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Letter from the
President
Spring has been busy at UDI! We’ve been planting the seeds for some
great programs that will launch this summer. In April, I traveled to
Orlando for VentureTech Network’s Member Conference sponsored by
Ingram Micro. I got information about industry trends and end-user
demands that will help me plan how best to deploy UDI’s resources to
meet YOUR needs. Just last week, two of our engineers attended “EMC
World” and returned armed with some great tools and information.
They attended classes and even completed additional certifications.
Back at home, our Marketing Department has been hard at work on 2
great events for June. First, we’ll be hosting a seminar called “Hit
a Home Run with IP Communications” on Friday June 5th from 2-5pm.
Several of our partners are coming together for this great session
on voice, data, and video. Attendees will receive 2 free tickets for
the Zephyr’s game that night. Then, on June 10th we’re sponsoring an
“eDiscovery” seminar with another partner. We’re happy to be able to
bring these informative sessions to our customers with the help of
our partners – all industry leaders offering best-in-class
solutions. Here’s to a long and productive summer!
Jim Perrier |
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Rid Your Business of
Software Piracy: 7 Tips
by Monte Enbysk
reprinted with permission from the Microsoft Small Business
Center
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Pirates still roam freely in the ocean of software out
there, but if your business is among the pirates, it could
end up costing you literally and figuratively.
You may very
well be a smart, community-minded business owner. But if
your company is using pirated software — and you condone it,
you aren't aware of it or you don't really give a rip —
you're not a responsible business owner. And you are taking
unnecessary risks.
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No, you're not
alone. In the United States, about one-fourth of the
software programs used today by businesses are illegal
copies, according to the statistics from the Business
Software Alliance (BSA), an active industry group. For U.S.
small businesses, those with 100 or fewer employees, the
piracy rate is even higher: about 40%. While those numbers
are bad enough, the piracy problem worldwide is worse —
although software piracy worldwide has decreased since 1994,
some $13.08 billion was still lost in 2002 due to pirated
software.
Read more |
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Business value of Social
Media part 1: online networking
reprinted with permission
from the HP Small Business Center
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If you could
connect to the world’s business professionals, in the time
it takes to check your email, wouldn’t you? Welcome to the
world of online networking, where valuable business
connections are made every day on social and professional
networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin.
Social and
professional networking simply refers to the interaction
between a community of people who share a common interest.
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Through these personal connections you make with an
otherwise impersonal medium, you can give your business a
personality, build brand awareness, and equally importantly,
tune in to what people are saying about you.
The ability to
create your own online networks through sites like Ning, has
made it difficult to distinguish which online communities
will help you reach your business goals. We did the leg work
for you, by exploring the difference between social and
professional networking and the business value of both,
analyzing which sites work best, and providing tips to help
you make the most of the free networking resources that
already exist.
Social or
Professional: What’s the difference? |
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Planning
for a Quick Recovery
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Learn about what you can
do to quickly and effectively recover your business' systems in the
event of a disruption.
For most small and
mid-sized businesses, computing systems and electronic information
are necessary to conduct business on a daily basis. You shouldn't
have to think about disasters causing you to lose valuable resources
and data, but the reality is that the risk of unforeseen
circumstances and disruptions to IT systems is always present.
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If
your IT systems go down, it's not only inconvenient, it could cost
your business a substantial amount of money. A study by Forrester
Research estimated that the average cost of downtime for an
e-commerce site is $8,000 per hour.
Read more
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 Success
comes in cans!
Used with permission of Joel H. Weldon &
Associates, Inc.
http://www.SuccessComesInCans.com
Some
said, “It can’t be done!” But “Success comes in CANS, not in
cannots!”
The first
successful cast iron plow invented in the United States in
1797 was rejected by New Jersey farmers under the theory
that cast iron poisoned the land and stimulated growth of
weeds.
In Germany, it was
“proven” by experts that if trains went at the frightful
speed of 15 miles per hour, blood would spurt from the
travelers’ noses, and that the passengers would suffocate
going through tunnels.
Commodore
Vanderbilt dismissed Westinghouse and his new air brakes for
trains with the remark that he had no time to waste on
fools.
Those who loaned
Robert Fulton money for his steamboat project stipulated
that their names be withheld for fear of ridicule were it
known that they supported anything so “foolhardy.”
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