http://www.informationweek.comInformationWeeken-usCopyright 2012, UBM LLC.2013-04-17T22:18:00Zhttp://reports.informationweek.com/abstract/10/9899/Social-Networking-Collaboration/9-Conference-Calling-and-Social-Apps.html?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Company_Size:_50-249_smb2012-12-12T23:57:00Zhttp://reports.informationweek.com/abstract/7/9115/Enterprise-Software/research-2012-application-delivery-specialists-staffing-survey.html?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Company_Size:_50-249_smb2012-12-12T23:08:00Zhttp://reports.informationweek.com/abstract/166/9077/Professional+Development+and+Salary+Data/research-app-dev-2012-staffing-survey.html?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Company_Size:_50-249_smb2012-10-18T00:49:00Zhttp://reports.informationweek.com/abstract/18/8956/Mobility-Wireless/strategy-18-mobile-productivity-apps.html?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Company_Size:_50-249_smb2012-09-21T02:52:00Zhttp://reports.informationweek.com/abstract/106/8887/Financial/best-practices-top-mobile-productivity-tools-for-finance.html?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Company_Size:_50-249_smb2010-11-27T06:00:00ZA local Boy Scout chapter found that Microsoft's workflow software, while most often used by large enterprises, was the most efficient way to roll out its collaborative website.http://www.informationweek.com/news/228000484?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Company_Size:_50-249_smb<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div style="margin: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; width: 185px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224701868"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/431/01_Chris_Overview_1_tn.jpg" alt="Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures" title="Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 3px; padding: 0pt;" border="0" height="109" hspace="0" vspace="0" width="175"></a><br /><i> <span>(click image to view slideshow)</span></i><br /><div style="margin:5px padding:0; font-weight:bold; font-size:1.2em; color:#990000;"> Slideshow: Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures</div></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> Small and midsize businesses (SMBs) are downloading, trying, and adopting Microsoft's SharePoint technology, the core bits of which are included as part of Microsoft Windows Small Business Server. But is SharePoint really designed for SMBs? <P> A spokesman from Microsoft admitted that SharePoint adoption is higher among larger organizations than for SMBs. "Today, we're probably skewed toward the enterprise," says Richard Riley, group product manager on Microsoft's SharePoint team. <P> We've previously taken a close look at the <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/smb/hardware_software/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226400004">collaboration features</a> of Office 2010 and the <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/smb/hardware_software/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226700216">workflow features</a> of SharePoint 2010. In this article, we'll examine how one group of Boy Scouts became one of the first to roll out a SharePoint 2010 deployment. Then, we'll look at some the factors that might guide your own decision. <P> <strong>Scout's Honor, Online</strong> <P> The Greater St. Louis Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America serves 56,000 young people and 15,000 volunteer leaders with a paid staff of about 80 people. And they do it all with a dedicated IT department of one. The organization's website, which enables scouting leaders in 15 regions to coordinate activities and update their own blogs, runs on Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. <P> The Greater St. Louis Area Council evaluated several solutions, including open source tools and custom applications designed expressly for non-profit organizations. "We realize that in the blink of an eye we could set up 15 WordPress blogs for our districts," says Joe Mueller, director of public relations for the Council. "But when you look at everything from an information management standpoint, SharePoint just made sense." <P> The new website enables a cultural shift in the organization toward collaborative content development. "We'll be granting permission to volunteers to begin writing blog posts," says Mueller. "That's a huge change in our culture here. We have been a top-down organization from a communication standpoint, and now we're opening the gates." <P> But this wouldn't have been feasible without administrative controls within SharePoint enabling only authorized participants to have access to troop activities and scouts' personal details, along with workflow controls that ensure that blog posts across the site meet the standards of the broader organization.<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div style="margin: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; width: 185px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224701868"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/431/01_Chris_Overview_1_tn.jpg" alt="Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures" title="Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 3px; padding: 0pt;" border="0" height="109" hspace="0" vspace="0" width="175"></a><br /><i> <span>(click image to view slideshow)</span></i><br /><div style="margin:5px padding:0; font-weight:bold; font-size:1.2em; color:#990000;"> Slideshow: Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures</div></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> The selection of SharePoint 2010 also offers broader capabilities than just enterprise content management, which provides ample support for phase two projects. "The other part of the project is to do online reservations, and having SharePoint as our platform will facilitate that," says Mueller. "When a scout is in a church basement with his troop leaders planning a campout, and they want to use our equipment to go rock climbing, they can use their mobile phones to go onto our website to make a reservation, possibly pay with a credit card, and boom, they're done." <P> To build the site, the Council had requested proposals from three St. Louis-area firms. They ultimately selected Quilogy, which earlier this year was acquired by Aspect, a Chelmsford, Mass.-based Microsoft partner and solutions provider specializing in unified communications and collaboration. <P> By relying on an outside organization to develop and install its website, the Greater St. Louis Area Council was able to create the web presence it needed without having to keep IT staffers on the payroll. "The development team at Aspect came in, they learned our business, they helped us to see our website through our customers' eyes, and helped show us how SharePoint would be better able to organize and present our information," says Mueller. "We have been extremely impressed." <P> The decision to move ahead with the latest version of the technology enabled the Council to skip an upgrade. "We were one of the first organizations in the country to get our hands on SharePoint 2010," notes Mueller. "By doing that, we were able to have significant cost savings by not having to go through development in SharePoint 2007 and then having to upgrade to SharePoint 2010 later." <P> Despite the cost of SharePoint relative to using open-source platforms, Mueller stands by his organization's choice. "I have never regretted making that decision with the team here," says Mueller. "SharePoint has shown us a tremendous amount of flexibility." <P> <strong>The SharePoint Decision</strong> <P> SMBs have two ways forward with SharePoint: hosted and in-house. <P> If you're only going to use SharePoint for a company intranet without establishing an external-focusing website, one easy approach is through Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Services (BPOS ). The standard version of BPOS includes Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Live Meeting, and Office Communications Online, and costs $10 per user per month. By itself, SharePoint Online costs $5.25 per user per month, and allows SMBs to create internal portals, collaboration sites, and content management workflows, all indexed and searchable.<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div style="margin: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; width: 185px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224701868"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/431/01_Chris_Overview_1_tn.jpg" alt="Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures" title="Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 3px; padding: 0pt;" border="0" height="109" hspace="0" vspace="0" width="175"></a><br /><i> <span>(click image to view slideshow)</span></i><br /><div style="margin:5px padding:0; font-weight:bold; font-size:1.2em; color:#990000;"> Slideshow: Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures</div></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> The in-house solution involves higher setup and licensing costs, but it paves the way for external as well as internal use. SharePoint Foundation 2010, a free version of the software, only works with internal portals and collaboration services, and requires a licensed copy of Microsoft Windows Server (pricing starts at $1,029, including five user licenses). Having an external-facing website requires a licensed copy of SharePoint Server 2010 plus standard client access licenses. <P> As the Boy Scouts example demonstrates, selecting SharePoint doesn't mean that you have to keep a SharePoint expert on the payroll. However, in that case you'll become dependent upon an external service provider. <P> Microsoft provided a few illustrative statistics about the SharePoint ecosystem: <P> -- There are over 300 independent software vendors (ISVs) building and testing SharePoint 2010 solutions today and that number is expected to double over the lifetime of the 2010 release. <P> -- Over 500,000 software developers have done at least one development project using SharePoint in the last 6 months. <P> -- The SharePoint services opportunity for Microsoft partners and developers is $5.6 billion today and will grow to over $6.7 billion in FY12. <P> That is to say, there's money to be made in SharePoint. This means that the availability of programming talent to keep your organization moving along should not be a problem. <P> Yet the Boy Scouts example highlights how the industry dynamics may unfold. <P> The merger between IT services provider Quilogy and unified communications specialist Aspect demonstrates the value to Microsoft partner ISVs in providing a full-service play across Microsoft's offerings. Unified communications is no longer a separate offering that works independently from office productivity software and internal/external collaboration tools, such as Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010, respectively. Instead, unified communications is baked into the entire Microsoft stack. <P> Naturally, the Microsoft development community would be among the first to realize this, and it appears that the smart ones are getting ready for the new level of competition in enterprise software by broadening their scopes. One example does not a trend make, but the logic behind the merger is sound, and we can certainly expect similar deals to surface.<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div style="margin: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; width: 185px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224701868"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/431/01_Chris_Overview_1_tn.jpg" alt="Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures" title="Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 3px; padding: 0pt;" border="0" height="109" hspace="0" vspace="0" width="175"></a><br /><i> <span>(click image to view slideshow)</span></i><br /><div style="margin:5px padding:0; font-weight:bold; font-size:1.2em; color:#990000;"> Slideshow: Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures</div></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> Let's assume that Microsoft's prediction is correct, and that we will end up seeing 600 ISVs building and testing SharePoint 2010 solutions by the latter half of the decade. If, at the same time, these SharePoint shops build their capabilities in unified communications through growth or acquisition, the result would likely split the market. On the one hand, we'd have huge, full-service ISVs that support everything that is Microsoft. On the other hand, we'd see smaller, SharePoint-specific shops that are essentially legacy, point-solution providers. Over time, which group would you expect to be more successful? I'd bet on the big guys. <P> There's nothing necessarily wrong with doing business with a big software company or a big ISV that's going to have strong incentives to find ways to improve your business on multiple fronts, from productivity to collaboration to communications. You'll just want to go into such an arrangement with your eyes open. <P> What's the alternative? There are certainly other technologies that can compete with the Microsoft stack at each level, and I'll explore some of those technologies in future articles for InformationWeek SMB. <P> Microsoft has traditionally done well at attracting developers to its programming environments through a combination of low-cost training, guaranteed marketing support, and the promise of large addressable markets. This environment attracts professional IT services firms, which as described earlier, are likely to expand in scope to match the growth in the Microsoft product set. <P> Open source technologies, such as Drupal or Joomla for content management and websites, or Asterisk for telephony, involve a different value proposition for both developers and their clients. For many SMBs, not having to write a check for user licenses is a badge of honor. And for developers of a certain mindset, the attraction of an open, elegant, and customizable codebase should not be underestimated. As a result, a small team of talented programmers can build with open source tools systems that rival the most high-end commercial software. <P> Combining the two approaches, we see firms such as Oracle and IBM that combine open source technologies with proprietary offerings, accessed through highly developed professional services organizations and vertically focused partner networks. <P> The decision probably comes down to how well you can match the expected duration of your project with the resources that you can hire or retain. If your SMB is taking a big chance on a new service that will either succeed wildly or fail quickly, you might put the ball in the hands of a highly motivated open source advocate with access to the latest and greatest tools. However, if you're trying to build a system that you expect will persist from generation to generation, you may want to build on an architecture that has the highest likelihood of persisting from one generation of programmers to the next. <P> Regardless of the technology, the most important question is who's going to install, build, maintain, and upgrade it. Ultimately, technology decisions are about the people who will be responsible for maintaining that technology. The "who" is vastly more important than the "what."2010-09-15T00:01:00ZIn a soft market, insurance CIOs focus on IT-based process efficiency projects.http://www.informationweek.com/news/227300402?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Company_Size:_50-249_smbThis is the sixth year of a soft insurance market during which premiums have declined an average of about 9% per year, according to TowerGroup, a research firm focused on financial services. </p> <P> In the course of this prolonged decline in premiums, the industry has realized it has to do more than quick-fix cost-cutting and do some long-term restructuring. In the past, insurance companies in a slowdown would just "fire a whole bunch of people," says Karen Pauli, research director in TowerGroup's insurance practice. </p> <P> Instead, smart CIOs continue to spend on IT-based process efficiency projects that reduce paperwork, increase standardization, and automate decision-making, Pauli says. These can be expensive, multiyear commitments. But insurers have had the benefit of relatively light catastrophe seasons--hurricanes and other storms--the past three to four years, so the smart ones have used this period to fund long-term productivity-enhancing projects. </p> <P> Evidence of this can be found in the <i>InformationWeek 500</i>. Only 10% of insurers expect to cut their IT budgets this year, compared with 20% for all industries; 62% of insurers have higher IT budgets than last year, compared with 57% for all industries. </p> <P> At insurer USAA, the push for better productivity and better service came together with its new Deposit@Mobile service, an app that lets people deposit a check by taking a picture of it with an iPhone or Android-based smartphone. (BlackBerry is in the works.) </p> <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div style="width:200px; float:right; margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 10px;"> <div style="border:solid 1px #000000; background-color:#ffffff;"> <div style="margin:0; padding:5px; background-color:#CC0000; text-align:center; font-size:1.3em; color:#ffffff; font-weight:bold;">DIG DEEPER</div> <div style="margin:8px 8px 6px 8px; font-weight:bold; font-size:1em; text-align:center; color:#cc0000;"> Insurance </div> <div style="margin:0 8px 6px 8px; font-weight:bold; text-align:center;"></strong>For full interview and in-depth look </div> <div style="margin:0 8px 10px 8px; font-weight:bold; text-align:center;"><a href="http://www.analytics.informationweek.com/abstract/186/4078/InformationWeek+500/informationweek-500-2010-insurance-report.html">Get this <nobr>Analytics Report</nobr></a></div> <div style="margin:0; padding:5px; background-color:#000000; text-align:center; font-size:1em; font-weight:bold; color:#ffffff;"><a href="http://www.informationweekanalytics.com"><span style="color:#ffffff;">See all InformationWeek <nobr>Analytics Reports</nobr></span></a></div> </div> </div></p> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> USAA is an insurer and a bank, but it has no branches and primarily serves military personnel. It first let customers deposit checks using home scanners; the smartphone app grew from that. CIO Greg Schwartz says Deposit@Mobile delivers cost savings because it cuts the amount of mail that USAA handles. Just as important, the app "has clearly broken down barriers for members who were reluctant to do branchless banking," he says. </p> <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <center><br /><table bgcolor="#FFFFFF" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="8" border="1"> <tr> <td align="center"> <span style="font-size:1.1em;font-weight:bold"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/galleries/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227300173">Industry Snapshot: Insurance</a></span> </td> </tr> </table></center></p> <P> <center><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/1278"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/1278/1278_500_return_sm.jpg" width="272" height="42" hspace="0" vspace="0" alt="Return to the 2010 InformationWeek 500 homepage" title="Return to the 2010 InformationWeek 500 homepage" border="0" /></a></p></center> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P>2010-09-15T00:01:00ZWith oil and gas prices down, companies are focusing on process efficiency and maximizing margins.http://www.informationweek.com/news/227300400?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Company_Size:_50-249_smbOil and gas companies operate from the ocean floor to the mountaintop, while U.S.-based utilities reach virtually every household from coast to coast. The sector's IT needs are equally expansive. But there's one common thread: Falling oil and gas prices the past two years have made it imperative that companies in this industry find operational efficiencies. </p> <P> They were "going flat out" when oil prices were $125 to $140 per barrel in 2008, says Curt Mortenson, a principal at Deloitte Consulting. "When everyone's making that kind of money ... cost is less of a consideration." Now, with oil hovering around $75 per barrel and natural gas prices down 60% from two years ago, companies are focusing on process efficiency and maximizing margins.</p> <P> Business process innovation was cited as a focus of 75% of the industry's CIOs. An example would be deploying monitoring equipment to oil rigs to track the maintenance levels of components, to maximize rig uptime. "It's about replacing particular items based on wear indicators versus 'hot-shotting' materials out to these rigs when they go down," Mortenson says. Location data matters for those type of uses, as well as for logistics that are a key part of the business; 58% of the sector's CIOs are adopting GPS-enabled or location-aware Web apps, compared with 25% for all industries.</p> <P> Doug Haugh, executive VP and CIO of Mansfield Oil, sees the combination of mobile data collection and widespread machine-to-machine connectivity as the next big force in the industry. "We're seeing every piece of physical hardware across the supply chain become intelligently connected to the network," Haugh says. </p> <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div style="width:200px; float:right; margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 10px;"> <div style="border:solid 1px #000000; background-color:#ffffff;"> <div style="margin:0; padding:5px; background-color:#CC0000; text-align:center; font-size:1.3em; color:#ffffff; font-weight:bold;">DIG DEEPER</div> <div style="margin:8px 8px 6px 8px; font-weight:bold; font-size:1em; text-align:center; color:#cc0000;"> Energy &amp; Utilities </div> <div style="margin:0 8px 6px 8px; font-weight:bold; text-align:center;"></strong>For full interview and in-depth look </div> <div style="margin:0 8px 10px 8px; font-weight:bold; text-align:center;"><a href="http://www.analytics.informationweek.com/abstract/186/4077/InformationWeek+500/informationweek-500-2010-energy-utilities.html">Get this <nobr>Analytics Report</nobr></a></div> <div style="margin:0; padding:5px; background-color:#000000; text-align:center; font-size:1em; font-weight:bold; color:#ffffff;"><a href="http://www.informationweekanalytics.com"><span style="color:#ffffff;">See all InformationWeek <nobr>Analytics Reports</nobr></span></a></div> </div> </div></p> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> Energy companies were focused on business process improvement before the BP spill, but the disaster will no doubt affect the demands on IT. "It's going to have an impact on how we drill, what redundancies are going to be required, and what data we need to capture," Mortenson says. </p> <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <center><br /><table bgcolor="#FFFFFF" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="8" border="1"> <tr> <td align="center"> <span style="font-size:1.1em;font-weight:bold"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/galleries/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227300105">Industry Snapshot: Energy and Utilities</a></span> </td> </tr> </table></center></p> <center><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/1278"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/1278/1278_500_return_sm.jpg" width="272" height="42" hspace="0" vspace="0" alt="Return to the 2010 InformationWeek 500 homepage" title="Return to the 2010 InformationWeek 500 homepage" border="0" /></a></p></center> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE -->2010-09-15T00:01:00ZBusiness intelligence tools and collaboration software are being used to improve productivity.http://www.informationweek.com/news/227300392?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Company_Size:_50-249_smbThe IT spending outlook in the manufacturing sector is more pessimistic than the <i>InformationWeek 500</i> overall. Only 48% of manufacturing CIOs say this year's spending will exceed last year's, compared with 57% for all industries, and fully 32% expect a decrease. </p> <P> Technology initiatives that have improved performance for these CIOs include business intelligence tools for 50% of them and new types of collaboration software for 48%. These percentages are slightly lower than across all <i>InformationWeek 500</i> industries. For 61% of manufacturing CIOs, future innovation plans focus on efficient business processes, ahead of the all-industry rate of 54%.</p> <P> Efficiency is a big focus at Lockheed Martin. Four years ago it supported 40 systems, some more than 30 years old, just for procurement and payment. "We looked at the cost of a single solution, we looked at the cost of the over 40 legacy systems, and we looked at the cost of modernizing under each of the five business units," says Lockheed procure-to-pay VP Jon Crump. "... Ultimately, everyone agreed on a single system based on SAP." </p> <P> Like Lockheed, many manufacturers have huge global supply chains. Given that, it's not surprising that 64% of industry CIOs do offshore IT outsourcing, 50% integrate IT work with global business operations, and 48% are expanding IT operations outside the United States, all of which exceed the all-industry percentages. </p> <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div style="width:200px; float:right; margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 10px;"> <div style="border:solid 1px #000000; background-color:#ffffff;"> <div style="margin:0; padding:5px; background-color:#CC0000; text-align:center; font-size:1.3em; color:#ffffff; font-weight:bold;">DIG DEEPER</div> <div style="margin:8px 8px 6px 8px; font-weight:bold; font-size:1em; text-align:center; color:#cc0000;">Manufacturing</div> <div style="margin:0 8px 6px 8px; font-weight:bold; text-align:center;"></strong>For full interview and in-depth look </div> <div style="margin:0 8px 10px 8px; font-weight:bold; text-align:center;"><a href="http://www.analytics.informationweek.com/abstract/186/4055/InformationWeek+500/informationweek-500-2010-manufacturing-report.html">Get this <nobr>Analytics Report</nobr></a></div> <div style="margin:0; padding:5px; background-color:#000000; text-align:center; font-size:1em; font-weight:bold; color:#ffffff;"><a href="http://www.informationweekanalytics.com"><span style="color:#ffffff;">See all InformationWeek <nobr>Analytics Reports</nobr></span></a></div> </div> </div></p> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> Two-thirds of manufacturers are making global support and development part of most IT workers' jobs, compared with 49% across all industries. This reflects changing relationships with suppliers that aren't arm's length anymore. "Big firms are telling their outsourcers, 'You'll use my distribution or manufacturing system,' which gives them more control over compliance and quality," says Bob Haas, partner and global strategic IT practice leader at A.T. Kearney. "It makes it easier to pull up stakes and run that system at a factory somewhere else." </p> <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <center><br /><table bgcolor="#FFFFFF" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="8" border="1"> <tr> <td align="center"> <span style="font-size:1.1em;font-weight:bold"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/galleries/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227300179">Industry Snapshot: Manufacturing</a></span> </td> </tr> </table></center></p> <P> <P> <center><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/1278"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/1278/1278_500_return_sm.jpg" width="272" height="42" hspace="0" vspace="0" alt="Return to the 2010 InformationWeek 500 homepage" title="Return to the 2010 InformationWeek 500 homepage" border="0" /></a></p></center> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE -->2010-09-15T00:01:00ZThe aftermath of the financial meltdown has financial firms rethinking their operational practices, business models, and offerings. IT has a major role in all of it.http://www.informationweek.com/news/227300391?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Company_Size:_50-249_smbIt's been a wild ride for financial services firms in the wake of the Wall Street meltdown. New regulations and overseers, rigorous stress testing, and stringent capital adequacy requirements have led banks to re-examine their operating practices, business models, and customer offerings--and all that adds up to challenges for financial-sector CIOs.</p> <P> One priority: Enable firms to adjust their business models and operations in response to the recently enacted Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. "Banks have got to figure out a different way to make money than fee income," says Jim Eckenrode, research executive for banking at TowerGroup, a financial service research and advisory firm. "You have to work a lot harder, while giving the customer confidence that your processes are consistent, fair, and easily understood." </p> <P> As an industry driven by data, financial CIOs enjoy the biggest IT budgets in the <i>InformationWeek 500</i>. They reported an average IT budget of $448 million compared with an all-industry average of $243 million, and the financial IT budget represents 8.2% of company revenue compared with 2.9% across all industries. With these big budgets, financial services firms engage in higher levels of outsourcing than companies in other industries. Fully 70% of the industry's CIOs report doing offshore IT outsourcing vs. 58% for all industries, while 46% send business processes offshore vs. 32%.</p> <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div style="width:200px; float:right; margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 10px;"> <div style="border:solid 1px #000000; background-color:#ffffff;"> <div style="margin:0; padding:5px; background-color:#CC0000; text-align:center; font-size:1.3em; color:#ffffff; font-weight:bold;">DIG DEEPER</div> <div style="margin:8px 8px 6px 8px; font-weight:bold; font-size:1em; text-align:center; color:#cc0000;">Banking &amp; Financial Services </div> <div style="margin:0 8px 6px 8px; font-weight:bold; text-align:center;"></strong>For full interview and in-depth look </div> <div style="margin:0 8px 10px 8px; font-weight:bold; text-align:center;"><a href="http://www.analytics.informationweek.com/abstract/186/4094/InformationWeek+500/informationweek-500-2010-banking-report.html">Get this <nobr>Analytics Report</nobr></a></div> <div style="margin:0; padding:5px; background-color:#000000; text-align:center; font-size:1em; font-weight:bold; color:#ffffff;"><a href="http://www.informationweekanalytics.com"><span style="color:#ffffff;">See all InformationWeek <nobr>Analytics Reports</nobr></span></a></div> </div> </div></p> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> IT spending in financial services has a stronger customer focus than the survey total: 53% of CIOs plan to introduce new IT-led products and services vs. 40% for all industries, and 45% are building improved Web operations and customer experiences vs. 34% for all industries. <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <center><br /><table bgcolor="#FFFFFF" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="8" border="1"> <tr> <td align="center"> <span style="font-size:1.1em;font-weight:bold"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/galleries/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227300092">Industry Snapshot: Banking and Financial Services</a></span> </td> </tr> </table></center></p> <P> <P> <center><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/1278"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/1278/1278_500_return_sm.jpg" width="272" height="42" hspace="0" vspace="0" alt="Return to the 2010 InformationWeek 500 homepage" title="Return to the 2010 InformationWeek 500 homepage" border="0" /></a></p></center> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P>2010-09-15T00:01:00ZSmart companies have changed business processes and used IT to do more with fewer people.http://www.informationweek.com/news/227300397?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Company_Size:_50-249_smb<i>InformationWeek 500</i> logistics and transportation companies aren't big spenders. The sector, which is comprised of a broad range of companies including airlines, all types of freight carriers, and even a waste disposal firm, has an average IT budget of just $51 million, well below the $243 million average for the entire <i>InformationWeek 500</i>. Spending also is at the low end, with 1.8% of logistics and transport companies' revenue going to IT compared with 2.9% for all industries. </p> <P> Making business processes more efficient tops the list of innovation plans for 55% of the <i>InformationWeek 500 </i>CIOs at these companies. For Old Dominion Freight Line, a nationwide transport company with a fleet of 5,500 trucks, that's meant overhauling its claims management system to move from a paper-based process to a completely electronic one. Ninety-nine percent of claims are now processed automatically or handled during the initial customer call. </p> <P> The new system also lets Old Dominion feed claims data into its SAP Business Intelligence platform, so it can take a closer look at customers' claims histories and find ways to fix systemic problems, says VP of IT Ken Erdner. For example, one customer shipped from five or six locations, but only one of them had high claims. "We went to that shipping location and worked with them on packaging, and we did some things on our end, Erdner says. "We kept that customer."</p> <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div style="width:200px; float:right; margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 10px;"> <div style="border:solid 1px #000000; background-color:#ffffff;"> <div style="margin:0; padding:5px; background-color:#CC0000; text-align:center; font-size:1.3em; color:#ffffff; font-weight:bold;">DIG DEEPER</div> <div style="margin:8px 8px 6px 8px; font-weight:bold; font-size:1em; text-align:center; color:#cc0000;">Logistics &amp; Transportation</div> <div style="margin:0 8px 6px 8px; font-weight:bold; text-align:center;"></strong>For full interview and in-depth look </div> <div style="margin:0 8px 10px 8px; font-weight:bold; text-align:center;"><a href="http://www.analytics.informationweek.com/abstract/186/4076/InformationWeek+500/informationweek-500-2010-logistics-report.html">Get this <nobr>Analytics Report</nobr></a></div> <div style="margin:0; padding:5px; background-color:#000000; text-align:center; font-size:1em; font-weight:bold; color:#ffffff;"><a href="http://www.informationweekanalytics.com"><span style="color:#ffffff;">See all InformationWeek <nobr>Analytics Reports</nobr></span></a></div> </div> </div></p> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> The industry also is keen on improving Web operations and customer experiences. Web technologies they're adopting include software as a service (70%) and external collaboration tools such as wikis, blogs, and social networking (64%), both slightly lower adoption rates than for the <i>InformationWeek 500</i> overall. Sixty-one percent of these companies are using hosted collaborative applications, higher than the overall 55%.</p> <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <center><br /><table bgcolor="#FFFFFF" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="8" border="1"> <tr> <td align="center"> <span style="font-size:1.1em;font-weight:bold"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/galleries/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227300176">Industry Snapshot: Logistics and Transportation</a></span> </td> </tr> </table></center></p> <P> <P> <center><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/1278"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/1278/1278_500_return_sm.jpg" width="272" height="42" hspace="0" vspace="0" alt="Return to the 2010 InformationWeek 500 homepage" title="Return to the 2010 InformationWeek 500 homepage" border="0" /></a></p></center> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE -->2010-09-15T00:01:00ZThey're showing their customers the way with software as a service, wikis, blogs, and social networking.http://www.informationweek.com/news/227300395?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Company_Size:_50-249_smb Among the <i>InformationWeek 500</i>, companies in the IT sector lead the way in their use of Web technologies. Software as a service is used by 94% of them, compared with 75% across all industries. Some 88% of <i>InformationWeek 500</i> companies are using wikis, blogs, and social networking for external collaboration, compared with 72% for the entire population. The trend continues for cloud computing (66% vs. 50%), hosted collaborative apps (62% vs. 55%), mashups (60% vs. 48%), and platform as a service (46% vs. 17%). </p> <P> "Tech firms look to use themselves as case studies on how to help their customers move forward," says Zeus Kerravala, distinguished research fellow at the Yankee Group. "If they're not going to lead the industry, who will?"</p> <P> Hewlett-Packard spent three years and about $1.7 billion overhauling its internal IT operations. The centerpiece of that effort was the consolidation of more than 85 internal data centers of 5,000 square feet or more, plus another 400 smaller facilities, to six energy-efficient data centers. </p> <P> The transformation not only gave HP "a very high-performance, reliable, and available platform," says executive VP and CIO Randy Mott, but it also cut IT costs and let HP's IT organization deliver innovation faster. And, of course, it positioned the company "to highlight the HP portfolio of products to our customers," he says.</p> <P> IT companies are also ahead of the broader <i>InformationWeek 500</i> when it comes to using certain technologies to boost productivity. These include: new types of collaboration software (66% vs. 59%), business intelligence tools (58% vs. 53%), and unified communications (44% vs. 30%). </p> <P> Within BI, investments in predictive analytics help IT vendors to better manage their inventory and supply chains, Kerravala says. "No vendor wants to get caught holding inventory, but you don't want product delays either," he says. "It creates quite a conundrum."</p> <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div style="width:200px; float:right; margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 10px;"> <div style="border:solid 1px #000000; background-color:#ffffff;"> <div style="margin:0; padding:5px; background-color:#CC0000; text-align:center; font-size:1.3em; color:#ffffff; font-weight:bold;">DIG DEEPER</div> <div style="margin:8px 8px 6px 8px; font-weight:bold; font-size:1em; text-align:center; color:#cc0000;">Information Technology</div> <div style="margin:0 8px 6px 8px; font-weight:bold; text-align:center;"></strong>For full interview and in-depth look </div> <div style="margin:0 8px 10px 8px; font-weight:bold; text-align:center;"><a href="http://www.analytics.informationweek.com/abstract/186/4056/InformationWeek+500/infomationweek-500-2010-information-technology.html">Get this <nobr>Analytics Report</nobr></a></div> <div style="margin:0; padding:5px; background-color:#000000; text-align:center; font-size:1em; font-weight:bold; color:#ffffff;"><a href="http://www.informationweekanalytics.com"><span style="color:#ffffff;">See all InformationWeek <nobr>Analytics Reports</nobr></span></a></div> </div> </div></p> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> IT companies in the <i>InformationWeek 500</i> also are relatively advanced in their global IT strategies. A much larger percentage of them report expanding their IT operations and hiring outside of the U.S. (78% vs. 37%), making global support and development part of most IT workers' regular jobs (68% vs. 49%), and integrating IT workers with global business operations (60% vs. 44%). However, only half of the IT vendors we surveyed are doing offshore IT outsourcing, compared with 58% for all industries.</p> <P> CIOs in IT companies are bullish when it comes to their IT budgets. Fifty-nine percent of them expect to spend more on IT this year than they did last year. Only 10% expect their IT budgets to decline this year, compared with 20% in all industries. </p> <P> As with the broader <i>InformationWeek 500</i>, the higher IT spending can be attributed in part to the need to do upgrades that were postponed during the recession. "Y2K was the last time we saw a big upgrade cycle," Kerravala says. "I'd expect the age of equipment alone to drive spending." </p> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <center><br /><table bgcolor="#FFFFFF" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="8" border="1"> <tr> <td align="center"> <span style="font-size:1.1em;font-weight:bold"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/galleries/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227300170">Industry Snapshot: Information Technology</a></span> </td> </tr> </table></center></p> <P> <P> <center><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/1278"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/1278/1278_500_return_sm.jpg" width="272" height="42" hspace="0" vspace="0" alt="Return to the 2010 InformationWeek 500 homepage" title="Return to the 2010 InformationWeek 500 homepage" border="0" /></a></p></center> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P>2010-09-15T00:01:00ZThis small, tech-intensive industry is ready to improve telework and expand use of high-end collaborative apps.http://www.informationweek.com/news/227300396?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Company_Size:_50-249_smbWith average revenue of $2.4 billion, consulting and business services is among the smallest industries surveyed in the <i>InformationWeek 500</i>. Yet it's relatively technology-intensive, with average IT budgets running 3.7% of revenue, the same rate as biotech and pharmaceuticals and well above the 2.9% average for all <i>InformationWeek 500</i> industries. </p> <P> IT spending in 2010 is expected to increase for just over half of the companies surveyed; only 17% foresee a decline in spending. This is a welcome reversal from the downturn of the past two years. "If you go back 12 to 24 months, there was a significant halt to any new capital expenditures," says Steve Martin, a partner at Pace Harmon, an advisory and management consulting firm that specializes in helping companies manage outsourcing relationships. "This year, companies are starting to recognize that they have to catch up and reinvest in infrastructure and applications."</p> <P> Online job site Monster.com has rebuilt its infrastructure in the last three years, opening two new data centers, says global CIO Darko Dejanovic. Monster also has launched new products recently including 6Sense, a semantic search technology that ranks and scores job candidates. It's technology no one else has, Dejanovic says. "We look for products that set us apart from the competition. I think this clearly does that," he adds. </p> <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div style="width:200px; float:right; margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 10px;"> <div style="border:solid 1px #000000; background-color:#ffffff;"> <div style="margin:0; padding:5px; background-color:#CC0000; text-align:center; font-size:1.3em; color:#ffffff; font-weight:bold;">DIG DEEPER</div> <div style="margin:8px 8px 6px 8px; font-weight:bold; font-size:1em; text-align:center; color:#cc0000;">Consulting &amp; Business Services </div> <div style="margin:0 8px 6px 8px; font-weight:bold; text-align:center;"></strong>For full interview and in-depth look </div> <div style="margin:0 8px 10px 8px; font-weight:bold; text-align:center;"><a href="http://www.analytics.informationweek.com/abstract/186/4075/InformationWeek+500/informationweek-500-2010-consulting-business-services-report.html">Get this <nobr>Analytics Report</nobr></a></div> <div style="margin:0; padding:5px; background-color:#000000; text-align:center; font-size:1em; font-weight:bold; color:#ffffff;"><a href="http://www.informationweekanalytics.com"><span style="color:#ffffff;">See all InformationWeek <nobr>Analytics Reports</nobr></span></a></div> </div> </div></p> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> Telecommunications will be a strategic priority for many companies. This decade will see resurgent spending in IP telephony, Martin says, partially because these companies need to replace legacy telecom equipment. There aren't many old PDXs out there with useful lives past four to five years, he says. Another driver for IP telephony is the need to support employee mobility. There's increased investment in teleworking among consulting and business service providers. "It's not just taking your PC home," Martin says. "It's setting up an environment in your home, or wherever you want to work, that effectively emulates an office environment."</p> <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <center><br /><table bgcolor="#FFFFFF" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="8" border="1"> <tr> <td align="center"> <span style="font-size:1.1em;font-weight:bold"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/galleries/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227300099">Industry Snapshot: Consulting and Business Services</a></span> </td> </tr> </table></center></p> <P> <center><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/1278"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/1278/1278_500_return_sm.jpg" width="272" height="42" hspace="0" vspace="0" alt="Return to the 2010 InformationWeek 500 homepage" title="Return to the 2010 InformationWeek 500 homepage" border="0" /></a></p></center> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE -->2010-08-21T06:00:00ZOffice 2010 can act as the front-end to a full-featured enterprise content management solution using the metadata and workflow capabilities of SharePoint 2010.http://www.informationweek.com/news/226700216?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Company_Size:_50-249_smb<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div style="margin: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; width: 185px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224701868"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/431/01_Chris_Overview_1_tn.jpg" alt="Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures" title="Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 3px; padding: 0pt;" border="0" height="109" hspace="0" vspace="0" width="175"></a><br /><i> <span>(click image to view gallery)</span></i><br /><div style="margin:5px padding:0;font-weight:bold; font-size:1.2em; color:#990000;">Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures</div></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE -->With SharePoint 2010 in combination with Office 2010, you can control precisely what happens to documents within your organization well after someone hits "Save." In this article, we'll explain the key building blocks of SharePoint, drill down on key capabilities for growing businesses, and outline the business case. <P> <strong>A Brief Primer On Sharepoint</strong> <P> Suppose you've painstakingly compiled an Excel workbook containing a list of retail outlets worldwide that sell your brand-new product. If you're a sole proprietor, you might stop there. If you're a small business with a few employees, you might pass the Excel workbook around via email as needed, or better yet, put it on a shared folder on an Internet server so that employees can access the data at any time. To ensure data quality, you could use Excel's data validation features to confirm that each retail outlet had an employee assigned as the customer's main contact. Then, if you want to create a "Where to Buy" web page, you can export the data from the spreadsheet into a format that can be uploaded onto a basic website. <P> But what happens when your company grows? Before you know it, you're managing multiple workbooks for each product, the employee assignments fall out of sync, and the process of manually uploading information to your website becomes a much bigger task than you had anticipated. And as your company grows, you'll have other lists, data and documents to manage, with each business requirement spawning a separate project on the IT to-do list. Ultimately, you'll face a motley collection of point solutions that add up to an expensive and hard-to-manage IT infrastructure. <P> The SharePoint approach anticipates and supports the spread of data within a growing enterprise through a comprehensive approach to storing, managing and sharing information. As companies grow, they need to capture a wide variety of content; provide access to employees and partners through intranet sites; serve customers, suppliers and other stakeholders through external-facing websites; and manage the workflows associated with the content. While the specifics vary, the fundamental data requirements of an enterprise are reasonably predictable, and SharePoint implements a technology stack and methodology to deal with all but the most specialized business needs.<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div style="margin: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; width: 185px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224701868"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/431/01_Chris_Overview_1_tn.jpg" alt="Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures" title="Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 3px; padding: 0pt;" border="0" height="109" hspace="0" vspace="0" width="175"></a><br /><i> <span>(click image to view gallery)</span></i><br /><div style="margin:5px padding:0;font-weight:bold; font-size:1.2em; color:#990000;">Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures</div></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE -->Let's revisit the aforementioned example with a deployment of SharePoint Foundation 2010, a free version of SharePoint that works with a licensed copy of Windows Server 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server. You'll start by installing a server farm containing a database server and a web server. Within the web server, which will have its own URL for use only within the company intranet, you'll set up what's called a "Site Collection," with its first site containing one item, your original list of retail outlets. That's five levels of hierarchy if you're keeping track (server farm -> web server -> site collection -> site -> list), just to replicate information that used to reside within a single Excel file. <P> But now, you'd have a scalable infrastructure that could easily incorporate other sources of data -- both structured and unstructured -- into a comprehensive enterprise repository. In SharePoint 2010, a list can contain not just text and numbers, but also multimedia elements including audio and video, Office 2010 documents, and other binary objects. <P> Out of the box, a SharePoint installation includes blogs, wikis, team workspaces and document libraries. You can set item-level permissions, enable employees to check documents in or out, and have the ability to retrieve previous versions of documents for auditing and revision control. From within Office 2010, your users would be able to create their own lists and store their own documents online, your department managers could create their own sites, and your IT department can deploy new site collections as needed. Although moving that first list to SharePoint may take significant effort, building successive lists and sites gets easier and easier. <P> Furthermore, because the underlying data is being stored on the enterprise server farm instead of on an isolated PC, you can easily point external and mobile users to versions of shared data. You'd be able to create a parallel list containing just the data elements that you want to make public. That list would be contained within a site collection on an externally-facing web server, tapping into the shared database server on the enterprise server farm. <P> However, this transition from the private intranet to the public internet does require an upgrade to SharePoint Server 2010. There's only so far you can go with the free version of SharePoint, and if you're truly taking an ECM (enterprise content management) approach you'll hit the limits soon enough (see the <a href="http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/buy/Pages/Editions-Comparison.aspx">comparison chart</a> for details).<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div style="margin: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; width: 185px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224701868"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/431/01_Chris_Overview_1_tn.jpg" alt="Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures" title="Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 3px; padding: 0pt;" border="0" height="109" hspace="0" vspace="0" width="175"></a><br /><i> <span>(click image to view gallery)</span></i><br /><div style="margin:5px padding:0;font-weight:bold; font-size:1.2em; color:#990000;">Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures</div></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE -->The power of SharePoint as an ECM tool stems from its ability to assign metadata to Office 2010 documents and other items, to trigger automatic actions based on that metadata, and to enforce approvals, sign-offs and other collaboration and workflow rules. <P> Metadata can be associated with a document in several ways: <P> -- Office documents include automatic metadata, such as the creator of the document, the time and date created. <P> -- Smart templates ensure that every document of a certain type contains metadata that describes exactly what it is. <P> -- You can require Office 2010 users to fill out metadata fields before submitting a document into a SharePoint folder. <P> -- Permitted values for metadata fields can be pulled from the "Managed Metadata" service application, a new feature in SharePoint 2010. Managed Metadata allows an enterprise to define and maintain taxonomies of allowable values for metadata fields across the enterprise. <P> -- In addition to a strict, top-down taxonomy, you can also implement a user-driven "folksonomy," letting people tag documents with terms that make sense to them. The centralized Managed Metadata service application will prompt users to reuse tags that other people have created, avoiding multiple spellings and duplicate entries to the extent possible. <P> -- "Location-Based Metadata Defaults" are assigned to documents based on where they're placed on the SharePoint server. <P> With these metadata elements assigned to documents in a reliable manner, SharePoint 2010 can initiate appropriate actions and workflows in response. <P> One such action is copying a file to one or more locations based on its metadata. A new feature in SharePoint 2010, "<a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee558288.aspx">Content Organizer</a>," allows an organization's content stewards to define rules that operate on documents based on their metadata as assigned through the methods described above. For example, you can set up a rule stating that a copy of every document tagged "Legal" gets automatically moved to a secure external SharePoint site to be reviewed by the company's attorneys.<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div style="margin: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; width: 185px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224701868"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/431/01_Chris_Overview_1_tn.jpg" alt="Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures" title="Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 3px; padding: 0pt;" border="0" height="109" hspace="0" vspace="0" width="175"></a><br /><i> <span>(click image to view gallery)</span></i><br /><div style="margin:5px padding:0;font-weight:bold; font-size:1.2em; color:#990000;">Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures</div></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE -->Several <a href="http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-designer-help/understand-approval-workflows-in-sharepoint-2010-HA101857172.aspx?CTT=1">approval workflows</a> have been built into SharePoint 2010 as pre-installed defaults: <P> -- <strong>Approval</strong>, for routing documents to a group of people. Approvals can be requested either in serial or in parallel, with the option to "stage" approvals. For example, approvals #1, #2, and #3 may be required in any order before seeking approval #4, and only then approval #5; <P> -- <strong>Collect Feedback</strong>, which works similarly to the Approval workflow, but instead requests comments from any number of people; <P> -- <strong>Collect Signatures</strong>, for gathering digital signatures from within Office 2010 documents; <P> -- <strong>Publishing</strong>, for documents headed to the web; <P> -- <strong>Three-State</strong>, primarily for issue tracking (e.g. "Active," "Ready for Review," "Complete") but reusable for similar applications; <P> -- <strong>Disposition Approval</strong>, for bulk deletion of expired or out-of-date content. <P> In addition to the built-in workflows, developers can create custom workflows either using a point-and-click interface in SharePoint Designer 2010, or a more traditional coding environment in Visual Studio 2010 Workflow Designer. <P> <strong>Evaluating SharePoint</strong> <P> Some advice for SMBs considering SharePoint 2010: <P> <strong>Get help.</strong> While it does provide easily modifiable workflow templates and other out-of-the-box functionality, SharePoint won't optimize your business processes for you. The ECM capabilities within SharePoint 2010 are powerful tools to achieve business process automation, but they're still just tools. Successful deployment requires both detailed knowledge of the existing business processes within your organization and a sophisticated level of understanding of what it would take to improve those processes. Reaching this understanding is, in itself, a major challenge for many SMBs. If the task of architecting an ECM and workflow solution using Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 seems outside of the core competencies of your IT organization, hire someone to help. Also, invest in training so that your internal IT people can maintain and customize a SharePoint environment once it's in production.<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div style="margin: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; width: 185px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224701868"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/431/01_Chris_Overview_1_tn.jpg" alt="Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures" title="Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 3px; padding: 0pt;" border="0" height="109" hspace="0" vspace="0" width="175"></a><br /><i> <span>(click image to view gallery)</span></i><br /><div style="margin:5px padding:0;font-weight:bold; font-size:1.2em; color:#990000;">Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures</div></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --><strong>Learn to love lock-in.</strong> If you stay up nights wondering whether you can figure out a way to avoid the licensing fees associated with the upgrade to Office 2010 by switching to StarOffice or Google Docs, you may indeed hesitate to embed your fundamental workflows and business logic into the Microsoft platform. That's because once your core business processes are embedded into a SharePoint workflow, it'll take more than just a document converter to switch software suppliers. On the other hand, with Microsoft you can be fairly certain that there'll be an upgrade path, an active developer community and support resources for a long time to come. While you may be able to build an equivalent solution using non-Microsoft technologies, your ability to maintain it over the long-haul is a question worth asking. <P> <strong>Build a business case. </strong>The purchase decision is predominately a function of the maturity of the business processes within your organization. If you have already have a well-defined, automated and leak-proof system for managing documents within your organization, the business benefit from ECM may only be incremental. However, SMBs tend to fall on the opposite end of the spectrum, with proposals and contracts bouncing around several times before someone wrangles them into shape, with customer service suffering due to delays in finding the right documents, and with incorrect information sometimes leading to costly mistakes. <P> As with other automation projects, a business case for ECM can be built on the pillars of higher throughput, faster service delivery, lower training and on-boarding costs, lower project management expense, and greater productivity for higher-value employees. In addition, with carefully defined and vetted business processes, you can provide risk and compliance managers with greater assurance of data accuracy and approvals, which in a litigious society can drive budget approval for an ECM solution. <P> Investments in automation and productivity never go out of style, and the capabilities of SharePoint 2010 put powerful capabilities within reach of virtually any SMB. It may not be for everyone, but it's definitely worth a look. <P> <strong>FURTHER READING:</strong> <P> -- <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/smb/hardware_software/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226400004">Microsoft Office 2010 Collaboration User's Guide </a> <P> -- <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/07/sharepoint_depl.html">Sharepoint Deployments Arise In An Ad-Hoc Manner</a> <P> -- <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/galleries/smb/hardware_software/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=221800397">12+ New Microsoft Office 2010 Features</a> <P> -- <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/galleries/global-cio/trends/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225800274">7 Biggest Microsoft Flops Ever</a> <P> -- <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225200312">Review: Microsoft Office Web Apps</a>2010-08-14T06:00:00ZFeatures on the latest NAS devices transform them into full-featured, multi-purpose computing devices that can act as media, print, and file servers; surveillance devices; web hosts; and more.http://www.informationweek.com/news/226300287?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Company_Size:_50-249_smb<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 10px; float:right; width:185px; text-align:center;"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/storage/systems/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226400045&isPrev=1"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/474/01QNAP_TS-410_tn.jpg" width="175" height="153" alt="Network Attached Storage Users Guide" title="Network Attached Storage Users Guide" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0" style="margin:0 0 3px 0; padding:0;" /></a><br /> <i><span class="covercredit">(click image for larger view)</span></i><br /> <div style="margin:5px 0 0 0; padding:0;font-weight:bold; font-size:1.2em; color:#990000;">QNAP TS-410</div></div><!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> Network attached storage, or NAS, provides a powerful, yet relatively inexpensive way to store and protect your data, declutter your PCs, and enable access to information at home and on the road. Whether you're managing a small business, curating your family's repository of digital photos and videos, or storing your own digital creations, NAS devices play a vital role in enhancing home and small office networks. <P> Much more than an external hard drive, the latest NAS devices have transformed themselves into full-featured, multi-purpose computing devices that can act as media, print, and file servers; surveillance devices; web hosts; and even file-streaming servers for mobile phones. Indeed, the term "network attached storage" is probably a misnomer. The new NAS, with its own chipset, operating system, and network connectivity options, is essentially a "network attached <i>server</i>." <P> In fact, if you have a spare PC with a CD-ROM and hard drive that you'd like to press into service as a NAS, you can set it up with <a href="http://freenas.org/" target="_blank">FreeNAS</a>, a FreeBSD Unix-based distribution that supports the most common NAS protocols, server processes, and applications. But considering the low cost, quality assurance, and bundled capabilities of the commercial alternatives, it's probably worthwhile to spend your time figuring out which off-the-shelf hardware is best for your needs instead of experimenting with the build-your-own approach. <P> NAS devices can be evaluated on several dimensions, including storage, PC backup, NAS backup, and server-based applications. <P> <strong>How Much Storage Do You Need?</strong> <P> Unlike an ordinary external hard drive connected directly to a PC, network attached storage can be shared across a network by multiple users using multiple devices. Although NAS devices typically have an upper limit to user accounts, groups, and concurrent users, these limits are usually set rather high -- in the hundreds or even thousands -- befitting the origins of NAS as an enterprise and workgroup technology. The real limitation is available disk space. <P> For each computer you own, you should plan to perform incremental file backups, including a full system image of your operating system, programs, settings, and files. That way, if the PC hard drive fails, you can simply get a new one and restore from the image. To estimate the size requirements, add the size of your documents folder to the total hard drive space used for each of your systems, and multiply by a factor of three or four. <P> Next, estimate your rate of data growth. One terabyte of storage, or 1,024 gigabytes, holds about 680 movies downloaded from the iTunes Store. So, if your family downloads three movies per week, it would take you about four years to fill a single terabyte. But if you're also adding other file downloads, or if someone at home is engaged with music composition, video production, 3-D graphics, or other storage-intensive applications, you'll need to plan accordingly with a larger target for disk space. <P> Give yourself plenty of room: One terabyte sounds like a lot of space, but so did 80 gigabytes just five years ago.<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 10px; float:right; width:185px; text-align:center;"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/storage/systems/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226400045&pgno=2&isPrev=1"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/474/02TeraStationDuoTS-WXL-R1_full.jpg" width="175" height="153" alt="Network Attached Storage Users Guide" title="Network Attached Storage Users Guide" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0" style="margin:0 0 3px 0; padding:0;" /></a><br /> <i><span class="covercredit">(click image for larger view)</span></i><br /> <div style="margin:5px 0 0 0; padding:0;font-weight:bold; font-size:1.2em; color:#990000;">Buffalo TeraStation Duo</div></div><!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> Once you have an estimate of your expected storage requirements, double it. That's not necessarily because your initial estimate was wrong, but rather because you'll likely want to employ one of the data protection practices known as RAID, or redundant array of independent disks. <P> If you simply copy your files to an external hard drive and then delete the originals, you're gambling that the external hard drive won't fail. Over time, you'll lose that gamble. By contrast, if you use disk mirroring (RAID1) or disk striping (RAID5) to store your data across multiple drives, a single disk failure isn't a disaster, but instead an advance warning to install a new drive. <P> Accordingly, I would recommend a dual-bay NAS device for RAID1 disk mirroring as a minimum specification for anyone considering this technology. This means that if you need 1 TB of storage, look for a 2-TB NAS solution supporting two separate 1-TB drives. <P> While it may seem extravagant to purchase twice the hard drive capacity than you expect to need, just remember that for every gigabyte of RAID-protected data moved to your NAS, that's a gigabyte you can delete from your PC's primary hard drive, freeing up space for easier defragmentation and better performance. Your laptop's hard drive should be a digital briefcase for the files you're working on now, not a digital safe deposit box containing everything you've ever done. <P> Starting with RAID1 on your NAS, you can safely delete files on your PC, and then more easily upgrade operating systems, try new applications, or download new content without worrying about disk space. It's a liberating experience. <P> Although RAID5 costs more to implement up-front and has performance disadvantages relative to RAID1, it provides higher levels of data protection and becomes quite cost-effective for larger implementations. Here are some sample calculations comparing the QNAP TS-210 two-bay (using RAID1) with the QNAP TS-410 four-bay NAS (using both RAID1 and RAID5), with 1-TB and 2-TB Western Digital Caviar Green hard drives: <P> <table border="1"> <tr> <th>NAS</th> <th>Hard Drives</th> <th>RAID</th> <th>TB Available</th> <th>Street Price</th> <th>Cost per TB</th> </tr> <tr> <td>QNAP TS-210</td> <td>2x1TB</td> <td>Level 1</td> <td>1 TB</td> <td>$420</td> <td>$420</td> </tr> <tr> <td>QNAP TS-210</td> <td>2x2TB</td> <td>Level 1</td> <td>2 TB</td> <td>$540</td> <td>$270</td> </tr> <tr> <td>QNAP TS-410</td> <td>4x1TB</td> <td>Level 1</td> <td>2 TB</td> <td>$720</td> <td>$240</td> </tr> <tr> <td>QNAP TS-410</td> <td>4x1TB</td> <td>Level 5</td> <td>3 TB</td> <td>$720</td> <td>$240</td> </tr> <tr> <td>QNAP TS-410</td> <td>4x2TB</td> <td>Level 1</td> <td>4 TB</td> <td>$960</td> <td>$240</td> </tr> <tr> <td>QNAP TS-410</td> <td>4x2TB</td> <td>Level 5</td> <td>6 TB</td> <td>$960</td> <td>$160</td> </tr> </table> <P> Prices vary widely by manufacturer and disk size, but the basic math points to buying the largest available hard drives that fit in a given unit. While RAID5 is less expensive as storage needs increase (not including the higher power usage), it's most appropriate for read-only applications such as media servers. If you expect to use your hard drive capacity for write-intensive applications such as content generation, file downloading, or database access, RAID1 may be a better fit. <P> Many vendors, mainly traditional storage companies such as Buffalo, Iomega, and Seagate, provide NAS devices with pre-installed hard drives. Other vendors, such as QNAP, Synology, and Thecus, require you to purchase and install hard drives from a list of compatible devices. That aspect shouldn't put you off much, since NAS devices have been designed to make it easy to install or replace hard drives.<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 10px; float:right; width:185px; text-align:center;"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/storage/systems/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226400045&pgno=3&isPrev=1"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/474/03AppleTimeCapsule_full.jpg" width="175" height="153" alt="Network Attached Storage Users Guide" title="Network Attached Storage Users Guide" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0" style="margin:0 0 3px 0; padding:0;" /></a><br /> <i><span class="covercredit">(click image for larger view)</span></i><br /> <div style="margin:5px 0 0 0; padding:0;font-weight:bold; font-size:1.2em; color:#990000;">Apple Time Capsule</div></div><!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <strong>Backing Up Your PCs</strong> <P> Aside from hardware characteristics, NAS vendors also differentiate their offerings based on the type of backup software included with the device. <P> However, for home networks, you really don't need external software to manage backups. All you have to do is mount the NAS onto your regular file system such that it appears as an attached hard drive. Then, Windows XP users can run the NTBACKUP utility and Windows 7 users can run the Backup and Restore control panel. <P> If you want or expect to support Macs with your NAS, check that the device supports Apple's Time Machine capability. A note about Apple: For a street price of $470, you can get a Time Capsule with 2 TB of non-mirrored storage. Nice when your Mac's hard drive fails, but not so nice when the hard drive on the Time Capsule fails. <P> In line with Apple's general philosophy, the Time Capsule is designed to be dead simple and doesn't come cluttered with "unnecessary" features that you'll find on competing, less-expensive products. It just does one thing -- backup files -- and does it well. Although the company does offer the media-ready Apple TV and Mac Mini, Apple has yet to release a category-killer in NAS. We should expect them to try. <P> If the built-in capabilities of your operating system are insufficient, such as if you're using Windows Server or another server OS, one of these bundled options may appeal to you: <P> <ul> <li> Buffalo Technology <a href="http://www.buffalotech.com/products/network-storage/terastation/">TeraStation</a> NAS devices include NovaBACKUP Business Essentials, which includes automatic backups, system imaging, and bare-metal restore with support for Windows Server, Microsoft Exchange, and SQL Server files.</li> <P> <li>Iomega, an EMC company, includes <a href="http://www.retrospect.com/products/software/retroexpresshd/">EMC Retrospect Express</a> with its StorCenter NAS devices.</li> <P> <li><a href="http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/external/blackarmor/">Seagate BlackArmor</a> NAS devices enable discounts of over 20% on Acronis Backup & Recovery products.</li> </ul> <P> <strong>Backing Up Your NAS Backup</strong> <P> Once you've successfully backed up every PC and device on your network onto the NAS, the natural progression will be the realization that someday, something bad could happen to your precious NAS. Here are some of the common approaches to backing up the backup device. <P> <i><b>USB, eSATA, or Firewire connection:</i></b> Most NAS devices come with at least one USB port, which you can use to connect an external hard drive. True, external hard drives are not RAID-enabled, but if you have one of those drives lying around, it can't hurt to make just one more copy, right? Your files will transfer even faster using either the eSATA or Firewire interface, if available.</li><!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 10px; float:right; width:185px; text-align:center;"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/storage/systems/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226400045&pgno=4&isPrev=1"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/474/04StorCenterNAS_ix12-300r_full.jpg" width="175" height="153" alt="Network Attached Storage Users Guide" title="Network Attached Storage Users Guide" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0" style="margin:0 0 3px 0; padding:0;" /></a><br /> <i><span class="covercredit">(click image for larger view)</span></i><br /> <div style="margin:5px 0 0 0; padding:0;font-weight:bold; font-size:1.2em; color:#990000;">Iomega StorCenter ix12--00r</div></div><!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <i><b>NAS-to-NAS replication:</i></b> If you buy two NAS devices, you can copy the contents of one NAS to the other. And with most of Iomega StorCenter NAS devices, you can perform replication on a schedule or with the press of a button.</li> <P> <b><i>NAS-to-cloud copy:</i></b> The smart NAS providers realize that cloud storage is the perfect complement to home network storage as an extra layer of data assurance for your most important files. Leading the way in this area is Synology, which now includes <a href="http://www.synology.com/us/products/features/backup_server.php">server backup</a> between its DiskStation NAS and an Amazon S3 server. While it may be relatively expensive to back up an entire NAS drive to Amazon S3 -- about $150 to upload 1 TB and $150 per month to keep it there -- you can cherry-pick your most important folders for synchronization with online storage. And the Amazon S3 pricing model undermines competing solutions, as with the <a href="http://www.netgear.com/readynasvault">Netgear ReadyNAS Vault</a>, which charges $5.95 per month for 5 GB, or $199 annually for 50 GB. <P> <strong>Other Applications For NAS</strong> <P> So far, we've just talked about the core applications of storage and backup. But there are many other compelling reasons to deploy a NAS, and you may find that some devices are more suited than others to specific tasks. <P> <i><b>UPnP and DLNA:</i></b> These industry standards govern interoperability between home media devices, including the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Most NAS devices support both standards, but it's worth checking your other audiovisual equipment against the certified product registries of the <a href="http://www.dlna.org/products">Digital Living Network Alliance</a> and the <a href="http://upnp.org/sdcps-and-certification/certification/certified-product-registry/">UPnP Forum</a>. <P> <b><i>Print server:</i></b> Let your NAS spool printer files by plugging a wired printer directly into an available USB port. <P> <b><i>USB device offloading:</i></b> Stop using your PC as a waystation for family pictures and other files by plugging your digital camera or other USB drive directly into the NAS. This is a common feature in NAS drives, and the more advanced models enable one-touch copying without having turn on the PC. <P> <b><i>iTunes server:</i></b> Many NAS devices permit you to create a "music" partition that can be shared by multiple users on a single network. However, these files are accessible through the shared library capability in iTunes, which does not support playlists. You can listen to whatever songs and albums you like, but you can't sync them to your portable MP3 player or set up your own playlists. For personal use, you're better off mapping the "music" partition as a virtual hard drive for direct indexing by the iTunes application. <P> <i><b>Web server:</i></b> You can set up your NAS as a home-based web server, accessible with a username and password from any computer or mobile device. Just make sure you've double- and triple-checked the security settings, assigned restrictive user privileges, used the more-secure HTTPS protocol if available, and don't blame me if you get hacked. Some approaches may give you greater comfort levels, such as having to login through the NAS provider's website, as with Buffalo Technology's BuffaloNAS.com for web access and native iPhone support for music and video streaming.<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 10px; float:right; width:185px; text-align:center;"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/storage/systems/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226400045&pgno=5&isPrev=1"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/474/05Seagate_BA_NAS440_full.jpg" width="175" height="153" alt="Network Attached Storage Users Guide" title="Network Attached Storage Users Guide" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0" style="margin:0 0 3px 0; padding:0;" /></a><br /> <i><span class="covercredit">(click image for larger view)</span></i><br /> <div style="margin:5px 0 0 0; padding:0;font-weight:bold; font-size:1.2em; color:#990000;">Seagate BlackArmor NAS440</div></div><!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <i><b>File downloading:</i></b> Apparently, there's an application out there called BitTorrent that provides some 50 million users with access to perfectly legal downloaded content with perhaps a small smattering of copyrighted material inadvertently distributed. Many NAS software providers have thoughtfully provided ways for people to, for example, <a href="http://www.readynas.com/?p=60">download</a> the latest CD image of the Debian distro using Bittorrent. Other providers, such as QNAP, Synology, and Thecus, support scheduled downloads as well, which is useful for those times when the Debian distro is just too popular to download. <P> <i><b>Surveillance cameras:</i></b> You may be able to use your NAS to monitor wireless or IP-networked surveillance cameras. As an example, QNAP NAS devices support both audio and video feeds, with motion-detection and scheduling capabilities. <P> <strong>General Recommendations</strong> <P> In the past, maintaining storage hygiene has been a dull chore. It's clearly a good idea to keep your files backed up, and now it's not only feasible to do so economically, but it can also form the core of a much more usable, functional, and capable network. <P> Here are some hard-earned words of wisdom that may help you on your search for the perfect NAS: <P> <ul> <li>Take a hard look at your data to come up with tiers of storage, ranging from "essential files that I'd want to take out of a burning house," to "I spent some money on this, but I wouldn't pay to replace it," to "why am I carrying these files around?" Your storage needs may vary significantly based on how you answer.</li> <P> <li>On a NAS, 4.7 GB costs about $1.50 on an allocated basis. You can fit the same amount of data on a DVD-ROM costing $0.50. Don't buy a NAS for files that just need to be offloaded onto disk and put in a drawer somewhere.</li> <P> <li>Estimate how much media you consume on a monthly or annual basis, and then adjust that figure upwards based on how excited you are about 3-D video and related innovations coming down the pike.</li> <P> <li>Your budget should also take into account the potential for extending the useful life and functional capacity of your over-stuffed PCs.</li> <P> <li>Come up with a "short list" of NAS devices based on compatibility with existing hardware and audiovisual equipment, cost, storage capacity, and those extra features most important to you.</li> <P> <li>Once you've narrowed down the list based on your purchase criteria, read the manual (almost always available online). You'll be able to see what comes with the device, how easy it is to install and configure, and whether the features that look good on a checklist actually have the functionality you need.</li> <P> <li>Tom's Hardware and HotHardware.com offer some pretty comprehensive hands-on reviews.</li> <P> <li>Glance at the vendor-provided message boards to see how people are using the devices, what problems people generally have, and whether the support staff is on the job.</li> <P> <li>Things can get tricky when you move NAS devices from one network to another. Keep good notes on network settings and the like.</li> <P> <li>You don't really have a fully working backup until you've tried to restore your data.</li> </ul> <P> <strong>For Further Reading</strong> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225600381">Online Storage Buyer's Guide </a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/05/iomega_launches.html">Iomega Launches New Storage Array</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=223900232">4 Keys To Storage Management</a>2010-07-31T06:00:00ZVirtual presence and co-authoring features in Office 2010 enable new approaches to collaboration and teamwork for businesses of any size.http://www.informationweek.com/news/226400004?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Company_Size:_50-249_smb<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div style="margin: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; width: 185px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224701868"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/431/01_Chris_Overview_1_tn.jpg" alt="Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures" title="Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 3px; padding: 0pt;" border="0" height="109" hspace="0" vspace="0" width="175"></a><br /><i> <span>(click image to view gallery)</span></i><br /><div style="margin:5px padding:0;font-weight:bold; font-size:1.2em; color:#990000;">Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures</div></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> Microsoft Office 2010 includes ways to communicate and collaborate that go far beyond what had been available in prior versions of the world's most popular office productivity suite. Here are some specific approaches for how individual users as well as small and midsize businesses can take advantage of the <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/desktop/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225700159">new capabilities of Office 2010</a>. <P> <strong>Collaboration With Co-Authoring</strong> <P> It's hard to jump in and contribute on a document that's squirreled away in a local folder on someone's PC. That's why the co-authoring feature in Office 2010 has the potential for transformative change in content development and workflow. <P> Co-authoring allows multiple people to work on the same Word 2010, PowerPoint 2010 or OneNote 2010 document at the same time. In order for co-authoring to work, the document has to be placed either on someone's Windows Live "SkyDrive" (free 25MB to anyone with a Windows Live ID) or on a shared folder in SharePoint 2010. From there, multiple Office 2010 users can open the document at the same time for simultaneous editing. <P> Once people realize that they can jump in to review, comment upon and contribute to documents without locking others out, they'll be more likely and willing to lend a hand. But careful planning should be a prerequisite. For most people, co-authoring represents new territory, and the ground rules and etiquette handbook for co-authoring have yet to be written. <P> For example, how will it feel to have the workplace grammarian virtually following you around to quietly fix your split infinitives? Who reconciles differences in opinion in terms of usage, style and formatting when these debates are happening in real-time? And are you ready for a workplace where your boss can look over your shoulder at any time to see exactly how far you've gotten on the Penske file? <P> Just because it's easy to have everyone pile into a document doesn't mean that you should deploy the technology without adequate planning and forethought.<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div style="margin: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; width: 185px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224701868"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/431/01_Chris_Overview_1_tn.jpg" alt="Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures" title="Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 3px; padding: 0pt;" border="0" height="109" hspace="0" vspace="0" width="175"></a><br /><i> <span>(click image to view gallery)</span></i><br /><div style="margin:5px padding:0;font-weight:bold; font-size:1.2em; color:#990000;">Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures</div></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <strong>-- Pick the right documents to co-author</strong>. There's no need to use co-authoring for every interoffice memo. It's a powerful tool, but co-authoring can get expensive quickly if you have several employees gathered around the same document stepping on each other's toes all at once. Co-Authoring should be reserved primarily for documents that would benefit from fast turnaround and high accuracy, with multiple pairs of eyes on every paragraph. Otherwise, retain the time-tested workflow of one-at-a-time access as the default mode of document creation. <P> <strong>-- Call your shots.</strong> For documents that will be co-authored, add a cover page as a separate section of the document (in Word 2010, select Page Layout >> Breaks >> Section Break >> Next Page). Or, in PowerPoint 2010, create a separate slide earmarked for that purpose. List the co-authors and their respective responsibilities and deadlines (e.g., "RJ - add stock art and illustrations by Friday"), and add columns for current status, completion date and comments. That way, anyone who opens the document will see what's needed next. <P> <strong>-- Assign a project manager.</strong> One person should coordinate participation, set the overall pace and reconcile the work of multiple contributors. <P> <strong>-- Assign content ownership.</strong> Just one person should hold primary responsibility for the content of the final document, including all of its component parts, for accountability's sake. <P> <strong>-- Use the right tool for the job.</strong> Co-authoring allows two people to work on adjacent paragraphs in the same document at the same time. But what if you need both people to work on the same paragraph at the same time? In that case, it's not co-authoring that you need, but rather desktop-sharing or application-sharing. Within the Microsoft product line-up, if you have Office Communicator 2007 R2, Desktop Sharing will allow you to see exactly what someone else sees on their PC. Alternatively, Microsoft Live Meeting, available by subscription or as part of Office Communicator 2007 R2, allows you to share with someone else a single application as it appears on your desktop. Also, the upcoming Office Communications Server "14," available later this year, integrates application-sharing and desktop-sharing into the Office 2010 environment.<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div style="margin: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; width: 185px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224701868"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/431/01_Chris_Overview_1_tn.jpg" alt="Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures" title="Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 3px; padding: 0pt;" border="0" height="109" hspace="0" vspace="0" width="175"></a><br /><i> <span>(click image to view gallery)</span></i><br /><div style="margin:5px padding:0;font-weight:bold; font-size:1.2em; color:#990000;">Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures</div></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> With presence status indicators built into Office 2010 applications, you can now initiate a real-time conversation from inside of a document instead of having to bounce to a separate, dedicated communications tool. The diversity of communication options also helps to <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/07/fifty_the_magic_1.html">reduce the volume of unnecessary email</a>, a scourge in today's data-deluged workplaces. In addition, information from external social networks and organizational charts can now be easily discovered from within Office 2010 applications, enriching what you know about the people with whom you work without forcing you to open a new browser window and conduct a search. <P> Here are some of the ways in which virtual presence can have a real impact on your business: <P> <strong>-- Presence during co-authoring.</strong> When someone's co-authoring a document with you in Word 2010, PowerPoint 2010, or OneNote 2010, that person's name and status indicator appears in the margins. By clicking on their status indicator you can send an instant message, create a new email or even initiate a VoIP call. Similarly, when you receive an email in Outlook 2010, you can instantly see the sender's presence status indicator if available. This is invaluable for bringing together office workers with remote workers, people in different time zones and traveling employees. <P> <strong>-- Internal knowledge through contact cards.</strong> If your business uses Microsoft Exchange and Active Directory, a "contact card" can display where your internal correspondents fit on the org chart. Although this would be most useful feature at larger organizations, even smaller companies have new hires and people located at other offices who may not be familiar with exactly how people fit into the company. <P> <strong>-- External knowledge from social networks.</strong> More applicable to small and midsize companies is the Outlook Social Connector, an <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/smb/hardware_software/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225800156">add-in for Outlook that brings your correspondents' social network feeds</a> and profile information directly to your inbox. The installation process involves downloading separate components for accessing LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace and Windows Live Messenger, which helps your IT staff to set appropriate usage policies for which social networks are to be integrated into the everyday email client, and which would be better left for off-hours perusal. On the surface, adding LinkedIn would be the obvious choice, providing quick details about the company, title, and current job responsibilities of your email correspondents, as knowing someone's professional history can be a great help in composing appropriate emails. However, that same logic might apply to Facebook status feeds, especially if you have a prior relationship with a customer or business partner that would warrant adding a personal note to the start of an email prior to getting down to business. (e.g. "Loved your vacation photos! You'll have to tell me more about it when we meet on Wednesday.")<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div style="margin: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; width: 185px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224701868"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/431/01_Chris_Overview_1_tn.jpg" alt="Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures" title="Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 3px; padding: 0pt;" border="0" height="109" hspace="0" vspace="0" width="175"></a><br /><i> <span>(click image to view gallery)</span></i><br /><div style="margin:5px padding:0;font-weight:bold; font-size:1.2em; color:#990000;">Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures</div></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <strong>-- Internal search for expertise and knowledge.</strong> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/07/sharepoint_depl.html">SharePoint 2010 includes People Search</a>, a method of finding people having certain expertise or knowledge within your organization. By default, the keyword-driven results are sorted by "social distance" (although less important in a smaller organization, it's still a consideration) as well as common interests. For example, if you conduct a search for "Spanish," you should be able to find someone at your level at your company who speaks the language -- and see by their presence status indicator whether they're available to answer a question you may have. As with any IT solution, People Search only as valuable as the underlying data, and it won't live up to its potential unless people fill out profiles with up-to-date skills, competencies and interests. <P> <strong>-- Communications without clutter.</strong> Email has its advantages, among them the ability to reply to an email with another email. But the proliferation of email creates new problems, and busy professionals struggle daily with the chore of sorting through hundreds of incoming emails. Outlook 2010 has several ways to help you to manage your inbox, including "Conversation View," which groups related posts into a single line; the "Ignore" button, to keep discussions that are completely irrelevant to you from reaching your inbox; and "MailTips," a feature of Exchange 2010 that warns people when they're about to commit an email faux pas such as clicking "Reply All" in response to a BCC:, or emailing an overly-large group. Also, MailTips tells you when your addressee has an "on holiday" auto-reply, so that you don't waste time sending someone a detailed message that they won't read for over a week. <P> <strong>-- Easy alternatives to email.</strong> Presence status indicators also help to reduce the time spent processing email. Often, a VoIP call or text chat is a quicker way to issue resolution than an email. The Outlook 2010 interface makes emailing, IM chats and voice calls equally accessible. When responding to an email message mail, you should be making conscious choice as to the best communications method through which to reply. For matters that are time-sensitive, discussion-oriented or best suited for a personal conversation, the best choice might be a text chat, audio call or video chat. By enabling people to make the right choices, you can foster lower email handling times, increased productivity and stronger working relationships between your employees. <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/enterpriseapps/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225700500">Collaboration and virtual presence in Office 2010 are powerful tools</a> with the potential to drive real business value. However, absent a clear-eyed awareness of the organizational and cultural challenges, those same features can also lead to difficulties in the workplace. For example, if you try to implement document co-authoring without treating it as a project to be managed, it'll soon become unmanageable. And if you build IM and social networking into every productivity application without instituting reasonable use policies, don't be surprised if back-channel chatter consumes whatever time savings were achieved from a smaller inbox. <P> However, the benefits of collaboration and virtual presence far outweigh the potential pitfalls. As with any new technology, take your Office 2010 rollout one step at a time. Think through the benefits and use cases, set reasonable policies, give people the training they need to understand how best to work with the technology, and seek out feedback from your employees and co-workers on what would help them to do their jobs better. <P> The potential prize: A team-focused organization having a healthy balance of internal cohesiveness, external connectedness, and overall productivity.2010-07-02T07:00:00ZAnyone can head for the beach, but if space flight, astronomy, or science fiction/fantasy movies (<i>Lord of The Rings</i>, anyone?) mean anything to you, try these destinations instead.http://www.informationweek.com/news/209602177?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Company_Size:_50-249_smb<small>This story originally appeared on August 2, 2008.</small> <P> By now, you've probably heard of the &#8220;<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/worklife/06/12/balance.staycation/">staycation</a>,&#8221; a fuel-friendly alternative to packing up the car for a long drive or heading to the airport. Curbed by high gas prices, people are increasingly spending their free time at home, unwinding with their neglected hobbies and home entertainment systems. <P> Yet for geeks (and I use that term in the nicest, self-deprecating, and science-and-tech-friendly way), the idea of a "staycation" seems business-as-usual. For instance, computer geeks have been on an extended staycation since the <a href="http://www.virtualaltair.com/">Altair 8800</a>. <P> But now, with the boring, ordinary folks staying at home, it's the perfect time for geeks to hit the road. You've earned it. With just a bit of money, some accrued vacation time, and an insatiable sense of curiosity, you'll have the perfect ingredients for an exciting and educational <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meatspace">meatspace</a> experience. <P> <P> <table width="185" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" border="0" align="right"> <tr BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td ALIGN="center" VALIGN="middle"> <A HREF="http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/showImage.jhtml?galleryID=213&articleID=209602177" TARGET="_blank"><IMG SRC="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/galleries/automated/213/1_full.jpg" WIDTH="175" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" BORDER="0"></A><BR> </td> <td ALIGN="center" VALIGN="middle" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" ROWSPAN="2"><BR> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="175" class="artCaption" align="center"> <img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/spacer.gif" width="175" height="4" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0"><br><B style="color:black">Hobbiton, near Matamata, New Zealand, where Lord Of The Rings was filmed. Photo by <a href="http://www.silvery.com/" target="new">Silver Smith</a>.</B> </td> </tr> <tr BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td width="185" class="artCaption" align="center"><A HREF="http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/showImage.jhtml?galleryID=213&articleID=209602177" target="_blank">(click for image gallery)</A> </td> </tr> </table> <P> <P> <b><big>Fanboy Pilgrimage</b></big> <P> It wouldn't be a roundup of geek vacations without talking about heading off to see where canonical sci-fi and fantasy movies were filmed. <P> To see the spectacular landscapes from the <i>Lord of the Rings</i> series, visit <a href="http://www.newzealand.com/travel/about-nz/features/lotr-2003/introduction.cfm">New Zealand</a> for a <a href="http://www.tourism.net.nz/tours/lord-of-the-rings-tours/index.html"><b>Lord of the Rings tour</b></a>, including <a href="http://www.newzealand.com/travel/sights-activities/scenic-highlights/scenic-views/scenic-highlight-details.cfm/businessid/63671.html">Matamata</a>, the home of Hobbiton. And with the 17,600-mile round-trip flight from New York to New Zealand adding about 5,300 kg of carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere (which you can <a href="http://www.sustravel.co.uk/carbon_calculator">offset</a> by taking the bus instead of driving your car for 53,000 miles), you may have the added bonus of imagining a malevolent glowing eye in the sky following you wherever you go. <P> If you're a Trekkie (or Trekker), there's no need to teleport so far. <a href="http://www.startrek.com/custom/include/community/tour/"><b>Star Trek: The Tour</b></a> had its initial run in Long Beach, Calif. earlier this year, and should soon be bringing a collection of memorabilia, flight simulators, and re-created film sets to a city near you. Or you can go to the Las Vegas Hilton for what may be your last chance to see <a href="http://www.startrekexp.com/"><b>Star Trek: The Experience</b></a>, which <a href="http://trekmovie.com/2008/05/02/future-of-star-trek-the-experience-in-doubt/">reports indicate</a> may be closed by the end of the year. <P> As real <i>Star Wars</i> fans surely know by now, you can visit the <a href="http://www.gonomad.com/lodgings/0009/starwars.html"><b>Hotel Sidi Driss</b></a> in Tunisia to see where George Lucas and company filmed some of the early scenes from the first Star Wars movie (to be precise, <i>Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope</i>). <P> But for a glimpse of real magic, the light in the saber was created at <a href="http://www.ilm.com/"><b>Industrial Light & Magic</b></a>. Unfortunately, IL&M's main operation in San Francisco isn't open for tours by the public, and so you can forget about taking <a href="http://s213.photobucket.com/albums/cc84/tonylop33/ILM%20Tour%202008/">pictures like these</a> -- unless you know somebody (and can invite me along). <P> You'll probably have better luck visiting <a href="http://www.spacecenter.org/"><b>Space Center Houston</b></a> to gaze lovingly upon genuine props, models, and artifacts from <a href="http://www.starwars.com/clonewars/site/index.html">Star Wars: The Clone Wars</a>, coming soon to a theater near you. <P> <a href="http://www.movie-locations.com/">The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations</a> has travel tips related to numerous other movies of likely interest to cinema geeks of all stripes. <P> Tip: Take some movie stills with you so that you can match the camera angles when posing in front of an iconic landscape or set. This will make your Photoshop touch-up efforts that much easier when you return home.<b><big>Space Race</b></big> <P> Now let's get real. Geekhood isn't defined by one's DVD collection or an ability to accurately cite minutia about fictional worlds. It's about lifelong learning in subjects which others lack either the patience or inclination to master. And so in the spirit of true geekdom, why not go somewhere that furthers your own learning while setting a positive example for others? <P> If we're ever going to leave the hothouse cradle of humanity to journey into the cool expanses of space, we'll need to show support for NASA, America's hardest-working earthlings furthering the cause of interplanetary exploration. <P> <a href="http://www.spacecenter.org/">Space Center Houston</a>, in addition to hosting the <i>Star Wars</i> memorabilia mentioned previously, also serves as the visitor center for <b>NASA's Johnson Space Center</b>. This includes the historic Mission Control Center used for the Apollo landings. If you go, make sure to amuse your fellow guests with the quip, &#8220;Houston, we have a problem.&#8221; The friendly Texan tour guides may have heard it before, but they'll smile anyway -- it's part of the job description. You may also get a glimpse of the current Mission Control Center and other rocket-powered highlights. <P> <P> <table width="185" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" border="0" align="right"> <tr BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td ALIGN="center" VALIGN="middle"> <A HREF="http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/showImage.jhtml?galleryID=213&articleID=209602177" TARGET="_blank"><IMG SRC="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/galleries/automated/213/5image007_full.jpg" WIDTH="175" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" BORDER="0"></A><BR> </td> <td ALIGN="center" VALIGN="middle" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" ROWSPAN="2"><BR> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="175" class="artCaption" align="center"> <img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/spacer.gif" width="175" height="4" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0"><br><B style="color:black">Space Center Houston mixes Star Wars memorabilia with space travel in our own galaxy. Photo by Another Off The Wall Production.</B> </td> </tr> <tr BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td width="185" class="artCaption" align="center"><A HREF="http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/showImage.jhtml?galleryID=213&articleID=209602177" target="_blank">(click for image gallery)</A> </td> </tr> </table> <P> <P> If you want to witness an actual liftoff, try timing your next visit to Florida's <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/home/index.html"><b>Kennedy Space Center</b></a> around the <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/missions/highlights/schedule.html">schedule</a> of <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/view/index.html">shuttle</a> and <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/launchingrockets/viewing.html">rocket</a> launches. You can either buy a ticket to watch the proceedings from the visitor complex (U.S. citizens only), or find a suitable <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/view/view_shuttle.html">off-site location</a> for a rocket-powered picnic or camping trip. The next launches are slated for October. <P> If you want the experience of training to be an astronaut without the rigorous selection criteria and years of training and education, try one of the three-day or six-day <a href="http://www.spacecamp.com/details.php?cat=Space&program=Adult+Programs">Space Academy programs for adults</a> at <b>Space Camp</b> in Huntsville, Alabama. During the program, you'll find out what 4Gs of force and 1/6th gravity feels like. Also, the Advanced Space Academy includes time on a jet simulator and a 3-G centrifuge. <P> Every third Saturday of the month, the <b>NASA Glenn Research Center</b> in Cleveland hosts a <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/events/vcevents.html">visitor center event</a> for aeronautics and space aficionados. The facility also boasts six galleries, including a flight simulator, rocket and space station exhibits, and a model of the Mars Pathfinder rover. <P> At Caltech in Pasadena, the <a href="http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm"><b>NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory</b></a> offers an inside glimpse at some of NASA's most exciting space research: the Mars Phoenix lander, the Jason 2 satellite monitoring Earth's oceans, and the soon-to-launch Orbiting Carbon Observatory. <a href="http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/pso/pt.cfm">Tours</a> must be booked well in advance. <P> For something only slightly more down-to-earth, visit the <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/home/index.html"><b>NASA Dryden Flight Research Center</b></a> in the western Mojave Desert. The facility, home of NASA's atmospheric flight research and operations, offers tours of its historical aircraft, current research aircraft, and a bus tour of the Edwards Air Force Base flight line, where the latest and greatest mechanical birds prepare to take to the sky. <P> If you're heading to Puerto Rico, check out the 20-acre reflector on the radio telescope at the <a href="http://www.naic.edu/"><b>Arecibo Observatory</b></a>, part of the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center (NAIC). You can also explore the use of radio telescopes in basic astronomy and atmospheric science at the visitor center.<b><big>Save the Critters</b></big> <P> If all of this skyward longing leaves you cold, there's still plenty of fun to be had helping Earth's other carbon-based life forms. You can use your vacation to improve animal habitats, while learning something about the environment in the process. <P> Even better for geeks, these experiences provide great conversation starters for those socially awkward moments when you'd be otherwise tempted to talk about PERL scripting techniques or string theory. Plus, talking about nature automatically puts an eco-focused spin on any apparent hygienic shortfalls. <P> For geeks, &#8220;That course is a bear!&#8221; is a challenge to be taken up with gusto. Now, you can take a course featuring actual black bears in the wild, to study their vocalizations, body language, behavior, and ecology. Taught in Ely, Minnesota by experienced bear researchers from the <a href="http://www.bearstudy.org/"><b>Wildlife Research Institute</b></a>, each eight-person, four-day course includes personal introductions to members of a black bear clan, with supporting discussions and presentations. Although this year's bear courses are full, it's not too early to get on the list for the 2009 courses in May, July, and August. <P> <P> <table width="185" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" border="0" align="right"> <tr BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td ALIGN="center" VALIGN="middle"> <A HREF="http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/showImage.jhtml?galleryID=213&articleID=209602177" TARGET="_blank"><IMG SRC="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/galleries/automated/213/10_full.jpg" WIDTH="175" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" BORDER="0"></A><BR> </td> <td ALIGN="center" VALIGN="middle" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" ROWSPAN="2"><BR> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="175" class="artCaption" align="center"> <img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/spacer.gif" width="175" height="4" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0"><br><B style="color:black">Studying bears at the Wildlife Research Institute in Ely, Minnesota.</B> </td> </tr> <tr BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td width="185" class="artCaption" align="center"><A HREF="http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/showImage.jhtml?galleryID=213&articleID=209602177" target="_blank">(click for image gallery)</A> </td> </tr> </table> <P> <P> If you'd prefer to get close to smaller critters, you can plan your own vacation visiting wetlands near you. By joining the <a href="http://www.nwf.org/frogwatchUSA/"><b>Frogwatch USA</b></a> program, you'll learn about the frogs and toads in your state, memorize their calls (e.g. check out the <a href="http://www.enature.com/fieldguides/detail.asp?recnum=AR0026">American bullfrog</a>), and then head out to a local wetland site with a data sheet in hand to listen and observe during breeding season. Your participation will help to protect these species from decline. <P> If you have other animals in mind and would like to turn your experience into a global travel adventure, check out the Volunteering section of <a href="http://www.gapyear.com"><b>Gapyear.com</b></a>. You can find programs of varying durations where you can get up close and personal with orangutans in Malaysia, sea turtles in Guatemala, whale sharks in Mozambique, and much more. <P> Other eco-friendly travel ideas can be found at the database of <a href="http://www.responsibletravel.com/TripSearch/Cultural%20tours/Activity100044.htm"><b>Community Based Tourism projects</b></a>, where you can find a holiday that conserves the environment, benefits the local people, and gives you a better window into foreign culture. <P> But if it turns out that separation from your computer is no holiday at all, try <a href="http://www.insightcruises.com"><b>InSight Cruises</b></a>. You can become an Apple Certified Support Professional on board a luxury ocean liner, learning personal productivity and digital art management tips and techniques for the Mac. Or, if you're a well-rounded geek, other cruises focus on classical music, Shakespeare, and opera, and the Scientific American &#8220;Bright Horizons&#8221; tours each offer a smorgasbord of knowledge from archaeology and astrophysics to evolution and psychology. Make sure to use the handy &#8220;convince your spouse&#8221; tab for all-important ammunition before planning your next holiday. <P> Whatever you do and wherever you go, have fun and let your geek flag fly!2010-06-26T06:00:00ZLeading industry experts respond to gripes that IT professionals have about the security, cost, and portability of cloud computing in the enterprise.http://www.informationweek.com/news/225701008?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Company_Size:_50-249_smbAs the popularity of cloud computing is taking off, so have questions and complaints from IT professionals who are using -- or considering moving to -- the cloud. Industry leaders answer some of the main concerns that they hear from IT staff about the cloud. <P> <b>Gripe #1: "Wait, this isn't really infinite, is it?"</b> <P> One of the big draws of cloud computing is the ability to start small and then go big at a moment's notice. But this elasticity should not be mistaken for infinity. <P> "It seems infinite, but it absolutely is not infinite," says Imad Mouline, CTO of Gomez, the web performance division of Compuware. "In some circumstances, you may not be able to get the instance that you want, the data center or availability zone that you want, or the kind of instance that you want." <P> You may be exposed to operational risk if your business depends upon being able to provision any level of cloud resources at a moment's notice. "Are you willing to bet your business on it?" asks Mouline. "Or are you taking a chance that on the day that you need to ramp up that you'll have the capacity and that you'll get to it quickly, in hours instead of days?" <P> If several heavy users of cloud services simultaneously have the same idea to scale up, you may end up in the tech equivalent of a financial panic where everyone tries to withdraw money from a bank that holds inadequate reserves. <P> <b>Gripe #2: "It's too slow!"</b> <P> Your computing resources are only as fast as the slowest link of the information supply chain, and if your slowest link is an underpowered cloud computing provider, you may have grounds for a gripe. <P> "We've won customers that way," says Jonathan Hoppe, president and CTO of Cloud Leverage, a provider of cloud performance solutions. <P> "Say you've got a website that's going to pull images from cloud storage," Hoppe says. "You want that connection to be very fast, and you also need both to be very fast when delivering to the end users." <P> Perform some simple performance tests before you start doing business with a cloud provider, and make sure you understand the quality of service and performance guarantees in the service level agreements. "You can tell a lot by looking at the SLAs," Hoppe says. "If they're pretty aggressive, they have a lot of confidence in their infrastructure." <P> And just because you're using an Amazon- or Google-branded cloud doesn't mean that your website will have the same performance as Amazon or Google. Web performance stems from several factors, including overall web traffic, the location of the data centers to which you've been assigned, and even the behavior of other applications in that same data center. "You can't sandbox everything, and someone else's application may impact the performance of yours," observes Mouline from Gomez. "Performance is all over the place." <P> You can find Gomez's top-level performance results for major public cloud providers at <a href="https://cloudsleuth.net" target="_blank">CloudSleuth.net</a>.<b>Gripe #3: "I can do this cheaper in-house."</b> <P> The benefits of cloud computing don't necessary scale up. "If you have a large enough organization, the subscription model tends to lose some of its clear cost benefit," says Mike Pearl, principal in PricewaterhouseCoopers' Advisory practice and Leader of PwC's digital transformation and cloud computing initiatives. "Turning potentially thousands of employees loose onto the cloud introduces variability into costs &#91;relative to fixed budgets&#93;." <P> Chris Weitz, director of Deloitte Consulting, also observes diseconomies of scale at the high end. "For some of the larger enterprise clients of ours, who are able to scale relatively high and have good volumes and get good discounts from vendors, they're finding that it's not particularly advantageous from a cost perspective to go to a public cloud infrastructure, particularly as it relates to storage or other services that are relatively commoditized," Weitz says. <P> Nor is capacity management necessarily a strong selling point, as large enterprises tend to have a good handle on their demand curve for IT services. "They tend to not be exposed too much to the spikes of usage that a smaller company would have," notes Weitz. <P> Instead, flexibility is the area where the largest enterprises find the greatest benefit in the cloud. "It's the opposite of a startup situation, which has spiky usage patterns but can provision quickly," observes Weitz. "Big companies have smooth usage patterns but are slow to provision new resources." <P> <b>Gripe #4: "I don't have enough control."</b> <P> With internally managed and collocated facilities, IT professionals can precisely match the availability and uptime needs of the enterprise using dedicated equipment, selecting the most appropriate power supplies, cooling equipment, and server hardware. <P> That's not so easy to manage in the cloud. "When someone puts their data and applications in the cloud, it's almost impossible for them to know what specific hardware they're on, where their data resides, where their power is coming from, or if there's adequate cooling," says Charles O'Donnell, VP of AC power engineering for Emerson Network Power. <P> If you want to maintain maximum control, you may end up doing it in-house. "We have one very large customer that keeps revenue-generating applications on an enterprise farm, Tier 4 facility, and keeps their e-mail and product development at a Tier 2 facility," says O'Donnell. "If e-mail goes out for a little while, it's not a disaster. It costs them time and money but it's nothing like what happens if their enterprise facility were to go down." <P> "If I had a mission-critical application, where if it goes out I start losing current or future revenue, that's something I want to have complete control over myself," remarks O'Donnell.<b>Gripe #5: "We've got clouds popping up all over the enterprise."</b> <P> Allowing unfettered, enterprise-wide access to cloud resources poses significant business risks, observes Philip Lieberman, founder and CEO of privileged identity management provider Lieberman Software. <P> "Business users see the cloud as a way of saving money without understanding the security, audit, or regulatory implications," he says. "Cloud is being brought in through the back door, and when auditors discover what's been done, they need to make a judgment as to what the exposure is." <P> Often, the risks aren't worth the ostensible cost savings from the cloud providers. "It's their business to give you compute power at a low cost," Lieberman adds. "They're not in the security business." <P> Enterprise IT departments are advised to reclaim the relationship between business units and external providers. "As you begin to look at cloud computing at the enterprise level, you need to first go throughout the business units to clean out the early adopters," says PwC's Pearl. "Bring those that jumped out in front into your overall enterprise strategy." <P> <b>Gripe #6: "Without standards, I'm locked into my cloud vendor."</b> <P> Portability has become the biggest gripe in cloud computing at the enterprise level, according to Edward Newman, global practice director of private cloud services at EMC. "It's not as if you can burst a workload out to Amazon today and then burst it out to Rackspace or Terremark tomorrow," he says. "The standards haven't yet been adopted that allow for easy movement of workloads and data to multiple cloud vendors." <P> Portability in the cloud would have to encompass a complicated set of policies and business requirements with regard to IT policies, regulatory compliance, and information security practices, which makes for a particularly challenging set of standards. <P> "You need the ability to migrate data from one cloud service provider to another, and there are cloud interoperability scenarios that need to be addressed as well," notes Matt Edwards, director of the cloud services initiative at TM Forum, a communications industry association. "There are multiple things that need to be addressed to avoid vendor lock-in and to remove the barriers for the adoption of cloud services." <P> Although the issues are widely recognized, consensus on the best solution is harder to reach. "New standards organizations for cloud crop up every day," says Edwards. <P> For its part, TM Forum has formed the Enterprise Cloud Leadership Council, with members from the banking, pharmaceutical, energy, healthcare, manufacturing, automotive, aerospace, government, and communications sectors. "While there are specific business requirements in each industry, there's no need to reinvent the wheel for every vertical," says Edwards. "The key is to have a coordinated approach, and to make sure that the actual business requirements of enterprise consumers are being addressed."<b>Gripe #7: "My cloud's in the way of my M&A."</b> <P> Before entering into an outsourcing arrangement, consider the likelihood that your organization will be involved in an acquisition or divestiture, suggests Daren Orzechowski, New York-based partner in White & Case's intellectual property practice. "One of the most important provisions in outsourcing for cloud is to have certain divestiture and acquisition support provisions," Orzechowski says. <P> Essentially, it's a matter of ensuring that you can scale up or down no matter the direction your business takes you. If you acquire a company, you'll want to support it with the same or better terms for enterprise cloud resources. Similarly, if you sell off a part of your company, ensure that both buyer and seller won't be held hostage by rate hikes after the deal closes. <P> "Make sure you'll get the assistance you need from your vendor, and that the terms of how that will work are fixed at the beginning of the relationship, when you have more leverage," says Orzechowski. "Like any commercial relationship, if you've signed the original big contract and you're in, and then you need help down the road, your leverage isn't as good." <P> <b>Gripe #8: "I'm relying on reputation as a security policy."</b> <P> High-profile technology providers face enormous scrutiny from customers and investors, with reputational risk involved with even the smallest lapses in availability and security. Accordingly, cloud providers have the incentive and wherewithal to retain teams of dedicated security experts capable of coping with a wide range of fast-moving threats. All things considered, public cloud providers may be better than you at information security. <P> Smaller, non-IT-focused enterprises find it harder to locate, hire, and retain top information security talent, and it's not uncommon in business to see small, overworked IT departments where the responsibility for security is diffused and even a few steps behind. <P> But just because the largest cloud vendors employ the smartest guys in the room doesn't automatically mean that they should have oversight of your enterprise data. <P> Before entrusting enterprise data to a cloud provider, do your homework. "Go to their website and read the discussion boards and blogs. Go to the analysts. Go to the regulations in your industry," advises Mohammad Zaman, head of global solutions at Logicworks, a low-latency hosting provider in New York. "There are many different ways to find the right cloud service provider from a security perspective." <P> Or, simply follow the herd. "Everybody publishes customer references on their website," Zaman says. "How do you match up against them?" <P> Unfortunately, it's all too common that these reputation-based approaches to due diligence represent the extent of information that's available from cloud vendors for purchasing decisions. <P> It's a "buyer beware," remarks Zaman.<b>Gripe #9: "Good enough for government work? Nope."</b> <P> You won't find more security-conscious users than in government, and it may take a while before they go into the cloud. "Until someone says that they can meet the <a href="http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SNS/cloud-computing/" target="_blank">NIST criteria</a> for cloud security, I don't see many government customers trusting their applications and data to the cloud infrastructure," says Jim Sweeney, principal solutions consultant for GTSI, a government solutions provider. <P> Security concerns include the integrity of data, protections in a multi-tenant environment, management of loading and offloading of data, and the trustworthiness of vendor employees, along with questions about the financial stability of vendors. <P> But it's not just information security that's holding up adoption. "People are using security as an excuse to not move to the cloud in order to protect their jobs," Sweeney says. The typical game plan: "I'm going to have my own internal cloud for my customers." <P> That's not much of an improvement over existing infrastructure, Sweeney counters. "Why move to a cloud at all?" he asks. <P> An alternative model places the most technologically savvy agencies as operators of cloud-based services and infrastructures on behalf of other agencies. Leading the way in this regard is the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), an arm of the Department of Defense that provides computing infrastructure and services to the military. <P> At the <i>InformationWeek</i> Government IT Leadership Forum in June, DISA's CIO Henry Sienkiewicz announced plans to deliver storage and office productivity applications through DISA's private cloud, which could potentially be extended elsewhere within government. <P> <b>Gripe #10: "Cloud computing is going to put me out of a job."</b> <P> For the people responsible for maintaining enterprise hardware, the cloud can appear to have the guise of a deadly fog. Should IT professionals fear the cloud? <P> "If your dream is to build servers and to be on call 24x7 when routers or servers go down, maybe you should be afraid," Stephen J. Roux, founder and president of Farmington, Conn.-based solution architect Innovative Computer Systems. "But if your goal is to see your company grow and become more agile, they still need someone to show them how to make the whole thing work. <P> "Rather than turning a wrench, sit down and have strategic conversations with the business," adds Roux. "Instead of provisioning servers and data centers, help the business get the most out of their applications." <P> <b>For Further Reading</b> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/roi/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225700503">Bringing Cloud ROI Down To Earth</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224900729"> Global CIO: Cloud Computing 2.0: Are You Ready?</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/hosted/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224701815"> Practical Analysis: Our Maturing View Of Cloud Computing </a>2010-06-19T07:00:00ZKeeping desktop, laptop, and mobile data synchronized, protected, and sharable is simple with solutions like Amazon Web Services and Jungle Disk, Backblaze, Carbonite, CrashPlan, Dropbox, Mozy, SpiderOak, and SugarSync.http://www.informationweek.com/news/225700407?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Company_Size:_50-249_smbJungle Disk provides access to an Amazon S3 storage bucket directly from your desktop, and manages automatic backups.Create a secure backup archive on another computer, whether one belonging to you or one of your friends, or to the CrashPlan servers.SpiderOak offers a single console for managing file backup, sync and sharing.The strength of Dropbox is in its simplicity, especially for sync and file/photo sharing.As a service focused on backup rather than other storage applications, Backblaze also make certain to provide multiple options for restoring your data.Carbonite hooks into the file system to let you see whether a file is slated for backup, and to make changes accordingly.SugarSync's "Magic Briefcase" of backed-up files and folders can be accessed online and via iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Android devices. <P>Mozy includes flexible options for creating custom backup sets. <P>2010-06-19T07:00:00ZWeb-based storage providers, including Jungle Disk, Backblaze, Mozy, and CrashPlan, keep your data secure and accessible with backup, synchronization, and file sharing features.http://www.informationweek.com/news/225600381?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Company_Size:_50-249_smb<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <table width="185" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" border="0" align="right"> <tr BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td ALIGN="center" VALIGN="middle"><A href="http://informationweek.com/galleries/storage/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225700407"><IMG SRC="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/449/image001_tn.jpg" WIDTH="175" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" BORDER="0"></A><BR> </td> <td ALIGN="center" VALIGN="middle" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" ROWSPAN="2"><BR></td> </tr> <tr> <td width="175" class="artCaption" align="center"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/spacer.gif" width="175" height="4" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0"><br><B style="color:black">Jungle Disk</B></td></tr><tr BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td width="185" class="artCaption" align="center"><A href="http://informationweek.com/galleries/storage/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225700407">(click for larger image and for full photo gallery)</A></td></tr></table> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> <P> The demand for online storage continues to grow unchecked, and an astonishing assortment of online storage solutions has emerged to meet the demand. Providers of online storage offer some combination of three primary benefits: data protection through online backup, synchronization across devices, and collaborative file-sharing for workgroups or social networks. <P> With these cross-platform, multi-purpose software solutions, it's become dead simple to keep your desktop, laptop, and mobile data synchronized, protected, and shared on the Web. <P> In this <i>InformationWeek</i> Online Storage Buyers' Guide, we'll examine the features and offerings of some of the most popular options in online storage. <P> <b>Amazon Web Services + Jungle Disk</b> <P> Through Amazon Web Services, developers can provision cloud-based storage, virtual servers, or even database instances for MySQL, IBM DB2, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, or Sybase, with the ability to scale up and down instantly, and pay only for capacity used. <P> For example, Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3) charges $0.15 per month to store a gigabyte of data, plus up to $0.15 per gigabyte for transferring data in or out of the S3 cloud. (Note: Prices are 10% higher in Northern California.) So, if you upload a 9-GB archive to your own S3 storage container, leave it there for a month, download it, and then delete the entire container, your total bill will be about four dollars. <P> <a href="http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/kbsearch.jspa?advanced=false&amp;entryTypeID=9&amp;parentCatID=75&amp;searchQuery=S3&amp;childCatID=-1&amp;dateRange=0&amp;entryTypeID=-1&amp;resultRange=15&amp;includeComments=false&amp;rankBy=107&amp;searchID=868194">Numerous</a> software providers provide access to the Amazon S3 service, and one of the more popular options is <a href="https://jungledisk.com/"><b>Jungle Disk</b></a> for Windows and Mac. The software allows you to automatically move selected folders from your computers into an online storage bucket managed either by Amazon S3 (using the pricing structure described above, with the first 10 GB free) or with Rackspace Hosting ($0.15 per GB/month, no charge for data transfer). <P> The Simply Backup plan, for $2 per month, manages backup and restore functions between an individual's multiple PCs. <P> The Desktop Edition, for $3 per month, also includes multi-way sync between computers, AES-256 encryption, and the ability to mount the online bucket as a virtual hard drive. <P> Teams of up to 100 people can share a locally mountable online storage bucket with the Workgroup Edition, for $4 per user/month. <P> With the Server Edition, for $5 per server per month, administrators of Windows- and Linux-based servers can manage multiple servers remotely from any PC using the Jungle Disk Server Management client. The Server Edition also includes file compression and block-level de-duplication.<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <table width="185" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" border="0" align="right"> <tr BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td ALIGN="center" VALIGN="middle"><A href="http://informationweek.com/galleries/storage/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225700407"><IMG SRC="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/449/image002_tn.jpg" WIDTH="175" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" BORDER="0"></A><BR> </td> <td ALIGN="center" VALIGN="middle" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" ROWSPAN="2"><BR></td> </tr> <tr> <td width="175" class="artCaption" align="center"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/spacer.gif" width="175" height="4" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0"><br><B style="color:black">Crash Plan </B></td></tr><tr BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td width="185" class="artCaption" align="center"><A href="http://informationweek.com/galleries/storage/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225700407">(click for larger image and for full photo gallery)</A></td></tr></table> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> <b>CrashPlan</b> <P> With <a href="http://crashplan.com/"><b>CrashPlan</b></a>, it takes a village. The free CrashPlan client software can perform a daily backup to one of your local computers or to the computers of your friends. As long as both machines have CrashPlan installed, you can establish free, two-way backup exchanges between the very people who would be most willing and able to help you recover from a system failure. <P> When it comes to security: You can pick your friends, and you can pick your backup files, but you can't pick your friends' backup files. Your remotely stored archives are secured with an encryption key based either on your CrashPlan account password, a separate password, or for maximum security, your own private key. <P> On top of that, you can also replicate files onto the CrashPlan servers in Minneapolis by paying $54 per year for unlimited backup capacity from a single computer. The family plan, which covers everyone in a single household, including kids away at school, costs $100 per year. Note that there's only one "head-of-household," who has unfettered access to all non-encrypted files backed up by any family member under the plan. <P> The initial backup can take weeks to perform for a loaded hard drive, and so to surmount that hurdle, CrashPlan also offers a service whereby they'll send you an external drive for you to fill and return. <P> The consumer version of CrashPlan doesn't officially recognize "mapped" drives, whether a remote network share or network attached storage (NAS) device. However, the enterprise version, <a href="http://crashplanpro.com">CrashPlan Pro</a>, supports enterprise-class storage and networking environments and provides continuous, intraday backups rather than daily backups. <P> The CrashPlan Pro free server software runs on your own hardware and includes remote configuration and Web management, access controls, auditing, tools, and monitoring tools. The client software starts at $350 for a five-pack with one year of support, with additional support starting at $76 per year per five-pack. <P> <b>SpiderOak</b> <P> <a href="https://spideroak.com/"><b>SpiderOak</b></a> combines backup, sync, and sharing in a single cross-platform application, and provides similar controls for each of these three primary benefits of online storage. <P> The client software, which can be installed on multiple devices including Windows, Mac, and several versions of Linux, does more than simply push files into an online storage bucket. To speed upload time, reduce file sizes, and provide security, the client software will perform compression, de-duplication, and encryption prior to sending files to the company's servers.<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <table width="185" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" border="0" align="right"> <tr BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td ALIGN="center" VALIGN="middle"><A href="http://informationweek.com/galleries/storage/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225700407"><IMG SRC="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/449/image003_tn.jpg" WIDTH="175" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" BORDER="0"></A><BR> </td> <td ALIGN="center" VALIGN="middle" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" ROWSPAN="2"><BR></td> </tr> <tr> <td width="175" class="artCaption" align="center"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/spacer.gif" width="175" height="4" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0"><br><B style="color:black">Spider Oak</B></td></tr><tr BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td width="185" class="artCaption" align="center"><A href="http://informationweek.com/galleries/storage/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225700407">(click for larger image and for full photo gallery)</A></td></tr></table> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> With SpiderOak, Files can be backed up from any device that you can read from your own PC, whether it's a local drive, USB device, network attached storage, or a virtual network drive. You can schedule backup, sync, and sharing operations independently, either at a certain time of day, automatically, or at intervals ranging from every five minutes to every two days. Then, to ensure consistency between multiple devices, you can sync any backed-up folders among the devices you choose. <P> Finallly, SpiderOak also works as a simple file-sharing mechanism. Essentially, you can create your own subdirectory on the SpiderOak.com Web site that has a custom "RoomKey" as part of a URL which you can mail to friends or colleagues. The "ShareRoom" doesn't maintain an access control list, but it does allow friends or colleagues to see the latest server version of a folder through any browser. <P> The company also has an iPhone app that provides access to your storage area, with Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile versions to come. <P> SpiderOak offers 2 GB of free storage. After that, you'll need to purchase storage in additional increments of 100 GB for $10 per month or $100 per year. <P> <b>DropBox</b> <P> For a simple yet powerful approach to backup, sync, and sharing, try <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/"><b>Dropbox</b></a>. Install the free software to create a "My Dropbox" folder on your Windows, Mac, or Linux computers and on iPhone, iPad, and Android mobile devices (with BlackBerry coming soon). Dropbox will automatically sync files placed in that folder among all of your devices. <P> To share files, you can place files in a public sub-folder, which automatically places your files in an Internet-accessible location within the Dropbox.com domain. You can right-click on a file and send the link to others for simple sharing. A separate sharing folder works specifically with photos, which are presented in gallery format through the Dropbox Web site. <P> Dropbox offers 2 GB of free storage, 50 GB for $9.99 per month, and 100 GB for $19.99 per month.<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <table width="185" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" border="0" align="right"> <tr BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td ALIGN="center" VALIGN="middle"><A href="http://informationweek.com/galleries/storage/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225700407"><IMG SRC="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/449/image004_tn.jpg" WIDTH="175" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" BORDER="0"></A><BR> </td> <td ALIGN="center" VALIGN="middle" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" ROWSPAN="2"><BR></td> </tr> <tr> <td width="175" class="artCaption" align="center"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/spacer.gif" width="175" height="4" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0"><br><B style="color:black">Drop Box</B></td></tr><tr BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td width="185" class="artCaption" align="center"><A href="http://informationweek.com/galleries/storage/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225700407">(click for larger image and for full photo gallery)</A></td></tr></table> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> <P> <b>Backblaze</b> <P> For Windows and Mac users, <a href="http://www.backblaze.com/"><b>Backblaze</b></a> backs up all of your internal, USB-, and Firewire-connected drives. It's not designed to be supplemental storage, but rather an automatic backup of everything on your hard disk except for the operating system, applications, and temporary files. As such, there's no interface to pick and choose which files to back up, which makes it a simpler tool to operate. Network drives, including NAS devices, are excluded, and Backblaze also skips files larger than 4 GB. <P> The initial backup occurs at the rate of 2 to 4 GB per day, and a quick restore can be accomplished by having Backblaze send, via overnight courier, a USB drive containing your latest data. <P> Backblaze costs $5 per month per computer, or $50 per year. <P> <b>Carbonite</b> <P> <a href="http://www.carbonite.com/"><b>Carbonite</b></a> offers a comprehensive, no-limit backup plan which encrypts and then backs up the entire Documents and Settings folder for Windows users, or the Users folder for Mac users. Once installed, the Carbonite software tweaks the file system such that the icons for backed-up files are displayed with a green or yellow dot to indicate whether the file has been backed up or is pending backup. <P> From your computer, you can access the Carbonite Backup Drive to see what's in the archive and to restore files. You can also log into your password-secured account from the Carbonite Web site, either from another computer or from an iPhone, iPod Touch, or BlackBerry. <P> Subscriptions are available for $54.95 per year, $99.95 for two years, $129.95 for three years, or $199.95 for five years.<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <table width="185" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" border="0" align="right"> <tr BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td ALIGN="center" VALIGN="middle"><A href="http://informationweek.com/galleries/storage/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225700407"><IMG SRC="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/449/image007_tn.jpg" WIDTH="175" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" BORDER="0"></A><BR> </td> <td ALIGN="center" VALIGN="middle" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" ROWSPAN="2"><BR></td> </tr> <tr> <td width="175" class="artCaption" align="center"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/spacer.gif" width="175" height="4" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0"><br><B style="color:black">SugarSync</B></td></tr><tr BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td width="185" class="artCaption" align="center"><A href="http://informationweek.com/galleries/storage/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225700407">(click for larger image and for full photo gallery)</A></td></tr></table> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> <b>SugarSync</b> <P> For Windows and Mac users, <a href="https://www.sugarsync.com/"><b>SugarSync</b></a> offers an extensive feature set, including real-time upload, versioning, and full-folder backup. On installation, SugarSync creates a "Magic Briefcase," a folder that automatically syncs to other computers you have with SugarSync installed. <P> Backed-up files are accessible online and from a wide range of mobile devices, including iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Android, with the mobile Web site optimized for mobile browsers. Sharing is also robust, with the ability to share files of any size, share folders with permissions and passwords, and initiate direct publishing to Facebook. In addition, the service supports music streaming to Web clients and iPhones. <P> For individuals, SugarSync offers plans ranging from 30 GB for $4.99 per month to 500 GB for $39.99 per month. Business plans start at 100 GB for three users at $49.99 per month (introductory pricing of $29.99 now available), with additional users costing $9.99 per month per person and additional storage available at $29.99 per 100 GB. <P> <b>Mozy</b> <P> <a href="http://mozy.com/"><b>Mozy</a></b>, an EMC-owned company, performs automatic or scheduled backups of user data, including opened and locked files, and encrypts files locally before uploading to the Mozy data center. Data can be restored through the Mozy software client, through the Web, or by ordering DVDs containing your data. <P> MozyHome, for individuals, costs $4.95 per month, $54.45 per year, or $103.95 for two years. Free accounts are available with 2 GB of storage. Additional licenses are required for additional computers, although they can be added to the same user account. <P> MozyPro, for businesses, creates an online backup for network drives, servers (including SQL and Exchange environments), and employee laptops and desktops. Included with the solution is Mozy 2xProtect software, which also backs up Windows users to a USB, external, or mapped network drive. Desktop licenses are licensed on a monthly basis for $3.95 plus $0.50 per GB per month. Server licenses are $6.95 plus $0.50 per GB per month. <P> <b>For Further Reading</b> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/05/cloud_storages_3.html">Cloud Storage's Role In Backup, Part I</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/storage/index.html">InformationWeek Storage Blog</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/storage/disaster_recovery/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=223101558">Google's Got Your Backup</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/infrastructure/remote_access/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225600349">Box.net Syncs Cloud With Desktop</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/storage/systems/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224900441">Amazon Launches $0.10 Per Gigabyte Online Storage </a>2010-05-29T07:00:00ZWe weigh the online versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to see how they stack up as standalone productivity apps -- and against Google Apps.http://www.informationweek.com/news/225200312?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Company_Size:_50-249_smb<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 10px; float:right; width:185px; text-align:center;"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/software/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225200350"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/442/001officewebapps.jpg" width="175" height="115" alt="Image Gallery: Microsoft&#8217;s Office Web Apps" title="Image Gallery: Microsoft&#8217;s Office Web Apps" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0" style="margin:0 0 3px 0; padding:0;" /></a><br /><i><span class="covercredit">(click image to view gallery)</span></i><br /><div style="margin:5px 0 0 0; padding:0;font-weight:bold; font-size:1.2em; color:#990000;">Image Gallery: Microsoft&#8217;s Office Web Apps</div> </div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> Microsoft reports more than 7.5 million downloads of the Office 2010 Beta, and Office Web Apps ranks among the most highly anticipated features in the imminent release of the software. But are Office Web Apps worthwhile as separate offerings, or are they only meaningful as part of the larger fabric? <P> Office Web Apps, as a browser-based deployment of office productivity software, ostensibly squares up against competitors including <a href=" http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224400376 ">Google Docs</a>, <a href=" http://www.zoho.com/ ">Zoho</a>, <a href=" http://www.adobe.com/acom/buzzword/ ">Adobe Buzzword</a> and others. <P> In their current incarnation, however, Office Web Apps do not appear designed to win a feature comparison faceoff against Google Docs or other online office productivity applications. With Google Docs, Google aims to create an online substitute for the Microsoft Office suite, allowing users to create, edit and share documents online, plus offline with the addition of Google Gears. By contrast, the functionality offered through Office Web Apps is far more basic, better suited to making minor corrections to existing documents than to creating documents wholly online. <P> <!-- CONTENTS BOX --><table border="0" bgcolor="#CCD2E0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" align="right"><tr><td bgcolor="#FFFFFF" rowspan="4"><img src="http://img.cmpnet.com/cmpnet/blank.gif" width="8" height="1" border="0"></td> </tr><tr bgcolor="#2A4379"><td width="7"><img src="http://img.cmpnet.com/cmpnet/blank.gif" width="5"></td><td><!-- header --><img src="http://img.cmpnet.com/cmpnet/blank.gif" height="3" border="0"><br><center><b><font color="#FFFFFF">Related Videos</font></b></center><img src="http://img.cmpnet.com/cmpnet/blank.gif" height="3" border="0"><br><!-- /header --></td><td><img src="http://img.cmpnet.com/cmpnet/blank.gif" width=8></td></tr><tr><td width="7"><img src="http://img.cmpnet.com/cmpnet/blank.gif" width="5"></td><td><!-- links --><img src="http://img.cmpnet.com/cmpnet/blank.gif" height="5" border="0"><br> &#149;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="http://www.informationweek.com/video/mastermix/85210564001"><b>5 Reasons To Upgrade to Office 2010</b></a><br><img src="http://img.cmpnet.com/cmpnet/blank.gif" height="5" border="0"><br> &#149;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="http://www.informationweek.com/video/mastermix/85194124001"><b>Demo: PowerPoint Broadcast Microsoft Office 2010</b></a><br> <img src="http://img.cmpnet.com/cmpnet/blank.gif" height="5" border="0"><br> &#149;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="http://www.informationweek.com/video/mastermix/86344301001"><b>Customizing Your Ribbon in Office 2010</b></a><br><img src="http://img.cmpnet.com/cmpnet/blank.gif" height="5" border="0"><br> &#149;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="http://www.informationweek.com/video/mastermix/86959406001"><b>Image & Video Editing in Office 2010</b></a><br><img src="http://img.cmpnet.com/cmpnet/blank.gif" height="5" border="0"><br> &#149;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="http://www.informationweek.com/video/personaltechnology/77193350001"><b>ReviewCam: Google Docs Gets Rewrite</b></a><br> <!-- /links --><img src="http://img.cmpnet.com/cmpnet/blank.gif" height="8" border=0><br></td> <td><img src="http://img.cmpnet.com/cmpnet/blank.gif" width=8></td></tr><tr><td bgcolor="#FFFFFF" colspan=5><img src="http://img.cmpnet.com/cmpnet/blank.gif" height=5 border=0></td></tr></table><!-- / CONTENTS BOX --> <P> The likely logic behind these divergent design decisions stems from the relative diversity of Microsoft's business compared to that of Google's. Microsoft makes most of its revenue from selling software licenses to OEMs, consumers, and enterprise customers, whereas Google makes more than 96 percent of its revenue from search-related advertising. <P> It's to be expected, therefore, that free products from Microsoft are primarily designed to convince you to buy software, while free products from Google entice you to remain within the Google fold, such that you continue to conduct searches through the Google search engine rather than exposing yourself to competing advertising channels and user experiences. <P> With these differences in mind, we can better understand the companies' respective design choices. By themselves, the Office Web Apps may not reshape the computing world. In combination with other features of Office 2010, however, these humble Web services may help Microsoft turn the tables on its upstart online challengers, regaining its once-dominant prominence in 21st century computing. <P><b>Installing Office Web Apps</b><br> <P> Office Web Apps can be tested by themselves, in conjunction with the Office 2010 Beta, or as part of the Office Professional Plus 2010 Trial Version. <P> The easiest test-drive skips the Office installation completely. When I uploaded a .doc file to "SkyDrive," Microsoft's 25-gigabyte online storage area included with an existing Windows Live account, I was invited to try Office Web Apps without having to install any other software. <P> Otherwise, the path to Office Web Apps goes through an installation of Office 2010. The Office Home and Business 2010 Beta includes new versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote, all of which are scheduled for release to the consumer market in June. <P> For IT professionals and developers, the Office Professional Plus 2010 Trial includes new versions of the entire Office Professional suite, but this approach requires a full installation that replaces existing installations of Office, for which Microsoft highly recommends using a spare PC. For the purposes of the <i>InformationWeek</i>test-drive of Office Web Apps, the Office Home and Business 2010 Beta was deemed sufficient. <P> One of the most noteworthy aspects of the Office 2010 Beta is the delivery method of the software. Instead of the user having to download and install a multi-gigabyte installation package, the entire suite is delivered via <a href="http://blogs.technet.com/b/office2010/archive/2009/11/06/click-to-run-delivering-office-in-the-21st-century.aspx">Click-to-Run</a> technology based on Microsoft App-V. This technology, known as application virtualization, enables Office 2010 to run alongside earlier versions of Microsoft Office as well as on systems using applications incompatible with traditional, CD-based Office installations. <P> Furthermore, application virtualization makes it possible for licensed applications to follow individual users instead of being tied to specific PCs. For example, if an enterprise institutes a hot-desking system within a facility or lab, application virtualization can enable streaming of each individual's licensed applications on an as-needed basis. <P> Instead of having to provision each workstation with the maximum possible configuration encompassing every part of the Office suite, an individual can log into any given workstation and have required applications streamed within minutes to the local environment, with no drop-off in performance or capability to the end user, while enabling greater manageability and standardization for the IT organization. <P> In any assessment of the relative merits of Office Web Apps compared to other online alternatives, it's important to consider that application virtualization has the substantive impact of removing some of the key drivers behind the need for browser-based office productivity applications in the first place. <P>For example, if you've ever been forced to use a browser-based word processor or spreadsheet because of incompatibilities between previous versions of Microsoft Office and other mission-critical applications, now you can reconsider Office 2010. <P> Similarly, if you you've ever been pushed to choose between over-provisioning enterprise workstations and switching to a lower-cost, online alternative, a deployment of Office 2010 with application virtualization offers a viable, user-centric alternative. <P> <b>The Test Drive</b><br> <P> Given that Microsoft has little financial incentive to make the free Office Web Apps as functional as the full version of Office, and because application virtualization enables the full version of Office 2010 to be deployed across a wider range of PCs than previously possible, it's not entirely surprising that the free Office Web Apps themselves have been provisioned with an anemic, underpowered feature set. <P> At the time of the beta, only the Excel 2010 Office Web App offered online editing, which similarly to the latest versions of Google Docs, permits simultaneous editing by multiple users. However, the core user interface lacked some of the basics that an ordinary Excel user might expect. Some examples: <P> <ul><li>You can't cut-and-paste cells from an Excel application window to an Excel Web Apps browser worksheet; Google Docs allows this.</li> <P> <li>You can't modify or even move a chart, and can only edit the source data; Google Docs allows you to create new charts.</li> <P> <li>While you can insert a hyperlink using the dialog box, if you enter an http address into a cell, Office Web Apps won't recognize it as such; again, this works in Google Docs. </li></ul> <P> <!-- CONTENTS BOX --><table border="0" bgcolor="#CCD2E0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" align="right"><tr><td bgcolor="#FFFFFF" rowspan="4"><img src="http://img.cmpnet.com/cmpnet/blank.gif" width="8" height="1" border="0"></td> </tr><tr bgcolor="#2A4379"><td width="7"><img src="http://img.cmpnet.com/cmpnet/blank.gif" width="5"></td><td><!-- header --><img src="http://img.cmpnet.com/cmpnet/blank.gif" height="3" border="0"><br><center><b><font color="#FFFFFF">Related Videos</font></b></center><img src="http://img.cmpnet.com/cmpnet/blank.gif" height="3" border="0"><br><!-- /header --></td><td><img src="http://img.cmpnet.com/cmpnet/blank.gif" width=8></td></tr><tr><td width="7"><img src="http://img.cmpnet.com/cmpnet/blank.gif" width="5"></td><td><!-- links --><img src="http://img.cmpnet.com/cmpnet/blank.gif" height="5" border="0"><br> &#149;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="http://www.informationweek.com/video/mastermix/85210564001"><b>5 Reasons To Upgrade to Office 2010</b></a><br><img src="http://img.cmpnet.com/cmpnet/blank.gif" height="5" border="0"><br> &#149;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="http://www.informationweek.com/video/mastermix/85194124001"><b>Demo: PowerPoint Broadcast Microsoft Office 2010</b></a><br> <img src="http://img.cmpnet.com/cmpnet/blank.gif" height="5" border="0"><br> &#149;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="http://www.informationweek.com/video/mastermix/86344301001"><b>Customizing Your Ribbon in Office 2010</b></a><br><img src="http://img.cmpnet.com/cmpnet/blank.gif" height="5" border="0"><br> &#149;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="http://www.informationweek.com/video/mastermix/86959406001"><b>Image & Video Editing in Office 2010</b></a><br><img src="http://img.cmpnet.com/cmpnet/blank.gif" height="5" border="0"><br> &#149;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="http://www.informationweek.com/video/personaltechnology/77193350001"><b>ReviewCam: Google Docs Gets Rewrite</b></a><br> <!-- /links --><img src="http://img.cmpnet.com/cmpnet/blank.gif" height="8" border=0><br></td> <td><img src="http://img.cmpnet.com/cmpnet/blank.gif" width=8></td></tr><tr><td bgcolor="#FFFFFF" colspan=5><img src="http://img.cmpnet.com/cmpnet/blank.gif" height=5 border=0></td></tr></table><!-- / CONTENTS BOX --> <P> <b>Introducing A New Sharing Model</b><br> <P> At this point, if you're tempted to dismiss Office Web Apps as an also-ran, you'd be well advised to reconsider. That's because the real impact of Office Web Apps is not whether it outperforms Google Docs on a feature-by-feature basis (it doesn't), but on how it fundamentally changes the workflow for business users who rely upon Microsoft Office products. <P>Previously, sharing documents called for one of two general approaches. The first approach was to e-mail or post somewhere online a Microsoft Office document to be opened by someone else with a licensed copy of Microsoft Office. <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 10px; float:right; width:185px; text-align:center;"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/software/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225200350"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/442/001officewebapps.jpg" width="175" height="115" alt="Image Gallery: Microsoft&#8217;s Office Web Apps" title="Image Gallery: Microsoft&#8217;s Office Web Apps" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0" style="margin:0 0 3px 0; padding:0;" /></a><br /><i><span class="covercredit">(click image to view gallery)</span></i><br /><div style="margin:5px 0 0 0; padding:0;font-weight:bold; font-size:1.2em; color:#990000;">Image Gallery: Microsoft&#8217;s Office Web Apps</div> </div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> The second approach was to transform the Office document into a PDF that could be e-mailed to anyone with the free Acrobat reader application installed. In both cases, the data within the document becomes potentially stale as soon as it is sent, and the user has to make a determination in advance whether the recipient is Office-enabled. <P> Now, through the "<a href=" http://blogs.technet.com/b/office2010/archive/2009/07/15/microsoft-office-backstage-part-1-backstory.aspx ">Backstage</a> view of Office 2010, it has become just as easy to save a file to a Windows Live "SkyDrive" folder or to a SharePoint server as it is to save a file to a local disk. <P> Sharing a file from one of these Internet-accessible locations is much more than distributing a static copy of a file; instead, it's sharing a live link to the most recent version of a file, accessible to anyone using a modern browser or Windows-enabled smartphones. <P> Even if the editing capabilities of Office Web Apps remain weak, the <a href=" http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA101054761033.aspx ">underlying technology</a> enables document sharing that not only retains the exact formatting of the original file, but also maintains workgroup or public access to the latest available data. <P> Unlike past upgrades to Office that required people to figure out how to deal with new file formats, this time it isn't the file format that's changing, but rather the way files are shared through business and social networks. <P> As individuals, workgroups, teams, and organizations move to Office 2010, their suppliers and business partners may feel the pressure to view those documents online instead of as attachments. <P> Soon, instead of receiving PDFs in your e-mail inbox, you may start receiving invitations to view Office 2010 documents located on shared folders within Windows Live and on enterprise SharePoint servers. Even if you haven't bought Office 2010, you'll still be able to view those files exactly as they were created, and in certain cases make small edits and annotations. <P> And in the process of viewing and editing those files, you'll likely end up with an active account on Windows Live with SkyDrive, which will exert a gravitational pull on your own workflow in proportion to the number of Office 2010 users in your supply chain. At some point soon, you may feel a nagging desire to make the overall collaboration process easier through a simple, quick, streaming download of one of the new Office 2010 applications. <P> And from there, perhaps you'll ditch your BlackBerry for a <a href=" http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/05/shakeup_bodes_i.html ">Windows Phone 7</a>, start using Windows Live as your primary social network <a href=" http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/hosted/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224701508 ">instead of Facebook</a>, and spend your spare time playing Xbox games. <P> That's right, ladies and gentlemen: Microsoft has its mojo back. <P> <b>See Also:<br> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/enterpriseapps/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224800020">Microsoft Roundup: Office, Sharepoint 2010 Launch </a><br> <P> <a href=" http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224400376">Microsoft, Google On Office Computing Collision Course</a><br> <P> <a href=http://www.informationweek.com/video/mastermix/85210564001>VIDEO: 5 Reasons To Upgrade to Office 2010</a><br> <P> <a href=http://www.informationweek.com/video/mastermix/85194124001>VIDEO: Demo: PowerPoint Broadcast Microsoft Office 2010<a/><br> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/video/mastermix/86344301001">VIDEO: Customizing Your Ribbon in Office 2010</a><br> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/video/mastermix/86959406001">VIDEO: Image & Video Editing in Office 2010</a><br> <P> <a href=" http://www.informationweek.com/video/personaltechnology/77193350001">VIDEO: ReviewCam: Google Docs Gets Rewrite</a><br></b>2010-05-29T07:00:00ZBy themselves, the Microsoft's Office Web Apps may not reshape the computing world. In combination with other features of Office 2010, however, these humble Web services may help Microsoft to turn the tables on its online challengers, like Google.http://www.informationweek.com/news/225200350?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Company_Size:_50-249_smbThe initial screen for the download crows that you've been selected for a technical preview of Microsoft Web apps for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.The standard choices for test-driving Office Web Apps require an installation, but the Home version requires less commitment.Click-to-run enables Office 2010 Beta installation in just a few minutes.Excel 2010 Beta includes full Ribbon and supports auto-fill.The Excel version accessed through Office Web Apps has a truncated Ribbon and no auto-fill.One issue with Web Apps Excel is that you can't modify or even move a chart, and can only edit the source data.Here's another screen where we tested editing the 1Q10 revenue figure, which caused the chart to automatically update but didn't allow us to move the chart itself, change colors, add titles, or edit labels. <P>The dialog box allows you to enter a hyperlink.In traditional Excel, typing a well-formed URL would have automatically turned into a hyperlink. Not so in Office Web Apps.2010-05-18T09:55:00ZRising demand for semiconductors and memory products calls for new and improved production facilities and intense R&D efforts.http://www.informationweek.com/news/224900149?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Company_Size:_50-249_smbThis year Samsung will invest almost $23 billion on manufacturing facilities and R&D, its largest annual investment outlay ever, the company announced on Monday. <P> In South Korea on Tuesday, Samsung broke ground on a memory semiconductor fabrication plant that will receive about one-third of this year&#8217;s investment, or $7.9 billion. The new facility will produce DRAM, NAND and next-generation memory products. The accelerated investment in the new facility represents a 64 percent increase from the original plan for 2010, and total multi-year investment in the new facility is slated to reach $10.6 billion. <P> The next-largest portion of Samsung&#8217;s 2010 investment is a $7 billion outlay on research and development. The company did not specify how that would be allocated across its semiconductor, LCD, telecommunication and digital media businesses. <P> Also, in response to demand for energy-efficient, high-density memory, Samsung will spend $4.4 billion on increasing the capacity of its 30nm DRAM production at an existing facility. Samsung&#8217;s semiconductor production is based at the Nano City Complex in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province, 30 miles south and a two-hour trip from the South Korean capital, Seoul. <P> Further investments include $2.2 billion for improved LCD facilities and $1.8 billion to improve operations and meet demand for System-on-Chip (SoC) mobile and set-top devices. <P> Samsung reported $30.5 billion in sales in the first quarter of 2010, according to the company&#8217;s April 2010 earnings report. The digital media division, including video devices and appliances, generated $11 billion of the quarterly total. During the same period, telecom sales were $8 billion and semiconductors $7.2 billion. In digital media, the company is expanding its focus on premium models, including 3-D televisions. The company forecasts higher demand based on 3-D, higher adoption of LED TVs, and interest in the World Cup. <P> In telecom, Samsung has outperformed market growth by shipping over 64 million handsets in the first quarter, for a year-over-year increase of 40 percent. The company expects increased demand in the second quarter due to economic recovery and higher adoption of mid-to-high-end products. <P> In semiconductors, Samsung expects to "strengthen market dominance based on technology leadership and cost competitiveness," according to a presentation accompanying the April earnings report. The company expects continued supply constraints of DRAM based on high PC shipments, and strong demand for mobile products based on new product launches in smart phones, tablet PCs and book readers. <P> Samsung expects to hire 10,000 new employees in 2010, including 3,000 for its semiconductor business and 4,000 for its LCD business. <P> (U.S. dollar figures have been converted at the rate of 0.00088 Korean won to the dollar.) <P>2010-05-18T09:23:00ZIntel has been actively gearing up for the past year to provide both silicon and software to Internet-enabled TV ventures.http://www.informationweek.com/news/224900139?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Company_Size:_50-249_smbIntel and Google appear close to announcing a deal with Sony for Internet-enabled TVs at a Google developer conference later this week in San Francisco. <P> The deal would help Sony to differentiate itself in a challenging and highly competitive marketplace for television sets. Last week, Sony <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/desktop/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224800126">reported</a> pricing pressure on its Bravia LCD televisions, contributing to a half-billion-dollar loss in Sony's consumer products and devices division. <P> Intel has been actively gearing up for the past year to provide both silicon and software to Internet-enabled TV ventures, according to Eric Kim, SVP and GM, digital home group, Intel Corporation, speaking at a May 11th investor presentation. <P> On the silicon side, Intel has an order backlog of one million units of its second-generation "System-on-Chip" (SoC) Intel Atom CE 4100, which entered production in December 2009. Customers include France Telecom and other major service providers, cable operators and IPTV operators to be announced. <P> On the software side, Intel has developed a consumer electronics (CE) operating system based on MeeGo Linux. The OS will support legacy CE middleware, including various systems developed by broadcast and pay-TV providers around the world, as well as fully-capable Internet applications including HTML5, OpenGL, and Adobe Flash 10.1. "When vendors say, 'We support Flash,' it usually means Flash Lite," said Kim. "We provide the performance headroom to run Flash without any constraints." <P> Intel's previous software framework, Widget Channel, was developed in conjunction with Yahoo! to enable developers to build small applications to enhance the viewing experience. <P> With the reported deal, Google, along with its developer community, would have a prime position to provide applications and content optimized for the Intel framework. In addition, the delivery channel opens up new methods of delivering user content, presenting contextual advertising, and gathering user information. <P> However, Intel's Kim was careful to point out that the latest generation of smart-TV technology was intended to complement existing networks and providers rather than attempt to replace it entirely. "We thought it was important to embrace the broadcast legacy infrastructure," said Kim. "These players invested billions into infrastructure, and they're not going to throw it away." <P> Google is holding its annual developer conference, Google I/O, on Wednesday and Thursday in San Francisco. <P> <P>2010-05-17T06:00:00ZSony's $1.4 billion loss in consumer products and video games offset by $1.7 billion profit in the financial services division. http://www.informationweek.com/news/224800126?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Company_Size:_50-249_smbSony, best known in the U.S. for its consumer electronics and gaming systems, performed best as a Japan-based financial services company over the past fiscal year. Earnings contributions by the company's financial services division enabled the company to record positive operating income in the fiscal year ending March 31. <P> Sony's largest division, Consumer Products and Devices (CPD), posted $500 million in losses on $34.7 billion in sales, which nevertheless was a 60 percent improvement in operating income over the prior year, according to the company's financial results released Thursday. <P> The division was impacted by lower prices on BRAVIA LCD televisions, and by lower sales of Handycam video cameras and Cyber-shot compact digital cameras due to contraction of these markets. In total, lower CPD sales resulted in a reduction in gross profit of $1.1 billion. The stronger Japanese yen also pulled down CPD profits by $733 million. <P> Yet these negative factors were more than offset by CPD's cost-cutting measures, including $1.9 billion improvement in the division's cost of sales ratio and $1.4 billion in reduction in selling, general and administrative expenses. This has been achieved by CEO Howard Stringer's recent restructuring activities, which have included selling facilities, cutting 20,000 jobs, and relying more heavily on outsourcing for manufacturing. <P> Sony's second-largest division, Networked Products and Services, posted a 10 percent sales decline on $17 billion in revenues on PlayStation and VAIO products, for an $893 million loss. PlayStation Portable sales were down 30 percent and Playstation2 software down 57 percent. These declines were partially offset by a 10 percent increase in PlayStation3 software, which now contributes over half of Sony's gaming revenues. <P> Sony's Financial Services division contributed $1.75 billion in operating income to the parent company on $9.2 billion in revenue. The Financial Services division includes Sony Life Insurance, Sony Bank and Sony Finance International. Sony Life Insurance posted a 72 percent increase in revenue from investment gains and valuation gains from the rebound of the Japanese stock market over the past fiscal year, along with increases in insurance premiums. <P> Sony Ericsson, a 50-50 joint venture between the two companies, faced significant challenges in regional market conditions, particularly in Europe. Sales were down 37 percent compared to the prior year. <P>