Whilst Leigh and I were overseas in the USA attending a conference there was an equally important event being held on the Gold Coast back here in Australia. Peter Sondergaard senior Vice President and global head of Gartner, provided the company’s latest outlook for the IT industry to an audience of 1500 Australian Chief Information Officers (CIO’s) and IT leaders. In it he said “The days when IT was the passive observer of the world are over. Global politics and the global economy are being shaped by IT. It is a primary driver of business growth. For example this year 350 companies will each invest more than US$1 billion in IT. They are doing this because IT impacts their business performance. Two-thirds of CEOs believe IT will make a greater contribution to their industry in the next 10 years than any prior decades. For the IT leader to thrive in this environment, IT leaders must lead from the front and re-imagine IT. This new era brings with it urgent and compelling forces. They include mobility, the cloud, social and an explosion in information.”

What is amazing is we literally heard the same message from Daniel Burrus the best selling author of FlashForesight whilst we sat in an auditorium in Orlando with 1200 IT business owners from around the world. He talked about how the forces of change around processing power, bandwidth speed and the explosion of storage is dramatically impacting businesses. Even if we consider the controversial NBN rollout, if it does proceed throughout Australia it alone will create industries and offerings that don’t currently exist in the market. The question is how can you take advantage of all these changes in IT when you are so flat out keeping up with everything in your own company?

Well that is where we can help!

To give an example I spent yesterday with a potential new client and although the “cloud” was the reason for my visit he was more interested in how we could leverage IT to actually make him money. His existing IT company provider was a solid organisation with excellent skills but they were limited to just doing IT. In this constant and rapidly changing era that is the old standard. The new standard is acting as the CIO for the business and actually looking at the strategic side of the equation rather than just the technology.

We finished our conversation with the two major takeaway’s being how he could immediately bring forward some of his cash-flow and begin generating consistent recurring revenue. Ultimately IT will play a part in those new developments but the reality is they are not the main focus and that is the way it should be.

So if you would like to chat about potential methods and ways to increase profits, reduce risk and cut costs we would love to talk to you.

Have a great month!

Cloud, cloud and more cloud! That was the major theme of the Accountants Technology Showcase Australia in Melbourne I attended with a few of our clients earlier in the week. With nearly 260 accounting firms from around Australia and 31 suppliers to the accounting industry it is the biggest event of it’s kind down-under. One of the highlight sessions for me was the CEO Q&A. They had a panel consisting of:

Tim Reed – CEO of MYOB
Mike Chisholm – CEO of Acclipse
Chris Ridd – MD of Xero
Russell Evans – CEO of Wolters Kluwer Asia Pacific
Alan Osrin – MD of Sage Australia
Brian Coventry – CEO of Advanced Professional Solutions

The panel provided a significant insight into the directions, thoughts, trends and challenges that these companies see facing their industry, accountants and small businesses in Australia in general. What stood out was the different levels of cloud focus between the organisations and just how many different ways you can “skin the cat” when it comes to cloud.

A couple like Xero and Acclipse are pretty much fully cloud based already and offer their solutions as a Software As A Service (Saas). APS is launching a dedicated private cloud for their clients where all of their line of business products will be hosted, delivered and supported by them. Sage was promoting the development of mobility for their products as they were not yet convinced of the right cloud offering for their clients. MYOB on the other hand has a hybrid approach where their business products (as first cab off the rank) will be part desktop and part cloud based giving businesses the best of both worlds according to them.

Lastly Wolters Kluwer offered a bit of cloud, mobility and staying on premise so they were trying to cover every angle. Plus since they bought Business Fitness the makers of HowNow it is clear their intention is more likely purchasing those companies to build up their offering.

For those not in accounting the trend is no different. You just need to look at the latest survey results coming out like this one by IDC showing that 20.6 percent of SME’s and enterprises are currently using cloud computing, 32.4 percent are planning to use it within the next six to 12 months and 41.2 percent after 12 months.

So the trend is there, the suppliers are there and the next question is will you be there? Before you make that choice let us help you identify the right cloud solution as just like in the normal physical IT world not all offerings are created equal and the worst choice is making one without a well thought out and researched plan to follow.

Have a great month!

Looking back on August it is another great example of how the IT industry is constantly shifting and changing at an ever increasing rate. First the big news for a number of our clients that are in the accounting industry is Bain Capital edging out Sage Group to purchase MYOB for a rumoured $1.2 Billion. This is after Archer Capital and some other investors purchased it for what was estimated as $437 Million back in early 2009. Not bad return for 2 ½ years effort! There is a great opinion piece on the potential direction MYOB will head over here whilst speculation on what this will mean for Quicken and APS owner Reckon is over here.

The 2^nd big news item is that the Apple iPhone 5 release date is pretty much all pointing to October next month and potentially on the 4^th according to this article. At Leap we have commented a number of times about the trend for businesses to now have numerous Apple products operating in their environments. Our expectation is this will continue to grow and we are seeing organisations choose to deploy and roll out mobile devices like the iPad rather than a laptop or alternatively for those using Citrix roll out iMac’s on the desktop.

So our 3^rd big news items is we are pleased to announce that Leap Consulting is now a fully certified Apple Reseller for the full range of their products including the iMac, Mac Mini, iPhone and iPad. We have also trained up some our technical staff to be Apple Certified Consultants and will spread this to more engineers over time. So if you are thinking about Apple in your business or even just for home Leap can now help you make the transition to Apple and provide the full backup and support you need.

Lastly we have a new Senior Systems Consultant called Chris A’Pathy on-board. Chris has been in IT for over 11 years and comes to us with a very strong technical background in Citrix and Microsoft along with a passion for helping clients use technology to help grow their business and make their staff more productive.

Have a great month!

Having the right kind of email system in place can do wonders for increasing productivity, especially for people on the go. It’s important to note the distinctions and feature differences of the email systems available to you, so you can be sure that what you’re using is the most efficient and cost-effective solution.

Whether you work from an office or are productive while on the go, email most likely plays a big factor in the way you go about your business. Unbeknownst to many, some types of email systems have certain limitations that by extension can also limit the level of productivity of your business, and especially for people in the organization who must also work while out in the field.

One major issue for many people is synchronicity. Many people need their emails to be accessible on their mobile phones, PDAs, or other mobile devices, and they need them to be properly synchronized with their desktop workstations. The need to constantly update conversations and email threads from mobile devices to desktops with certain types of email can prove to be tedious and unproductive– and some email system types don’t include this ability at all.

Depending on the way you use your email, especially when on the go, having full access and full control of your account can define how productive you and others in your organization can be. Besides providing a much better degree of synchronization and integration with mobile devices, certain types of email systems also have features for sharing and collaboration features that allow you to set schedules and share files from your mailbox, as well as central storage for emails that allows you to access your account seamlessly with any mobile device, regardless of where you are located.

Of course, having a full-featured email system might not be best for everyone. The key is to know whether adapting a more bare-bones system is cost-effective for your business (especially in the long run). Sometimes the top of the line may be needed, and sometimes all you need is a bit of tweaking on your less fully featured system. Not sure which is best? Call us and we’ll be glad to sit down with you and assess what kind of email system is best suited for you and your business.

The proliferation of websites and social media tools is making the job of monitoring what’s being said about you online increasingly difficult to do. But you need to somehow make sense of the sea of information available in these online tools, because depending on what’s being said—it can have either a helpful or a damaging effect on your reputation or your business. Here are some tools to help you.

Besides your own eyes and ears, there are plenty of tools—for free or for a price—available to help you monitor your presence online. The simplest of these is your familiar search engines such as Google or Bing. By simply searching online, you can find where your name or your company’s name appears in various websites. With Google in particular, you can set up “alerts” which will email you when a specific word or term appears in their website index.

What words or terms should you use? Start with your name, or your company name, then try the name of your products and/or services, and maybe even the names of your employees, directors, and other stakeholders. It might also be helpful to search for the competition as well. As results come in you can refine your search by expanding or narrowing the scope of terms you would like to search or be alerted on. If you want to be able to search across all different search engines and not just one or two, you can use Monitor This.

Next you can use specialized website or social media monitoring tools to search only specific sites or services as opposed to the entire Internet. One example is Greplin, which allows you to search all of your accounts or accounts that you own. This is very helpful to be able to execute highly filtered searches on specific information in your Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn accounts, or your blog. Another option is Rollyo, which allows you to set up your own specialized search engines that cull content from public or open websites of your choosing.

Other more generalized tools include RSS feed readers—which allow you to consume news or information feeds from news sites or blogs. Examples include Newsgator.com, Bloglines.com, Google Reader or Pluck.com. Other generalized tools include those that monitor specific newsgroups or message boards like BoardReader.com, ForumFind.com, Big-Boards.com, BoardTracker.com, iVillage, Yahoo Message Boards, and MSN Money. Still others track changes to content of specific sites (Copernic Tracker, Website Watcher and WatchThatPage.com), as well as their domain information (DomainTools.com and BetterWhois.com).

The really interesting new services actually give you an explicit idea of the status of your reputation—especially if you are a relatively well known name or your business has an established brand. In this category are sites like Amplicate, which monitors general feelings or impressions about brands, businesses, or services; Klout, which tries to measure the influence of individuals based on their social interactions; and SendLove.to, which focuses on celebrities and media personalities.

There are literally dozens more tools you can use to monitor and manage your reputation online. To find out more, a great resource is here at the Duct Tape Marketing blog. If you have any additional suggestions, feel free to let us know!

Interested in setting up your company’s email in the cloud? Here are two options to consider—one from Microsoft, the other from Google. See how they compare.

Google Apps
Google Apps is a service from Google that started in 2006, with the introduction of Gmail—a hosted email service, and which later incorporated other apps such as Google Calendar, Groups, Talk, Docs and Sites. Google Apps allow customers an independently customizable version of these Google products under their own domain name. The entry level option is free, but the package offered for Businesses is a paid service with an annual fee per user and additional storage space.

1. Storage. Gmail, Google Apps’ email service starts with a sizable 7GB of free storage. Business users get 25GB. Bear in mind however that this storage space is shared with any data you have in other Google properties such as Picasa Web Album and Google Docs. Extra space can be bought however starting with USD $5 per year for an extra 20GB of storage. E-mail attachment sizes are limited to 25MB.
2. Calendaring and Task Management. Gmail can be integrated with the overall excellent Google Calendar application. Google Calendar allows you to easily share personal calendars with colleagues, or create shared calendars used by groups of people (such as a calendar to track meeting room reservations, marketing events and others). Google Calendar also offers a built-in, but somewhat underpowered task management tool. Tasks can readily be added with due dates, but not readily shared or cannot be nested or linked with other tasks.
3. Spam filtering, security and reliability. Gmail’s spam filtering features a community-driven system. Email tagged as spam by users help identifies similar messages as Spam for all other Gmail users. Generally the system works well, although some have complained that it can get over aggressive in its filters. In terms of security and reliability—Gmail has been criticized in the past with showing ads in its free Gmail service that display based on key words in the user’s messages—potentially violating their privacy. Its paid service offers however the option of disable these ads. Reliability is generally good with very few, but widely publicized disruptions in service.
4. Usability. Gmail offers a host of unique usability enhancements that make it different from most other mail services. For one for a web app it loads really fast, as Google has been known to studiously optimize web page loading performance for their products. Another is that it offers a threaded view of messages by default. It also uses a starring/labeling system to tag and segregate messages instead of using folders. Another interesting enhancement done recently is the ability to sort messages by “importance” where it learns based on your usage over time what email messages it thinks you think are important.
5. Mobile access. Gmail offers a version optimized for mobile devices, as well as support for a variety of devices for their native mail applications such as iOS and Android.

Overall Gmail is a solid mature choice if you are thinking of moving email to the cloud and are not afraid of being on the bleeding edge of cloud services and technology.

Microsoft Office 365
Microsoft Office 365, like Google Apps, offers a host of applications such as online versions of productivity tools which we all already know and use such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Most however work best when they are used in conjunction with your desktop-installed Office applications. Focusing on email, Office 365 offers a Hosted Exchange service, which transforms the mature, business-proven on-premise application to an on-demand service. Compared to Google Apps, it is quite new—being introduced only last June this year, although its suite of products in an alternate form has been around for much earlier.

1. Storage. Microsoft’s Hosted Exchange email service gives users 25GB of storage. Attachment file sizes are limited to 35MB. Additional storage can be purchased for $2.5 per GB per user per month.
2. Calendaring and Task Management. Exchange integrates a mature feature set for personal productivity including calendaring, resource management, and task management. As an example tasks can be grouped, color coded and easily sorted. Emails can be converted as tasks and so on.
3. Spam filtering, security and reliability. This is an area where perhaps Microsoft easily outshines Google with Exchange’s roots as an enterprise-class application. It offers spam protection, antivirus and others via Microsoft’s Forefore Online Protection for Exchange technology. It offers other features such as more full features user management, identity access management, mail archiving, etc. If you are in a highly regulated industry like financial services or healthcare these features may be essential for your business.
4. Usability. While the web apps of Office 365 is not as fast loading or as slick as Google, it does offer familiarity. Modeled after their desktop brethren, or directly integrating with them—they offer a smoother migration experience for users specially if they have been weaned on Outlook.
5. Mobile access. Like Gmail Microsoft made sure to support a variety of devices on launch, as well as integration with a variety of devices—specially enterprise stalwarts like Blackberry mobile phones.

Overall Office 365 is a solid choice if you are thinking of moving email to the cloud but may be hesitant with changing the apps your users already know and use. Also if you are a business with strict policies related to security and compliance—this service may be something your auditors and IT people may be more comfortable with.

Interested in learning more? Can’t decide which to try? Let us know and find out how we can help get you the right balance between your existing IT systems and infrastructure and the cloud.

It’s the dilemma of many smaller businesses lacking the budget for advertising that many of their bigger competitors have to be able to establish a better presence in a specific market. However, the rise of the use of social networks now allows these smaller firms to reach thousands to millions of people – at a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising and marketing.

One of the most difficult challenges smaller businesses face is having a bigger presence in the market. While many of these companies offer good, quality services at much more affordable rates, they are many times overshadowed by larger firms that have bigger budgets to spend on marketing, advertising, and the like.

Things have changed, though, with the advent of social networking. What was once a simple, social, get-to-know-each-other tool between people on the internet has now evolved into a tool that small businesses can take advantage of in order to get their voices heard.

The gist of social networking for business is the simple concept of reaching potentially millions of people at a mere fraction of what is normally spent on advertising and traditional marketing. The wide reach of social media allows businesses to find their voices and showcase what they can do. The playing field then moves from an unfair balance of advertising budgets to a battle of service quality and value for money, as it should be – and many smaller firms can compete effectively in this arena.

There are many ways to tap into the social networking phenomenon to boost your online presence and aid in your marketing. If you are interested in knowing more about this, please contact us and we’ll be glad to assist you in developing strategies that fit your specific requirements and needs.

While it is the concern of every business to be as cost-effective as possible, it is not a good idea to skimp on your investment in a proper and solid security system for your business data and information. For instance, cost-cutting on your router/firewall might seem like a good idea at the start, but in the long term, it’s a risk you cannot afford to take.

In business, protecting important information and data is paramount. This is why it is recommended for any sort of business to invest in a security system that will prevent any cyber-attacks that might be launched against you.

Unfortunately, though, it’s lost on many that a security system is not just made up of one single thing – software, better staff, better hardware, et cetera. A good and solid security system is composed of several factors working together to create a virtual chain that envelops your business and keeps it safe.

And one of the most underestimated links in this chain is the router/firewall. Many businesses are content using the most basic and cheapest option available on the market, without realizing that their security chain is only as strong as its weakest link. And if you make do with a cheap router/firewall, odds are you’ll get what you pay for – not much.

While basic routers might work fine for homes or individual users, it is a much different scenario when it comes to business operations where basic just doesn’t cut it. Plus, there’s more at stake with business data, so why take the risk with cheap routers that lack the proper security features?

With viruses, malware, and the cyber thieves behind them continuing to grow and evolve, it is important that you understand what it takes to protect your system and your data – and invest in the best solution. Remember that it can take only one incident, one infiltration, to bring your whole business down.

We realize that every system is different and every business has its own specific needs, so if you want to know more about getting the right router/firewall for you, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

For many people, smartphones have become essential tools in conducting not only personal communications, but also for business purposes as well. However, the rise in smartphone use has also increased the number of models released into the market, which can confuse would-be buyers. A few pointers are in order to help put things into perspective.

For many people these days, smartphones have become more of a necessity than a luxury. Being able to stay in touch through constant access to the internet and the thousands of mobile smartphone applications available has made smartphones an indispensable tool.

But with the boom in smartphone use, there also comes a conundrum for many: Which smartphone should I get? With so many choices out there, it’s becoming difficult and confusing to pick the right one. Here are a few quick and simple tips that you might find useful when canvassing the market:

1. Know what you want.
What do you need a smartphone for? Each handset has its own strengths and weaknesses. There are smartphones that integrate email and web browsing and put more focus on multimedia such as audio and video – while there are other no-frills, no-nonsense models that trim features down to those that are the most basic and essential.

2. Consider your carrier.
Carriers are important because there are some smartphones that are only available with certain carriers, or carriers that limit certain features of a particular smartphone. You do have the option of getting an unlocked phone (meaning the device does not come with carrier requirements), but this has its own set of pros and cons that you have to weigh as well.

3. Get a feel for your choices.
Nothing beats actual experience, so visit local stores to get the physical feel of each phone. Is the keypad big (or small) enough for you? Is the device too thick or too thin? Do you like the user interface or is it too complicated for you? These are just some of the questions that you can answer once you get an idea of how it actually feels to use them yourself.

4. User feedback is important.
Talk not only to sales people but also to other people you know. Your friends and acquaintances have actual experience with various smartphones, so ask them what concerns and issues they have with their particular models.

If you have additional inquiries about how you can better use your smartphone for your business, please give us a call and we’ll be happy to assist you.

Well after a trip to Hamilton Island for the family and I and a trip to Bali for Leigh and his kids we are both refreshed and ready to go. Emily our new trainee starts on Monday along with Aaron our new Systems Consultant. Geoff our new Service Coordinator has been with us two weeks now and many of you will have likely already spoken to him. Aaron, Emily and Geoff will obviously take a short while to find their feet so we appreciate your patience during this period. We still have two newly created additional positions to fill and in the current IT jobs market and with our level of requirements they are not easy to find. So if any of you know an IT person in a support role who is looking for a change we would love to talk to them!

Talking with a number of new clients recently and the common theme amongst all of them was their business is flat out and they can’t keep up. Earlier in the week though I spent time at a seminar and the talk was about how quiet and constricted the market was. On one side they couldn’t hire people quick enough and on the other they weren’t sure if they were going to keep their existing staff due to lack of work. It was one of the most concrete examples of the so called two speed economy talked about in the press that I had come across.

How this is playing out in IT is that decisions to refresh equipment and upgrade servers that used to be tick the box exercise’s are now interwoven with questions about the cloud, hosted servers and virtual computing. With the announcement that the NBN will begin operations in Geraldton, Mandurah and Victoria Park next year companies are even looking at the length and term for Internet connections. Unfortunately there is a lot of misinformation in the marketplace and decisions are being made based on advice that is not future proof, commercially naive or in some cases just plain irresponsible.

So we encourage each of you that are updating your budgets or considering the next steps with your IT to let us spend some time working with you on what the choices and options are now and just around the corner.

Have a great month!