Monthly Archives: October 2011

Microsoft Adds Firepower to Dynamics CRM

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Microsoft Adds Firepower to Dynamics CRM

By Erika Morphy
CRM Buyer
Part of the ECT News Network
10/25/11 – TechNewsWorld

 

Microsoft is a bit late to the party, adding social components to its Dynamics CRM in an effort to match some of the functionality of Salesforce.com’s vaunted Chatter. The upgrade includes other features as well, though, and overall is a good package, according to Nucleus Research VP Rebecca Wettemann. “The BI capabilities will be an important differentiator for Microsoft, for example,” she remarked.
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Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is rolling out a service update for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online for both the partner-hosted and on-premises deployments.

The update includes its promised “Activity Feeds,” as well as administrative enhancements and stepped-up disaster recovery practices.

Microsoft has put Dynamics CRM on a rapid release schedule, Brad Wilson, general manager of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, told CRM Buyer. “We are introducing new features every six months, bringing different capabilities to our customers with every iteration.”

Social Elements

Chief among the new features is Microsoft Dynamic CRM’s Activity Feeds — its answer to Salesforce.com’s (NYSE: CRM) Chatter feature.

These are configurable, real-time notifications on relationships and business events. They can apply to anything business-related, from a customer to a sales opportunity.

Users can post information directly to the activity feed based on event rules — say, when a sales opportunity is closed, or when a new person has joined a team. The feed is then subscribed to, or followed, by whomever is interested in that particular event.

Other new social features include microblogging, enhanced with status updates, notification features, and more functionality around conversations — meaning users are able to post questions, observations and status updates to more easily collaborate and gather feedback.

“Microsoft is making a lot of investments in social right now,” Wilson said.

Oftentimes, this investment originated with other product research and development, and Microsoft leveraged it to be used across a suite of products, he explained.

One example is Microsoft Office’s social connector, shades of which can be found in Dynamics CRM and Sharepoint.

“What we are doing is leveraging the line of business relationship model we have built over the years,” Wilson said.

‘A Good Package’

In addition to the new social capabilities, updates include new features around business intelligence, such as more advanced charting and reporting. The dialogue function has been souped up so a greater number of topics can trigger conversations.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is also gearing up to offer cross-browser functionality for the first half of next year, with plans to support Chrome, Firefox and Safari.

Further, Dynamics CRM now has a stronger focus on disaster recovery and more robust back-end administrative functionality.

The bigger picture to these changes, Wilson said, is a more unified experience with Office 365.

The application has unified the different interfaces for Dynamics CRM and CRM Online for the back end, such as administration, provisions and billings. The disaster recovery process has been shored up, with service rolling over to another data center located in the same region when one data center fails. So if a data center located somewhere in North America fails, it is backed up by a data center also located in North America.

Taken as a whole, it is a good package, Nucleus Research Vice President Rebecca Wettemann told CRM Buyer. “The BI capabilities will be an important differentiator for Microsoft, for example.”

The social media features also are significant, she said. “Microsoft recognizes that there will be multiple social networks any organization will want to manage, such as outside groups or customers or partners. It is laying the groundwork for new tools that can best target these groups.”

The application is strengthened by Microsoft’s stepped-up focus on integration of its product lines, she also noted.

“A lot of the value proposition for Microsoft Dynamics CRM has been integration with other Microsoft technology,” said Wettemann. “It is clear that Microsoft’s focus is on driving a productive enterprise.”

The PC is dying, but very, very slowly

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By David Goldman @CNNMoneyTechOctober 19, 2011: 12:59 PM ET

mac-pc.ju.top.jpg

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — The trend is clear: Personal computer sales are slumping, and smartphone and tablet sales are booming. But Intel proved late Tuesday that the PC isn’t going away anytime soon.

Semiconductor sales in Intel’s (INTC, Fortune 500) PC division rose 22% last quarter, driving Intel’s overall revenue to its sixth consecutive quarterly record. That comes despite a lackluster PC sales environment: Overall PC shipments grew just 3.2% globally last quarter, which is well below seasonal averages, according to Gartner.

Zeroing in on different regions and segments of the world provides a fuller picture of why the PC isn’t yet dead, and why Intel has been so successful lately.

Consumer demand for PCs in the United States, Canada and Europe is slumping badly, but consumers in emerging markets can’t get enough of them, Intel said. Sales in China were up 12%, India 21%, Turkey 14% and Indonesia 23%. China has become the world’s No. 1 PC market, and fast-growing Brazil is now right behind the United States at No. 3.

“The global PC landscape is being reshaped,” Paul Otellini, Intel’s CEO, said during a conference call with analysts Tuesday. “We were very pleased with the momentum.”

In its most recent survey of third-quarter PC shipments, Gartner found that the computer industry is thriving in other regions as well. In the Asia/Pacific region, PC shipments doubled the global average by growing 6% from the same period last year. Many former desktop PC owners in that region are now buying their first laptops, Gartner said.

The PC market in Latin America is the fastest growing, soaring 20% last quarter. Like Asia/Pacific, sales were buoyed by laptops, which grew 31% year over year. But even desktop shipments were up 6.5%.

Meanwhile, corporations around the world continue to buy up PCs — even in Western countries where consumers are tightening their purse strings. Businesses are still in the midst of what’s known as a “refresh cycle,” purchasing new PCs to replace outdated ones that were never replaced due to the Great Recession and concerns about Microsoft’s (MSFT, Fortune 500) Windows Vista operating system.

Intel said its overall sales for the quarter rose 28% to $14.2 billion, and profit grew 17% to $3.5 billion. Both set records and far surpassed analysts’ expectations, sending shares up more than 4% Wednesday.

“Just an all-around solid execution,” said Vijay Rakesh, analyst at Sterne Agee. “Intel continues to show a technology lead.”

At the same time, analysts are keeping a close eye on Intel’s transition to the mobile space. Sales of the company’s Atom processors, which fuel netbooks and mobile devices, fell 30% year over year.

Meanwhile, the iPad has begun to eat into PC sales. When Hewlett-Packard (HPQ, Fortune 500) decided to exit the PC business, then-CEO Leo Apotheker cited as a prime reason that “the tablet effect is real.”

Intel, however, remained upbeat. It said its “Ivy Bridge” 22-nanometer chips that will debut next year have made significant improvements in power consumption, and that will help the company take a lead in the new “ultrabook” segment. Ultrabooks are extremely light-weight notebook PCs that have long battery life and almost as much power as a full-sized laptop.

The chipmaker has has also partnered with Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) to build Android tablets on Intel’s architecture, and it will power Microsoft Windows 8 tablets when they go on sale — probably sometime next year.

Intel and its longtime partner Microsoft have been left for dead many times over. What Intel’s past quarter proves is that whether or not the chipmaker has the right mobile strategy in place for the future, riding on the back of the still-alive PC will give Intel significant lead time to figure the problem out.

How colleges use, misuse social media to reach students

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By Umika Pidaparthy, Special to CNN
Thu October 20, 2011 | CNN.com
Johns Hopkins University has an interactive site with blogs and videos by current students for prospective students.
Johns Hopkins University has an interactive site with blogs and videos by current students for prospective students

(CNN) — It was a joyous day for Lucie Fink when she received her acceptance letter from Johns Hopkins University.

Like most prospective students, she wanted to know exactly what she was getting into before she made her decision between schools. The shiny pamphlets were all fine, but Fink really needed to hear more about the school from the students.

So she went to the Web to get her answers. There she came across student-produced videos and blog entries, along with posts in a Facebook group for accepted students.

“There were all these kids that were so passionate about sharing their experience,” Fink said. “It was then that going off to Hopkins became a no-brainer, because I had already fallen in love with the school.”

Fink, who is now a sophomore, was so impressed by the originality of the student content online that she eventually became a contributor to a student-run social media site, Hopkins Interactive. The site features regularly updated blogs, videos and Twitter feeds, all produced by current students for prospective and admitted students.

Daniel Creasy, the associate director of admissions and one of the people behind Hopkins Interactive, believes that it provides an uncensored look at the school.

“You definitely take a leap of faith when you put this much control of your message in the students’ hands,” he said. “But the students feel a sense of pride that they are part of this process.”

For universities competing to attract top students, it’s no longer enough to have a glossy brochure and a sleek website. Schools like Johns Hopkins are reaching out to engage with applicants on Facebook and Twitter. They’re also finding that a robust social media campaign, along with such creative features as student-run blogs, can lure prospective students while a stale online presence can turn them off.

College admissions officers are indeed learning to interact with students where they hang out: online. According to a recent study by the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, 100% of universities surveyed use social media to communicate with students, up from 61% in 2007-08. The study found that 98% of the responding colleges have a Facebook page and 84% have a Twitter account.

“Social media is past the fad phase,” said Nora Barnes, director of the center. “The numbers speak for themselves. Many students can’t afford to visit the campus, so they are depending on the podcasts and blogs to get answers.”

Top social media colleges

When Ashmi Pathela, a University of Notre Dame senior, was applying to colleges, she was still receiving the traditional brochures. If she had the option of social media, she said, she would have learned more about the schools much faster.

“I think the younger generation has grown up with social media,” Pathela said. “It’s something, like electricity, they expect it to exist.”

Dean Tsouvalas, editor-in-chief of StudentAdvisor.com, also noticed this reliance on social media when students in a focus group made it clear that university catalogs did not always impress them.

“Students view the brochures similarly to school propaganda,” he said. “There’s an aversion among them to the glossy versions that colleges put out.”

Tsouvalas said that applicants often turn to the Web to talk with enrolled students about their experiences.

“They can get a sense of what life is really like on campus through social media, whether it’s through a virtual tour or Twitter,” he said.

Tsouvalas has come up with a ranking system, StudentAdvisor.com’s “Top 100 Social Media Colleges,” which classifies the universities on how well they use social media.

As subjective as it may seem, the list, which was updated last month, is compiled based on a formula that requires at least 500 Facebook “likes” and a Twitter account for a school to be eligible. Tsouvalas said the ranking takes into account factors such as enrollment size, hours between tweets and responses to posts.

Anyone browsing the Top 100 list will notice a surprising trend: It’s not the Ivy League that rules the roost. Among the top 10 schools are The Ohio State University, Louisiana State University and the United States Military Academy at West Point.

Although Harvard University, where Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook as a student, topped the list when it launched in March, it was soon dethroned by Johns Hopkins.

What colleges do right, and do wrong

In their attempts to stand out, some universities on StudentAdvisor.com’s list have gone far beyond just having a Facebook page.

The chairman of the math department at Berry College made a calculus music video with his students, who sing about derivatives in a YouTube video titled “The Derivative Rag.” The sixth-ranked University of Kentucky created a campaign around the school’s colors of blue and white and a site, SeeBlue.com, that includes videos from students and staff.

Many top schools also make creative use of Twitter to communicate with students.

The University of Kentucky recently sent out tweets to some of its accepted students saying, “Congrats and welcome to our Big Blue family.” Baylor University keeps its students updated on student affairs through its Student Activities Twitter account. And the admissions office of George Washington University has a Twitter account that messages applicants about interview weekends and decision dates.

But other universities are still slow to catch on. While Lehigh University regularly tweets updates through its LehighUNews account, its main LehighU Twitter account hasn’t been updated since September 2009. And it’s not the only one. Some universities neglect their websites, tweet too infrequently or fail to reply to student questions.

“It’s not enough to be satisfied that your school is on Facebook,” Barnes said. “Students will make a judgment about the university if it is not current and responsive online. When their post doesn’t get answered, they are not interested anymore.”

James Mueller, a University of Oregon senior, said he finds it annoying that many colleges do not use Twitter effectively.

“Why have a Twitter account if you only have four tweets in the past few months?” he said. “Also, colleges sometimes don’t understand the difference between Facebook and Twitter. Sometimes they tweet clones of Facebook posts.”

Daniella Phillips, a University of Florida senior, said the kind of language used in social media is important to her. She has seen some universities tweet archaic words such as “groovy,” which can be off-putting.

“It’s like reading a text message from my mom,” she said. “It screams that ‘I didn’t do my research and I don’t know my target audience.’ ”

Engagement is key

There is no one recipe for success when it comes to colleges’ use of digital media. Tsouvalas believes universities should invite students to produce online content. He cited West Point, which uploaded a video montage of its band’s drum section performing Nick Werth’s “Rhythm of Conscience.”

“It shows a personality to the school that I would have never seen before,” Tsouvalas said. “They are having a good time, and I loved it. That’s what makes it special.”

Barnes thinks universities should avoid content on social media that presents a bland, pristine image of the school.

“PR people should not be doing these blogs. Students have an antenna for that,” she said. “If you try to sanitize your blog, students will see right through that.”

Finally, it’s not enough just to have unique online features. Without attempts to interact with students, universities’ fancy graphics or slick videos are good for nothing, Tsouvalas said.

“You can have an awesome page and gorgeous features, but you need to have real engagement,” he said. “It makes us feel that the school really does care about its students.”

Tsouvalas believes universities should think about what their focus is and what they want students to see when they Google the school.

“A successful social media campaign is when students are able to have a one-to-one connection, speak directly to the school and get interesting information that they never knew before,” he said.

Why computer voices are mostly female

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Brandon Griggs, CNN
By Brandon Griggs, CNN
updated 11:42 AM EST, Fri October 21, 2011 | CNN.com

(CNN) — To most owners of the new iPhone, the voice-activated feature called Siri is more than a virtual “assistant” who can help schedule appointments, find a good nearby pizza or tell you if it’s going to rain.

She’s also a she.

Siri answers questions in a part-human, part-robot voice that’s deep, briskly efficient and distinctly female. (At least in the U.S. and four other countries. In France and the UK, Siri is male.)

People describe the app using female pronouns. Her gender has even prompted some users to flood blogs and online forums with sexually suggestive questions for Siri such as “What are you wearing?” (Siri’s baffled response: “Why do people keep asking me this?”)

The fuss over Siri’s sex also raises a larger question: From voice-mail systems to GPS devices to Siri and beyond, why are so many computerized voices female?

One answer may lie in biology. Scientific studies have shown that people generally find women’s voices more pleasing than men’s.

“It’s much easier to find a female voice that everyone likes than a male voice that everyone likes,” said Stanford University Professor Clifford Nass, author of “The Man Who Lied to His Laptop: What Machines Teach Us About Human Relationships.” “It’s a well-established phenomenon that the human brain is developed to like female voices.”

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HAL, the homicidal artificial intelligence in “2001: A space Odyssey,” may have scared manufacturers away from male automated voices.

Research suggests this preference starts as early as the womb, Nass said. He cites a study in which fetuses were found to react to the sound of their mother’s voice but not to other female voices. The fetuses showed no distinct reaction to their father’s voice, however.

Another answer lies in history. According to some sources, the use of female voices in navigation devices dates back to World War II, when women’s voices were employed in airplane cockpits because they stood out among the male pilots. And telephone operators have traditionally been female, making people accustomed to getting assistance from a disembodied woman’s voice.

When automakers were first installing automated voice prompts in cars (“your door is ajar”) decades ago, their consumer research found that people overwhelmingly preferred female voices to male ones, said Tim Bajarin, a Silicon Valley analyst and president of Creative Strategies Inc.

This may explain why in almost all GPS navigation systems on the market, the default voice is female. One notable exception has been Germany, where BMW was forced to recall a female-voiced navigation system on its 5 Series cars in the late 1990s after being flooded with calls from German men saying they refused to take directions from a woman.

“Cultural stereotypes run deep,” said Nass, who details the BMW episode in his book.

Voice casting

Most companies that produce automated voices hold auditions for voice actors and collect recordings of them speaking. Then they invite focus groups to listen to the recordings and rate the voices on how well they convey certain attributes: warmth, friendliness, competence and so on.

“It’s casting,” Nass said. “It’s something Hollywood has known for a long, long time.”

Look no further than examples of automated or artificial-intelligence voices in sci-fi movies and TV shows. Voices of authority or menace tend to be male: the homicidal HAL 9000 computer in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” the computer program in “WarGames,” or Auto, the spaceship’s autopilot function in “Wall-E.” More subservient talking machines, such as the onboard computer from the “Star Trek” TV series, skew female.

Bajarin, the Silicon Valley analyst, believes that more computerized voices would be masculine if not for the associations with HAL, whose malicious intent in the 1968 Stanley Kubrick film was made even creepier by his soothing tone.

“A lot of tech companies stayed away from the male voice because of HAL,” he said. “I’ve heard that theory tossed around multiple times.” (One prominent exception: The chipper “You’ve got mail!” voice from AOL’s dial-up days.)

When it comes to consumer applications of computerized voices, the sex of the voice is usually determined by what service or product is employing it. For example, transit systems such as the San Francisco Area’s BART often use higher-pitched voices because they are easier to hear over the clatter of the train cars.

Nuance, a Massachusetts-based company that develops speech technologies for Ford vehicles’ SYNC system, Amazon e-readers and other clients, creates both male and female voices. It’s then up to the client to choose which voice, and gender, best fits their product, said chief creative officer Gary Clayton.

“As these products become part of our everyday lives, there’s a huge opportunity for personalization,” added Brant Ward, the company’s director of advanced speech design. “I could have an approximation of my wife’s voice read me a text message in my car.”

Siri: Brilliant or sexist?

Siri, the iPhone 4S’s voice, grew from a five-year research project that was funded by military agency DARPA and led by SRI International, a Bay Area research institute. The project spawned a company, also called Siri, that launched an iPhone app in February 2010 and was acquired by Apple two months later.

That original Siri voice-to-text app — powered in part by Nuance’s technology — also worked by people speaking commands into their phones, although it didn’t talk back. And it had no gender. In fact, the app was originally conceived to speak in a gender-neutral voice, said Norman Winarsky, vice president of SRI and a co-founder of Siri.

“What Apple did is absolutely brilliant,” said Winarsky, who calls speech “the most natural of all human interfaces.”

“They took Siri and gave it more of a personality,” he said. “It’s the first real artificial intelligence working in millions of people’s hands.”

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment on why the company gave Siri a female voice in the U.S. Nor would she say why Siri speaks like a man in the UK, where iPhone 4S owners have swarmed online forums to request a female voice instead. “Eww!! Hope UK gets female voice soon,” wrote one commenter. “I don’t think anyone in the US cares about male voice option.”

Many GPS devices and computer text-to-speech programs now offer multiple voice options. And someday soon, voice-technology experts say, Siri will probably speak in a variety of voices, too.

Until then, some bloggers have wondered: Are computerized female “assistants” sexist?

Not necessarily, said Rebecca Zorach, director of the Social Media Project at the University of Chicago’s Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality.

“I think they have to be understood in a broader context in which they’re one small piece,” she wrote in an e-mail to CNN. “Voices intended to convey authority (such as voice-over narration in films) tend to be male. So yes, probably these compliant female robot voices reinforce gender stereotypes, not just because they serve the user but because the technology itself is about communication and relationships (areas that women are presumed to be good at).

“I wouldn’t automatically claim any sexism in individual companies’ choices, though. Most such decisions are probably the result of market research, so they may be reflecting gender stereotypes that already exist in the general public.”

Zorach listened to some sound clips of Siri online, then e-mailed back again.

“What’s interesting to me is how they seem to intentionally make her speech sound artificial — they could choose to make her speech more seamless and human-like, but they choose instead to highlight the technology,” she said. “That makes you aware of how high-tech your gadget is.”

Start Small to build a green culture at your office

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By Dan Korte, Business Review West Michigan, October 13-19, 2011

You’d be hard-pressed these days to find an office that doesn’t at least recycle.  Aluminum cans, plastic, paper, glass – most companies have that down.  Mention the words “green office culture,” however, and many business executives become fairly intimidated.

As daunting as it may sound, creating that kind of culture is what it takes to establish a truly green office, and the best advice is to start out small and watch it grow.

Not only is fostering a green office culture good for the environment, but it can be good for your bottom line.  Many of your current prospective clients are looking for environmentally responsible companies to work with.

If you are interested in “greening up” your office, I recommend you start with a committee of employees, whether you give it a formal name or not, to brainstorm ideas and lead the office in green business practices.

Here are just a few tips to help you get started:

  • Recycle – but do it right.  Most companies recycle, but many just do the basics.  You’d be surprised about now many recycle incorrectly.  Take basic recycling a step forward by also including cellphones or toner and ink cartridges.  Recycling may sound like a no-brainer, but make sure employees know the basic rules of sorting.
  • Buy environmentally friendly office supplies, such as recycled copy paper, phosphate-free dishwasher detergent, biodegradable cups, and even plates and bowls made from corn-based materials.
  • Go paperless.  Most people e-mail today instead of mailing or faxing, but make it a policy; print on both sides of the paper instead of just one side; switch to an electronic pay system instead of paper checks; and use Easylink Fax, which delivers faxes you receive as PDFs rather than as hard copies – just make sure to print them out only as a necessity.  By going paperless, you’ll be saving money and reducing waste.
  • Travel green.  When possible, use video conferencing instead of traveling; but if you have to travel, stay in eco-friendly hotels (check out www.greenhotels.com or a similar website).  You will save travel costs for your clients and your own business.  Also, be sure to take advantage of green cleaning programs offered at places you stay.  When traveling around town, use Kalamazoo’s bus system or participate in Michigan’s Rideshare program.
  • Lunch smart.  Carpool to a local eatery, or bring lunch to cut down on your carbon footprint.

These are just a few ideas to help you get started, but the most important thing is to start.  Bring green is a state of mind, and simply educating your employees about the importance of environmental responsibility will go a long way in creating a green culture in your office.  Employees will soon become more aware of their impact on the world, whether at work or not.

Virtualization Security Checklist

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Four Steps to a more secure virtual infrastructure

By Michael A. Davis, Information Week Magazine, October 2011

What’s the most dangerous threat to your virtualized systems?  Hint: it’s not the latest zero-day exploit.  The most pressing risk is IT staff who have full privileges in these systems.

Take the February 2011 attack by an IT employee who’d been laid off from a pharmaceutical company.  The ex-employee logged in remotely and deleted virtual hosts that ran the company’s critical applications, including email, financial software, and order tracking.  The company sustained about $800,000 in losses from a few key strokes, the FBI says.

We’re not saying your administrators will go rogue, but our September 2010 survey on virtualization security found that access to virtualization systems is fairly widespread: 42% of respondents say administrators have access to guest virtual machines.  It only makes sense to take precautions, such as security monitoring, so that one person, whether maliciously or inadvertently, doesn’t bring down critical apps and services.

Virtualized systems make it harder to manage risk, but sensible security practices still apply.  Here are four steps to help you protect virtual assets and respond to threats and incidents.

  1. Secure Layers: Virtual environments are made up of layers, so you’ll want to implement security controls at each layer within the virtual architecture, including controls that you already have in your environment.  For example, at the virtual switch layer, redirect traffic out to a firewall or an intrusion prevention system to monitor traffic.  Alternatively, use a virtual firewall within the VM cluster.  The primary virtual layers to address include the hypervisor and guest operating systems, the virtual network that connects VMs, the physical network, the virtualization management system, and physical storage of VM images.
  2. Define and Document: You can’t place security controls around elements you don’t know are there.  Thus, it’s vital to have accurate, up-to-date information on your virtual environment.  That means being able to identify the components in your virtual infrastructure.  Make sure your document the primary functions of these components and their owners and administrators.  It’s also critical to understand how data traffic flows through your infrastructure, because the type of data will determine which controls are needed.  For example, most companies take extra steps to secure virtual database servers that store critical business data.  However, your backups also have copies of this confidential data.  Track data flows from start to finish to identify critical areas where additional security measures are needed.
  3. Restrict and Separate: Access control and authorization are core security functions, particularly for virtual environments, where control over a single hypervisor.  As in the physical world, administrator access to systems and their authorization to perform specific functions should be as specific as possible.  Every administrator in your shop doesn’t need to be able to spin up, modify, and shut down every virtual server in your data center.  Logging is another critical security function.  It lets you monitor and track all the activities that take place within the virtual environment.  The management consoles from the major hypervisor vendors provide decent role-based access controls that restrict administrators’ permissions to perform basic tasks and you should take advantage of these capabilities.  However, these management consoles don’t validate change requests, log all changes, and implement capabilities such as two-factor authentication.  For that, you’ll need third-party software from vendors such as HyTrust and Catbird, which provide additional controls, such as change management.  With these controls, major changes can’t be made to critical systems without authorization from another administrator in addition to the one requesting the change.  These third-party tools can also split functions among different IT groups.  For instance, the IT security team can be put in charge of managing the logs from the virtualization management console instead of the server administrators.  This separation of duties means no single administrator can modify or disable systems undetected.
  4. Secure The Virtual Network:  The virtual network has the same problems as the physical one, including the potential for man-in-the-middle attacks, in which compromised VMs intercept traffic between other VMs.  To prevent these, it’s important to take advantage of the security features in your virtual switches.  Most virtualization vendors let you set up VLANs that can segment network devices and traffic based on security and management policies.  However, the virtual switch you have in place may lack advanced security and monitoring features of physical switches.  For instance, a physical switch lets you create private VLANs, which allow for additional segmentation (think of a VLAN within a VLAN), but many virtual switches may also lack the ability to provide netflow data, which can be used for performance monitoring and attack detection.  Do your homework to see if you need a third-party virtual switch that provides these advanced capabilities.  If you can implement only one of these steps at the outset, focus on access control and separation of duties.  Most companies have procedures and tools in place to control access to physical systems, and these can be applied directly to virtual environments.  Virtualization’s risks and challenges can be countered with common security practices.

Michigan tops U.S. for tech job growth in 2010

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By Chris Knape, Business Review West Michigan, October 13-19 2011

 

Michigan is leading the nation in terms of growth in technology jobs, defying a national trend that saw tech jobs decline as a whole last year, according to a new report.

In its 14th annual Cyberstates survey of technology-related employment, the Washington D.C. non-profit TechAmerica Foundation said Michigan gained more tech jobs between 2009 and 2010 than any other state.

In fact, Michigan was one of only seven states plus the District of Columbia that added jobs last year, according to the survey, which uses U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.  Washington D.C. (up 1,400), West Virginia (up 400), Utah (up 400), and South Carolina (up 300) were the only other gainers.

Michigan ranked 15th overall in terms of technology-related employment in the survey.

No doubt the rebound of the automotive industry played a major role in the relative boom in tech jobs.  The study showed research and development and testing labs added 3,100 jobs, Internet and software publishers added 900 jobs and computer systems and design-related services added 600 positions.

The state is ranked 4th nationally in research and development testing labs jobs, with 39,200 positions in Michigan, and sixth in engineering services, with 33,000 jobs.

Nationally, the U.S. high-tech industry lost 115,800 jobs in 2010, but there are still 5.75 million tech workers in the country.

The rebound can be seen in businesses across many industries in Michigan.

West Michigan tech services firms like OST and Netech have been adding jobs at a solid clip.

Larger organizations like Spectrum Health, Amway, GE Aviation and a variety of automotive components makers like Gentex and LG Chem also have been actively recruiting engineers, software developers and IT professionals.

 

Turns out we aren’t the only ones looking for IT help.

Steve Jobs and the Seven Rules of Success

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By Carmine Gallo | October 14, 2011 – Entrepreneur Magazine

Steve Jobs’ impact on your life cannot be overestimated. His innovations have likely touched nearly every aspect — computers, movies, music and mobile. As a communications coach, I learned from Jobs that a presentation can, indeed, inspire. For entrepreneurs, Jobs’ greatest legacy is the set of principles that drove his success.

Over the years, I’ve become a student of sorts of Jobs’ career and life. Here’s my take on the rules and values underpinning his success. Any of us can adopt them to unleash our “inner Steve Jobs.”

1. Do what you love. Jobs once said, “People with passion can change the world for the better.” Asked about the advice he would offer would-be entrepreneurs, he said, “I’d get a job as a busboy or something until I figured out what I was really passionate about.” That’s how much it meant to him. Passion is everything.

2. Put a dent in the universe. Jobs believed in the power of vision. He once asked then-Pepsi President, John Sculley, “Do you want to spend your life selling sugar water or do you want to change the world?” Don’t lose sight of the big vision.

3. Make connections. Jobs once said creativity is connecting things. He meant that people with a broad set of life experiences can often see things that others miss. He took calligraphy classes that didn’t have any practical use in his life — until he built the Macintosh. Jobs traveled to India and Asia. He studied design and hospitality. Don’t live in a bubble. Connect ideas from different fields.

4. Say no to 1,000 things. Jobs was as proud of what Apple chose not to do as he was of what Apple did. When he returned in Apple in 1997, he took a company with 350 products and reduced them to 10 products in a two-year period. Why? So he could put the “A-Team” on each product. What are you saying “no” to?

5. Create insanely different experiences. Jobs also sought innovation in the customer-service experience. When he first came up with the concept for the Apple Stores, he said they would be different because instead of just moving boxes, the stores would enrich lives. Everything about the experience you have when you walk into an Apple store is intended to enrich your life and to create an emotional connection between you and the Apple brand. What are you doing to enrich the lives of your customers?

6. Master the message. You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if you can’t communicate your ideas, it doesn’t matter. Jobs was the world’s greatest corporate storyteller. Instead of simply delivering a presentation like most people do, he informed, he educated, he inspired and he entertained, all in one presentation.

7. Sell dreams, not products. Jobs captured our imagination because he really understood his customer. He knew that tablets would not capture our imaginations if they were too complicated. The result? One button on the front of an iPad. It’s so simple, a 2-year-old can use it. Your customers don’t care about your product. They care about themselves, their hopes, their ambitions. Jobs taught us that if you help your customers reach their dreams, you’ll win them over.

There’s one story that I think sums up Jobs’ career at Apple. An executive who had the job of reinventing the Disney Store once called up Jobs and asked for advice. His counsel? Dream bigger. I think that’s the best advice he could leave us with. See genius in your craziness, believe in yourself, believe in your vision, and be constantly prepared to defend those ideas.

Siri? On My iPhone 4? Not Quite

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iPhone Siri

Why does Apple not want its new digital assistant, Siri, on the iPhone 4 in addition to its brand-new iPhone 4S? The answer isn’t in the technical details. According to iOS aficionado Steven Troughton-Smith, Siri runs fairly well on a standard iPhone 4. And he should know: He hacked the code to make it work.

The bad news: Troughton-Smith’s port isn’t ready for a public unveiling, nor is there any indication that he’ll be able to do so without Apple having a little cause for concern. Siri on the iPhone 4 might “work” in the sense that a user can load and access the app on the smartphone, but it doesn’t actually perform like Siri on an iPhone 4S.

The chief reason for that is because Siri uses server-side software to determine what, exactly, it is that you’re yelling into your iPhone 4S. In other words, no Internet, no Siri. In the case of the iPhone 4 version of Siri, it’s as if you’re in a permanent dead zone: Apple servers are refusing to authenticate iPhone 4-issued Siri commands, which makes the entire exercise of porting the app onto an iPhone 4 a bit of a novelty unless a clever workaround for the issue can be solved. What good is a digital assistant that you can’t talk to?

Troughton-Smith was initially having a bit of trouble getting Siri to perform smoothly on the iPhone 4, an issue that was later determined to be the result of a missing driver for the iPhone 4 that ties the device’s GPU into Siri’s performance. It’s unclear what fix Troughton-Smith used to address the issue, but a subsequent update – shown in the below video – managed to get Siri up and running in its true, non-choppy form.

So why no Siri on the iPhone 4? Two reasons come to mind: The first, and most obvious, is that Apple wants to save its “killer feature” for its latest hardware, giving consumers more of an incentive to upgrade to a device instead of sticking with what they have. The second, and equally plausible reason, is that even the slightest hint of performance differences between the iPhone 4 Siri and the iPhone 4S Siri could be enough to eliminate the iPhone 4 from consideration. Apple, after all, famously refused to allow custom wallpapers on the iPhone 3G because they slightly degraded the performance of iOS icon animations.

Of course, you could always ask Siri for the real answer – on an iPhone 4S, that is.

Determining Staffing Levels

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Minimize Labor expense & identity inefficiencies

 

It is no secret that labor expense, as a percentage of service revenue, has a tremendous impact on service margins.  Therefore, as a service leader, it is important to understand and determine the appropriate staffing levels for your organization.  Often, organizations are not sure what their staffing levels should be, which, in most cases, leads to over staffing at these organizations.  Planning and determining the appropriate staffing levels for your service organization  can be challenging and time consuming, but it plays a pivotal role in the department’s profitability and response to your customers.

In years past, it was common for service departments to determine their staffing levels by merely assigning a designated number of machines per technician.  As an example, an organization might have had 5,000 machines of various speeds, makes, and models under contract and simply assigned a certain number of machines to each technician.  Under this staffing philosophy, head count was based on the service leader’s judgement of the appropriate number of machines a technician could support.  In this case, if the leader thought a technician should be able to support approximately 300 machines, then it was determined that the department’s staffing levels should be around 16 or 17 technicians (5,000/300 =16.6).

On the other hand, many times staffing levels were determined by images supported by the technician.  A common rule of thumb was that each technician should be able to support approximately 1.5 million images per month.  For example, if the organization’s base was collectively producing 15 million images, then the appropriate staffing level would be 10 technicians (15 million images/1.5 million = 10).

Unfortunately, neither approach takes into consideration the geography, population mix or workload demand for the organization’s specific fleet.  So, you may be thinking, “I get it.  There isn’t a methodology that works for everyone.  My technicians always seem to be busy and my customers appear to be happy.  Everything is running fine.”  Are you sure this is the case?

Regardless of your organization’s equipment population, image volume and geography, there is a methodology that can be applied to each organization regardless of size, geography and machine mix.

First, you have to determine your actual technician workload capacity per technician.  This is commonly referred to as “productive time.” Productive time may vary based on your staff’s non-productive factors, such as meeting times per month, vacation time and training time.  Most organizations average between 135-145 available productive hours per technician per month.  However, I recommend you analyze your staff’s productive hours to be sure.

Though you have determined your staff’s productive time, you are not in the clear yet.  Have you considered your targeted response time for your clients?  Your company’s desired response time will affect your field team’s daily productive hours.  In order to achieve an average targeted response time consistently, you must adjust available hours for additional non-productive time.

Next, it is important to determine your base’s actual work load demand (call time plus travel time).  This should be reviewed periodically throughout the year due to the many factors that could affect your workload demand and affect your organization’s staffing levels.

Once you have calculated your base’s actual workload demand, it is important to compare your workload to the benchmark (targeted) workload for your base.  This step provides the foundation of “what good looks like” for your particular base.  If you choose to sidestep this process, you are increasing your risk of being overstaffed, as well as sacrificing further improvement by benchmarking against your own data.  This calculation requires some form of benchmark data.  BEI Services is a common source of such information.

All of these steps are important when determining your staffing levels.  Let us assume your staff’s average productive time is 145 hours per technician per month and you discover your organization’s actual workload is 2,125 hours, which is currently being supported by 20 technicians.  At first glance, you might calculate the appropriate staffing level to be technicians (2,125/145).  What if your organization desired a four-hour average response time?  To achieve this, you must adjust your available productive hours accordingly.  In this example, the four-hour response would reduce your available productive hours to 125 hours per technician per month.  Therefore, your current workload demand with your staff performing as it is today should be 17 technicians (2,125/125).

At this point, one might be thinking, “That’s great.  I can reduce my staff from 20 technicians down to 17.”  Although true, it it important to understand what your staffing level should be.  Using the same example, now let us assume you determined down to the model level: Your organization’s benchmark workload is 1,875 hours of work for its fleet, resulting in a workload equivalent of 15 (1,875/125) technicians.  In this case, the organization would have an excess capacity of two (17-15) technicians or a total excess capacity of five (20-15) technicians.

There are a few ways to respond to this information.  One way is to immediately reduce your staff and expect the rest of the remaining employees to “pick up the slack”.  This approach  provides immediate gains to the organization’s bottom line, but could greatly reduce the level of service to your customers.

A second approach is to utilize the excess capacity by taking on additional business without reducing head count.  Assuming you have the right players, this could help eliminate potential growth pains.  Another approach is a combination of both: reduce staff to a certain degree and utilize the excess capacity to support additional revenue opportunities.

Regardless of the approach, it is critical to identify the reasons your organization is not performing at its benchmark level and implement a plan to correct these issues before making any changes in head count.  Determining staffing levels in this manner will minimize your labor expense and it will play a pivotal role in identifying areas of inefficiency that could affect your customer satisfaction levels.

By: Ken Staubitz, Office Technology Magazine October 2011