Archive for the 'Commentary' category
To Many Cooks in the Kitchen
8:45 amYesterday a friend and long time partner referred us to a client who was in a bit of situation. I use them as an example here as their situation is a far to often occurrence. Long story short: for their relatively small two-site company the owner had a handful of IT firms, tech guys and random sub-contractors working on their IT. To many cooks in the kitchen creates a mess!
Cost is the first usual suspect for these type of situations. Firms with lower skilled staff or freelancers without overhead of a larger company can offer lower hourly costs which can be attractive to an uninformed client. They’ll have a freelancer or moonlighter come to work on their systems on evenings and weekends. Also we’ll tend to see the tween age relative of someone who works there. However with these lower skilled workers usually comes a lower breadth of skills, requiring them to have others (attempt to) fill in the blanks to complete the job.
Stemming from cost, competency (or lack there of) is the 2nd most common reason we see. For one of our niche markets, we find this most often in IT Service firms that don’t really support Mac’s, but they have someone they refer clients to, or subcontracts that out to another firm. This is usually where the afore-mentioned tween runs into trouble too. Working with firms that don’t meet your core needs will cost you more money due to the need to constantly bring in others to complete the job they don’t have on staff.
All that being said, there is nothing wrong with having multiple IT firms work for your business; just as long as they focus in different arenas. An analogy I often refer to is to the medial profession. You have a GP that is very well-trained in core medicine, but is not an expert in any one speciality, but knows enough to know when need to see someone with more focus. Then there are specialists that you work with on an as needed, case by case basis. When looking for an IT firm, find one that is a great GP, one you trust and is trusted by those you trust. They must look after the core technology of your business (servers, desktops, laptops, networks, printers, connectivity, communication, etc). Have them refer you to work with specialist they trust: Web-designers, SEO specialists, database developers, etc.. Have your GP set the strategy for your company and execute that with them and their partners. With to many GP’s in the exam room all they’re doing is stepping on each others toes and racking up your bill.
10,000 feet with Steve Jobs
June 16, 2010 10:31 pmA highlight every year for me is the All Things Digital Conference hosted by Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal. For those of you not familiar it is a four-day conference where many of the “who’s who” from the technology and entertainment industry sit for some great in-depth interviews. While there are some product related interview, most notably this year is Microsoft’s Project Natal, the majority of substance isn’t the usual march of gadgets and upgrades cycles. This conference focuses on the leaders themselves talking about them, their vision and the big picture of how they captain their enterprises. It is some of the most fascinating content I find generated all year not filtered though a PR department. That is the key, the unfiltered content. Even when that breaks from the standard, the heavily coached Mark Zuckerberg’s interview was entertaining to watch him squirm. I’m someone who takes a very macro focus on my business, our industry and the tech world in general; I find these interviews more entertaining and stimulating than any keynote ever given.
Kicking off this year’s event was a great interview with Apple CEO, Steve Jobs (link for non-flash video). Now it’s no secret that Steve is one of the best presenters and public speakers to ever grace a stage. From the interview you can really tell how passionate he is for what he does. As a founder that should come as no surprise, but compared on some other technology CEO interviews, there is a very different tone and feeling to what they do and how they see their mission.
Fast Company has a great article on this interview that visually represents the interview in one of those great word clouds where the frequency of a word is represented by the words size in the cloud. The result: Steve is a “people” person. This highlights a belief I hold true to our philosophy: technology is not about technology, technology is about people.
What is the best type Internet connection?
June 7, 2010 3:59 pmI was asked an interesting question today: “What is the best type of Internet connection?” Yes, you are reading the blog of an IT company, so interesting is a relative term here. Which is exactly my point. ”Best” is also a relative term, but all to often people ask us for the “best” solution, but fail to define what “best” is for them.
To which I replied… “what to you mean by best?”… her response was a blank stare… (crickets) …followed by… “….well… what do you have?” This was going nowhere fast…
What is “best” to me, my home or my company can be very different from what is “best” for you. Therefore, the “best” type of Internet connection (or anything for that matter) is usually is one that meets all your unique needs at the lowest cost. For example:
- Residential users typically want Internet service that is reliable, constant, somewhat fast and relatively inexpensive.
- Businesses typically want Internet service with guaranteed uptime, responsive support (if something does go wrong) and higher bandwidth. They may also want added services, but will pay more.
- Mobile users want an Internet connection that is widely available, relatively fast and easy to access. Mobile users are not as concerned with downloading a lot of data, but accessibility is a priority.Price is again at a premium here.
To find the “best” type of Internet connection you must first know your needs related to cost. For Internet service they are usually cost, accessibility, access, support, bandwidth and usage. Once you know that, finding what is your best is much easier.
Time Machine for Windows
June 3, 2010 9:33 am“Time Machine for Windows” is what I’m sure Genie-Soft would love to call their backup software, Timeline (in both Home & Professional flavors) if it wasn’t for those pesky Apple lawyers or a huge royalty payout. Genie-soft may not be able to, but after using this software for some clients running Windows, that’s basically what it is. We’re very happy Windows users can now enjoy many of the benefits Mac users have enjoyed for years.
With so much of our personal and business data on our systems it’s no surprise that in the area of 45% of all systems lose unrecoverable data each year to some form of data loss. That is a lot of vacation photos, financial documents and wedding videos. Time Machine is focused toward the consumer and SoHo market and it’s been a HUGE asset to many Mac users having a super simple and automatic backup solution built-in as part of the Mac OS for nearly 3 years now (it has saved yours truly twice). Just like Time Machine, Timeline is drop dead simple setup with nearly zero maintenance, it passes the test for even the most luddite of computer users. Added to the local backup, they have the pending release of their online backup that makes this tool a true disaster recovery platform with offsite hosting of your backup.
For those of you Mac users with a Windows system still lingering around the home or office, I highly recommend Timeline as a very familiar cousin to what you already enjoy on your Mac.
The horse must come first
May 17, 2010 1:27 pmI feel truly blessed to have developed relationships with our clients where we can have a direct effect on their businesses. In advising our clients, working hand-in-hand with the owner and leadership of the company to help match the clients business strategy with the proper technology to achieve those goals; this is our Advising services. It’s great to see the results when a properly developed and implemented plan come together and play out of over a multi-year period. The dividends are paid in terms of increased productivity, reduction of costs, happier employees and clients.
Entrepreneurs are a stubborn group, myself included. Busy people with power can adopt what I call a “ready, fire, aim” approach to project planning and implementation. It happens on a nearly continual basis, that owners with the best of intentions ask us to implement a solution they’ve developed. ”Here is what I think what we need, send me a quote to get is done yesterday”. Unfortunately all to often, as they are not IT Consultants, their picture of the technology available to solve a problem is at best a few years behind the time. I had one business owner just two years back suggest we implement a floppy disk backup system he had in the closet because he “still worked and didn’t want it to go to waste.” … not everyone can be helped.
I stress to our new clients (and often remind our existing) that we have a process in place for a reason and it’s important we stick to it because it works! Technology is a foundational part of most businesses, developing an understanding of our clients business to implement these mission critical systems is important to getting it done right the first time. And it’s always easier (and cheaper) to do things once.
How the “Ken Burns Effect” came to iPhoto
November 11, 2009 7:15 pmFor those of you who love using iPhoto to manage, create and share your digital photography you’ll really enjoy this video. It is an excerpt from a talk The Oxonian Society where Ken Burns personally tells a the story of how the “Ken Burns Effect” became to be a part of pretty much every iPhoto slide show you see. I particularly love the impression at the end of a happy iPhoto user; dead on. To all our Apple users, i hope you enjoy this story as much as I did.
It’s always nice when you’re work is appreciated by colleagues…
October 9, 2009 6:44 pmNOBEL PRIZE FOR VPN ADMINISTRATION ANNOUNCED
Stockholm, Oct. 9, 2009 – The Nobel Prize for VPN administration was awarded today to Brian Weber of Watchung, New Jersey for his ground-breaking work implementing Feury Image Group’s remote access capabilities. Using nothing more than a frisbee and a cigarette lighter, Mr. Weber was able to change the subnet on FIG’s LAN, manage port assignment, route traffic in and out, and maximize performance while deploying and configuring new remote clients.
Hans Finngersmells and Vlad Rektalprobe, co-chairs at the prestigious Nobel Institute’s Technology Committee, said that Mr. Weber took the prize in first round voting. “All of the members were agreed that Mr. Weber’s work qualified for the prize and hoped that if he won he would tell them what he used the frisbee for.”
When asked for comment, Tom Vincent, an associate of Mr. Weber’s replied “Dude is f*cking awesome!” adding, “You guys from Sweden? You bring any of that righteous vodka?”
Other prize winners today included Barack Obama for something to do with peace.
Tom Vincent
Nearly Normal Services
Everything is Amazing and Nobody is Happy
April 5, 2009 10:55 pmOne of my rules of the “new” DP blog was no YouTube videos. I had to break it for this one. This clip is from an interview of comedian Louis CK from an appearance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. It really is some great commentary of how we, as both a society and individually, take for granted the amazing life modern technology affords us to enjoy. Keep this in mind the next time you think technology is ruining your day.
Disclaimer: We do not claim ownership of the video above.
