Posted by Crystal Nichols on Fri, Jan 15, 2010 @ 08:00 AM
One of the best ways to reduce capital IT expenditures, increase your service levels and increase the efficiency of your IT department and your company as a whole is by using an IT solutions provider. A solutions provider gives you all of the benefits of having your own dedicated IT infrastructure management team without all of the costs. Solutions providers get rid of the day-to-day burden of IT systems management in that they assume responsibility for everything from application deployment through updates and daily support. This frees you up to meet your core business needs and to do what your company does best.
Here are 6 key areas that a solutions provider boosts your business:
- Cost. Using solutions providers reduces the cost of administering your IT functions. In many cases, outsourcing applications can reduce the cost of ownership for the application by as much as 50%. Applications costs become as reliable and simple as your monthly service provider bill.
- Expertise. When you implement an in-house solution, you either need to hire an expert to administer the solution or train existing personnel to handle the solution. A solutions provider, on the other hand, has staff that do nothing but deal with your particular solution. They’re true experts, up to speed with what’s going on in the field. When you use a solution provider, you save significantly on personnel and training costs, as well.
- Reduced capital expenditures. By using a solutions provider you eliminate the need for huge capital infrastructure investments. You also reduce the need for ongoing costs to upgrade or maintain your solutions. You can have the latest and greatest best-in-class solutions, administered by an expert, without the expensive and extensive cost of application development or infrastructure equipment upgrade costs. This lets you take control of the total cost of owning the technology.
- Rapid deployment. When you roll out a new implementation on your own, it can take months to finish. Your service provider, on the other hand, already has the implementations running. You simply need to plug in. Training end users on the solution becomes the most time intensive task in the implementation process.
- Increased predictability and reliability. In most cases, a solutions provider can give you a higher level of performance than what you can get on your own. In addition, when you have Service Level Agreements (SLAs) in place, you can guarantee things like uptime and security.
- Unlimited Scalability. Perhaps one of the most compelling reasons to utilize a solutions provider is scalability. If you hit the limit for what your current infrastructure can handle, you’re looking at a time-consuming and often costly upgrade process. When you utilize a solutions provider, you don’t have to worry about all of that. You simply contact the solutions provider, increase the provisioning of your solutions and you’re good to go.
In most instances, it just makes good sense to utilize a solutions provider for at least some of your business IT functions.
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Posted by Crystal Nichols on Mon, Dec 07, 2009 @ 09:40 AM
One of the best ways to reduce costs while improving the level of service in your IT department is through effective IT asset lifecycle management. Understanding the IT asset lifecycle is the first step in increasing your organization’s IT efficiency and controlling costs all while making sure the organization has the IT resources that it needs in the place it most needs them.
There are many systems that IT departments need to be aware of in terms of asset management. They include base machines, installed components, computer peripherals, operating systems, software, servers, network equipment, other infrastructure and even telephony in many cases.
The IT asset lifestyle involves several phases, some of which apply to all IT assets and some of which may not:
1. Procurement
The first step in the IT asset lifecycle is procurement. An organization procures an asset, and it enters into the organization’s asset management system. At this point, the asset is being managed. In an ideal environment, the process of procurement itself will feed directly into an organization’s asset management system. In other words, once the purchase order is complete and the vendor confirms the order, the procurement system should notify the asset management system. In addition, the asset management system should notify the purchasing system once receipt of the asset actually occurs, allowing payment on the asset.
2. Deployment
Once an organization procures an asset, the next step in the IT asset lifecycle is to deploy it. When the IT asset is deployed, the asset management system should receive updates that include things like physical location of the asset, who in the company is responsible for the asset, configuration information, warranty information and any other data that may be useful to the organization.
3. Usage
Once an IT asset is deployed, an organization can begin to use it. An asset that is in the usage phase is providing value to the organization, and serving a function. Depending on the nature of the asset, the deployment and usage phases may overlap. For example, some systems may be deployed in a staged fashion, where certain portions of the system are actually being utilized before the rest of the system has been fully deployed. An effective IT asset management system will be updated regularly to determine what assets are not being used, and are candidates for repurposing or redeployment.
4. Upgrade
Especially in the IT world, assets may need to receive an upgrade. Whether it’s a new version of application software or even just the addition of a hard drive, equipment will be changed. When that happens, the new configuration information should be recorded in the asset management system, as well.
5. Decommission
When an IT asset isn’t being used anymore, it should be decommissioned. In some cases, a decommissioned asset can be redeployed or repurposed to serve elsewhere in the organization.
6. Salvage
If an IT asset is not being used and has been decommissioned, yet it cannot be redeployed or repurposed, it may still have some salvage value. If that’s the case, the asset management system should be able to track the asset until the salvage process is complete.
For more information on the Asset Lifecycle Management, please go to http://www.unitiv.com/solutions/intelligent-help-desk/
Posted by Crystal Nichols on Fri, Nov 13, 2009 @ 08:13 AM
Getting the right technology into your organization can be a challenge. Between finding reliable vendors and keeping on top of new technological developments, the last thing you need is a problem with the procurement process.
Here are five things that will gum up the works in your technology procurement process and how to avoid them:
1. Not establishing a business case. Before you ever write an RFP or contact a single vendor, you need to have a solid business case lined up. The business case for any given IT project is not just useful for getting the project approved and getting senior management's backing. You need to be able to provide the business case to potential vendors so that they are clear on what you expect the solution to do for your company. Without that essential information, the solution you wind up with may not do what you've promised management it will do.
2. Not using technology specific procurement methodology. If you try to apply standard procurement methodology to IT, you're going to wind up with some seriously non-ideal responses. In addition, evaluating vendors is a complex and technical issue that is more highly specialized than, for example, evaluating office furniture vendors. Because procurement can vary in these requirements, you need to be able to make specific adjustments. You need to give vendors the opportunity to differentiate their proposals while making sure that the proposals are addressing the same needs.
3. Choosing single-vendor solutions. Getting the right piece of equipment for the job is essential in IT. When you use a single vendor, your IT needs are at their mercy. If they go under, or if their product proves to be sub-standard, you have to do a complete overhaul to get things right. By choosing the right equipment for the job, you avoid this problem. In addition, you gain access to solutions providers who can design, implement and support solutions without being beholden to a single vendor.
4. Procuring temporary solutions. Sometimes, a business will experience a sudden burst in need. Whether it's the sudden need for extra data storage in response to new regulatory changes or whether it's increased processing power for a new application, the temptation can be to procure a bandage solution just to get up and running. This may solve a short-term problem but creates a larger problem in the long run, in that it may be much more expensive to procure an incremental solution. Here is a situation when a cloud computing option, such as SaaS, may be a good fit.
5. Misrepresentation or misunderstanding. Sometimes, a manufacturer or vendor misrepresents a product. You need to make sure you know what's being offered, and ask specific questions of the vendor. Carefully evaluating contractual language is key here, and it doesn't hurt to have the legal department take a look before you make your procurement.
Find out more about Unitiv's Technology Procurement.
Posted by JD Eller on Tue, Aug 25, 2009 @ 07:00 AM
Looking around on the internet, I came across an article that completely grabbed my attention. IBM using “DNA” scaffolding to create circuit boards. There is nothing like something along the lines of “Sci-Fi Engineering” to make you want to read more.
Last week a team of scientist for IBM Research in a joint effort with the California Institute of Technology announced a major breakthrough in development of new semiconductors. Using the lithographic patterning – a method used to arrange DNA origami structures – they will tie in this feature set into the manufacturing of semiconductors.
This breakthrough will allow for faster speeds going forward and precise execution of the assembly of these circuit boards. With this new advancement in technology, components will be significantly smaller than what was fabricated with conventional methods.
Check it out at: http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/28185.wss
Posted by Crystal Nichols on Sun, May 24, 2009 @ 09:17 PM
I recently came across some very interesting statistics regarding females in engineering. According to The National Engineers Week Foundation only 20% of students in U.S. undergraduate engineering programs are women. A study done at Purdue showed that out of the 6,400 engineering majors, only 1,275 were women (20%). This number rose from 18% between 1994 to 1998; however, there has been no change since 1998.
Since I have a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science (and still remember my college days), these figures came as no big surprise. I was about to start reading another article when it hit me...why aren't more women pursuing careers in engineering and technology?
The final conclusion of the Purdue study indicates that there is no single silver bullet to explain the lack of female engineering majors. However they also concluded that the image of engineering and technology careers conflicts with the goals of most young women. What is this goal you ask? Simple, they want to "help people" or "make a difference." A noble idea no doubt, however are we engineers nothing more than cold, calculating destroyers of the world? More about that later.
So what exactly do women want (I'm only discussing careers here)? The Association of American Colleges say that 47.8% of first year medical students were women. This statistic directly attacks the old idea that women are not good at technology. However according to the AAC women need their future careers to have some "social relevance" more so than men.
Returning to my previous point about the image of engineers in society, why can't we make a difference? Of course we do, we are just far more subtle. For example to all the difference-making ladies entering the medical field, where do you think all those x-ray images are stored? When a hospital patient needs urgent attention, how are all the doctors and nurses notified in real time without human intervention?
Well I'm sure you see what I'm getting at, but it seems that it is not so obvious to everyone. It seems to me that people (mostly women) see technology as not just impersonal, but to some extent evil. To that I say, technology is not sentient (not yet anyway) and it is what we make it. So while it pollutes and destroys, the main focus of virtually any new high-tech invention is to improve quality of life. Perhaps technology (and engineers) needs a better publicist or perhaps the field just needs more ladies in order to make it seem warmer and more personable.
So what is being done today to change the demographics of engineering and high-tech careers? The first thing that I can think of are the IBM commercials which frequent my favorite TV programs. I'm sure you know the ones...they talk about reducing pollution by changing traffic patterns, building smart cities and becoming IBMers. Not a bad start, however according to Kristen Lamoreaux the founder of SIM Women (Society for Information Management) it will take much more than that. She states that there aren't enough female success stories in the IT industry for women to relate to and that successful women should do more to share their stories with the younger generation. Lamoreaux also states that women in IT have not yet found their "Hannah Montana" that speaks to this younger generation.
For now it seems that the female demographic in engineering is not going to increase, however at least engineering is starting to be talked about in the context of humanity and society.
For more information, go to www.Unitiv.com.
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Posted by Crystal Nichols on Tue, Apr 28, 2009 @ 03:54 PM
Everyone here at Unitiv is pleased to announce the launch of our new website: www.unitiv.com.
We have designed the website to appeal to both the technical and business community alike. To achieve this we have added a direct feed from our company blog and a method to receive direct feedback. This website is meant to compliment our position as a professional provider of enterprise IT solutions and enhance the service we deliver from our headquarters in Alpharetta, Georgia and our regional office in Iselin, New Jersey.
Our goal is to create and deliver cost-effective technical solutions to help our customers achieve their business goals. Please let us know how we are doing. We want to hear from you about our new site and how it can help you and your business.