The outcomes of most of our decisions are heavily dependent on timing and trade-offs. With the economic outlook improving, now is a great time to get positioned to catch the next wave of business activity.
Over the past two years, the uncertainty of the economic environment has made our management decisions more complex, often with a need to be prudent with our resources.
Many of our clients have experienced difficulties with business volumes and revenues causing deferred projects and investments. We are now seeing renewed consideration of those deferred projects. In some cases, our clients are looking to get new capabilities into production before business volumes increase. Others that had delayed actions are finding it necessary to replace older systems, expand capacity or add new application functions.
The good news is that the trend of decreasing cost of information technology with increasing functionality has continued for applications, system software and hardware. If it is now time for you to extend your IT capabilities, you have the advantage of new application versions in Windows 7 for workstations, Windows Server 2008 R2 for servers, SQL Server 2008, and Exchange 2010. There are also many new and appealing features and options in Dynamics SL and Dynamics GP.
Deltan’s objectives remain unchanged. Our efforts are directed to assisting clients to use the most effective solutions for your needs. Our recommendations are based on your requirements with a strong emphasis on capabilities and economics.
Now is a good time for us to discuss your business expectations for 2010 and assure that your information systems plans align with your business strategies.
The challenges we all face are many. Our mutual efforts and collaboration are key to the best possible results. We look forward to working with you in 2010.
David Echols
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Email Archiving - Can your organization afford not to archive?
Can your organization retrieve several years of email communication by a terminated employee if needed? If your company was compelled to produce electronic communications, such as emails, in support of a legal proceeding could your organization comply? Are you willing to take that risk?
Some statistics show that as much as 60 percent of business critical data now resides in email, making it the most important repository of data your company may own. This huge amount of data, which grows on a daily basis, can translate into a significant burden on corporate storage resources.
This fact, combined with a recent onslaught of regulatory compliance rules, is forcing organizations to take a deeper look at email storage, retention and archiving practices. As email messages increasingly take center stage in headlines and lawsuits, email has become the electronic equivalent of DNA evidence.
Having a good email archiving system in place, which records all email data before it reaches the intended recipient, is very different than archiving at the Outlook or tape backup level. An email archiving system records ALL inbound, outbound, and inner office emails before it can be deleted by a user.
Why should your organization be archiving email?
Email Retrieval: The ability to recover email that had previously been deleted by an employee or purged when an employee left the company can be critical. With an enterprise archiving solution all email is captured and stored before an employee can delete it.
Electronic Discovery (E-Discovery) and Litigation: If you had to produce a series of emails from several years ago in order to support your legal case could you do so? In a recent survey on message archiving issues, Osterman Research, Inc. found that:
- In one study, more than 61% of IT organizations polled referred to email or IM archives or backup tapes to support their organization’s innocence in a legal case. More than 55% of organizations polled have been ordered by a court or regulatory body to produce employee email or instant messages.
- Regulatory Compliance: The archiving of email messages has become a business requirement in some industries driven by numerous federal and state regulations including Sarbanes-Oxley, SEC 17a 3-4, HIPAA, and NASD rules. These regulations are forcing businesses to retain email just as they must retain other formal corporate records, or face penalties that can include significant fines or even criminal charges.
- Storage Management: The pressure to increase storage limits continues to grow as the amount of email sent each day, as well as the size of messages and attachments, increases. By automatically offloading data into an archive you can dramatically help improve the efficiency of messaging servers, their reliability and the speed with which they deliver messages.
Some statistics show that as much as 60 percent of business critical data now resides in email, making it the most important repository of data your company may own. This huge amount of data, which grows on a daily basis, can translate into a significant burden on corporate storage resources.
This fact, combined with a recent onslaught of regulatory compliance rules, is forcing organizations to take a deeper look at email storage, retention and archiving practices. As email messages increasingly take center stage in headlines and lawsuits, email has become the electronic equivalent of DNA evidence.
Having a good email archiving system in place, which records all email data before it reaches the intended recipient, is very different than archiving at the Outlook or tape backup level. An email archiving system records ALL inbound, outbound, and inner office emails before it can be deleted by a user.
Why should your organization be archiving email?
Email Retrieval: The ability to recover email that had previously been deleted by an employee or purged when an employee left the company can be critical. With an enterprise archiving solution all email is captured and stored before an employee can delete it.
Electronic Discovery (E-Discovery) and Litigation: If you had to produce a series of emails from several years ago in order to support your legal case could you do so? In a recent survey on message archiving issues, Osterman Research, Inc. found that:
- In one study, more than 61% of IT organizations polled referred to email or IM archives or backup tapes to support their organization’s innocence in a legal case. More than 55% of organizations polled have been ordered by a court or regulatory body to produce employee email or instant messages.
- Regulatory Compliance: The archiving of email messages has become a business requirement in some industries driven by numerous federal and state regulations including Sarbanes-Oxley, SEC 17a 3-4, HIPAA, and NASD rules. These regulations are forcing businesses to retain email just as they must retain other formal corporate records, or face penalties that can include significant fines or even criminal charges.
- Storage Management: The pressure to increase storage limits continues to grow as the amount of email sent each day, as well as the size of messages and attachments, increases. By automatically offloading data into an archive you can dramatically help improve the efficiency of messaging servers, their reliability and the speed with which they deliver messages.
Windows 7 Has Arrived
Microsoft Windows 7 is here and what a difference a few years makes. Windows 7 is receiving solid reviews and appears to be one of the strongest entries ever in the Microsoft Windows product set.
Deltan Group has been running Windows 7 in-house since the platform was in beta and we are quite pleased with the product. In addition to adding many valuable features, Microsoft obviously took great pains in producing a far more streamlined operating system. Windows 7 is less resource intensive and more stable than its predecessor, Windows Vista.
The new features of Windows 7 are too numerous to list in a
newsletter, but here are few:
- Aero Peek and Aero Snap: Without minimizing or closing applications Aero Peek provides the ability to view application, document, or web content open in other windows by a simple mouse over another open application, document or web page. Aero Snap can greatly enhance document processing without the need for dual monitors, providing the ability to “snap” windows or documents to the left or right of the screen so that multiple documents can be viewed simultaneously.
- DirectAccess: If used in combination with a Windows Server 2008 R2 corporate server, DirectAccess increases remote user productivity by enabling remote users to seamlessly and securely access the corporate network any time they have an Internet connection, without requiring a virtual private network (VPN) connection. DirectAccess also enhances the security and flexibility of the corporate network infrastructure, enabling IT professionals to remotely manage and update corporate computers whenever they connect to the Internet—even when users are not logged in.
- Mobile Broadband: Windows 7 provides plug-and-play access and a consistent user interface for mobile broadband connectivity whether a user connects with a built-in or external wireless broadband data card. With Mobile Broadband, Windows 7 removes the requirement for any additional software to connect to mobile broadband networks.
With regard to compatibility with Microsoft Dynamics ERP systems, Windows 7 is fully compatible with Dynamics SL v7 FP1 and Dynamics GP v10.
Deltan Group has been running Windows 7 in-house since the platform was in beta and we are quite pleased with the product. In addition to adding many valuable features, Microsoft obviously took great pains in producing a far more streamlined operating system. Windows 7 is less resource intensive and more stable than its predecessor, Windows Vista.
The new features of Windows 7 are too numerous to list in a
newsletter, but here are few:
- Aero Peek and Aero Snap: Without minimizing or closing applications Aero Peek provides the ability to view application, document, or web content open in other windows by a simple mouse over another open application, document or web page. Aero Snap can greatly enhance document processing without the need for dual monitors, providing the ability to “snap” windows or documents to the left or right of the screen so that multiple documents can be viewed simultaneously.
- DirectAccess: If used in combination with a Windows Server 2008 R2 corporate server, DirectAccess increases remote user productivity by enabling remote users to seamlessly and securely access the corporate network any time they have an Internet connection, without requiring a virtual private network (VPN) connection. DirectAccess also enhances the security and flexibility of the corporate network infrastructure, enabling IT professionals to remotely manage and update corporate computers whenever they connect to the Internet—even when users are not logged in.
- Mobile Broadband: Windows 7 provides plug-and-play access and a consistent user interface for mobile broadband connectivity whether a user connects with a built-in or external wireless broadband data card. With Mobile Broadband, Windows 7 removes the requirement for any additional software to connect to mobile broadband networks.
With regard to compatibility with Microsoft Dynamics ERP systems, Windows 7 is fully compatible with Dynamics SL v7 FP1 and Dynamics GP v10.
Dynamics GP 2010 Scheduled for May Release
Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 (GP 11.0) is expected to be released in May. Some of the key new features in version 2010 like native emailing of P.O.'s and printing invoices via MS word will give companies a reason to embrace the GP 2010 upgrade.
Workflow in GP 2010 will no longer require Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server (MOSS) but will work with Windows Sharepoint Server included with Microsoft's server operating systems. This removes cost and experimentation barriers for workflow in Dynamics GP, which should help drive greater adoption of version 2010.
The upcoming release of Office 2010 will allow even tighter links with GP 2010 and provide some significant improvements for Business Intelligence.
Microsoft's PowerPivot tool for Excel 2010 will bring incredible power and ease of use to self service Business Intelligence inside of Microsoft Excel. When combined with Dynamics GP's Analysis Cubes, companies will have faster and easier ways to analyze their operations than ever before.
Windows 7 is fully supported in Dynamics GP 10.
Workflow in GP 2010 will no longer require Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server (MOSS) but will work with Windows Sharepoint Server included with Microsoft's server operating systems. This removes cost and experimentation barriers for workflow in Dynamics GP, which should help drive greater adoption of version 2010.
The upcoming release of Office 2010 will allow even tighter links with GP 2010 and provide some significant improvements for Business Intelligence.
Microsoft's PowerPivot tool for Excel 2010 will bring incredible power and ease of use to self service Business Intelligence inside of Microsoft Excel. When combined with Dynamics GP's Analysis Cubes, companies will have faster and easier ways to analyze their operations than ever before.
Windows 7 is fully supported in Dynamics GP 10.
What's New in Dynamics SL
The latest version—Microsoft Dynamics SL 7.0—empowers your
employees to be even more productive. It also helps increase
effectiveness by providing the tools your people need to view and
process data based on the permissions that you establish. Some of
these new features include:
Pay-When-Paid - allows you to connect AP vouchers to AR invoices and will not release the AP voucher for payment until the AR invoice has been paid.
Quick Send - allows you to email or fax purchase orders, invoices, AR statements, OM order confirmations, and OM Shipping notices.
Hard Close - gives you the option to prevent postings to previous periods or fiscal years by using this feature to lock down prior period and fiscal year reporting.
Business Date Security – provides additional security to control access to the business date. Only the SYSADMIN and users granted access to this screen are able to modify the business date.
Windows 7 is fully supported with Dynamics SL FP1.
Dynamics SL 7 is the first Microsoft ERP product to be fully .Net compliant.
employees to be even more productive. It also helps increase
effectiveness by providing the tools your people need to view and
process data based on the permissions that you establish. Some of
these new features include:
Pay-When-Paid - allows you to connect AP vouchers to AR invoices and will not release the AP voucher for payment until the AR invoice has been paid.
Quick Send - allows you to email or fax purchase orders, invoices, AR statements, OM order confirmations, and OM Shipping notices.
Hard Close - gives you the option to prevent postings to previous periods or fiscal years by using this feature to lock down prior period and fiscal year reporting.
Business Date Security – provides additional security to control access to the business date. Only the SYSADMIN and users granted access to this screen are able to modify the business date.
Windows 7 is fully supported with Dynamics SL FP1.
Dynamics SL 7 is the first Microsoft ERP product to be fully .Net compliant.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Introducing the Deltan Blog!!!
We're excited to be joining the blogging community! Our objective is to focus on those IT topics which pertain to and impact the business community such as: server, desktop, database, collabortation, and ERP / accounting system products.
Deltan Group has been providing technology solutions to middle and small market businesses since 1993. We are a Dallas based Microsoft Gold Certified Partner with emphasis on Managed Services, business computer systems support, Microsoft Dynamics GP (Great Plains) and Microsoft Dynamics SL (Solomon).
Stay tuned for up to date information regarding technology that impacts the business community...
Deltan Group, Inc.
Dallas / Fort Worth, TX
sales@deltan.com
214-987-3030
Deltan Group has been providing technology solutions to middle and small market businesses since 1993. We are a Dallas based Microsoft Gold Certified Partner with emphasis on Managed Services, business computer systems support, Microsoft Dynamics GP (Great Plains) and Microsoft Dynamics SL (Solomon).
Stay tuned for up to date information regarding technology that impacts the business community...
Deltan Group, Inc.
Dallas / Fort Worth, TX
sales@deltan.com
214-987-3030
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