things are going up and will continue to go up, while some are going down and will effectively continue to go down. If you were considering purchasing a Toyota Prius about 18 months ago, you may have looked at the mileage, number of miles you tend to drive and the price of the car and then compared that cost to the truck you were driving at the time that was paid off and getting 15 miles per gallon. With the average price of gas at $2.14/gallon it could have come to a 15year payback, assuming the price of gas was going to increase at the slow rate it had been over the prior several years. Taking the current $4.00-plus/gallon price, you could be looking at an eightyear payback. More realistically, the price

in people. While we often look at training in times of plenty, we must not set it aside in lean times. Take management training, for example. The goal of management is to accomplish objectives through others. With effective management training, we can often learn to accomplish more through others, thereby either reducing our costs or increasing our offering. With effective time management training, we can learn to spend more time in our high payoff activities and less in our lower return tasks. Another means of getting more from what we have in the area of IT is to expand or refine our systems to do a better job at saving us time and money. Take a poll of the business system users within your organization and ask them what could make their job easier and what areas of the systems are difficult to use. Often you will find that with relatively minor adjustments to the systems, major productivity gains can be achieved. You may also find that a complete replace-

of gas is not going to do much else other than continue to increase at higher rates, resulting in an even quicker payback. We can bank on the fact that commodities produced from natural resources will continue to go up while technology products will effectively continue to fall in actual cost. Putting it into context, the actual cost of a loaf of bread will continue to rise due to the costs associated with producing a loaf of bread and the amount of natural resources that go into the bread, while the effective cost of a piece of technology will continue to go down. While seeking the magic bullet that will enable our businesses to survive these rough economic times, we need to look at payoff over longer periods of time than we may be used to considering. Technology is going to continue to progress at a very rapid pace, even keeping up with the raising price of gas. Our challenge is to make effective use of the technology available to us and to not waste it away as we have done with gas. You have more computer power on your desktop than was on board the first space shuttle, and more in your cell phone than our astronauts brought to the moon. Are you using it to the potential under your fingertips? R. Boyd Zack is the president and CEO of R.B. Zack & Associates, Inc, a Torrance, California-based company with 27 years of experience in developing, integrating, implementing, maintaining and supporting custom business software and IT services. “Building Business Applications that Work Since 1981.” Boyd can be contacted at [email protected] or via the Web at www.rbza.com or by phone at 310.303.3320. The 2008 South Bay Technology Guide is a special supplement of:

Main Website: www.BusinessInsider.us Classified Advertising Site: www.TheBizBoard.net BIM Publications — Business Insider Magazine P.O. Box 1032 Palos Verdes Estates, CA 90274 (310) 872-9732 [email protected] ©2008 BIM Publications All Rights Reserved

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Technology Providers Alpha Computer Support, Inc. Alpha Computer Support is a small office-home office/small business consulting company. We are customer oriented and as a small business ourself, we understand the value of keeping an eye on the bottom line. We have experience in all of the Microsoft Windows operating systems. Our server and desktop support includes: migration, new systems and servers, training, back-ups, fault tolerance. disaster recovery, anti-virus, hardware, workstations, laptops and upgrades. Network services include: VPN, LAN/WAN, firewalls, routers, wireless networking, network cabling and troubleshooting and DSL/cable modems. 310-374-0666 611 Green Lane, Redondo Beach, CA 90278 www.alphacomputersupport.com

The Cyber Boardroom The Cyber Boardroom offers three amazingly equipped conference rooms of various sizes and unique character that are ideal for any occasion. Every room (The Royal, The Lennox and the Manchester) comes equipped with a 40-inch monitor that can be used for everything from television viewing to projected presentations, a telephone capable of conferencing up to four outside parties, and our exclusive “Gigabyte” high-speed Internet access either through a wired or wireless connection. Each room is an independent sound zone with an adjustable volume control for presentation audio or ambient music. The Cyber Boardroom also has a Wi-Fi lounge and a full range of powerhouse computers for office or graphic work, scanners, faxes and printers. 310-393-7904 4451 Redondo Beach Blvd., Lawndale, CA 90269 www.TheCyberBoardroom.com

DME Computer Consulting Services If you run a small- to medium-sized business in the South Bay, save time and money by outsourcing your IT department to DME Computer Consulting Services. Keep your network running efficiently, improve your workflow and benefit from custom programming and support. We also handle vacation fill-ins for your IT staff. Get a fast response and quick solutions from an A+ Authorized service center with experience in a wide range of industries. 310-991-1464 3418 W. 224th St., Torrance, CA 90505

Holden-Andrew Corporation Since 1991, Holden-Andrew Corporation has delivered systems integration and support services to its clients. With principal staff coming from security, finance, and aerospace related sectors, the firm has always maintained systems security as its foundation. With Holden-Andrew Corporation, you’re not only bringing on a company with industry partnerships, but a leader in the Information Technology field. Through its suite of Evolution Connect Services, HoldenAndrew is leading the way for companies looking to utilize managed and cost effective technology solutions. Using products like VoIP Systems that deliver powerful reporting tools, hosted application servers, electronic and print marketing, interactive website design and data storage services, Holden-Andrew gives companies the opportunity to consolidate their business operations costs. Going beyond the desktop, Holden-Andrew Corporation is your total IT and business solutions provider. Ask for account executive Melissa Stewart or e-mail her at [email protected] for more information. 310-792-4999 3528 Torrance Blvd, Suite 320, Torrance, CA 90503 www.holdenandrew.com

IMiN Instant Messaging IMiN is the first true secure instant messaging solution designed specifically for business users. IMiN is a fully

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Want Website Visibility? Get Prepared For Spiders BY CAYLEY VOS

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O, NOT THE CREEPY CRAWLERS THAT INVADE YOUR HOUSE…

THERE’S NOTHING CREEPY ABOUT THE SPIDERS WE’RE

TALKING ABOUT —

these crawlers (that’s the other

name for them) move through the Internet at nearly the speed of light. Dispatched by search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN Live, these spiders zip over every attribute of your website to see how it measures up. They judge your site by algorithms that will determine if a search will return your site listed on results page one, page seven, or page 62.

Because search engine algorithms are kept secret and are frequently changed, preparing a site for high ranking and keeping it there is a demanding task; one that is never finished. There is no right and final answer, but there are much discussed guidelines that follow search engine best practices and can virtually guarantee you a slot on page one. Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the generic term for the process of tuning a website so that it achieves the best possible search results — as close as possible to a page one listing. Your website must be designed for effective communication with a human being, and part of that design must be satisfying the search engines that bring it to the visitor. A site must have strong elements that visitors can connect and engage with, as well as copious copy, well labeled images and keyword-rich title tags for search engines. This is not a slam dunk task. Search engine spiders like an interesting buffet of copy, keywords, text and links. You want to have 200–500 words of copy per page, well labeled images, plentiful navigation links and a keyword-rich title tag. Common problems are sites that are heavy in graphics, interactive media/flash/video and audio. An easy test to see if your website fails the text test is to use the view source button on your browser or use this auto22 S

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mated tool: www.netpaths.net/tool/spider . The web crawler has not dropped in to try an entrée or two. It’s there as a sort of Digital Health Department with a critical eye and a long checklist: — Are there incoming links from other websites? — What is the quantity and quality of content? — Is the content grammatically correct with no misspellings? — Is the site unique or redundant? — How many internal links are there and how many are broken? — How many unique visitors, page views, revisits and conversions can be measured? — Is the source code technically precise? It may seem like an intimidating checklist, but a fundamentally sound website will have a good chance at ranking well in the search engines. We may not be afraid of spiders, but if we want good search results, we must prepare for them. The spiders are coming. But don’t call an exterminator. Update the text on your website and prepare for more business. Cayley Vos is the owner of www.Netpaths.net, a forward thinking Web design company that focuses on providing high value services to the online market. You can improve the value of your business with a well-designed and promoted website. Cayley can be reached at 310-372-3086.

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TECHNOLOGY PROVIDERS continued from Tech Guide page 5 scalable and secure instant messaging and communications software solution adopted by some of the top financial, legal, gaming and entertainment businesses. The IMiN instant messaging server lets you capitalize on the powerful new advantages of real-time enterprise-accelerating revenue growth, productivity, operational efficiency and profitability. Make faster, better decisions. Empower managers and associates to do more in real time. Available through our network of channel partners and alliances, IMiN secure instant messaging software is the securest, simplest and most scalable instant messaging solution available in the market. 310-303-3320 23844 Hawthorne Blvd. #101, Torrance CA 90505 www.ebs-imin.com

range computer environments. RBZ&A brings more than 26 years in computer services to the table with an excellent management team promoting a contagious “can do” mindset. It also has an uncanny ability to understand complex business problems and to accommodate the needs of even the most sophisticated customer. RBZ&A’s extensive experience with both mainframe and client server technology coupled with an in-depth understanding of business processes makes it uniquely qualified to migrate older systems onto new platforms. 310-303-3320 23844 Hawthorne Blvd. #101, Torrance CA 90505 www.rbza.com

WeFixPrinters.com WeFixPrinters.com has been repairing laser/ink jet

printers and fax machines in the Greater Los Angeles area for almost 20 years. We also sell toner, ink and other office supplies via our Redondo Beach retail store and e-commerce site, which features over 6,500 office products. WeFixPrinters.com provides on-site service to small and large companies, and services most major makes and models. We are the South Bay’s only authorized service facility for Canon inkjets, photo printers and scanners. WeFixPrinters.com offers full service printer repair and supplies. Our goal is to make servicing your equipment hassle-free so that we can reduce downtime, while extending the lifetime of your equipment. Call today to set up your corporate account! 310-937-4588 2895 190th St., Redondo Beach, CA 90278 www.WeFixPrinters.com

Konica Minolta Business Solutions Konica Minolta Business Solutions USA Inc., a leader in advanced imaging and networking technologies for the desktop to the print shop, brings together unparalleled advances in security, print quality and network integration via its award winning line of bizhub multifunction products (MFPs); bizhub PRO production printing systems; magicolor desktop color laser printers and all-inones; and Pagepro monochrome desktop laser printers and all-in-ones. Konica Minolta also offers advanced software solutions, wide-format printers, microform digital imaging systems and scanning systems for specialized applications.Headquartered in Ramsey, NJ, Konica Minolta delivers expert professional services and client support through an extensive network of direct sales offices, authorized dealers, resellers and distribution partners in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Central America and South America. 310-214-6696 879 190th St., Suite 200, Gardena, CA 90248 www.konicaminolta.us

Netpaths You can get a website anywhere, but Netpaths can get you to the top of the search engines. Find out more about how your website can be at the top of Google. We offer you a forward thinking Web design company focused on providing high-value services to the online market. You can improve the value of your business with a well designed and promoted website. We design search engine-friendly websites that can attain top placement in the big four search engines. We offer custom e-commerce solutions and organizational website development. We also offer economy development models for smaller start-ups and non-profits. You can view our new automated website builder. Create your own website with a Web-based automation tool for free. We have been in the online business since 1998 and have successfully moved hundreds of businesses online with an individually customized Web presence. We have been doing search engine optimization before Google existed and have a 100% success rate for all online marketing campaigns. Netpaths’ Web design is consistently ranked among the top Web development and SEO firms with a long history of strong customer support. Get a fresh perspective on your online initiatives and see how your website can work for you. We make you look good. 310-372-3086 23940 Madison St., Torrance, CA 90505 www.netpaths.net

R.B. Zack & Associates, Inc. R.B. Zack & Associates, Inc. focuses on the development, implementation, maintenance and support of custom business software. The firm specializes in browser-based and desktop applications for the business world. RBZ&A can help you unleash the power of the Web and realize its potential for your business application. The company also has an extensive background in database design work garnered from many years in client server and Web development as well as an extensive past entrenched in the mini and mid-

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