Meet the new members
ASCDI Inside
Cisco
Dell
Energy wars
IBM
Leasing
Microsoft
Sarbanes-Oxley

Meet the new members

RetroFit Technologies
For over 25 years, RetroFit Technologies has been a full-service network integration company providing IT services to small and medium-sized companies, schools and government.  Headquartered in Milford, MA with an office in Meriden, CT, RetroFit has been a leading provider of Managed IT Services; Backup and Disaster Recovery services; IT professional services; deployment and integration; and support and maintenance.   RetroFit holds a well-earned reputation as one of New England’s leading providers of IT services for computer systems, networks, printers, and various peripherals. 

Madeline Doherty, Marketing Director
[email protected]
www.retrofit.com  ^Back To Top

ASCDI Inside

Slumpbuster: Used IT equipment for cheap
Move faster and take more risks. Those are lessons that Vibrant Technologies CEO Jennifer Larson learned during the dotcom bust. So when she saw the beginnings of an economic slowdown last year, Larson was ready to pounce by acquiring new inventory for her company, which sells used IT equipment. The Minnetonka, Minn., firm earmarked $1 million for a buying spree, scooping up used routers and servers on the cheap as companies began downsizing and selling off unneeded equipment. Increasing her stockpile of goods from $3.5 million to $4.5 million leaves Larson prepared for the crush of IT brokers and other firms looking for refurbished units to outfit their offices at a discount. She is also bolstering staff to 50 from 40 to handle the rising volume of orders and boosting the marketing budget 25%, to $500,000. As a result, Larson anticipates 2008 revenue of $52 million, up from $45 million last year, and expects sales to explode 40% in 2009. Larson knows that her situation is unique because demand for her products spikes during downturns. But she also knows that just like other small-business owners, if she doesn't innovate and implement smart growth strategies, the slumping economy could crush her.
Visit www.vibrant.com.



Cash for trash
In 2006, Catterton Partners, a Greenwich (Conn.) private equity firm, sensed opportunity in discarded computers and invested $50 million in TechTurn, an e-recycler. TechTurn refurbishes e-waste from companies and sells it to schools, nonprofits and poor countries. It also recycles the precious copper, gold and other materials from inside units it can't revamp. The company booked $40 million in sales last year, and is on track for $200 million by 2010. With 15 truckloads headed each day to its Texas and Virginia facilities, TechTurn is racing to open plants in Chicago, Nevada, Seattle and New Jersey. It all started with a hunch. In the late '90s, Jeff Zeigler saw that Y2K was orphaning fleet loads of functional computers. He suspected there might be an aftermarket for them, and found brisk demand in Europe and Asia. In 1999, with $3,000 in capital and "a name that I grabbed at the courthouse," the 29-year-old Zeigler set up shop as Newmarket IT. Zeigler quickly found that there was also money to be made in cleaning hard drives and recovering metals and plastic. "We can extract 88% of a computer's value before ever getting down to its base commodities," boasts Zeigler. TechTurn puts computers through a thorough diagnostic process and hard-drive cleansing. Everything else is taken apart and recycled to the last ounce.
Visit www.techturn.com.
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Cisco

Cisco announces WebEx online meetings promotional package for small businesses
With gas prices so high today, commuting to the office and traveling to customer sites by car or air has become very expensive. Small businesses and individual professionals feel the pinch acutely, and are seeking new ways to serve customers and interact with colleagues while saving travel expenses. Many are discovering they can take care of business very effectively -- at far less cost -- with WebEx online meetings. WebEx makes it possible for people to share presentations and documents, and demonstrate applications over the web, much like they do in person. They can even share their webcams to create a face-to-face experience. WebEx is a great way to make sales presentations, consult with remote clients, provide training, and have routine staff or project meetings. People can host and join online meetings from any Internet-connected computer, anywhere in the world. A special Meetings Plus promotional package is currently available to small businesses. It is a limited-time offer, and runs through October 25, 2008.
Visit Meetings Plus offer or Try WebEx for free.
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Dell

Dell recovery appears underway
Recent industry data indicates that Dell, Inc. has been successfully executing its five growth priorities. Dell's direct sales model and efficient supply chain process have helped entrench the company as a cost leader, enabling it to offer attractive pricing relative to its competitors. As the U.S. PC market matures, the company is now focused on gaining share in the fragmented international markets and new domestic markets. The company expects to achieve annualized cost savings of approximately $3.0 billion by 2011 from its global operations, and will use these benefits to strengthen its competitive position and improve profitability. However, relative to IBM and Hewlett-Packard, Dell has a high multiple and much greater exposure to the domestic U.S. market. With improved Q109 results, including better than expected top-line growth and good progress on cost reduction initiatives, it appears that a recovery is under way at Dell.
Visit www.dell.com.
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Energy wars

Nortel vs. Cisco: the energy calculator
Nortel has produced an online energy calculator, now available to everyone. The calculator has been used by Nortel and independent consultants for a while. It can be accessed at http://www33.nortel.com/energycalculator/registration.html once you register. So why is this important? Gartner predicts that energy costs will be the second highest bill to IT after salaries within the next year or two. Very few IT departments receive the electrical bill and therefore do not use energy consumption to compare products.

Let’s assume that the calculator is accurate when Nortel and Cisco products are compared. At the March 2008 VoiceCon conference, Nortel had a side-by-side demonstration of comparable Nortel and Cisco products. It was obvious that Nortel used less power. Since this is a Nortel sponsored site, you may be a little skeptical of the results. However, it demonstrates that power consumption should be part of the future RFP. VARs should make energy conservation part of their sales pitch.  As a side note, the cost to cool the IT equipment is not included. Take the energy savings and multiply by .86 to calculate the cooling energy cost reduction and add it to the Nortel calculated savings.

The calculator is discussed in the seminar “Managing and Controlling the IT Power Bill,” presented in Chicago on September 22-23 and New York on December 15-16.
Visit http://www.bcrtraining.com/course-info/mpc.php.^Back To Top

IBM

IBM's Ubuntu deal favors the server
Ubuntu is the latest Linux distro to fall under the loving gaze of systems giant IBM, in its endless march to unseat Microsoft from business desktops and servers. Canonical, the commercial sponsor of the people-friendly Ubuntu, has done a deal with IBM that'll serve Ubuntu well in the enterprise - running business applications. As reported, Canonical will re-distribute IBM's Lotus Symphony, based on OpenOffice.org, with its Ubuntu repositories. Canonical said it would have Lotus Notes install with Symphony using the Ubuntu two-click process. Canonical expects testing to be done in September and general availability with the release by IBM of a Lotus Notes client for Debian this autumn. The question is whether Canonical will also provide support for Symphony, a free product from IBM that the systems giant supports. Canonical is likely to turn to a third-party to provide this although it's likely to resell Symphony support, the company said. Canonical and Ubuntu are finding growing favor with IBM, which wants its applications running on Linux distros against Microsoft's Windows and business applications. So far, for example, IBM's DB2 has been certified on Ubuntu. IBM's endorsement is great for Ubuntu, which - with Red Hat and Novell both conspicuous by their absence - was the Linux distro that owned this year's LinuxWorld. It re-enforces Canonical's long-term objective of running more business-critical applications.
Visit www.ibm.com or www.canonical.com.
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Leasing

CIT's core commercial businesses reflect impact of difficult period
CIT's recently filed 10-Q for period ended June 30, 2008 shows that its commercial finance business revenues and net income declines were mostly the result of poor performance reported by its corporate finance and vendor finance business segments. An analysis of the first six months 2008 revealed that CIT's corporate finance revenue and net income were off 42% and 87%, respectively from the same period last year. Revenues for the first half were $455.8 million compared to $784.3 million for the first six months last year. Net income was $38.5 million, down from $299.4 million. Similarly, the company's vendor finance business revenue was $546.4 million, off 26% from last year's first six months revenue performance of $734.0 million. More dramatic, however, was this year's first half net income of $17.6 million, which was off about 88% from last year's net income of $146.5 million. Higher provisioning charges of $50.8 million compared to last year's $16.2 million was partially responsible for the decline. Overall, CIT's commercial finance business segment revenue and net income were $1.8 billion and $291.5 million, respectively down from $2.2 billion and $657.8 million in the first half of 2007.
Visit www.cit.com.
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Microsoft

Microsoft promises SP 'milestone' for Visual Studio 2008
Microsoft has said SP1 - like its predecessors - is no ordinary SP. Ian Ellison-Taylor, general manager for Microsoft's presentation platforms and tools team, called SP1 a "pretty big milestone" because it quickly connects web-side applications to databases through a new framework. SP1 also cuts the size of the .NET Framework 3.5, which was tailored for Windows Vista, by 85 per cent to make it easier to download and run on Windows XP machines. According to Ellison-Taylor, the SP introduces an ADO entity framework that lets you program using high-level objects, picking your database and tables, and that does the heavy lifting by connecting to and sucking in data. The framework talks to the database and pulls in the objects for connection to an ASP.NET template. You edit data on the site, and changes will be updated inside the database. SP1 will reduce the amount of time spent manually coding and linking to connect, and then synchronize changes between the website and the server, so you can get on with scripting the interface.  Out of the box, SP1 will connect to SQL Server 2008, MySQL, IBM's DB2 and Oracle, and there's a pluggable framework for connection to other databases.
Visit www.microsoft.com.
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Sarbanes - Oxley

Real-time log and security event management for IBM platform
LogRhythm and The PowerTech Group, Inc. have announced a strategic partnership to provide comprehensive log and security event management for customers running the IBM AS/400 (also known as IBM i, iSeries, and System i) . The integration of LogRhythm’s log and event management system with PowerTech Interact delivers real-time visibility into and management of system, device, application, database and network log data. The integration of LogRhythm and PowerTech Interact enables organizations to centrally collect, analyze, correlate and manage real-time security events from their IBM AS/400 and System i platforms with log data from other sources in their network. PowerTech Interact gathers security events from the audit journal, operating system, and network, and forwards them in real time via syslog to the LogRhythm system for analysis, correlation, alerting, reporting, and archiving. Unlike alternative approaches that use batch ftp flat file transfers, the LogRhythm-PowerTech solution provides real-time visibility into security events.
Visit www.logrhythm.com or www.powertech.com.
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