The Savvy CIO

Bigger, better, faster.

That’s been the trend in all things Internet over the last ten years. Computers and connections are faster. Monitors have been growing bigger and bigger. Websites and web applications have been stretching into all of that new screen size and bandwidth to deliver big, fast, media-rich, interactive sites.

Now that’s starting to change.

Bigger, better and faster aren’t going away. But a rapidly increasing number of people using the Internet are trading some of that in for other values: mobile and accessible.

Tiny phone screens and modest tablet screens are going to represent a sizeable part of web traffic in the future. I have not always been a believer that the mighty PC and laptop would actually be supplanted for “serious” Internet use. But I believe now. It’s still early, but the trending is clear. read more »

Cloud computing has been generating a lot of buzz and by all accounts looks to increase in 2010. But even with all the hype (or perhaps because of it), we regularly get asked, “What is cloud computing?”

That’s a great question. There isn’t a broad consensus on exactly what cloud computing is and is not. I don’t think a valuable answer can be found in the technical discussion of what services are and are not cloud computing. Instead, the real definition is in how cloud computing meets a business need.

Eric Knorr and Galen Gruman at InfoWorld have put their finger on it:

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Highland isn’t a software reseller shop. We do custom solutions.

So when we advocate a piece of software that we didn’t create, we feel a bit of obligation to justify our preference.

Any CRM worth its salt offers similar benefits to an organization. Why do we think SugarCRM is currently the best CRM to offer our clients? Here’s a peek into a bit of Highland history and our thoughts on the matter.

Five years ago, it became obvious to us that CRM was a recurring need among our development clients. We had built a few custom CRMs from scratch, but were looking for a solid building block we could use in our solutions so we could stop re-inventing the wheel.

We prefer open, flexible, low cost solutions, and those preferences drove our search process. After extensive research and getting our hands on several possible solutions, we began working with SugarCRM in 2005 as part of Sugar’s open source community. Since that time we’ve deployed Community and Professional Editions of SugarCRM for our clients, both as a stand-alone CRM solution and integrated into a larger web application deployment.

So why do we use SugarCRM instead of other offerings like Salesforce.com or Microsoft Dynamics? Without a full competitive breakdown, here are four quick reasons we’ve come to strongly prefer SugarCRM. read more »

We’ve been long-time users (and advocates) of SugarCRM.

Sugar fits within our preference for flexible, powerful, open-source platforms, and we’ve found it to be incredibly useful through the past few years, both internally for our business and as a platform for our clients. We’ve used SugarCRM both “out of the box” and as a foundation for some very deep customization and integration work.

Sugar’s next major update, SugarCRM 5.5, is now generally available, and it adds several great new capabilities to Sugar Professional:

• Mobile Studio: Customizable interfaces for mobile smartphone access.
• Cloud Connectors: Real time data integration from online sources like LinkedIn and Hoovers.
• Dynamic Teams: Add multiple teams and individuals to a single record.
• Social Feeds: User created Facebook-style work status updates.

Here’s a closer look at how these new features can benefit your business:
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Why put a server or a service in the data center?

Here are the four main advantages we hear from our small business clients:

Full On-Site and Remote Management

With 24/7 on-site staff and robust remote management tools, maintaining or repairing a server in the data center is significantly faster than doing so in your office. Plus, server-side maintenance becomes the responsibility of the provider under the data center agreement. read more »

Data centers used to be the domain of huge online giants, like Google or eBay. But as accessibility has increased and prices decreased, the data center has become a viable alternative for small businesses who want to trade in the capital and maintenance costs of a server (and security, backups, etc.) for predictable monthly fees that cover hardware, maintenance and support.

How are small businesses using the data center to their advantage? read more »

Ever wonder what the “cloud” part of cloud computing looks like?

It can be easy to think of the cloud as some vague place “out there” where things are taken care of. After all, it is called the cloud. In reality, the cloud is comprised mostly of companies—like ours—that provide web-based services out of data centers.

Want to see the cool, techie insides of the cloud? View this tour from Equinix. (Warning: Video is a bit goofy at times, all part of the geeky cool factor.)

Image from www.equinix.com/locations/tours/

We would have liked to show you our own pictures of the center, but a “no camera” policy is a part of the security standards, along with biometric access and 24×7 security guards.

Why are we excited about data centers?

Earlier this month we expanded our hosted services to a second state-of-the-art Tier 3 data center.

Why two data centers?

As our hosted services continue to grow, we needed more space for servers, more power, etc. By growing into a second data center, we’re able to provide separate geographic locations for servers and backups to our clients who host business critical applications and desire this level of disaster recovery.

What’s a Tier 3 center?

Data centers are rated from Tier 1 (the closet in your office) to Tier 4 (can stay online during a major disaster and last 3 days without power). Tier 3 centers provide extremely high levels of security, power, speed, redundancy and disaster preparedness. Read about data center tiers and what they mean.

Our commitment to world class data center hosting for our clients helps set us apart. Please contact us if you’d like to know more about our hosted and cloud computing services.

Google recently launched a “Going Google” billboard campaign in several major US cities, including our beloved Chicago. The ads focus on Google Apps for small and medium businesses: Gmail, Calendar, Google Documents and Google Chat.

The Savvy CIO is always interested in the best solutions for Chicago small businesses, and believes cloud computing is often a smart and cost-effective. So we took a closer look at Google Apps for small businesses: the good, the bad and the ugly.

Not to spoil the ending, but boy does it get ugly.
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We’ve just finished a series of posts about how small businesses can get the most out of hosted solutions. It all started with Forrester’s survey revealing the most popular hosted solutions for small businesses.

Here’s a brief recap of the key information in one place, as well as links back to the original posts.

Customer Relationship Management: How to Get the Most out of a CRM

Key Benefit: Help sales and support win, keep and grow business by organizing customer information and history.

Most popular providers: Salesforce.com, SugarCRM (we use this), ZohoCRM

Email and Collaboration: How to Get the Most out of a Collaboration System

Key Benefit: Increase productivity with best of class email and calendaring tools, without the huge costs of Microsoft Exchange.

Most popular providers: CommuniGate, Kerio, Zimbra (we use this)

Content Management System: How to Get the Most out of a Content Management System

Key Benefit: Make content updates to your own website without the ongoing need for a developer or designer.

Most popular providers: Drupal, webEdition (we use this), Wordpress

Document Management System: How to Get the Most out of a Document Management System

Key Benefit: Store and find files more easily than on a file server, get to files anywhere, help teams work together on documents, control who sees what, and provide client access to deliverables.

Most popular providers: Alfresco, HighlandShare (we use this), KnowledgeTree

Why is it that in 10 seconds on Google you can find exactly what you are looking for in an entire world of online information, but you could spend 10 minutes (or more!) locating a file on your local file server?

If you can’t remember where you—or someone else—put that file, it’s File Treasure Hunt time. A File Treasure Hunt involves clicking into dozens of folders inside of folders inside of folders. Like a bunch of bad blind dates, they all seem promising until you look a little closer.

If you’re getting desperate, you could ask the Windows Search Dog to try and track it down, then check back in the afternoon to see what he dug up. If you have ever used the Search Dog to find something on a file server, you instantly hate him. He’s slow, inaccurate and often completely useless. I suspect he’s aging and partially blind.

If you have a hard time finding files stored on your server, that’s one sign you may need to revolutionize how you store your company files with a document management system.

Here are seven more signs that a small business may need a document management system, and how a document management system can help fix what’s broken.

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