Welcome to Corporate Technologies "Solutions"
for March 2007!

Solutions is designed to skip the fluff and bring you information that you can use now. Many of the articles in Solutions are based on requests from our best customers. Most of the solutions utilize products from #1 manufacturers and the services Corporate Technologies' provide. We will include information on upcoming events in your area. This should give you any hands-on time needed to help you with your IT decisions. We would also like to show you ways to take advantage of all that Corptech has to offer including Technology Advantage! If you are not familiar with Technology Advantage, send an email to your rep today.

Watch for Solutions on a monthly basis.
Feel free to email us your thoughts and suggestions.

A 2003 survey of Small Business Server users conducted by Lawrence Associates LLC offers a clue. It found that employees were able to perform an average of 20% more revenue-producing tasks, thanks in no small part to functions that allowed them to stay connected to their office computers while they were away.

Ann Westerheim knows about these productivity gains firsthand. As the president of Ekaru, a Westford, Mass., small-business technology adviser, she's seen the benefits in client after client.

One of her customers is a small law office in which the principal attorney's home is linked to the main office through a server's remote-connectivity features. Another small-business client is a marketing firm with employees constantly on the go.

"Thanks to the server," Westerheim says, "the connection between employees is seamless."

Read More

Worried about computer viruses? Concerned about the safety of your company's data?  You're in good company.

If you run a small business, you probably don't just feel like a target. Your company probably is a target. Small businesses are frequent victims of cyberattacks, according to several recent studies. And a 2006 Yankee Group survey found that 40 percent of small business owners rank protecting their companies from outside security breaches as an important issue.

"Big businesses have extensive IT departments with deep expertise to handle security," says Ann Westerheim, president of Ekaru, a technology services company for small and medium-sized business. "Small businesses just don't have these resources – and they're vulnerable."

Read More

Get the Big Picture
Assessing your information technology

You are certainly familiar with the Rube Goldberg machine – the delightfully convoluted set of processes required to accomplish a simple task. In the day to day interactions of information technologies, Goldberg is often hard at work. It only takes a tiny disagreement between software codes or a mismatch of operating systems for the marble wobbling down the chute to end up on the floor.

Ideally, you should be evaluating your IT investment initiatives in the context of a comprehensive business strategy that ensures maximum returns and facilitates that all-important "alignment" of IT and business requirements. But the real world too often delivers unrestrained marbles.

It's indicative of the problem that many businesses face as they try to maintain an accurate picture of their assets. When turnover and change of these assets is inevitable and often unmonitored, you lose track of what you own and reduce the efficiencies of the processes they impact.

The business consequences are costly. Companies confront over-and under-buying of assets, lease penalties, expensive off-contract and fragmented procurement, excess maintenance and support, non-compliance with software licenses, regulatory requirements and inadequate ownership cost data for purchasing and planning.

Read More