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Chocolate or Vanilla? Ford or Chevy? IBM or HP?
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.

more green bananas
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.

 

the case of the green banana
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

Cowboys and Aliens
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

The End of the Backpack?
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.Big backpacks are dying

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.

New Web Pages (Education and Lifeline Services)
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.

After just a few hours in the dark -
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
Meg Whitman - Queen of HP?
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
Teaching old dogs new tricks
09/19/11
I have been doing this IT thing for a long time. That makes me older and it should make me wiser as well. Older, I can definitely confirm. Wiser? That might take an outside source to calibrate. I know one thing: technology is moving faster than I have ever seen it. And, I have seen a lot of it. This is an age that will be reviewed on the history web pages (I almost said history books) as a time of unparalleled growth and relentless speed of time to market. It was only two years ago that tablets were a dream in Apple's eye. Two years! It didn't hit the street until April 2010. As of June 2011 over 25 Million have been sold. I don’t think 25 Million paper clips have been sold in that short of a span, let alone a box that averages around $650.

Five years ago Apple stock was barely over $50/share and today it is over $400.

What does this mean to us? We are living in a technology dream. It means we have to keep up or lose our relevance to our customers. I sent my first tweet on Friday and I don’t even know what that means really. I know that in general terms it means I can reach millions of people, I (now) know that there are “skimmers” out there that are looking for key words within tweets that can take your tweet and re-tweet it to an audience of millions. I know that people swear in some tweets and that offends me a little. I’m not above a good swear word to amplify a message but, really, in a tweet about ipads?

I now know that I might be able to pass along some useful information that I learn along the way to my faithful follower (I actually have two already and got picked up by impost whatever that is). In any case, you can follow me on twitter @your_cio which will probably take you back here quite often. I hope to be able to give useful advice without all the babble that takes place out there. I read a lot of technology posts every day and I find there is either an agenda or someone is being paid by the word and doesn’t have any practical experience about what they are writing about. I do and I will share it with my faithful followers.

Cya on the tweet.

Daryl

@your_cio
Reflections and Mysteries
04/11/11

Welcome to the new view of the Abtech website. It was time to reconstruct the site and put it in a format that is in better alignment to what our customers are looking for. And really, who uses a website these days? Customers. My wife gets bored with it in less time than it takes to make a left turn in a NASCAR race. While designing the new site we did spend some time reflecting on the information that was presented and watched the trends for several months on which pages got hit and how long people stayed on them. It was a mystery to why people didn’t dive in and look around more after we spent so much time putting it together. I’m thinking websites should evolve and change every few months but, it does cost a lot of money and a significant amount of time and manpower to get there. We hope this new format will help you get more intimate with our offerings and challenge you to look more deeply into the changing tapestry of IT today. It is certainly changing, and fast. I have been doing this a long time and reflecting back on my career I can see some things that just boggle my mind. Thirty years ago Shugart released the first 5MB 5/14” drive but the real seller was the Morrow 26MB drive that would only cost $5,000 (that is $193,000/GB if you do the math) as compared to a 1TB drive last year that came in at an amazing $.07/GB. That is a cost decrease of 3,000,000%. That is an amazing number but just take a moment to reflect on the things we didn’t have just twenty years ago – • The web • Email • VoIP • Unix in the enterprise Well crap, you know all that. How technology moves that fast is a mystery to me. But, we have a lot of smart people who can explain how all this technology stuff works. Keep an eye on the blog and we will introduce you to some cool technologies – like email. Daryl

 

Why did we change our website?

Posted: 04/11/11

Welcome to the new website.  For those of you who have been our customers for years (or decades, for that matter) and know what we have done for you in the past, the additional services you see today may be surprising to you. Let me explain why and how you see such a radical departure from the typical website that you saw for the last several years:

Most of our customers know us an independent support provider of enterprise hardware systems, storage, and operating environments saving them thousands of dollars a month to reallocate towards more important projects. For some, these services have expanded into relocations, performance consulting, technology refreshes, and in emergency situations, a lifesaver. While we were performing these services for our traditional clients, we had been growing new service areas that we did not market as forcefully just so that when we did we would be able to do so with confidence.

That time is now.

The goal that we've accomplished and that you see today on the website is that Abtech has services and solutions at every level of the IT stack. We've expanded into application support, staffing, database services, and many more. Whereas most companies can only do a certain layer of the stack, Abtech is full service, independent, and horizontally focused.

I'm proud to say that Abtech has become a full IT lifecycle management company over the last decade and is completely independent of the OEMs. We've discovered that our customers appreciate a complete solution from one partner who takes responsibility for the long haul. See the nifty graphic below? If you're like me, you see these graphics and immediately think that some marketing person put together a highly theoretical (and quite frankly, completely removed from reality) illustration of how a customer centric solution methodology should look like, not what actually happens in a company. That's why I put this one together myself based on how I've seen our account managers, engineers, and field service force work with our clients every day for the 18 years I've been with Abtech.

There is nothing magic here, no fancy acronym for a process or method, no "marketecture" or fancy meaningless words, just plain listening to our customers, technically validating concerns, and taking the support responsibility for the solution after it's in place.

Please explore our site and feel free to inquire as to how we can help you as a new customer or how we can help you even more if you are one of our valued returning clients.

Dana Collins
President