As your company finalizes its technology budget for the 2012 calendar year, it might want to consider some new tips from market research firm Gartner for keeping IT infrastructure costs in check. That way, more of that budget can be dedicated to more meaningful investments focused less on maintenance and more on innovation.

Most of Gartner’s suggestions are centered on the data center, which is the heart of any company’s technology assets. But you could also extrapolate some of these ideas into what I would call workforce enablement and client-facing technologies. Gartner is focusing on 10 tips for the upcoming year, but I’m going to synergize those into five key themes.

1) Know what is really important. One advantage that smaller companies have over enterprises when it comes to technology investments is that those of you managing IT strategy generally are much closer to line of business priorities. That is, you know what’s on the mind of managers throughout the organization. If you don’t know, then you should make it your business to do so. Many of the smaller IT service and consulting companies that it is my privilege to know set two different timeframes for prioritization: 12 months out and three years out. What was the last time you revisited what is important to your organization?

2) Get rid of what you don’t need. I am a big believer in consolidation, and there are plenty of virtualization options now that make fiscal sense for SMBs, as both VMware and Microsoft vie for the attention of small and midsize businesses. By getting rid of server hardware that isn’t being used to capacity and ditching applications that aren’t critical to day-to-day business, you can also ditch maintenance and operational costs — particularly when it comes to electricity. That’s increasily important because power costs are rising and it doesn’t look like that trend will be reversed any time soon.

3) Revisit networking and communications options. The next wave of telecommunications services, including initial 4g (fourth generation) wireless plans could help your organization keep employees better connected AND help cut connectivity costs. The example I love using to illustrate hidden costs is the traveling executive who is forced to pay for hotel telecommunications services while on the road. Those costs aren’t usually seen by the IT team, but they can hit the travel budget pretty hard.

4) Get formal about support and service processes.By introducing more discipline into the way certain service requests are resolved — both when supporting employees or when updating applications, applying security pitches and so on — more of these processes can be automated. That leaves more time for IT teams to focus on creating rather than maintaining.

5) Consider alternate sourcing strategies.This is where the cloud fits in. Email is the most profound example of an application that could be handled in the cloud, taking another load off your team. Your organization should also consider the implications of the “bring your own device” movement. By allowing employees to use their own smartphone or notebook computer for work purposes, you can encourage and enable higher levels of productivity. However, managing those devices can be tricky. Security policies must be set, plus you’ll have to figure out how to distribute and manage the applications used by your organization.

A friend recently had his Facebook account shut down. He had done nothing wrong, and when he sent a message to Facebook saying as much and inquiring about what he could do to remedy the situation, he received a canned response noting that, for security reasons, they couldn’t give him any more information.

My friend was likely the victim of some kind of Facebook hijacking, where his account was used for goodness knows what. He felt (and was) helpless to respond, which is terrible at the personal level. But it got me thinking about the businesses that are on Facebook. Organizations are increasingly relying on Facebook as a communications and promotions vehicle. Indeed, many companies’ Facebook pages are as sophisticated, if not more so, than their own websites. Companies are pumping more and more time and money into a platform over which they have little control. Of course, with the growing use of cloud-based applications, a dearth of autonomy is nothing new, but Facebook brings with it some unique circumstances in terms of how it’s being used by companies and what recourse (if any) they have should something go wrong.

What’s a company to do?

I spoke with Andre Eaddy, director of cybersecurity portfolio services at Unisys, who said that companies need to realize that Facebook was built originally for personal use and acknowledge that the kinds of service level agreements (SLAs) and security we take for granted in most of the apps used in the enterprise are lacking with Facebook and other public social networking platforms. “There is always risk in operating on public Internet sites that you don’t command complete control of, and that’s really what you’re doing when you’re working with social media sites,” Eaddy said. “It’s incumbent on organizations to evaluate the impact social media will have on their overall risk profile.”

Eaddy provided some tips for companies looking to tighten the controls they do have.
1. Develop acceptable use policies around social networking on both personal and business Facebook pages, and communicate them on a regular and ongoing basis. “This is important because it gives the company an opportunity to lay the foundation and groundwork for how they want their staff to interact with these sites, and also provides guidelines for the staff and gives them an opportunity to present what’s acceptable to communicate on the site,” said Eaddy.
2. Educate users. As with communicating acceptable use policies, employee education should be a regular and ongoing function. Getting social security settings just right is challenging, and Facebook is notorious for making changes that affect those settings without much, if any, warning. Users should be educated on the security and privacy settings that should be in place now, but they also need to know that settings can be overridden if Facebook makes a change on its end. Social networking security and privacy settings aren’t just a set-it-and-forget-it thing, and they aren’t completely in the purview of the company IT department. “There is a certain level of responsibility on the part of end users,” said Eaddy.
3. Take action quickly if there is a compromise. Anytime a company believes its presence has been compromised, the first thing they should do is take steps to mitigate the damage, said Eaddy. “With Facebook, for example, you want to reach out to that organization immediately and tell their security department that there’s a problem. The organization can then take steps to secure the site, whether that’s bringing it down or securing passwords so that you can begin to take control of the site again.”
4. Don’t share passwords, or, if you do, be careful when you share passwords. Sharing passwords is a security no-no akin to the apocryphal password written on a Post-It note stuck to the monitor. With that said, Facebook does not currently allow the use of multiple profiles (with separate credentials) on a page, so companies that have several people monitoring and posting to a single site often use a single set of credentials. If that is the case, use of the credentials should be limited. Companies should also change the password if an employee with access leaves the company. To get around this problem, companies can also make use of third-party applications such as HootSuite that enable companies to have multiple contributors to social profiles without sharing passwords.
5. Insist that people to go against their nature–sometimes. You’re a global company. Someone posts on your wall, “Hey, Company X. Attached is a great article about your presence in Japan.” What PR or marketing professional wouldn’t be tempted to open the attachment? Don’t, says Eaddy. “Make sure people understand what constitutes risky behavior,” he said. “Everything from links forwarded to you by “friends,” attachments that they might send, specific activities that they might suggest you engage in. … That’s risky behavior on Facebook.”

Gartner defines a strategic technology as one with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years. Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major dollar investment, or the risk of being late to adopt.

A strategic technology may be an existing technology that has matured and/or become suitable for a wider range of uses. It may also be an emerging technology that offers an opportunity for strategic business advantage for early adopters or with potential for significant market disruption in the next five years. These technologies impact the organization’s long-term plans, programs and initiatives.

“These top 10 technologies will be strategic for most organizations, and IT leaders should use this list in their strategic planning process by reviewing the technologies and how they fit into their expected needs,” said David Cearley, vice president and Gartner fellow.

“Organizations should start exploratory projects to look at promised candidate technology and kick off a search for combinations of information sources, including social sites and unstructured data that may be mined for insights,” said Carl Claunch, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner.

The top 10 strategic technologies for 2012 include:

Media Tablets and Beyond. Users can choose between various form factors when it comes to mobile computing. No single platform, form factor or technology will dominate and companies should expect to manage a diverse environment with two to four intelligent clients through 2015. IT leaders need a managed diversity program to address multiple form factors, as well as employees bringing their own smartphones and tablet devices into the workplace.

Enterprises will have to come up with two mobile strategies – one to address the business to employee (B2E) scenario and one to address the business to consumer (B2C) scenario. On the B2E front, IT must consider social goals, business goals, financial goals, and risk management goals. On the B2C front, which includes business to business (B2B) activities to support consumers, IT needs to address a number of additional issues such as surfacing and managing APIs to access enterprise information and systems, integration with third-party applications, integration with various partners for capabilities such as search and social networking, and delivery through app stores.

Mobile-Centric Applications and Interfaces. The user interface (IU) paradigm in place for more than 20 years is changing. UIs with windows, icons, menus, and pointers will be replaced by mobile-centric interfaces emphasizing touch, gesture, search, voice and video. Applications themselves are likely to shift to more focused and simple apps that can be assembled into more complex solutions. These changes will drive the need for new user interface design skills.

Building application user interfaces that span a variety of device types, potentially from many vendors, requires an understanding of fragmented building blocks and an adaptable programming structure that assembles them into optimized content for each device. Mobile consumer application platform tools and mobile enterprise platform tools are emerging to make it easier to develop in this cross-platform environment. HTML5 will also provide a long term model to address some of the cross-platform issues. By 2015, mobile Web technologies will have advanced sufficiently, so that half the applications that would be written as native apps in 2011 will instead be delivered as Web apps.

Contextual and Social User Experience. Context-aware computing uses information about an end-user or objects environment, activities, connections and preferences to improve the quality of interaction with that end-user or object. A contextually aware system anticipates the user’s needs and proactively serves up the most appropriate and customized content, product or service. Context can be used to link mobile, social, location, payment and commerce. It can help build skills in augmented reality, model-driven security and ensemble applications. Through 2013, context aware applications will appear in targeted areas such as location-based services, augmented reality on mobile devices, and mobile commerce.

On the social front, the interfaces for applications are taking on the characteristics of social networks. Social information is also becoming a key source of contextual information to enhance delivery of search results or the operation of applications.

Internet of Things. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a concept that describes how the Internet will expand as sensors and intelligence are added to physical items such as consumer devices or physical assets and these objects are connected to the Internet. The vision and concept have existed for years, however, there has been an acceleration in the number and types of things that are being connected and in the technologies for identifying, sensing and communicating. These technologies are reaching critical mass and an economic tipping point over the next few years. Key elements of the IoT include:

• Embedded sensors: Sensors that detect and communicate changes are being embedded, not just in mobile devices, but in an increasing number of places and objects.
• Image Recognition: Image recognition technologies strive to identify objects, people, buildings, places logos, and anything else that has value to consumers and enterprises. Smartphones and tablets equipped with cameras have pushed this technology from mainly industrial applications to broad consumer and enterprise applications.
• Near Field Communication (NFC) payment: NFC allows users to make payments by waving their mobile phone in front of a compatible reader. Once NFC is embedded in a critical mass of phones for payment, industries such as public transportation, airlines, retail and healthcare can explore other areas in which NFC technology can improve efficiency and customer service.

App Stores and Marketplaces. Application stores by Apple and Android provide marketplaces where hundreds of thousands of applications are available to mobile users. Gartner forecasts that by 2014, there will be more than 70 billion mobile application downloads from app stores every year. This will grow from a consumer-only phenomena to an enterprise focus. With enterprise app stores, the role of IT shifts from that of a centralized planner to a market manager providing governance and brokerage services to users and potentially an ecosystem to support entrepreneurs. Enterprises should use a managed diversity approach to focus on app store efforts and segment apps by risk and value.

Next-Generation Analytics. Analytics is growing along three key dimensions:

1. From traditional offline analytics to in-line embedded analytics. This has been the focus for many efforts in the past and will continue to be an important focus for analytics.
2. From analyzing historical data to explain what happened to analyzing historical and real-time data from multiple systems to simulate and predict the future.
3. Over the next three years, analytics will mature along a third dimension, from structured and simple data analyzed by individuals to analysis of complex information of many types (text, video, etc…) from many systems supporting a collaborative decision process that brings multiple people together to analyze, brainstorm and make decisions.

Analytics is also beginning to shift to the cloud and exploit cloud resources for high performance and grid computing.

In 2011 and 2012, analytics will increasingly focus on decisions and collaboration. The new step is to provide simulation, prediction, optimization and other analytics, not simply information, to empower even more decision flexibility at the time and place of every business process action.

Big Data. The size, complexity of formats and speed of delivery exceeds the capabilities of traditional data management technologies; it requires the use of new or exotic technologies simply to manage the volume alone. Many new technologies are emerging, with the potential to be disruptive (e.g., in-memory DBMS). Analytics has become a major driving application for data warehousing, with the use of MapReduce outside and inside the DBMS, and the use of self-service data marts. One major implication of big data is that in the future users will not be able to put all useful information into a single data warehouse. Logical data warehouses bringing together information from multiple sources as needed will replace the single data warehouse model.

In-Memory Computing. Gartner sees huge use of flash memory in consumer devices, entertainment equipment and other embedded IT systems. In addition, it offers a new layer of the memory hierarchy in servers that has key advantages — space, heat, performance and ruggedness among them. Besides delivering a new storage tier, the availability of large amounts of memory is driving new application models. In-memory applications platforms include in-memory analytics, event processing platforms, in-memory application servers, in-memory data management and in-memory messaging.

Running existing applications in-memory or refactoring these applications to exploit in-memory approaches can result in improved transactional application performance and scalability, lower latency (less than one microsecond) application messaging, dramatically faster batch execution and faster response time in analytical applications. As cost and availability of memory intensive hardware platforms reach tipping points in 2012 and 2013, the in-memory approach will enter the mainstream.

Extreme Low-Energy Servers. The adoption of low-energy servers — the radical new systems being proposed, announced and marketed by mostly new entrants to the server business —will take the buyer on a trip backward in time. These systems are built on low-power processors typically used in mobile devices. The potential advantage is delivering 30 times or more processors in a particular server unit with lower power consumption vs. current server approaches. The new approach is well suited for certain non-compute intensive tasks such as map/reduce workloads or delivery of static objects to a website. However, most applications will require more processing power, and the low-energy server model potentially increases management costs, undercutting broader use of the approach.

Cloud Computing. Cloud is a disruptive force and has the potential for broad long-term impact in most industries. While the market remains in its early stages in 2011 and 2012, it will see the full range of large enterprise providers fully engaged in delivering a range of offerings to build cloud environments and deliver cloud services. Oracle, IBM and SAP all have major initiatives to deliver a broader range of cloud services over the next two years. As Microsoft continues to expand its cloud offering, and these traditional enterprise players expand offerings, users will see competition heat up and enterprise-level cloud services increase.

Enterprises are moving from trying to understand the cloud to making decisions on selected workloads to implement on cloud services and where they need to build out private clouds. Hybrid cloud computing which brings together external public cloud services and internal private cloud services, as well as the capabilities to secure, manage and govern the entire cloud spectrum will be a major focus for 2012. From a security perspective new certification programs including FedRAMP and CAMM will be ready for initial trial, setting the stage for more secure cloud computing. On the private cloud front, IT will be challenged to bring operations and development groups closer together using “DevOps” concepts in order to approach the speed and efficiencies of public cloud service providers.

David Cheriton, a computer science professor at Stanford known for his skills in software design, and Andreas Bechtolsheim, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems, have committed $100 million of their money, and spent half that, to shake up the business of connecting computers in the Internet’s big computing centers.

As the Arista founders say, the promise of having access to mammoth amounts of data instantly, anywhere, is matched by the threat of catastrophe. People are creating more data and moving it ever faster on computer networks. The fast networks allow people to pour much more of civilization online, including not just Facebook posts and every book ever written, but all music, live video calls, and most of the information technology behind modern business, into a worldwide “cloud” of data centers. The networks are designed so it will always be available, via phone, tablet, personal computer or an increasing array of connected devices.

Statistics dictate that the vastly greater number of transactions among computers in a world 100 times faster than today will lead to a greater number of unpredictable accidents, with less time in between them. Already, Amazon’s cloud for businesses failed for several hours in April, when normal computer routines faltered and the system overloaded. Google’s cloud of e-mail and document collaboration software has been interrupted several times.
“We think of the Internet as always there. Just because we’ve become dependent on it, that doesn’t mean it’s true,” Mr. Cheriton says. Mr. Bechtolsheim says that because of the Internet’s complexity, the global network is impossible to design without bugs. Very dangerous bugs, as they describe them, capable of halting commerce, destroying financial information or enabling hostile attacks by foreign powers.
Both were among the first investors in Google, which made them billionaires, and, before that, they created and sold a company to the networking giant Cisco Systems for $220 million. Wealth and reputations as technology seers give their arguments about the risks of faster networks rare credibility.
More transactions also mean more system attacks. Even though he says there is no turning back on the online society, Mr. Cheriton worries most about security hazards. “I’ve made the claim that the Chinese military can take it down in 30 seconds, no one can prove me wrong,” he said. By building a new way to run networks in the cloud era, he says, “we have a path to having software that is more sophisticated, can be self-defending, and is able to detect more problems, quicker.”
The common connection among computer servers, one gigabit per second, is giving way to 10-gigabit connections, because of improvements in semiconductor design and software. Speeds of 40 gigabits, even 100 gigabits, are now used for specialty purposes like consolidating huge data streams among hundreds of thousands of computers across the globe, and that technology is headed into the mainstream. An engineering standard for a terabit per second, 1,000 gigabits, is expected in about seven years.
Arista, which is based here, was built with the 10-gigabit world in mind. It now has 250 employees, 167 of them engineers, building a fast data-routing switch that could isolate problems and fix them without ever shutting down the network. It is intended to run on inexpensive mass-produced chips. In terms of software and hardware, it was a big break from the way things had been done in networking for the last quarter-century.
“Companies like Cisco had to build their own specialty chips to work at high speed for the time,” Mr. Bechtolsheim said. Because of improvements in the quality and capability of the kind of chips used in computers, phones and cable television boxes, “we could build a network that is a lot more software-enabled, something that is a lot easier to defend and modify,” he said.
For Mr. Cheriton, who cuts his own hair despite his great wealth, Arista was an opportunity to work on a new style of software he said he had been thinking about since 1989.

That’s the impression you could get from the results of a Symantec global survey that asked 1,900 SMB professionals responsible for information technology what they know about security threats and how they prepare for them. While most SMB managers exhibited knowledge of threats such as keystroke logging, distributed denial of service attacks, website vulnerabilities and targeted attacks, exactly half indicated they need not have concern about any of it. “We are a small business and are not targets for these types of attacks,” they said.

“They’re saying these things happen to other people, not them,” said Kevin Haley, director of Symantec security response, who admitted he was somewhat surprised by some of the results of the “SMB Threat Awareness Poll,” which defines the SMB as between 5 and 499 employees in size.
Symantec, which sponsored the poll conducted by Applied Research, wanted to get a sense of how SMBs across the world and in many industries — financial, insurance, aviation, chemical, medical, information technology, energy and manufacturing — viewed security and what steps they took to combat specific threats.
While their understanding of risks was apparent, the SMBs much of the time saw their organizations as somehow exempt from actual attacks, which they view as a problem mainly for big corporations. They didn’t spend much time preparing for potential problems.
“Only 39% use antivirus on every desktop,” Haley noted. “That’s striking right there. “He said malware, such as the banking Trojans used in cybercrime to compromise computers to make unauthorized funds transfers, are hitting smaller businesses. But SMBs see the news headlines that show the Stuxnet worm hitting nation states and hactivist group Anonymous striking large companies, and they think, “That’s not me, I don’t need to worry about any of this.” They also don’t worry much about smartphones used in business being lost or stolen.
Other results of the survey show that only 67% of the SMBs bothered to establish login and password restrictions for online banking purposes, and 63% didn’t lock down machines used in corporate banking.
SMBs vary widely in terms of the levels of expertise about security, Haley said, noting sometimes the individual in charge of security is also the person in charge of the phones. Sometimes it’s the business owner running the IT operations and security.
The IT security industry in general has long been subject to hand-wringing over SMBs, fretting about how to build products specialized to suit smaller businesses sensitive to price points. Setting up hardware and day-to-day management have been particular barriers where IT departments may be small, too. But the tide may be starting to turn with the advent of cloud-based security services, which typically alleviate the need for on-premises equipment, becoming more ubiquitous. Indeed, Gartner last week predicted that SMBs would be a big contributor to the growth of security services market over the next three years.

Cloud computing is a term that remains mysterious to many people. If you are one of these people you might be concerned about cloud computing and whether it is some new concept that is of use to your business.

Cloud computing is important to your business especially when it comes to customer relationship management. There are many different descriptions for cloud computing, but contrary to popular thought, it is not something new. Cloud computing is something that’s been around for a long time. In fact, you’re probably already using it right now within your business organization.

Cloud computing is simply a term that is used to describe services that are provided to you via the Internet. While these services can include something as simple as email, cloud computing can also include more complex tasks like accounting, forecasting and tracking. Cloud computing services are provided to you through a remote server. This means that you can just conveniently log in from any Internet location to access and utilize them. You can use them from any computer, not just your own.

This is why the term cloud is used. The services are up in the air, accessible to everyone. Of course this doesn’t mean that the services are not secure. They are usually secured with a user name and password, and sometimes greater security measurements are taken.

You are probably wondering what other cloud computing applications besides email can improve your business and customer relationship management. Besides email, when it comes to business, Internet telecommunications have increased the professionalism of many small businesses.

Because of cloud computing, you can now meet with your clients from all over the world in real time via video and webinars. You could put together professional presentations from your basement if you wanted to and emergency meetings are simple to organize when using the internet.

In addition to all of the exciting functionality within cloud computing, these services are very affordable and accessible to most, if not all businesses. There are some services that offer professional services like this for free. Internet telecommunications applications are extremely important cloud tools when it comes to customer relationship management.

Cloud computing can also be used for additional storage. Expensive hard drives are not needed, as you will store your files in an off-site location. This can increase your office space and hard drive space while helping you to organize data. At the same time, your data can be accessed remotely and quickly whenever necessary. This means a lot to clients. It makes them feel important when you have their information right at hand.

There are now more and more online backup corporations that are popping up to provide companies and individuals with backup storage in case of emergencies and for convenience.

Cloud computing has applications that can help with your accounting needs, contact lists and customer lists. Your client lists and business contact lists are the most important lists you will have in business, and anything that makes accounting easier is very helpful to resource for every user.

Cloud computing accounting software in fact has eliminated the expense of a professional accountant from the budget of many small businesses. The software is often so complete and user-friendly, that a professional accountant has become absolutely unnecessary.

Cloud computing offers so many advantages to the modern business person. In the past, many of these small businesses would never exist because they wouldn’t have had the seed money to start. Cloud computing provides professional business services that can help any business grow for free or at a very low cost price point. There are also some cloud computing services that cost a bit more, so it is wise to shop around. In many instances you can start a successful online business or brick and mortar cloud computing supported business for less than $200.

So as you can see, cloud computing is an institution on the internet that has been around for many years. You are probably already familiar with some of the most popular elements of cloud computing, like email, and enjoy utilizing them in your personal and business life. Now that you know some of the other cloud computing applications that are available to you, you can branch out and improve your business even more.

Short for search engine optimization or search engine optimizer, SEO is the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results page of a search engine (SERP). The higher a website ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user.

It is common practice for Internet users to not click through pages and pages of search results, so where a site ranks in a search is essential for directing more traffic toward the site. SEO helps to ensure that a site is accessible to a search engine and improves the chances that the site will be found by the search engine.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization isn’t terribly complicated. It’s all about getting your website to the top of the search engine rankings when people type in search terms that are related to your products or services.

The key is to find the right target audience and key words to ensure that your business is visible to the searching audience – effective SEO is the first step.

• Step 1. Analyze. Before you decide what to say and how to say it online, it’s pivotal to analyze your audience, your competitors, your industry and yourself.
• Audience analysis: Online success begins with a detailed audience profile. Who will your visitors be? What type of experience do they expect? How internet savvy are they? Do they want or require education on your products? What type of appeal do they best respond to: emotional, intellectual or a combination?
• Competitive analysis: You want to beat your competition without imitating them. So find out what your competitors’ URLs are, and choose one that won’t be confused with theirs. What do your competitors’ sites look like? Why should customers buy from you?
• Industry analysis: What are the predominant trends in your industry today? Carefully examine your industry’s history, current state and future. Today’s markets and technologies evolve rapidly, especially online. Be prepared.
• Self analysis: What’s your corporate personality? Are you formal? Fun? Technical? How can you translate your brand visually and “verbally” to your website? Design and copywriting work hand-in-glove to communicate your brand.

  Step 2. Clarify. Based on the above analyses, narrow your focus to a specific niche–don’t try to be all things to all people. Target a specific audience with a specific offer for a specific product or service that features specific benefits. The more unlike the competition you are, the less competition you’ll have. But how does this relate to branding online? The less competition you have, the harder it will be for consumers to replace your product–which makes price less important. And the less important price becomes, the easier it will be for you to communicate the value of your brand and the faster you’ll build brand equity.

  Step 3. Strategize. When it comes to your site, there are several areas that need your attention. The first two are site content and organization. Be sure to divide your site into sections according to user needs and expectations, and then fill each section with the appropriate content. Use your home page for the most important information, like your selling proposition, and rely on links off the home page to provide more details. Develop a site navigation system (for example, left-side menu, tabs at the top, search function) that will help visitors quickly and easily find the content they’re looking for. Remember, in the minds of consumers, a well-organized site equals a well-organized company. A smart message equals a smart company. And strategic site content and organization equal strategic brand.

  The purpose of branding is to get people to recall your company/product/service from memory. The ultimate aim is to get people to trust you more than the competition, and to think of your Web site before they think of the competition’s Web site. Branding isn’t just for the big companies. It’s just as important to the small business entrepreneur, especially online business owners. With cutthroat competition on the Web, those who don’t brand will probably go out of business.

  ]]> http://www.itbd.us/miscellaneous-articles/your-website-%e2%80%93-key-to-branding-your-business/feed 0 http://www.itbd.us/miscellaneous-articles/the-number-one-reason-for-a-web-presence http://www.itbd.us/miscellaneous-articles/the-number-one-reason-for-a-web-presence#comments Fri, 02 Sep 2011 14:25:23 +0000 admin http://www.itbd.us/?p=358 What’s the number one reason a business should have a web presence? In today’s web world, with social media and online marketing leading the charge it’s no longer the question of “if” you have a website, but “how can you not?” It’s affordable, effective and wrought with opportunity – for any businesses, it is your store front. But many businesses currently operating offline jump into the web for a variety of reasons that are often unclear to the business owner. Of course, the hype can be very enticing. But it can also make things hazy for the entrepreneur — making that jump often a blind leap. So why are you on the web? What are the benefits for your company with an increased web presence?

  Increased Reach
  Doing business online expands the marketplace to national and international markets, and offers the ability to reach new, untapped markets that would have been potentially unreachable otherwise.

  Increased Savings
  An online business decreases administrative costs normally associated with managing paper-based information. It also lowers telecommunications costs since the Internet is more economical than other conventional forms of communication.

  Increased Speed
  It also reduces the time that normally lapses between the launch of a product, building its consumer awareness, selling the product and delivering it to the market.

  Improved Management
  An added advantage to doing business online is that the web enhances communications within organizations, between business partners and with a company’ various publics (e.g., the media, specific market segments, the government, related agencies, trade associations, etc).

  Improved Branding
  Being a branding and positioning consultant, I’ve personally noticed that the Internet greatly facilitates the adoption and branding processes — such as with the ability to project a strong corporate identity and to build brand equity, both over a shorter period of time. Moreover, it removes potentially critical, physical comparisons (i.e., on the Internet, the element of size no longer exists).

  Improved Promotion
  This one is my favorite. The web is an extraordinary market research tool. It facilitates intelligence gathering, tracking and measuring of marketing efforts (often referred as “data mining”). As well, it offers new promotional avenues, and opens new customer service and product support channels.

  ]]> http://www.itbd.us/miscellaneous-articles/the-number-one-reason-for-a-web-presence/feed 0 http://www.itbd.us/proactive-maintenance/top-5-ways-to-recycle-your-old-computer http://www.itbd.us/proactive-maintenance/top-5-ways-to-recycle-your-old-computer#comments Mon, 02 May 2011 14:17:11 +0000 admin http://www.itbd.us/?p=339 Contributed By: Katie Robinson

  Recycle: Your best bet is always to send your old computer directly back to the manufacturer from which you purchased your machine in order to prevent ID theft and e-waste smuggling. You can also use a product like “Eraser”, an advanced security tool that allows you to completely remove all sensitive data from your hard drive.

  Donate: A great way to get rid of your unwanted computer while at the same time extending its use to others in need is by donating it to a non-profit or school-based refurbisher rather than directly to a charity or school, especially if you need to wipe your hard drive or if you’re unsure about your equipment’s condition.

  Resell: Don’t expect to make too much cash, but reselling your old computer is always an option if your machine is two years old or less. Ebay is always a great source for buying and trading, and you can search through places like the Used Computer Mall to make sure that you’re asking and receiving fair market value.

  Return: Some companies like Gateway and HP have trade-in programs where you can deduct a certain amount from the cost of a new computer or receive a credit toward merchandise.

  Upgrades/Downgrades: If your computer is less than five-years-old, why not replace a few items rather than purchase a new computer? Upgrade your memory, add a larger hard disk, or replace your CRT monitor with an LCD. In most cases, for less than one-third the price of a new computer you may be able to hold onto your computer for a few more years which will help you save money for next-generation systems that will arrive in another two years or so.

   

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