Copeland Data News - April, 2010

Welcome!

There is a change in the air. Springtime is here after a long, cool winter. It is this period that often brings us new life, new energy and new opportunity.   Many of us will face new challenges like never before. Each issue needs to be sized up to determine what tools or technologies you may need to help implement each opportunity. A plan of execution is also needed. Technology can really help in times like these where we all need to think more globally and compete on the world stage.

With this in mind, please review our latest edition of Copeland Data News. As always, if you have any questions or concerns - please drop us a note.

Thank you,

In this issue of Copeland Data News

• Social Networking In Your Business?
• Kaspersky Anti-Virus
• Odds and Ends
• Customer Profile - DocuSyst

Social Networking In Your Business?

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn  - these are applications you may be familiar with and may even use at a personal level. Should you use these social networking tools to promote your business and interact with business colleagues?

This is a tricky question, as it all depends on your point of reference. A few things to keep in mind while considering the use of social networking for business use should include:

• Be careful not to blend your personal life with your professional life and vice versa. Treat the two differently, even if it means that you need to set up business-focused accounts in Facebook, Twitter, etc  that do not overlap with your personal accounts.
  Be careful not to share confidential information on a social networking site - once you do, this information is "out there" and you will never get it back.
   
• Social networking sites can be a time drain to you and fellow associates. In our world today, productivity in a single work day is everything. If you implement the use of social networking in your organization, give some thought on how you will need to manage it from a time perspective. Social networking must be executed with focus and discipline for everyone who is engaged to use it.  
  You may have conflicts in your company policy. Is an associate allowed to engage in personal Social networking when on the job?  For what purposes? Who is policing this? Spell out the company policy clearly and make sure it is understood. Proper Internet use in the workplace gets more complicated when Social networking is used.
   
• Those who use social networking for business need to be on their best behavior - the sharing of jokes, photos, or words will be judged by others including your competitors. This judgment will be directed straight at your business when someone finds this information on the web.
   
• On many social networking sites, you can control who your "network friends" are and who sees this information. You may want to consider tight security for all information you post as to what people will see.
   
• Even when executed with focus and discipline, social networking will take time to review and interact with each and every day. Engaging in social networking on a weekly basis or "when you get to it" will not work for you or your contacts all too well. There is an expectation of timely interactions on social networking in the workplace.
   
• There are companies that have successfully engaged social networking in their workplace. While the use of social networking in business will continue to grow, the "people" side of the technology needs to be considered.

Kaspersky Anti-Virus

With the continual explosion of threats to our Personal Computers and Servers, fighting Virus activity has certainly become a mainstream concern. Over time, Virus activity has morphed into other attacks - Spyware, Worms and Spam just to name a few.

Anti-Virus tools have had their hands full in fighting these issues. In determining how far should an AV tool go into fighting these issues, the price of going to the Nth degree in this fight is usually measured in effectiveness versus performance.
 
Some of these tools, in trying to defeat everything negative to every man, woman and child, have elected to include all aspects of technology needed to fight the battle. The price of this is performance, as some of these tools will only run acceptably on the latest hardware. Older hardware (hardware that is 2+ years or older), in many cases, will come to a crawl if suited with "layers of software" to fight the evil of Virus activity.

Some products bridge that gap well. One Anti-Virus product that continually rates well in terms of effectiveness versus performance is Kaspersky Anti-Virus. Kaspersky has a full line of products, and does a great job at the enterprise level. Kaspersky has done very well in recent ratings against other products like Trend Micro and Symantec/Norton Anti-Virus. You can learn more about Kaspersky at www.kaspersky.com . You may want to consider an upgrade to Kaspersky the next time your current Anti-Virus provider comes up for renewal. If you want to know more, just let us know

Odds and Ends

	Windows 7 continues to grow in popularity. New desktop purchases will tend to be based on Windows 7. There is no upgrade Windows 7 available from Windows XP, so continue to use any hardware running Windows XP until it is time to upgrade. Reminder - you may have to replace printers and upgrade software when you upgrade, so plan on some additional investment.
	Document Management can be integrated into your business system.  You can link documents to customers and processes in your system. Document Management helps you access, manage and store documents, while, at the same time, is integrated directly into your system.
	Office 2010 will be available in June or July and is the successor of Office 2007. This new version will run on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. In addition, this version will also include free access to online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, which denotes the applications collaboration features. Office 2010 is also available in a 64 bit version. You can learn more about the latest information on Office 2010 at www.microsoft.com/office2010.
	Using POP3 Mailboxes for business level email is becoming less effective and more error-prone over time. While POP3 services from an Internet Provider may work well for the consumer, there are limitations such as security and attachment handling that does affect the business user. Any small business who currently uses POP3 mailboxes should consider an upgrade to Google Apps (www.google.com/apps). Full security, plenty of functionality and storage, and a price of $50 per user per year make this an attractive and smart alternative to POP3 mail. Google Apps includes: Mail - works with your domain name and includes Postini spam protection and 25GB of mail storage per user. Chat & Video Private and Shared Calendars Docs - online creation/storage/sharing of documents.  No need for Word, Excel, etc. Collaboration Groups ...and more!
	Blackberry Enterprise Server Express Version 5 is now available. This latest product fills a void many of you may have been facing.  It supports up to 75 Blackberry phones, has no cost per phone and runs on Windows 2003 and Windows 2008 Servers in either 32 or 64 Bit mode. There is no license cost to this software, so it allows Blackberry to compete very well with other email integrated phones like iPhone and Windows Mobile phones. Let us know if you want to know more about the Blackberry services for your Microsoft Exchange integration.
	Exchange 2010 is now available and will run on Windows 2008 Server 64 Bit editions as a more focused and less bulky successor to Exchange 2007. Unified messaging (a.k.a.: phone system integration) can be incorporated by using Exchange Server 2010 with Office Communications Server. Mobile phone support using the latest ActiveSync technologies is also supported. New installations of Exchange should certainly look into Exchange 2010. More information can be found at www.microsoft.com/exchange/2010.
	Will the iPhone be available to Verizon Wireless users? While there has been a hint of that earlier this year, there appears to be no truth to it on the short term. The release of the iPad (Applets newest tablet device) which runs on the AT&T network, along with different technologies between AT&T and Verizon (GSM vs. CDMA), it is not likely that iPhone will even be considered to be available to Verizon until the end of 2011.
	Want to use your cell phone as a modem to gain Internet access on your laptop or notebook? PDANET does just that. PDANET is available for the iPhone, the Android, the Blackberry, Windows Mobile phones, and a few Palm phones. Go to www.junefabrics.com for more information.
	CDS is selected as a 2010 Buffalo Business Ethics Award Finalist Copeland Data Systems has been selected as a finalist to the Buffalo Niagara Business Ethics Award for 2010. We applaud all organizations who exhibit ethical practices in their day to day activities.
	Time to review your website?  For most folks, now is the time to update your content and your image.  See what Microsoft did with www.msn.com, as most of these ideas can be applied to your own site as well. WebsiteMagazine.com breaks down the latest revamps for the following sites: MSN, CNN, and the LA Times.

Company Profile: DocuSyst

DocuSyst has been providing Document Management solutions to its customers nationally since 2005.  They specialize in reducing an organization's reliance on paper documents and help companies organize their information.

DocuSyst's main focus is using the necessary software and equipment to create a central repository for a company's information that can be easily managed, searched and securely accessed from anywhere in the world.  They assist in creating a "Company's Focus" of stored information instead of allowing users to create their own silos of data.

Once a company creates a central location for their information, it can be accessed from their business system, a custom website or even shared with outside partners.  Businesses can maintain many versions of their files and know who is doing what to the files with the use of an audit trail.  Users can also quickly save emails, spreadsheets and word documents to their repository with tight integration to Microsoft Office programs.

Copeland Data Systems has been a critical partner since DocuSyst's inception in 2005. Eric Posa, Owner of DocuSyst adds:

"Since day one of our mission of Document Management, Copeland Data Systems has stood beside us and provided IT, Development and Web services with speed, precision and integrity.  The CDS staff is constantly looking for simple and cost-effective solutions to help DocuSyst deliver the highest quality of products and services possible.  CDS is a true partner in every sense of the word."

You can learn more about DocuSyst at www.docusyst.com.

Your comments are always appreciated...

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