Reading this blog you might start to think I am an Apple fan, and in fairness I probably am. The products just work, the rate that they refresh and innovate puts most companies to shame, and they have a sound business model. They do have faults – stock supply being the number one issue. For some good commentary on all the new Apple TV, Nano, and iPod Touch have a look at the following article from CNN Money.
The iPhone 4 – a nice little evolutionary product, that is both hard to resist and has the right mix between business and personal usefulness. We are currently replacing all iPhone 3Gs with the iPhone 4, and by the end of the year hope to have migrated the whole firm over. iPhone 4 is a step up in terms of speed so we think it is worthwhile from a productivity point of view.
The iPad has been slower to roll out, essentially we are waiting on application support for one of our line of business apps. When that happens, I can see that the team will definitely each want one.
A lot of firms, especially banks at the moment seem to be doing a lot of advertising and trying really hard to communicate how they are better, friendlier, and more flexible. I think a lot of it is rubbish, and actions speak louder than words, and as such BNZ should be given credit for its business banking “Partners” concept, and Rabobank for its being very clear at what it is about.
At IT Partners we also try not to follow the herd, and do a few things differently. A big part of our difference is our people and how we develop them. It is not all IT focused; a good example would be the Roger Steare Seminar later this month – have a look at the following YouTube video as to why.
My experience and feedback from the tech team is that best practice is often easier to implement at clients rather than internally. We have always thought we were reasonably good at keeping our systems at a reasonable level, and certainly from a hardware perspective with both Cisco and IBM equipment it looks pretty good. However we did get application sprawl especially with all the growth we have experienced and my willingness to try new applications.
This month with the move to some new internal management systems, we have managed to turn off a whole lot of legacy systems, thus reducing the number of servers and systems. We also took the time to rebuild all the internal systems including new Active Directory, File and Print, Exchange, SQL and Terminal servers – great to start afresh!
Our Windows Server environment is now almost completely 2008 Server (all x64 and a mix of R2 and R1). We have one remaining 2003 Server, which will be soon moved to 2008.
Many people forget that Vodafone do residential homes and broadband connections. I thought about changing, procrastinated, but then saw the savings. For me at home, it was over 20% reduction in spend. Now Vodafone have added even more value into some of the packages with the ability to add a Vodafone or national number to your account and talk free for up to an hour.
For those of you hanging out for the iphone 4, you can pre-register at: http://www.vodafone.co.nz/iphone/