IncTechnology.com > Software Reviews

Imaging Software: When Image is Everything

Minda Zetlin — 2008-07-14T15:56:17-05:00

Have you ever had a hard drive malfunction and needed to completely reinstall all your applications and drivers? Chances are, it took a while, and may have involved a desperate search for installation disks or license numbers. Reinstalling a server can be even more of a hassle.

Disk imaging software eases that pain by creating a single image "snapshot" of everything on a hard drive. That allows you or your IT staff to "clone" -- completely reproduce -- that hard drive in a single operation. It can get you up and running in less than an hour, as opposed to many hours. Even better, it can create huge savings in IT work time.

Even if your company tried imaging software in the past, and rejected it because it took too long or used too many network resources, advances mean you should take another look at this highly useful software, according to Joel Barker, senior product analyst for Aeshen, which creates training and marketing tools for technology professionals. "Now, images are smaller, networks are faster, and it's easier to store everything in a single location," he says.

Making the most of imaging

Here are some ways disk imaging can make your IT life easier:

Disaster recovery: "We use imaging for customers to make it much quicker and easier to restore a desktop after a disaster," says Paul Sullivan, vice president and general manager of Agility Recovery Solutions, Inc. He estimates that restoring from an image saves four to six hours of work per desktop. Agility specializes in helping companies deal with catastrophes such as Hurricane Katrina or this summer's Midwestern flooding, but imaging can also help you recover from a relatively minor disaster such as a crashed computer. "I think the greatest value is reducing desktop support, which is a major IT cost," Barker says. If a desktop is suffering malware-related trouble or otherwise experiences a software-based crash, IT staff can simply restore an image rather than having to wipe the disk and reinstall everything from scratch. Often they can do the restore remotely and won't even have to touch the malfunctioning computer. It's important to note that, in most cases, the new image will completely replace the old, so that any applications or data stored after the snapshot was taken will be lost for good unless they're saved separately. This is why most IT experts recommend separate backup for day-to-day data, and why Sullivan recommends that his customers update their stored images on a quarterly basis or more, especially after installing a major new piece of software.
Hard drive upgrades: "If your computer's hard drive is getting full and you need to replace it with something larger, it's easiest to create an image and then restore everything onto the new hard drive," says Ken Colburn, president of Data Doctors Computer Services. "That's what it was primarily used for in the past. It works so well because everything's in the same structure, and the same setting."
Software deployments: Imaging can also come in handy during a software deployment, in which many desktops must be loaded with the same new or upgraded application, or operating system. Instead of doing the same installation over and over, IT staff can simply load it on one desktop, take a snapshot of that computer, and then copy the image onto all the rest. This strategy works especially well if your company uses standardized PC configuration. (For more on the benefits of standardized configuration, see previous article.)Keep in mind, however, that unless all employees have the same brand and model of computer and peripherals, you may need your imaging software to account for hardware variations.
Resetting to a previous state: Have you ever had an upgrade or new application that caused more problems than it solved? Disk imaging makes it easy to undo a bad installation, and can completely remove unwelcome applications from your computer, which standard uninstall functions don't necessarily do. To take advantage of this benefit, make sure you or your IT staff takes an image of a computer or server just before beginning the new installation. Companies now paying to have IT pros restore their computers to Microsoft Windows XP after encountering problems with Vista could have saved themselves the money if they'd taken this step before beginning the Vista upgrade.

Before selecting imaging software, Barker says, you should first plan precisely how it will be used. "They're all targeted at slightly different roles," he says. "So you should decide your requirements before you start shopping, or you may get suckered into buying features you don't need."

There are also differences in their interfaces, some of which may work better for your IT setup than others. "The only way to find out is to test it," Barker says. Fortunately, he adds, "They all have free trial versions, though they may have limited features. So get the free version, and try it out."

Sidebar: Disk Imaging Software Options

Here are some of the most popular disk imaging options. Check their various features against your company's specific needs to make sure you pick the right one.

Acronis True Image -- Allows for backups of key files and data as well as the entire disk image. Restores in minutes and allows computers to be online while restoring. Acronis Universal Restore allows you to restore the image to a different model or brand of computer, or even to a virtual machine.
Symantec/Norton Ghost -- Can be managed remotely, and perform incremental backups as well as image restores. Can copy to an FTP site for easier off site recovery. Can trigger automatic backups of new data in response to increased malware threats.
Microsoft Windows Deployment Services -- Microsoft offers this product primarily to assist with upgrades or migrations to new operating systems, but Joel Barker of Aeshen notes that it can also be used to create and restore disk images, and if you have Microsoft Windows Server 2003 or 2008, then Windows Deployment Services is available free. It works with XP as well as Vista.
Paragon Drive Backup -- Paragon Drive Backup allows you to save both space and time with quicker backups and restores, and allows you to keep working during the backup. You can back up and restore your whole computer to and from a USB flash drive.

Tech Talk: HR Software Helps Retain Staff

Elizabeth Wasserman — 2008-04-25T16:19:39-05:00

Nittany Embroidery & ScreenPrinting, based in Centre County, Pa. has been marketing custom embroidery, screen printing, and advertising specialty items for Penn State University and other clients for 10 years. Owner Erin G. O'Leary-Rallis tells IncTechnology that human resource software helped the company retain employees and foster a team environment.

Elizabeth Wasserman: What type of problems were you trying to resolve in your business by opting for human resources software?
Erin G. O'Leary-Rallis: Our industry is very fast paced and as small business owners my husband and I often wear many different hats from sales consultants to managers to cashiers and Internet designers at times. We tend to have very personal relationships with our 25-35 employees but we had to streamline the review process because we simply found we did not personally have time to evaluate everyone thoroughly, nor do we actively work side-by-side anymore with many employees. But being a grass roots company, our employees have come to expect personal attention and we do not want to give the impression that we are ever getting too big to be involved and acknowledge individual inputs. We needed a solution that would incorporate what we as owners need our employees to recognize as core cultural values within our company like integrity, reliability, and quality; however, we needed to tailor specific competencies which vary by job role. In addition we needed to carve out goals which were mutually agreed upon and monitored on a real time basis that would further allow our employees to align their work habits with our expectations. Through SuccessFactors, we found our solution.
Wasserman: Why did you choose this particular software and how does it help?
O'Leary-Rallis: We tried the "off the shelf" solutions for several years and they were fine for a quick review in a crisis situation but they did not allow us to really track progress and grow with it. Further, we wanted a single place to record both encouraging milestones by employee and reprimands so that when review time came around we would have specific examples to draw upon. I searched on the Internet for a solution that would be easily accessible for employees from multiple locations and was less paper intensive. When I found SuccessFactors and gave it a "test drive" I found it to be the HR solution that we were seeking. It is Web-based so it does not rely on a single server, and it is very scalable, and will grow as our business grows using the same footprint but allowing maximum customization and personalization. We also found a feature that we never even realized we needed which is the 360-degree peer review which has been a valuable concept incorporated into our everyday work. Being reviewed by your co-workers, you are forced to recognize that we all have blind-spots and areas we could improve upon -- including my husband and I as owners. It has opened up our eyes and our employees eyes to recognize that in order to succeed as a team, you need not just impress the boss, but you also need to humbly recognize weaknesses and frustrations that others may have when working with you and we all must diligently work toward improvement in those areas.
Wasserman: What have the results been? What can you do now that you weren't able to do before?
O'Leary-Rallis: Ultimately, employee reviews used to be a high anxiety activity for me and consequently I would put them off. They were only done sporadically and I recognize that approach was not good for morale. Further, it is difficult to promote a team atmosphere, then give a less than stellar review – sporadically -- when an employee did not recognize the specific "weighting" of variables in the same way the I did. For instance, I had a long term employee who was reliable and honest. I could trust him making bank deposits and with confidential information. However, he was not motivated and I often wondered what he contributed during his work time. His lack of motivation was contagious and caused many other employees to become lax in their work habits, using him as precedent. Giving him negative reviews year after year was difficult for me because I could not seem to relay to him my disappointment until we began our current system. With our new HR management system, we are able to "weight" core competencies and expectations like reliability and honesty but through the addition of additional role-specific competencies. You are not guaranteed a raise -- or a positive review -- by just showing up and being trustworthy. With expectations laid out in advance and a clear rating system, standards are set and employees have a better idea of how their performance will be rated.

Wasserman: How have the peer reviews worked out?

O'Leary-Rallis: The 360-degree reviews require accountability on multiple dimensions so that evaluations are not based on one person's perception or perceived bias. The employee used as an example above is no longer in our employ due to the results of a 360-degree review. He did not agree with constructive criticism and inputs of multiple co-workers and ultimately moved on. In the end, we grew as a company. Our overall employee turn over has gone down by 25 percent in the last year since we began making organizational changes including this new HR management system. I believe we are retaining the right type of employee for our organization, and we are poised and expecting 30 percent growth this year.

Tech Talk: Protecting Laptops from Data Theft

Elizabeth Wasserman — 2008-03-31T10:48:46-05:00

Founders Bank & Trust -- a five-branch bank based in Grand Rapids, Mich. – faced the same challenges in keeping customer data secure as larger financial institutions in compliance with regulations. Network Administrator Tom Vanden Bosch talks about software he deployed that encrypts data and locks down laptops in the event of theft in this Q&A with IncTechnology Editor Elizabeth Wasserman.

Elizabeth Wasserman: What is the greatest IT security threat facing the bank today?

Tom Vanden Bosch: I would say that is a breach of customer information. That would be our number one concern. There are so many different avenues where customer data is manipulated that we just don’t necessarily always have a good handle on how that information is being transmitted. Online banking does contribute to that liability. But, in the financial world, we’re held to a much higher set of standards because of regulatory objectives we have, as well as Sarbanes-Oxley requirements. Those two items are primarily the driving force.

Wasserman: How do you protect customer data?

Vanden Bosch: Basically you want to seal off areas that you have the least amount of control over. Securing laptops is one of the top three items that IT security auditors are pushing for in our industry. They say we need to be making sure those devices are encrypted. That laptop is a mobile data base of customer data. Obviously, securing company laptops was our primary objective when we started dealing with this issue. Naturally we wanted to extend that protection to flash drives, MP3 devices, and anything else that attaches to our bank equipment. We went with GuardianEdge, which has a full suite of products for device control, hard disk encryption and endpoint encryption. That means we can encrypt our data and prevent or restrict activity on our network that has the potential to generate liability for us. Another nice feature is the auditing piece that tells us who is connecting what to what device and what data they’re moving back and forth across those devices.

Wasserman: How does the software help you prevent data breaches?

Vanden Bosch: We can lock down a device so that the CD Rom drive or USB port becomes untouchable. If a laptop is lost or stolen and does not communicate with the encryption server for a certain amount of time it becomes unusable, and this time frame is customizable. Once a device is locked out, the only way to unlock it is to go through IT administration or format the hard drive.

We’re not just relying on the software to keep us safe. In addition, we’re also in the middle of a project to reclassify our data on the network to establish policies to restrict data on the network based on who has permission. Our employees have to be educated to understand the risks that they could expose us to. That’s a major part of the equation, too.

Tech Talk: Virtualization Saves $$ for Software Firm

Elizabeth Wasserman — 2008-03-31T10:34:05-05:00

System Automation Corp., an 85-person business based in Columbia, Md., provides the MyLicense Suite software to more than 400 government entities in 23 states to manage, for example, teacher and nurse licenses. Network Engineer Craig Callan describes how server virtualization helps keep costs down yet provides better service for customers.

Elizabeth Wasserman: What challenges did you encounter at System Automation?

Craig Callan: There were often delays setting up testing trials because equipment simply wasn't available. Quite simply, in many cases, a desktop box wouldn’t be enough. You needed to beef up a desktop box to run a server on it. We needed to do a number of things to get it going. We just didn’t have enough resources. We didn’t have enough servers to keep everybody happy.

The process of ordering equipment, setting it up, loading software takes a minimum of about two weeks. Also, we were looking for a way to create a testing platform that would be easy to convert into production for our customers. Although the software starts with a common base, each MyLicense implementation is customized and each customer tests the software. Once testing is completed and the actual implementation is locked, we needed a better way to transition into production.

Wasserman: What made you look at virtualization technology?

Callan: The fact that I needed a number of servers and it was an increasing number every day. As we started in development of our MyLicense software product, we really needed servers. We tried to host multiple servers on a single box and it didn’t work. We were looking for the ability to quickly deploy servers for the developers as they needed them. Virtualization is the only way to do this. By sharing the resources on a single server, we can roll out servers almost instantly. In-house, we’re currently running three boxes. Two of our main boxes are for virtualization. One is deployment for customer sites, test sites for customers, and the other is for test sites for our own developers and quality assurance people. We’re probably running about 25 sites on each server at the moment.

Wasserman: So virtualization helps you deliver products to customers?

Callan: It helps us deliver products to customers on time, but also it allows our developers to quickly respond to deploy a new software build to see how it works, to have development sites that are different from our production sites and our quality assurance sites. Developers will go in and change a site and make changes on an ongoing basis and if anyone is trying to share that server they’re going to have some serious problems. So we need to give them their own servers and in many cases dedicated servers to run on the various levels of Oracle that we support and SQL server. We were facing this multiplying need for environments.

Wasserman: What have the results been?

Callan: We can turn around servers very rapidly now. One of the things that happens, for example, is we’ll do a new build. Within about two hours, I can deploy roughly eight to10 new servers with the new version of the software. Every time we do a build, we simply turn out a number of quality assurance servers for the team to work with. That takes about two hours. I wouldn’t begin to think what the 50 servers would cost me to buy. They run around anywhere from $1,500 to $2,000 each these days. So we’ve saved about $75,000 to $100,000 versus I think we’ve put in about between the software licensing everything was $25,000 to $35,000.

Wasserman: Tell me about your implementation.

Callan: We did it in an afternoon. It seems rather funny now. We got a trial version of Parallel’s Virtuozzo Containers software, worked with the sales people, and I installed the software and created a server with an operating system and installed on an existing server here started at 11 a.m. and had everything up and running by 1 p.m. By the time I went home that night, I had eight servers up.

No More Spreadsheets

Michelle V. Rafter — 2008-03-27T11:32:25-05:00

Michael Schwartz had a problem with his salesforce. It wasn't that they weren't selling. It's what happened afterward.

Schwartz is sales operations vice president at Incentra Solutions in Boulder, Colo., a fast-growing provider of storage and IT services for mid-sized companies. In the past two years, Incentra acquired five smaller businesses and now has close to 120 sales representatives in multiple regional offices. At the month's end, when it was time to calculate and pay salespeople commissions, each region's finance department used a different process. It took too long, and back at corporate, Schwartz was in the dark as to whether the company's commission structure was really working. "It was difficult for us, without a consistent process, to review numbers in a lot of detail," he says.

Like many other companies, Incentra built its commission plans on spreadsheets. But as experiences there and elsewhere have shown, spreadsheets do a poor job of calculating complicated sales commissions. Salespeople even have a name for the problem: "Excel hell."

Earlier this year, Schwartz switched to something that's picking up steam as a spreadsheet alternative: sales incentive management software, which automates the job of creating and managing a company's reward system for meeting sales quotas and goals. Typical sales incentive software includes tools to devise, document, and allocate incentive plans and a Web-based portal that sales reps and sales managers use to track data and generate reports.

Appealing to small businesses

Sales incentive software has been around for a while, but vendors only recently introduced a low-cost software-as-a-service (SaaS) version that's affordable and appealing to small and mid-sized businesses. Costs range from $20 to $50 a month per person, according to analysts. That's more expensive than a spreadsheet, but the extra cost is worth it because it eliminates mistakes and accidental overpayments that routinely happen in spreadsheet-based commission plans, says Michael Dunne, a sales software analyst at Gartner, the Stamford, Conn., technology research and consulting firm. Also, because the software generates more detailed reports, companies can see whether their commission structure is motivating salespeople to sell the most profitable product mix, Dunne says.

That's important to a company like Incentra, which projects a big jump in revenue this year but is still working to get itself out of the red. To that end, Schwartz started rolling out a sales incentive software program from Callidus Software in mid-March and expected to have 85 percent of its salesforce up and running by April. If all goes well, Schwartz plans to use the software for other employees who receive commissions, including inside sales representatives, engineers, and corporate staff.

Besides Callidus, vendors that sell sales incentive management software to small and mid-size companies on an SaaS basis include:

Although the software is winning fans, analysts estimate 90 percent of small and mid-sized businesses still rely on spreadsheets. Software vendors are working on a number of fronts to change that. Centive recently signed a deal with ADP for the payroll service bureau to market the software and host it for small and mid-sized business customers. Callidus, Centive, and Xactly have partnerships with Salesforce.com, the SaaS application platform. Xactly also offers an outsourced version of its SaaS software that the company manages on behalf of small-business clients for an additional monthly fee, says Karen Steele, Xactly marketing vice president.

Clean up your act

If a small business is considering making the switch, the most important thing they can do is clean up their data and document anything that's being done manually beforehand, because eventually it all has to fit into the new software. "No matter what (a vendor) offers on their side, it all comes down to how good your data is and how fast you can put it into the structure," Incentra's Schwartz says.

SIDEBAR: How to Get the Most from Sales Incentive Software

Analysts and other experts suggest that small and mid-sized businesses can ensure that they maximize the benefits from sales incentive software by doing some research first. This includes following this advice:

Look beyond the basics -- When evaluating vendors, look for add-ons that might be important at your particular company. For example, Incentra uses Salesforce.com, so any sales incentive software they chose had to be compatible with it, Schwartz says.

Take a long view of ROI -- Any software will cost more than a spreadsheet and vendors have different fee structures, so analyze the cost and return on your investment over a long period, such as three years. That way "everyone's on a level field," Schwartz says.

Get demos and feedback -- If you can't get a free trial, give the vendor's sales team specific scenarios or tasks to perform during a product demonstration, all the better to see how the software would function at your company, Schwartz suggests. Also, ask current customers how easy it is to customize the software they're using, how scalable it is and the kind of reports it can generate.

Tech Talk: Virtualization Helps Distribute Software During Tax Season

Elizabeth Wasserman — 2008-03-17T10:35:44-05:00

During the tax season, Hudson LLP, based in Alberta, Calgary, needed to dispatch its accountants to clients equipped with different versions of tax software. In the past, updating software on each of 30 laptops would be a monumental task and cause downtime. The problem was resolved with the use of application virtualization, Jim Grusendorf, the firm's senior network specialist, tells Inc. Technology Editor Elizabeth Wasserman in this Q&A.

Elizabeth Wasserman: What type of problems caused you to try virtualization?

Jim Grusendorf: It was with our laptops. I used to have to go around to every machine to install software updates. There are frequent software updates -- especially during tax season -- every year. The accountants that go out to client sites have laptops and they work on the clients accounting on site. I would just try to schedule time to go around to each machine and do the updates manually. We had about 25 laptops and it's increased to probably 30 now. It didn't take long per machine but because of how the accounting tax season is, it was really hard to schedule time to update the machines.

Wasserman: You also wanted to run different versions of software on the same machine, right?

Grusendorf: There's a separate version of the tax software for each year. Often our accountants have to go back 10 years for clients. They need to look at old returns. In the past, when I would run the next year's version along side of the last year's version, the last year's version would stop running. They shared INI files and registry location and DLL files. There was quite a bit of downtime associated with this while I tried to figure out what was going on.

Wasserman: So what did you decide to do?

Grusendorf: I looked around at some different deployment solutions. Because we didn't have a huge number of machines, I was looking for something fairly inexpensive. The Software Virtualization Solution from Altiris fit the bill. It lets me install an application on one machine and then send it out to all the laptops transparently. The virtualization software goes right on the workstations. When you want to load different versions of the same software, it intercepts all the registry and file systems and commands is they relate to the application and the operating system and it allows you to avoid conflict. It lets you run multiple versions of the same software on each laptop.

Wasserman: What have the results been?

Grusendorf: It's been wonderful. There aren't any complaints any more about anything. I don't hear anything from the accountants during tax season. They just keep working. It's when I'm not noticed that I know I'm doing a good job.

What is Linux?

Peter Suciu — 2006-12-13T13:49:11-05:00

The beginning of 2007 will see the arrival of a new version of a widely used computer operating system (OS). This latest version will see many new advances over the current editions, and is likely to be quickly adopted in the coming months. This isn’t Windows Vista, the long-awaited update of Microsoft's flagship computer operating system.

This new much-heralded update is actually based on Linux, the open-source operating system. The major launch is Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, expected to be commercially available in January. That will be followed soon after by Open Enterprise Server from Novell.

And while Linux is still trailing Microsoft’s computer OS in overall popularity, it has a higher growth rate while coming from a small base, according to George Weis, an analyst with Gartner Inc., a Stamford, Conn. research firm. Much of this growth is coming in computer servers, popular with some small and mid-size businesses that deal in a high volume of data over a network. “The two OS for the server in the future will be Linux and Windows," Weis says. "Linux is an economical cost-justified OS for the X86, Intel-compatible platform, and the benefit of Linux over Unix is really closing.”

Linux has about $8 billion in annual revenue from server shipments, which is expected to grow to about $13 billion by 2011, according to a Gartner forecast. At the same time, Microsoft’s Windows will likely raise $22 billion in revenue from servers over the same time. But the interesting factor is that the $13 billion in revenue for Linux is in a market for what many people consider free software.

History of Linux

Linux isn’t a new phenomenon. Linux was developed in the early 1990s as an alternative to an OS called MINIX, itself an alternative to Unix. Linus Torvalds, then a student at the University of Helsinki, wanted to develop something that was both free and open. The result was Linux. During the past decade, software has maintained cult popularity, offering a desktop alternative to Windows or the Apple OS. But its real power as been on the server side.

Linux, at its core, was designed to be developer-friendly, and as a result grew with the development of the World Wide Web in the mid-1990s. Nicholas Petreley, editor-in-chief of the Linux Journal, says the OS has a bit of a dubious past. “It was a popular Web server for pornographic websites," he says. "It was free and stable, and this proved it was a reliable Web server.”

At the same, Linux started being used because it could emulate a Windows file and printer server, and many IT departments essentially “snuck in” the OS to save money, says Petreley. “Once Oracle and IBM supported Linux, it came out of the closet," he adds. Now, he estimates that 80 percent to 90 percent of businesses use Linux in some way.

Business uses of Linux

There are different ways that Linux can be used in the small and mid-size business environment: in desktop PCs, servers (such as e-mail servers), and on workstations (such as graphic workstations). Companies need to undertake cost analyses to figure out whether a move to Linux in any of those categories makes economic sense -- figuring out the costs associated with upgrading, any new licensing fees and finding technical staff that can shepherd the changeover.

However, one of the great misconceptions about Linux is that businesses can just run it for free. While there are plenty of free downloadable versions, most small and mid-size businesses still pay for commercially-available versions that feature the traditional tech support you’d find with Windows or even Unix.

For business use, the main downside of using Linux is simply application availability, says Gary Chen, a small business IT analyst with the Yankee Group, a Boston-based research firm. “An OS isn’t really useful without apps to run on top of it. Linux has some good applications but there still exist major holes and in some areas there isn't the amount of choice as for Windows," Chen says. "This is changing, but building an ecosystem that can rival the Microsoft system will certainly take a lot of time.”

In addition to commercially-available server packages from companies such as Novell and Red Hat, there is a growing body of open-source software available for free that can help a small business develop Web services, host databases, and provide network monitoring. In this respect, Linux is a very solid choice for a small company with a small information technology budget, or a larger company trying to shrug off some painful licensing fees.

Another attribute of Linux is that it is generally virus free, and many long time users speak highly of how it seldom crashes. Of course, with every silver lining there may be clouds. Most notably says Petreley, “There is no one to hold financially responsible should you have problems.”

Software Integration for Non-Dummies

Jennifer Zaino — 2006-12-13T13:43:41-05:00

Small and mid-size businesses often make a big mistake when they embark on integration projects, whether they’re connecting internal applications or facilitating transactions with business partners. They get mired down in creating point-to-point connections between specific applications and systems and wind up with siloed application sets that can’t communicate with one another and don’t create a lot of value for the business.

These businesses may assume that the price of hiring an outside firm to meet their integration needs or buying commercial products is too high -- even just for basic enterprise application integration (EAI) technology or enterprise service bus (ESB) functionality to handle routing, and message transformation. In fact, it’s the point-to-point integration costs that are killing them. “That’s an ongoing recipe for disaster,” says Ken Vollmer, principal analyst at Forrester Research, in Cambridge, Mass. “It sets you up for increased maintenance and additional expense.”

These days, most of the larger vendors in the integration space will give smaller companies a viable alternative for breaking into the small business market. “It doesn’t have to cost $100,000 to get started,” Vollmer says. When companies consider that they’ll be able to use the same software over many projects, the $25,000 or $50,000 they may lay out for an initial effort becomes more palatable.

Wide world of integration options

A small business owner or information technology manager might be confused by the range of integration options out there. The list includes vendors who made their mark in the traditional EAI market, including Fiorano, IONA, Tibco, Vitria, and webMethods. Platform and enterprise application vendors are also options, such as BEA, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Software AG, and Sun Microsystems. Both groups are now focusing on comprehensive, integration-centric business process management suites that support core Web service standards, according to Forrester. The full suites may be out of financial reach, but usually vendors offer versions targeted at smaller companies. There are also the startups, including Cape Clear and PolarLake, that specialize in ESB solutions.

The technical differences also have blurred between EAI and ESB, according to Vollmer. ESB previously had an advantage for businesses in that these solutions were created on an open standards platforms. But now all of the traditional EAI vendors whose products were based on proprietary platforms have migrated to more open J2EE or .Net platforms. Additionally, several EAI vendors have also built distributed processing capability into their products, which was another traditional strong point for ESBs, Vollmer says. ESBs still retain the price advantage, though, which smaller organizations may find appealing, depending on their needs.

Many vendors can facilitate a business’ move to service-oriented architectures (SOA), which feature modular, reuseable business services that are easily integrated to support internal and business-to-business (B2B) connections. Oracle, for instance, includes as part of its SOA Suite an ESB for connecting IT systems via standards-based Oracle Adapters. The suite supports multiple industry standards for B2B integrations, such as RosettaNet and EDI, and saves the costs of building point-to-point connections s.

Service oriented architecture more popular

Small and mid-size businesses are the emerging market in terms of using SOA, says Ashish Mohindroo, senior product director for Oracle Fusion Middleware. A mind-set change is in order: As small businesses move to integrate with their trading partners, they need to consider overall business objectives, not just any one particular project. So, instead of home-growing a new system for each project, they should be thinking, “‘How can I support integration in a standardized fashion rather than a one-off solution, using a common platform that can scale over time as business increases?’” says Mohindroo. “'How can I leverage it to change the playing field here to support business needs and gain a competitive edge moving forward?'”

That strategic thinking tends to get lost when organizations get caught up in building out multiple integration projects.

There are plenty of other reasons to abandon the point-to-point approach to integration, not the least of which is the move by businesses today to become process-centric organizations.

In fact, integration must start with the process, not the systems. “If you give the problem of technology and integration to a tech, they will almost always gravitate to hooking the systems together,” says Phil Gilbert, CTO and founder of business process management vendor Lombardi Software. “They really aren’t starting with the customer or the supplier, and working back to what the process should be for how to interact with the customer and partners.”

That approach, combined with the right tools, will help turn your small business into an innovation engine -- and that’s a lot better than being an integration factory.

Renting Your Software Online

Ramon Ray — 2006-11-28T13:36:48-05:00

A few weeks ago, I did a technology experiment. I used a Web-hosted software application to collaborate on a document with two colleagues of mine. Now, I admit to being a total geek. As for my colleagues, let's just say they are more uncomfortable with using new tools. But after I convinced them to give Google Docs a try, we were all able to quickly and easily edit the document, track changes, and work together to produce a better product. In the past, we would have had to e-mail the document back and forth and use track changes. It would have been time-consuming and, frankly, a pain.

The success of the experiment only served to embolden me to consider new delivery systems for my other business software applications. As a business owner, you, too, should be investigating the benefits and drawbacks of new Web-hosted applications. I'm seriously considering moving to a hosted solution for e-mail, for example.

The market for Web applications directed at the small business market is exploding. Over the past few weeks, Google has been aggressively launching online applications for business users. These services include document collaboration, corporate e-mail and website hosting, and more. Although Google has only recently launched business applications, other companies such as BlueTie, HyperOffice, and WebExOne (formerly Intranets.com), among others, have been in the market for a longer time. Google's biggest competitor, Microsoft, also launched a full suite of online applications from beta Nov. 15, Office Live 2007. Baris Cetinok, director of project management and marketing for Office Live explained to me that there are three things MSOL helps small businesses do:

Establish a Web presence (many smaller businesses still have none)
Find more customers
Manage the business (from anywhere)
Add company branded e-mail accounts
Allow you to chat online via text, voice or mobile phone with employees, customers or colleagues using your company domain name with Windows Live Messenger.

What this means for your business

Traditionally, you have purchased software and it was delivered via CD (or some other media) or downloaded via the Internet. The software was then installed on individual computers for everyone in the office to use. If you only have three computers, it's not very difficult or time consuming to get the software loaded. But if your growing business has 30 computers, it takes a lot of time (and money if you are paying a consultant) to install the software on all those machines.

Sometimes installing the software is only one part of the problem. When the software is installed it might conflict with previously installed software. The benefit of hosted applications is that the hosted application is online, therefore there is no installation on your part and you and your entire team can access the software and data anytime and from anywhere.

Software that resides on your local computer (or server) means that you can't easily access it when you are traveling, unless you setup a remote access solution (which means more time and money) to do so. If you have two sales representatives in Maine, three in Maryland, and a main office in Michigan, you have to ensure the computers in all three locations have the same software (that equals even more time and money -- are you getting the picture?).

When you buy traditional software you are encumbered by license agreements and their associated costs. Using a hosted application you pay a monthly fee per user which can be an ease on your cash flow.

Traditional software vendors often update their software annually, or release patches throughout the year. Using a hosted application, the service provider continuously updates the software and each time you login you have the most recent version.

One of the side benefits of a hosted application is that your data is always backed up. If you lose your notebook, your data is not lost as it resides on the servers of your service providers.

Before switching to a hosted application, be it a collaboration tool, e-mail, database, or one of the hundreds of other solutions on the market, carefully consider the pros and cons. The risks include that if you don't have Internet access for some reason, such as your Internet provider going down, what do you do? There is also the risk that something will happen to bring down the system of your hosted application provider. Again, this is something that is out of your control, but would have a potential impact on your business. Weigh your options and choose the solution that's best for your business.

For me, I have decided to look for a hosted e-mail solution that is both local and hosted, providing me with the convenience of a hosted application but the security of having the data also housed locally. Fortunately, there are dozens and dozens of great e-mail hosting services provided by such companies as Webmail.us, MI8, Blue Tie, and Microsoft's Office Live.

Ramon Ray is an author, speaker, technology writer and former small business technology consultant. He publishes Smallbiztechnology.com, a website that helps small and medium-sized businesses strategically use technology as a tool to grow their businesses.

How to Choose Office Productivity Software

Caroline Waxler — 2006-11-28T12:51:40-05:00

When choosing office productivity software -- the suite of functions, including word processing, spreadsheets, presentation software and an e-mail program -- the knee-jerk reaction is to first look at Microsoft Office. After all, it is the most ubiquitous. But popularity doesn’t matter to everyone.

Derek Featherstone, founder of Further Ahead, of Ottawa, a Web development firm, uses a combination of Apple's iWork on his Mac, which includes the Pages application for documents and Keynote for presentations. He also uses OpenOffice, an open source office productivity suite, "because it was free, compatible with pretty much every other office suite out there.” Featherstone says that he works on three computers at a time -- a Mac, a Windows-based PC, and an open-source Linux machine. "I wanted to be able to have a tool that worked no matter which computer I happened to be using at the time and not to have to pay for three licenses," Featherstone says. "As a small business, minimizing costs is essential. OpenOffice lets me do just that.”

Featherstone is one of a new breed of entrepreneur who believes that when it comes to office productivity software there’s more than one choice out there.

Small businesses miss out on upgrades

Right now Microsoft Office dominates the small and mid-size business market. However, many of these packages were purchased years ago, and were not upgraded, even though Microsoft refreshed the offering in 2003. What that means is that small businesses using an older Office version may be missing out on features enabling them to increase productivity. As it is, many small businesses don't use many features beyond the basic functionality.

“Ninety percent of MS Office’s higher functionality isn’t used by most users, who simply want to keep track of finances, write office letters, and put together small presentations, etc.” says Adam Braunstein, senior research analyst at the Robert Frances Group, a business advisory to technology executives.

“That's too bad,” Yankee Group analyst Gary Chen points out, “because Office comes out with cool things that people almost never discover -- such as support for tablet PCs, collaboration tools, and locking down sections in a Word document that can't be edited.” And yet, Microsoft has been spending a lot of time focused on the small business market, and currently has a free product out for small businesses. In addition, Microsoft is coming out with its newest version yet, Office 2007, with even more updated versions of its features. The bottom line is that the customers still aren't getting everything they could out of their product. “That left the door open for other start-ups to get in there," says Chen.

One of those is the commercial version of OpenOffice, the free office suite and Open Source project that Featherstone uses, called StarOffice. StarOffice is spear-headed by Sun Microsystems. It’s a neat alternative, says Chen, and supports much of what's available on Microsoft Office. Sun is trying to lure people in with snazzy features, such as multiple toolbars, migration aides, Web publishing tools, etc. It's giving Office a run for the money. CFOs are happy with it, though; StarOffice is a fraction of the cost of Microsoft Office.

Battle of the productivity programs

“With the many different formats out there you can send a file and the receiver can’t open it or if they do it looks weird,” says Chen. Right now, Microsoft is the format that everyone can open.

OpenOffice is a cross platform. It can run on Linux. So, people can use whatever platform they want. And it’s free. Also, the online versions are not tied to an install on a particular computer, says Forrester analyst Michael Speyer. “You can use them anywhere that has Internet access.” Another thing to consider with the Open Source products is that there is an emphasis on introducing new, exciting features. There are a lot of OpenOffice choices and more coming. Look out for Google to make some waves in the area. Right now, Google offers some business applications over the Web, and considering the huge cash hoard that the company is sinking into research and development, their products will only get better. Right now, their offerings are free, and in the get-what-you-pay-for kind of way, there are lots of ads. Reading distracting ads, however, isn’t the ideal situation to increase productivity at work.

The areas where the rival products still trail behind Office, says Andrea Peiro, CEO and founder, Small Business Technology Institute, are mostly related to collaboration -- such as documents version control, integration of the revision process with -email programs and interaction with some server-side technologies. “In a multi-employee environment with highly structured document management processes, these features can be extremely important, but for most other situations these alternatives represent excellent low-cost options,” says Chen.

How to figure out what suite is right for your business

Chen recommends that small business owners ask themselves the following questions:

How much do you use the office suite?
Which features and functionality do you use and need?
Take a look at the complexity of the documents you use and produce and look at what level of support you need. Something to consider if you use free products is that if you want support you’ll need to pay extra.
What is your budget for the product and for support?

Office is much more expensive than its competition, running several hundred dollars per computer. If you are looking for something else to cast your vote for, Peiro suggests considering the following, which offer a high degree of compatibility with Office in terms of file formats:

OpenOffice This is a free multiplatform office suite and an Open Source project that’s compatible with all other major office suites.

WordPerfect Suite This old standby -- remember WordPerfect anyone? -- costs about $250.00.

602 PC Suite Low-cost alternative started in the Czech Republic. It includes a word processor, spreadsheet, photo editor, and photo album organizer.

ThinkFree Web-based office application. It’s free but doesn¹t include a database application.