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10/24/12
Why 3rd Party Oracle Application Support Makes Sense
Have you made a rich investment in, and commitment to, your Oracle applications? Perhaps you made this wise investment at a time when you could afford it, and now you are left having to maintain it with quite possibly fewer resources than when you first purchased these applications.
IT budgets are down from one to five percent year-over-year, yet software support and maintenance costs continue to escalate ahead of inflation. Thus, continued pressure on IT budgets and a growing need for savings have business and technology leaders re-examining their software support and maintenance contracts for cost efficiencies
This is precisely where Abtech Support can help. Abtech offers Oracle third party support services (3PM), as well as Oracle E-Business Suite support, Siebel support, and Oracle hosting support. Keep your world-class applications running smoothly and satisfy your company’s tightening fiscal requirements. The best of both worlds!
Business Critical Systems, Database, and Application Support services are where Abtech excels. They are one of North America’s leading 3rd party support organizations with a proven portfolio of Oracle Support and Oracle Managed Services on all major hardware and operating system platforms.
All of their work is performed remotely by US-based Oracle Certified Professionals who are regularly trained and up to date with shifts in technology and functionality. They are not just Oracle specialists, they are proven Oracle experts.
Every organization should consider Third-Party Maintenance (3PM) and unbundling their maintenance contracts.
If you need support with your Oracle applications, including Oracle E-Business Suite, Siebel, and/or Oracle hosting, contact Abtech Support right away.
Read more at: http://www.abtechsupport.com/abtech-application-support-services
08/16/12
Yep, it’s a flux capacitor. Everyone has one (at least according to the IT guy) and it takes a constant source of capital to keep it running at the prescribed 1.2 gigawatts or your whole IT department will not be able to “get to the future”.
Does that sound like the kind of conversation you have with your IT department?
CIO magazine in an article by Roy Harris suggests that “One in four companies fails to conduct ANY IT risk assessment. And 42% say there are areas of their information technology audit plans that cannot be addressed because of a lack of resources and expertise”. A technology readiness audit would present a detailed analysis of where you are and where you need to be in terms that you can absorb. Abtech Systems has thousands of man years of experience in IT management, consultation and architecture.
The Ponemon Institute goes to great lengths to calculate the annual cost of a data breach. Examining 43 different companies in a cross section of industries resulted in an average of $6.65 million. You certainly don’t want to be part of this statistic. I was doing a little research on the web today and found a few startling quips
In 2012 so far, there have been an estimated 13.73 million records exposed in the top 189 breaches of January through June. Here are some scorchers:
- Calif Dept of Child Support Services – exposed 800,000 adult and child records between IBM and Iron Mountain lost in transit. FedEx may have dropped an unsecured container from a truck en route.
- Utah Dept. of Technology Services – exposed 780,000 patient files to hackers (In May, Utah CIO Steven Fletcher resigned)
- In-Home Support Services, CA – exposed 701,000 personal information on individuals receiving home care where unencrypted data was lost in the mail but “some” of the information was found in public.
- University of Nebraska – 654,000 student records from a systems database were revealed to a hacker (suspected student).
- University of North Carolina, Charlotte – 350,000 files that included social security information related to students and faculty was “accidentally made available on an unsecured network for three months”.
- Thrift Savings Plan, Washington DC – exposed 123,000 federal employee records from a security breach during a computer attack resulted in exposure of information concerning $313 Billion in accounts. The company disclosed this 10 months after the breach
Take a look at our assessment and audit section www.abtechsystems.com/small-business and click on ASSESSEMENTS AND AUDITS. We can help keeping you from being a statistic.
daryl
04/04/12
It appears we like to frame choices in terms in dichotomies, or more simply stated questions of “this OR that.” And certainly, as technologies first emerged from their relative birth places, it was easy to choose from one or the other. For example, buyers could consider IBM or Hewlett-Packard, Dell or Gateway, Apple or Microsoft. These giants of technology had a vision that end users would simply buy their platforms from soup to nuts, and never again would these end users so much as look sideways at competing technologies or brands.
But something funny happened on the way to this marketing fantasy, a dream that postulated once consumers at any level, including large enterprises, selected a certain path, they would stick to it forever. Diversity and innovation came along, and combined with changing technologies and lower prices, they began to erode the idea that only a single platform would suffice.
Today we find many types and brands of technology having to “play nice” with each other rather than force consumers to make a choice. You can write a Word® document on an Apple® machine, competing tablets can join the same networks, and you can even have different servers running your business. Perhaps this is your situation?
Abtech realized many years ago that as technologies, brands, and platforms converged, there would be a market need for a single Point-of-Contact company to manage these varying needs. We are truly a one-stop shop, and we are confident our skill sets encompass the entire spectrum of IT needs under your roof.
IBM? No problem. HP? No problem. Cisco router? No problem. You no longer have to have different consultants to manage your IT requirements. It really is possible to have one company do it, and that company is Abtech. Let us come visit you and give you a free evaluation of what it’s going to cost to manage your IT needs. You’ll be surprised at the savings, and you’ll be delighted with our service.
Chocolate is nice. Vanilla is nice. But Spumoni is the reality of today’s IT operations.
03/02/12
In my last blog entry I mentioned something to the effect of; let's wait and see how the tablet market plays out.
Oh silly me. Apparently not many people are waiting to see how it shakes out. They are jumping in to the deep end and hoping they know how to swim. In the Feb 28th edition of the San Diego Union there was a huge article on digital textbook initiatives around San Diego. San Diego County School District has made it known that they will purchase 20,000 ipads for the coming school year. We know that there are several thousand out there already in small pilot programs (some not so small as one Christian school purchased 1,700 just recently). The same pattern is happening across the world.
All of that is great for my Apple stock but, it is unclear today that Apple is the right choice for correct tablet for all of k-12. It might be for 9-12. Consider that you can get three 7” android based devices for the price of one ipad and kids in the k-8 have smaller hands and excellent eyesight. The latter being the essential ingredient for making 7” devices an integral part of education.
I consider myself the prototypical remote learner. I have taken two college classes and read numerous books since Apple announced itunesU which has been about three months. My personal technology stash is the ipad2, itouch2, a lenovo laptop tablet (which I don’t use as a tablet anymore because I lost the styles), a lenovo laptop proper and a desktop. I have an Android phone because Apple doesn’t support SWYPE. Oh, and on my home office desk I have an HP desktop and an HP laptop/workstation which is pretty high end and had some cool apps on it when I bought it fully furnished.
I use the ipad2 for work as a replacement for a laptop which took almost as much time to get used to as giving up red meat. But, both activities have been good for me. I use the pad for email and web and if I need something remotely, I just use a remote terminal session (itap in my case) and works perfectly for applications that run under the Microsoft oligarchy. I use a pretty sophisticated “notes” app which I use constantly. I have some home apps that work for me (like letting me record a program on directv that I forgot I wanted) and a password vault that secures all of my passwords. Oh, and facetime when I’m in a group and chatting with a relative. My grandkids prefer it over the itouch for games so it is pretty popular with them.
Otherwise, I spend 90% of my time on the itouch. I read constantly, take college courses constantly, listen to educational podcasts constantly and facetime every day with my dad. All on the itouch. It slips in my shirt pocket, I can set the font to whatever size I need for the time of day, I plug it into the audio system of my car (still the fm transmitter as my car isn’t new enough to have an ipod dock) and I literally wear the battery down every day because everything works just as well on the itouch as it does the ipad.
I applaud the schools for jumping in. I don’t even worry that they may or may not be making the right choice on platform because two years from now it will all be different (as it should be). The goal here is to get into play. Whether it is Apple of Android – just do it. Consider something like INTELLIGENT PAPERS which is a great app that turns digital textbooks into something that acts like paper. Take notes, highlight, do homework assignments outside the network (the only product that caches the content), and it supports the Flash content that is currently out there.
Oops, that’s right; Apple doesn’t support Flash and probably never will, though I have seen some Flash content working under the SKYFIRE browser. But, therein lays one of the choices you have to make when thinking of what tablet to choose. Apple doesn’t support Flash and a lot of current content (digital textbooks) have extended media in the form of Flash. This, along with the price, makes an Android decision pretty compelling. INTELLIGENT PAPERS works on both platforms and makes content delivery useful and levels the playing field because in most cases you can deliver the same content to both the Apple and the Android devices through your LMS (learning management system ie: Haiku).
I have visited many schools and watched kids in classes across the k-12 spectrum using both Apple and Android tablets. Regardless of the table choice the kids are more engaged, love the fact that they don’t have to lug 70 lbs of schoolbooks around if they are using INTELLIGENT PAPERS and fundamentally are learning more by accident rather than any preconceived evolutionary process of education.
Keep it going! More about the interaction of different educational conditions in the digital domain when I visit next.
02/14/12
I’ve noticed in some of the technology blogs recently that there are a lot of people who aren’t sure that the digital textbook initiative is going to succeed. Frankly, that is what the politicians in England thought about the small group of “rebels” in the Americas in 1775. There wasn’t enough backing by the general population to get behind any kind of revolt. What they failed to see was that the revolt was already well underway before anyone fired the first shot.
If you aren’t deeply involved in the technology it is easy to miss the fact that THIS IS GOING TO HAPPEN. And there is little than anyone can do to impede it. I have visited many school districts in the past few months and I have seen that it isn’t a matter of “if” we are going to do this; it is a matter of “tell me what to do and I will do it”. Many school districts are using existing technology funds to buy tablets and they don’t even have a curriculum to execute. They just don’t want to be standing on the dock watching the cruise ship depart without them. A tether of any sort is better than none.
School administrators often ask, “which tablet is the right one for my school?”. There is some edginess to the question of Betamax vs VHS and trying to make sure they make an intelligent decision but, I don’t even know if you can make that kind of decision today. Tablets are in the infancy of their development cycle. One way to measure the marketing cycle of a product is to reference bananas (daryl, you have clearly gone bananas).
Think of the life cycle of a banana:
- Green banana: not ripe but still useful in a few recipes
- Yellow banana: ripe and ready to go – everyone is eating them
- Spotted banana: some people like them but, definitely heading to the end
- Brown banana: at the end of the lifecycle
There is probably another category but, ewwww.
Tablets are only approaching the green banana phase. They are cool and they are all trying to climb up the elephants leg (Apple) and take him on but, they have a long way to go. The elephant has its own challenges of being big and bulky and only comes in gray, so there certainly are challenges with it as well. But, remember, tablets haven’t even been around for much more than a year and they are all struggling with size, features, price points and delivery in mass quantities.
It's early, let’s watch the banana get ripe and when it is mostly yellow we should start thinking the market is ripening as well and it will be time to make some definitive decisions on which technology will rule. While that goes on – keep buying whatever looks like it will do the job and make it work. I don't think you can make a wrong choice.
daryl
@k16goesdigital
02/13/12
Ok, that is a weird title. I will be the first to agree to that. It turns out that it was a pretty good movie. I remember thinking this is Clint Eastwood and Barbarella versus Ming the Magnificent. It could happen.
Tying two dissimilar things together and deriving some meaning was what I was shooting for. And the real question is, what does the study of American colonization from 1750 to 1776 have to do with digital textbooks? I study that line of history as a past-time and I work in an environment where digital textbooks are becoming a reality. What they have in common is the term REVOLUTION. Where much of the computer industry has been an evolution over the past twenty five years, even the price of a TB of space going from $1.3M in 1994 to $76 in 2011 can only be classified as the evolution of disk technology.
So, what is a revolution in the technology world?
My Sears Electronic Slide Rule sits at home on a shelf right next to my Post Slide Rule. This was a situation where the world of electronics literally put a company out of business. Ross Shafer has written a compelling book, aptly named "Are You Relevant" where he explores how companies of all sizes have gone completely out of business (ie: blockbuster) because they lost their relevance. The same thing happened to Post. One day they were there thinking a $395 calculator would never replace a $30 slide rule, and what seemed like the next day they were wandering the streets - unemployed. Wondering how a calculator could sell for $30.
Digital textbooks are experiencing this same timeline. Standard publishers are scrambling to remain relevant in the new digital world. It is estimated today that 40,000 k-12 students in CA are utilizing tablets. That number will grow to 100x in twenty four months. Four million kids reading books and doing homework on tablets instead of writing love letters in the margins of their school books.
More to come as this is a revolution in education and like most revolutions, once it starts, it is impossible to stop (and there might be some bloodshed along the way).
daryl
@k16goesdigital
02/13/12
There is no doubt, as tablet adoption rates continue to skyrocket, that these devices will soon find their way into our children’s classrooms, if not there already. This had been predicted for several years as the internet grew and school districts invested in the infrastructure to bring it to their classrooms.
But huge advances in Wi-Fi technology (no more wires, Ma!), combined with our hunger for tablet computers such as the Viewsonic Viewpad™, the Lenovo Ideapad™, and Apple’s iPad™, have made it possible for the educational system to begin replacing traditional textbooks with applications published by the very same companies who were previously providing content via books.
Consider the following:
- In less than two years, mobile devices will represent the majority of online activity
- 62% of K-12 students prefer mobile devices over laptops
- High school students spend 80 minutes per day using “apps”- in other words, they are using internet information to actually do something versus merely consuming the internet
- High school students spend 4.6 hours per day on social media
This has a tremendous impact on today’s youth, and for all generations to come. It is entirely possible, and quite likely, that within five years we will see the absorption of the tablet as a standard classroom tool, much like paper, pencils, and a protractor. Backpacks weighing ten pounds or more will disappear, replaced by smarter, lighter, and hardier computers that students will have at all times. If you want to be surprised, do an online search for backpack injuries to students and you’ll know what we mean.
Let’s face it: our children are already carrying technology everywhere they go. Witness teenagers anywhere, and you will find a Smartphone firmly planted in their hands (and it is probably a better device than their own parents are carrying!) This comfort with technology, and their quickness to embrace and understand it, makes tablets in the classroom a natural extension of the use of technology in education. At the risk of sounding cliché, it is indeed a “no-brainer” to enable schools so every child can have a tablet, and instruction can thus be elevated to better reflect our changing society’s use of technology. The sooner we understand this, and the sooner we act, the better our children will be able to compete in a world that is quickly shrinking and where global competition is more intense than ever.
Abtech’s Education Service offering can help guide you through this historic transition from a blackboard-based educational system to a technology-based environment where our children will succeed. Check out our webpage for more information: www.abtechsystems.com/abtech-education.
Time to usher in The Future.
02/08/12
Check out our newest web pages:
Abtech Education http://www.abtechsystems.com/abtech-education
Abtech Education Solutions help educational institutions create, implement, and maintain successful end-to-end technology learning environments.
HP-UX Lifeline Services http://www.abtechsupport.com/hp-ux-lifeline-services
“Customers are justifiably concerned about the future of HP-UX. Our in-house team of certified technicians allows us to offer assistance through every phase of the eventual transition to another platform” says Miles Fleming, VP of Support Services for Abtech.
09/26/11
Having had the experience to work through a real mini crisis a few weeks ago when the lights went out in Southern California, we now have a much deeper understanding of what managed services means in a disaster. I have been preaching Disaster Preparedness for the past six years and people respond to that preaching with; that is all well and good but, it isn’t going to happen here and it’s too expensive.
I suppose it would be wrong to say, “I told you so”. So, I won’t.
It happened here and could happen here again. It could happen anywhere. Natural disasters, regional problems like flooding and tornadoes and hurricanes and anything that touches a datacenter for more than a few minutes can happen in a heartbeat and as we saw, is pretty unpredictable.
One big question after the lights came back on and everyone stabilized a bit is: what was the number one problem as a result of the blackout? Interestingly, the majority of the problems were not catastrophic. They were more annoying than anything because people (managers/owners especially) don’t have a grasp of how mission critical email is until it isn’t there. Corruption of databases was the most prevalent problem but, the power outage was not the cause. The power did go out for 6-8 hours. Far longer than anyone who didn’t have a generator could tolerate. So, even though most everyone had a battery backup, several people didn’t have them connected correctly and when the power went out, the battery backup ultimately failed. Their servers shut down immediately after and many corrupted their databases. All of the customers that contacted us to help get them back on line had battery backup units (BBU) installed.
That’s bad though right? Exchange gets corrupted and how could the batteries have held on for eight hours?
Let’s put this into perspective: battery backup units are not designed to keep your exchange server (or database server – another likely corruptible device) running in an extended power outage. Your CIO would tell you that BBU’s are designed to a) switch over to UPS power when wall power goes away; b) notify the computers in its zone that a power failure occurred and it’s time to shut down gracefully. Let me repeat that important step – SHUT DOWN GRACEFULLY. That is all. If the power is out for more than a few hours it’s just time to send everyone home because they can’t do anything anyway.
Lesson for today, make sure your battery backup units have the software installed in the servers to gracefully shut down when they sense a power failure. Battery backup units are generally not designed to keep the servers up for much longer than 10-12 minutes.
Daryl
@CIOisME
I suppose it would be wrong to say, “I told you so”. So, I won’t.
It happened here and could happen here again. It could happen anywhere. Natural disasters, regional problems like flooding and tornadoes and hurricanes and anything that touches a datacenter for more than a few minutes can happen in a heartbeat and as we saw, is pretty unpredictable.
One big question after the lights came back on and everyone stabilized a bit is: what was the number one problem as a result of the blackout? Interestingly, the majority of the problems were not catastrophic. They were more annoying than anything because people (managers/owners especially) don’t have a grasp of how mission critical email is until it isn’t there. Corruption of databases was the most prevalent problem but, the power outage was not the cause. The power did go out for 6-8 hours. Far longer than anyone who didn’t have a generator could tolerate. So, even though most everyone had a battery backup, several people didn’t have them connected correctly and when the power went out, the battery backup ultimately failed. Their servers shut down immediately after and many corrupted their databases. All of the customers that contacted us to help get them back on line had battery backup units (BBU) installed.
That’s bad though right? Exchange gets corrupted and how could the batteries have held on for eight hours?
Let’s put this into perspective: battery backup units are not designed to keep your exchange server (or database server – another likely corruptible device) running in an extended power outage. Your CIO would tell you that BBU’s are designed to a) switch over to UPS power when wall power goes away; b) notify the computers in its zone that a power failure occurred and it’s time to shut down gracefully. Let me repeat that important step – SHUT DOWN GRACEFULLY. That is all. If the power is out for more than a few hours it’s just time to send everyone home because they can’t do anything anyway.
Lesson for today, make sure your battery backup units have the software installed in the servers to gracefully shut down when they sense a power failure. Battery backup units are generally not designed to keep the servers up for much longer than 10-12 minutes.
Daryl
@CIOisME
09/24/11
It isn't the first time HP has brought in a rich and powerful person to run the company and once again picks someone with no manufacturing skills to run a manufacturing company. I guess the only good news is they got rid of their goofy millstone. Can Meg do what Carly couldn't? Connect with the people within HP?
Now, I’ve got to tell you, I liked Carly. I thought she had the moxy to pull off the biggest merger in the history of the computer industry. And, being a part of that as an HP reseller, I thought the transition was the most seamless integration of two companies ever. EVER. Really, it was well done. But, the people in HP hated her and that was a shame. She wanted to cut divisions that were not profitable and release under achievers and make sales people accountable for their ‘work at home’ jobs. It is no wonder why they didn’t like her.
But, what of Meg? What does she bring to the table besides the fact she is a media attraction and she was in charge of Ebay when it was inevitable to grow anyway? Maybe not, but certainly she doesn’t have the enterprise manufacturing skills of Mark Hurd who’s only problem was in doing his own expense reports. I have the same problem so I certainly can’t fault him there. Where is Lou Platt? Now there was a CEO. I remember meeting him on an HP sponsored cruise around San Diego harbor one time and I was thoroughly impressed that he knew the price of memory. This guy had his finger on the pulse of the company.
It might be easier to bring back Lou than it would be to bring back Bill Clinton but, honestly I would take them both. Here were a couple of guys who understood what it took to run an organization. You talk about the good old days!!
Daryl @CIOisMe @your_CIO
Now, I’ve got to tell you, I liked Carly. I thought she had the moxy to pull off the biggest merger in the history of the computer industry. And, being a part of that as an HP reseller, I thought the transition was the most seamless integration of two companies ever. EVER. Really, it was well done. But, the people in HP hated her and that was a shame. She wanted to cut divisions that were not profitable and release under achievers and make sales people accountable for their ‘work at home’ jobs. It is no wonder why they didn’t like her.
But, what of Meg? What does she bring to the table besides the fact she is a media attraction and she was in charge of Ebay when it was inevitable to grow anyway? Maybe not, but certainly she doesn’t have the enterprise manufacturing skills of Mark Hurd who’s only problem was in doing his own expense reports. I have the same problem so I certainly can’t fault him there. Where is Lou Platt? Now there was a CEO. I remember meeting him on an HP sponsored cruise around San Diego harbor one time and I was thoroughly impressed that he knew the price of memory. This guy had his finger on the pulse of the company.
It might be easier to bring back Lou than it would be to bring back Bill Clinton but, honestly I would take them both. Here were a couple of guys who understood what it took to run an organization. You talk about the good old days!!
Daryl @CIOisMe @your_CIO
