The Attivo Blog

In this modern age of internet capable "Smart-Phones" like iPhones and Blackberries, instant access to sports scores and facebook accounts, and linked email, calendars and other applications - one problem existed for all smart phone owners - until just a little while ago.  What happens to all that saved information when you lose your phone?  Contacts. Phone numbers. Addresses. Calendar Entries. Chat Usernames. All need to be re-entered into your new phone! (unless you remembered to manually backup this information to a computer).  A small application from Google (who else?) now exists that solves this problem as well as several others.  Sync automatically logs into your GMAIL (account required) online email service and synchronizes your contacts from your phone with the contacts on your GMAIL.  It will even carefully search for names that appear to be similar in order to prevent duplication. If duplication does occur, you can easily log into GMAIL from a computer at your convenience and merge similar contact records. The contact records themselves are extraordinarily detailed; affording you the ability to save unlimited Phone Numbers and Email Addresses for each contact name. Because most smart phones afford you the same luxury, all those detailed contacts are now updated on your phone the very next time the Sync application runs. Google Sync also updates your phone's calendar entries with your Google Calendar application - saving your appointments and reminders and alerting them on your phone instead of waiting for you to sign into a computer terminal to be alerted. Imagine, your own rolodex, personal reminder service and datebook - automatically updated - right in your pocket. Then, when someday the inevitable happens and you lose your phone, break your phone, or just decide to replace it: just re-install Google Sync on your next phone and let Sync update your contacts! No more fancy cord transfers and downloads! No more backups! It's all online!  I can't express to you enough how valuable this service can be. Just think about all the times you've had to send an email out to everyone you know letting them know you've "lost" their phone numbers and email addresses, and to please send them to you as soon as they can.  Now it all occurs wirelessly and in moments. To get this incredibly useful feature on your phone, visit http://m.google.com from your phone's browser and select the "Sync" application.  Then, choose your phone's make and model and begin the download. After you install with all requested permissions, sign into the application one time with your GMAIL username and password, and let Sync do the rest.

About a month ago, I encountered a dilemma while monitoring our Backup Exec software.  While our daily backup to network drive feature was humming along quite successfully, our weekly tape backup began to show repeated failures. It seemed to backup the first 60GB of our network drives and database successfully, then it would pause and ultimately fail.  I tried a few more tapes to make sure it wasn't a corruption issue, but it did not resolve the problem. Then I decided to shave a few GB off our backup policy, taking us under the 60GB threshold.  Drat. We had outgrown our taped backups. We toyed with the idea of buying bigger tapes, but that meant also updating our Tape Drive hardware itself, a significant investement that would no doubt become obsolete itself someday.  Or we could remotely backup to an offsite backup service, but this meant clogging our internet line mercilessly during backup times - and 60GB takes a very long time to transfer even over broadband. It was time to embrace a different option.  USB external drives were the answer. Not only are USB External Drives significantly more inexpensive than Tape drives, but they also have the unquestionable appeal of being able to be plugged into any computer/server - without any additional hardware to buy/install!  Additionally, the transfer rate both to and from the external drive over the USB 2.0 connection is at times more than 30x the rate of transfer we received over the old tapes.  30 hour backups on the tape systems were now taking just over an hour to complete! We purchased 2 500GB Iomega drives from http://www.tigerdirect.com for less than $100 each. They shipped in just a few days and within minutes of opening the box I had them programmed into Backup Exec to backup our entire network on a weekly basis.  They are about the same size and weight as the old tapes, but at 10x times the size they are useful for a variety of purposes beyond just backing up our system.  Now, every Monday our new routine consists of the following steps:

1. Unplug old USB drive.
2. Plug in new USB drive returned from the offsite location.
3. Return to the offsite location with the old USB drive.

There have been a whole lot of fires down here in Southern California recently, but with our new backup plan in place, we're no longer worried about losing our valuable data.

Using an Accounting or ERP system?  Got Support? In the normal course of business, something will go wrong with your accounting/ERP system, causing grief and inefficiency until the problem is resolved.  Guaranteed.  The more complex the system is, the more it happens.  So what are the options for getting the help that you need when you need it? First, let's clear the air on some confusing terminology.  Most software developers charge annual maintenance fees, which typically cover just updates to the software, or the actual right to be able to continue using the program from one year to the next.   This often costs anywhere from 10-20% of the original software license cost, and is charged at the original purchase and each year thereafter.  Technical support, on the other hand, is assistance via phone or email in resolving issues and errors that come up while installing or operating the software.  Technical support can be provided by either the software developer (author), or by a third party such as a software reseller or consulting firm.  Some larger companies have in-house experts to provide almost all of this support, except for perhaps code-based errors that only the developer can resolve. So, what are the purchase options?  Most software developers and consultants offer two options for technical support.  The usual two options are an unlimited support plan, or a per-incident plan.  The unlimited support plan is usually quite costly, such as 10% of the software cost per year.  Often this is wrapped up with a "maintenance plan" that can cost north of 20% per year.  The per incident support plan is usually priced as a cost per incident (regardless of how short or long it takes to resolve).  Another version of per incident support is to start the clock running every time the client calls, and bill for actual time incurred (perhaps subject to some minimum billing).  The most annoying part of most support plans is being told "I'm sorry, but this is not a technical support issue.  I'll have our Consulting Manager prepare a quote for this".  In other words, you're not covered.  For this reason, I'm not a big fan of unlimited support, since it has to exclude anything except true support issues, or it will be abused and be too costly for the provider.  I also don't think per incident plans are much better, since a lot of cost is created in administering the incident pool, or billing the client for each and every phone call.  Those costs must ultimately be passed on to the customer.  Customers often hesitate to call for support, since they know they're going to get an invoice, and choose to gut it out themselves rather than reach out for help (and stay productive!). So what is the better mousetrap for Technical Support?  After doing this kind of support for the last 17 years, we developed a plan that we call  Full Value Support.  This is administered as a quarterly budget of estimated consulting time required for technical support AND small consulting projects such as report writing, user training, etc.  We send one quarterly statement and invoice, and if there is any unused time from the original budget, it becomes "rollover minutes".  Every 6 months we review the budget to be sure it isn't too high or too low, and discuss ways to keep the cost as low as possible with the client, by using many of the self-help tools that we make available to them in their unique client web portal.  We also point out where any system (or people) weaknesses exist, which may be causing unnecessary expense. Full Value Support makes sense for both our clients as well as our support team.  We provide Exact Macola Technical Support, Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains Technical Support, and QuickBooks Support in this manner and our clients love it.  Their systems are well documented on our client portal, the self-help tools are there, and resources available that allow them to keep their costs low.   Shared responsibility for keeping costs under control - now there's a "new economy" concept by which we can all prosper!