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Hidden Technology Costs

If you walk a straight line then take four short left turns, what will you have seen? Spotting hidden challenges can take some effort and preparation. IT projects are peppered with hidden costs so don't just turn your head and think you have a 360 degree view.

Maintain a checklist of expense areas and vet them well before signing off on a project. Hidden costs can significantly impact a project's budget and are often overlooked in initial planning. Some common hidden costs in technology include:

  • Training and Onboarding: Introducing new…
    Hidden Costs
    Saturday, March 16th 2024
DemoTech Drives Democracy

In the United States, elections are a cornerstone of democracy, and technology plays an increasingly vital role in ensuring fair, secure, and efficient electoral processes. Several tech vendors provide products and services that support various aspects of US elections, from voter registration to ballot counting. Here, we'll explore some common tech vendors and the products they offer in support of US elections.

 

 

 

 

ES&S (Election Systems & Software), https://www.essvote.com/:

  • Voting Tech
    Monday, March 4th 2024
Job Seekers Guide To Leveraging AI

Many ear grabbing coffee conversations these days circle around employment. The question de jour is why are resumes not getting noticed. And AI seems to be the culprit. But this can make finding a job even easier.

As HR departments continue to adopt Machine Learning solutions to filter applicant resumes, they also assume the responsibility of training the solutions. Which opens the question, "what data is given to a ML solution designed to filter resumes?" Well, past and present resumes deemed top level by the same HR department, of course. And there lies an opportunity for you as a…

AI Training
Monday, February 19th 2024
Cloud Departures. Back to Colo They Go.

Last year brought attention to cloud departures and the trend looks for be ongoing this year. Basecamp CTO David Heinemeier Hansson gave a detailed interview on why he left the cloud. Lower hardware costs deliver a better return after migrating to on-premise rather than continuing to pay the same or more for comparable cloud services. When cloud services were launched by Amazon, Microsoft and Google in the early 2000's the average cost of storage was…

Cloud Walk
Monday, February 12th 2024
AI Driven Grammy Awards. At Least Milli Vanilli Made Physical Appearances.

The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into the Grammy Awards, one of the music industry's most prestigious events, has significantly transformed various aspects of the production, ranging from content creation to audience engagement. AI technologies play a pivotal role in enhancing efficiency, personalizing experiences, and providing valuable insights into the dynamic world of music and entertainment.

Content Curation and Recommendation:
AI algorithms are employed to curate content for the Grammy Awards, assisting in the selection of nominees and…

Computer Generated Concert
Sunday, February 4th 2024
Implementing digital transformation is a complex and multifaceted process.

Similar words like Administrate, Administer, Preventative, Preventive are used interchangeably in the office environment. They can be used to frame common goals but convey different actions depending on the term used. When planning digital transformation it is important to be aware that action is the secret sauce for success. Clear communication of action will provide reference points that guide the transformation at the strategic and tactical level.

Implementing digital transformation is a complex and multifaceted process that involves integrating…

Digital Transformation
Tuesday, December 26th 2023
Striking the Balance: Crafting Service Level Agreements for Cost Minimization

Introduction:

In today's fast-paced business environment, organizations are increasingly relying on Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to define the parameters of service delivery. While SLAs are crucial for ensuring quality and performance, there is a growing need to structure these agreements in a way that minimizes costs without compromising on service standards. Striking the right balance between efficiency and expenditure is a delicate task that demands meticulous planning and consideration.

Define Clear Objectives:
One of the first…

SLA
Tuesday, December 19th 2023
Occultism in Tech. Is Your Organization in Need of a Grand Master?

The Golden Ratio has become a magical number in mathematics and pop culture. A number associated with mystical standards such as music frequency. The current base frequency used in music is 440Hz. According to mystics the natural frequency is 432Hz which resonates in the cochlea of the ear which itself is designed around the Fibonacci Spiral which is based on the Golden Ratio. If it is correct then why are not advertisers playing music tuned to 432Hz? They indeed are with the hope of mesmerizing listeners into buying another set of Ginzu knives.

Web…

Fibonacci Spiral
Tuesday, December 12th 2023
Godzilla Doesn't Need a Thumb. Do You?

Application rationalization will uncover the answer.

What is the purpose of your thumb? Before Touchpads entered the scene, I will argue thumbs were a mere instrument for balance. Consider all of the applications in your organization. What is their purpose? Are they serving business needs? Could costs be reduced by retiring applications and moving staff to a better fit asset?

Questions around application rationalization are ongoing and should not be ignored for any extended period of time. Organizations need to have well developed matrixes by which to measure…

G-Zilla
Monday, December 4th 2023
How Many Wars Before We All Fall Off The Planet?

War is an unfortunate part of human history. Driven by the desire of a few to control the rest. It produces more death than disease and famine. Mankind has parted with many of its own due to wars, natural causes and disease. Death leaves more than memories behind. It also leaves behind organic mass. On average about 136 pounds of such mass per deceased.

Assuming a constant growth rate and birth rates of 80 per 1000 through 1 A.D., 60 per 1000 from 2 A.D. to 1750, and the low 30s per 1000 by modern times, 105 billion people have lived on earth, of whom 5.5% are alive today.

Earth Mass
Tuesday, November 7th 2023
The Role of Information Technology at Costco. Why Borrowing Your Neighbor's Member Card is a No No.

Introduction

Costco, the American multinational corporation renowned for its membership-based wholesale model, has evolved into a global retail giant with over 800 warehouses across the world. Behind this immense success lies a well-orchestrated symphony of Information Technology (IT) systems that drive the company's operations, enhance customer experiences, and optimize supply chain management. In this article, we will delve into the world of Costco's information technology, exploring how it powers this retail juggernaut.

The Foundation of Costco's IT…

Shop
Thursday, November 2nd 2023
VB6 Is Not Going Away Anytime Soon and The Reason Why Makes Sense.

Visual Basic 6 (VB6) was a popular programming language and integrated development environment (IDE) released by Microsoft in 1998. While it's considered outdated and no longer officially supported by Microsoft, there are still situations in which VB6 can be considered useful. Here's an assessment of why VB6 still has some value:

  1.  Legacy Codebase: Many organizations have extensive codebases written in VB6 that still play a critical role in their operations. Rewriting or migrating such code can be expensive and time-consuming. Therefore, maintaining and extending these…
    VB6
    Wednesday, October 18th 2023
Replacing human intelligence with AI didn’t work well for Israel. Your organization needs an AI fail over system.

Israel is the leader in forward technology adoption and capabilities of AI is not overlooked. Deploying AI across all branches of the military positioned Israel away from Human Intelligence and towards an automated data analysis model. The results are in. AI looks to have failed yet once again.

In 2022 Israel declared a new military strategy based on Artificial Intelligence, https://www.c4isrnet.com/artificial-intelligence/2022/02/11/israel-unveils-…

The Voice of the Customer (VOC) and Why it Goes Beyond Lean Six Sigma

Customers “pay the bills,” so it’s important to understand their needs. Customers behavior as key input to strategy and process design. Value driver “levers” are pulled by an external customer. They define the “playing field”. Serve as referee for all competitors. Define “value-added” activity or service. They are always right, even if we cannot meet their needs, or do so profitably.


Who are the customers? Any person or organization that receives a product or service (Output) from the work activities. Those whose needs must be met for a process to be successful? They are…

Voice of the Customer
Tuesday, October 3rd 2023
Unlock your website's full potential with our expert SiteFinity development services, ensuring seamless functionality and user-friendly content management.

Before Progress bought Sitefinity I met with the lead developer and we had a conversation about the CMS architecture. What a surprise it was to learn that focus was on low code but a ton of interfaces are available allowing organizations to customize the CMS to specific needs. I mean down to the level of form controls there are abstractions allowing for custom inputs and labels.

Let’s look at some key points.

Cost

The run rate of…

Special Offer
Thursday, September 28th 2023
Who does Starlink serve? Can your organization benefit?

Starlink is a satellite internet constellation project developed by SpaceX, the private aerospace company founded by Elon Musk. The goal of Starlink is to provide global internet coverage by deploying thousands of small satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO). Can your organization benefit?

The project's ambition is to offer internet access to virtually every corner of the globe, including remote and rural regions where traditional infrastructure is challenging to deploy. This is potentially a paradigm shift in HR sourcing. Skilled workers are scarce and even more difficult to find in…

Application Rationalization
Thursday, September 21st 2023
The Dark Side of Crypto: Unmasking the Risks and Realities of Using Cryptocurrency as Payment

Over 80% of the failed Silicone Valley Bank depositors are involved in crypto startups. When fear set in, SVB depositors lined up to get US dollars out. The main reason being is that wealth from dollar purchases of crypto coins was stored at Silicone Valley Bank in US dollars. The message was clear. Even leaders in the crypto space are saying the dollar is wealth and crypto is whatever you want it to be. Yes, SVB ran out of cash. Cash that purchases crypto and finances the company. If crypto had value nobody would have cared much about SVB failing. Further more, during the SVB crash, there…

Crypto Payment
Monday, September 4th 2023
Disaster Recovery easy peasy method. Stay ahead of the game like Novak Djokovic.

Preparing for eventual misfortune is as a burden at times. Staff are at capacity. Committing weekend time to an unlikely event is aggravating. Burden is accentuated by a final report showing critical operations  fully restored. What employee wants to hear that? After a nuclear bomb they want to go home. Focus on "Identify" so everybody has a sense of value.

Identifying Critical Systems 
It is a straight forward excercise. Although every department will claim they can not operate without Outlook, first ask if the department is critical to the…

Disaster Recovery
Tuesday, August 29th 2023
Supporting Remote Workers Quickly Is The New Norm. Citrix or VPN?

Here's a cost benefits comparison between using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) and Citrix for supporting remote workers:

Virtual Private Network (VPN):

Benefits:

Security: VPNs provide encrypted connections, ensuring secure data transmission over the internet. This is crucial for protecting sensitive company information and preventing unauthorized access.

Familiarity: VPNs are a well-established technology and are often already implemented within organizations. Employees may be more comfortable using VPNs since they are…

Remote Work
Tuesday, August 22nd 2023
Software Runtime Budget – Ask The People Who Make It How Much It Will Cost To Maintain It.

Executive management has approved the development of a chatbot for your help desk team. You schedule meetings to gather requirements and plan resources and cost. The green light is given and the kick-off meeting generates much excitement. Four weeks later final testing is done and stakeholders have signed off. Go-live is around the corner! The development lead reaches out to you and asks for a session with the application owner so they can hand off knowledge to the team that will maintain the application. “Aren’t you guys maintaining the application?”, you ask yourself in silence. You…

Software Budget
Wednesday, August 16th 2023
The GDPR Right to Data Portability Act is being enforced. Bring awareness to your enterprise employees.

The Right to Data Portability is part of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is an Act stipulate by the European Union in 2018. The Act targets unfair marketing practices executed by holding personal user information in silos to the end effect of imprisoning users to a specific OSP (Online Service Provider). Big OSPs such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft hold the majority of personal information and only share it among themselves. In the case of Facebook and Google honor among thieves does not apply since Facebook does not give Google access to its Contacts API. So even among…

Data Protability
Tuesday, August 1st 2023
ESG Accountability. Why you will need a digital marketing professional soon.

As the importance of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors grows, so does the need for effective governance frameworks to guide and oversee ESG-related practices. ESG governance plays a pivotal role in ensuring that companies, investors, and other stakeholders incorporate sustainability and social responsibility into their decision-making processes. In this article, we explore how ESG is governed and how managing ESG profiles will be the next big thing.

International trade could not function without insurance coverage.  Most private individuals with mortgages are…

ESG
Wednesday, July 26th 2023
Assessing CodeBeamer

As software development becomes increasingly complex and challenging, organizations require a reliable and efficient tool to manage their projects, collaborate with teams, and track progress seamlessly. CodeBeamer, developed by Intland Software, has emerged as a popular solution, encompassing a vast range of features designed to streamline the software development lifecycle. In this article, we will thoroughly assess CodeBeamer and evaluate its key capabilities.

User-Friendly Interface:
One distinguishing feature of CodeBeamer is its intuitive and user-friendly…

Application Life Cycle Management
Monday, July 24th 2023
Microsoft Access End of Life. Time is Running Out

The go to application framework for many small businesses is approaching a juncture. The last release of Microsoft Access will continue to be supported by Microsoft until Oct 13, 2026. If your organization has a version older than 2021 it already is out of support. The risk is that as long as Access is running on a physical desktop and not supported it is subject to breaking because of an OS update. This makes owning Access a risk worthy of future state discussions. What does a…

Runtime Crash
Thursday, July 13th 2023
You Just Learned Half of Your Application Portfolio is Underperforming. Sucks to be You.

IT Departments are custodians of an organization's application portfolio. As the business changes so does application business fit. The alignment between applications and business needs needs be gauged regularly.

Who doesn't recall having MS Office installed on their PC desktop? Very useful application deployed on many PCs across the planet. How useful was MS Office Desktop during the pandemic? Not so much. The example illustrates the need to conduct regular application rationalization efforts before circumstances dictate it. Why does it take unpredictable circumstances to make us…

Rationalization
Tuesday, July 4th 2023
If code is generally readable, can everybody code?

Common are discussions around writing code these days. General interest in coding and the process of delivering code is not only limited to IT professionals. Business managers are a high percentage of coder camp students. Managers are looking to understand the coding process better and how to introduce efficiencies to it.

Much modern code is logical and managed by their environment. Some code is functional and requires understanding of the business needs being addresses. Some code is scripted and calls for an understanding of the underlying environment running it. However, most code…

Big-O
Wednesday, June 28th 2023
Chrome is about to disrupt online advertising

Privacy concerns and new laws are changing the online advertising industry. Much advertising cash is at stake and Google has tech'd up. Google is moving forward with its new interest-based advertising platform, Privacy Sandbox. As such Ad-Tech architecture is going to change.

The new advertising platform contains three fundamental components all of which have API driven architectures. The concept of "Topics" or areas of interest is introduced. Topics are interests generated by the browser using AI technology based on the user's online activity…

Online Advertising
Thursday, June 22nd 2023
Data Pipes Are Not Contraband

Data Pipes are queues of information with specific business purposes. That information is moved in and out of Data Pipes by message brokers. An example of such a message broker is Azure Service Bus.

From a high level view, Data Pipe architecture integrates systems without requiring them to know much about one another. Typically large corporations deploy them to move a large amount of data across systems and drive ingestion processes used for analytics and reporting.

Data Pipes
Monday, June 12th 2023
No Such Thing as a Cloud Solution

There are several cloud architecture types. Each architecture type has its unique benefits and drawbacks. The public cloud offers scalability and agility, private cloud solutions offer security, and the hybrid cloud combines the best of both worlds. Organizations must assess their needs to determine which architecture best suits their specific requirements.

Netflix began its rise to the top on a monolithic architecture.  In 2008 Netflix experienced an outage that impacted over 8 million customers. The hit to revenue and reputation set the company in a different direction. The…

Cloud Journey
Tuesday, June 6th 2023
Personal Productivity Piracy - Social Media

Lost CommsRecall the last time you stood near your mother and told her you love her. Was there ever any doubt that she got the message? Regardless of her reaction, she understood the sentiment conveyed in words, gestures, and posture.

Now recall the last time you sent your mother an IM in which you wrote you love her. What sort of sentiment…

Tuesday, May 30th 2023
QuickBooks Online Integration for $1 per Month

Small and mid-sized businesses are growing at an ever-increasing rate in the global economy. This growth is often attributed to the access that small and mid-sized businesses now have to powerful and effective tools and services, such as QuickBooks Online. QuickBooks Online is an accounting software system that has been designed specifically for small and mid-sized businesses. It helps them to keep track of their finances quickly and accurately, and it is becoming increasingly popular among business owners and entrepreneurs alike.

 

Monday, May 22nd 2023
How Low Can No-Code Go

Low-code and no-code solutions are becoming popular to business as they seek to simplify their development processes and reduce costs. Low-code and no-code solutions offer businesses the ability to quickly develop and deploy applications without the need for a team of developers or a lengthy process. These platforms can reduce costs in time and materials as well as licensing and infrastructure. Low-code and no-code platforms can make integrating other systems easier.

From a business perspective low-code and no-code solutions can lower IT costs, supporting operations…

Low-Code No-Code
Monday, May 15th 2023
FedNow Has Arrived

 FedNow will have a major impact on IT departments, as it will create the demand for more specialized hardware and software to enable faster payments. Additionally, IT departments will need to ensure that their internal systems are compatible with the new system and make sure that data is properly secured. Human: Write an article on hoe FedNow will impact IT departments AI: The introduction of FedNow, a new interbank payment service from the Federal Reserve Bank, represents a major shift in the world of payments…

Sunday, May 7th 2023
Microsoft Access End of Life. What to do?

When it comes to database management, Microsoft Access has had a long and influential reign. Launched in 1992, it offered an accessible and user-friendly solution for small-scale data organization and manipulation. However, in today's rapidly evolving technological landscape, where efficiency, scalability, and security are paramount, it is high time that Microsoft Access is retired and replaced with more modern and versatile alternatives.

Limited Scalability and Performance

One of the major drawbacks of MS Access is its inherent limitations in terms of…

Wednesday, April 26th 2023
Wrike

I recently had the opportunity to use Wrike project management software and I must say that I was impressed. The software is incredibly user-friendly and intuitive, making it easy to get up and running quickly. The interface is well-designed and organized, allowing me to quickly find what I need and get to work.

The features are comprehensive and powerful, allowing me to easily manage projects, assign tasks, track progress, and collaborate with my team. I especially appreciate the ability to integrate with other popular tools, such as Google Drive and Dropbox, which makes it easy…

Saturday, February 25th 2023
ChatGPT3 Coder

Gogi: write code in c# that integrates with dropbox
ChatGPT3:

using Dropbox.Api;
using System.IO;

public async Task UploadFileToDropbox(string file, string path) 
{
    using (var dbx = new DropboxClient("<accessToken>")) 
    {
        using (var mem = new MemoryStream(File.ReadAllBytes(file))) 
        {
            var updated = await dbx.Files.UploadAsync(
                path,
                WriteMode.Overwrite.Instance,
                body: mem);
        }
    }
}

Saturday, February 18th 2023
Tech Helping Business Grow

AI: Artificial Intelligence helps businesses to make intelligent decisions and implement automated solutions to effectively reduce the time taken to perform tasks, while saving on costs. Examples of AI technology include machine learning, natural language processing (NLP), and robotic automation.

IoT: Internet of Things (IoT) technology enables businesses to collect real-time data from interconnected devices, allowing them to automate systems and gain actionable insights. These insights can help businesses optimize their processes, reduce costs, and increase customer engagement.…

Sunday, February 12th 2023
Plex Sytems ERP

Our manufacturing expert had the opportunity to take a look at a deployment of the Plex Manufacturing System. Like many enterprise solutions they do many things. But only a couple are done well. We found that the Business Management Modules were of medium effort to deploy and worked to expectations. The modules related to manufacturing seem adequate. They do require more customization and the help of an outside consultant. In particular, the Inventor Management module does have off the shelf integration components to keep track of consumed items. However, the hardware offered does put the…

Sunday, March 8th 2020
What Happened to the Visual Studio License?

Years ago developing on the MS plaform was  an exclusive activity. First you needed a version of Visual Studio to write code and compile it. That alone ran about 2500 per year. At the time MS had a licesning agreement that gave them rights to all code compiled using VS. It was and elitist club indeed. So what happened? Like capitalism tends to do, people were driven to innovation to free themselves from code tyranny. Hence Mono arrived on the scene. Mono is a compiler that works with MS languages thus removing some of the licensing shackles. Mono is well adapted and deployed across the…

Sunday, March 8th 2020
The End For Bitcoin Draws Near (SegWit2x)

The Blockchain algorithm is running without issue on nodes across the globe for nearly two decades. Like all things technology, the time comes for an upgrade. That time has arrived for the Blockchain. SegWit2X is an upgrade to the Blockchain set to deploy on the Aug 1, 2017. The upgrade will double the size of the block and increase the Bitcoin network performance which is very much in need now and more so in the future. So, what is the problem? Just click the upgrade package and wait for it to install. There is fear that some crypto current platforms will not support the new blocks.…

Sunday, March 8th 2020
Working with Sitefinity MVC Widgets (Pure, Hybrid or Classic)

We are currently building custom MVC widgets for a client, and noticed a couple of things. First is that the development environment with Sitefinity Thunder is not the best. The provided Visual Studio project is part of the site installation. Since this client pushes content changes from their development installation, we would have to work from the same site. Work would be checked from the physical site and not in a development environment.  This slowed us down a great deal. What we did is to create a standard MVC project in Visual Studio and use pre and post build scripts to package…

Sunday, March 8th 2020
Blockchain - The Average Joe Explanation

This blog will be the beginning of a series to frame the inner workings of Blockchains and how they are evolving in modern society.

Let us begin with this question, “What is a Blockchain”.  A Blockchain is a continuous record of individual transactions or “Blocks”. We might look at a Block as a receipt. When you make a purchase at a store, you are given a receipt for that purchase. When you think about it, that receipt is a record of two things. First it records how much money escaped your pocket. Next, it is proof of how much money was placed into a stores cash register.  It…

Sunday, March 8th 2020
Progress - Sitefinity CMS Development

When Progress bought Telerik and as Sitefinity consultants, we were concerned that the commitment to MVC might be lost. The .ASP life cycle has served its purpose for many years; however, modern client side complexities are better tackled with architecture capable of offering flexible client side packages and proven server side frameworks to handle the business needs.

Over the years we have made a number of custom Modules for Sitefinity.  The unusual ability for Sitefinity to allow custom development while giving content administrators creative control has made working with it…

Sunday, March 8th 2020
SiteFinity Developers/Architects – (Module or Control)

Sitefinity offers many ways for developers to add custom features. Often we find ourselves asking, “What would work best”? Create custom controls or a custom module. From our experience working with the CMS on various client projects, the answer resolves to the question, “Native logic and custom controls or custom logic and native controls”?   With a module there will be an entire configuration section that gets built for users to set global configuration. This may be a necessity, for example, when integrating Sitefinity to other applications such as SalesForce. Also, a Module’s native…

Sunday, March 8th 2020
Survey Says - Food Trucks

We did a survey of food truck operators while researching features for an on-line web application which will serve that industry. We found some interesting things.

We asked if they needed an application to let their customers know where they are. All responded in the negative. The next question was if their customers needed an online menu. All responded in the negative. Intuitively, one would think these two questions are the two most important to that industry. They are not as you will see.

The next question was if their customers would like to place and order…

Sunday, March 8th 2020
Twitter Has Lost Its Twang

The rapid growth of social media has been amazing no question. If you recall MySpace when it was an IPO, the model for raising a social media network was established with some concrete definition. First Hollywood was called upon to show the public how they regularly stay in touch with each other. The younger generation jumped on board quickly and blew up the number of users. Shortly after those younger users, came the small businesses looking to attract customers. Then after business adopted social media, came the politicians. Even with that many people MySpace still struggled to cash in…

Sunday, March 8th 2020
H1B Changes for IT

With the current administration’s intent to revamp the H1B program, this is a good time to have a look at what is in play.
The IT industry claims a need for H1B workers due to labor shortages. However, other views see the industry simply abusing opportunities for cheap labor at the expense of domestic works. This issue has been around for a while and not of much interest in the scope of this blog, so we will leave it alone.


What are of interest are the influences affecting the US IT industry for the longer term. Domestically we have an administration driving an “…

Sunday, March 8th 2020
Are Your Apps "Appy" Enough?

How much native code is required for the app stores? “As much as you can get”.

A client recently asked us to make an existing app more “appy”. That is the word they used. Strangely though, the app was already deployed to Google Play and iTunes. It was based on a cross platform framework and they were having difficulty getting changes published because of insufficient native code. So there seems to be the case that there can be just too much framework and not enough “appyness”. Hmm, what should a growing business which connects with its customers through an app do? Make it more…

Sunday, March 8th 2020
Cheap SalesForce and Sitefinity Integration

Antyhing SalesForce related is not cheap. Not consider integrating your CMS with SalesForce and the letter "c" drops right out of the alphabet. There is exponential effort in getting a sales lead started as there is maintaining the contact. Why not let customers interested in your services or products start their own contant information. This Sitefinity module is just the thing. It lets you convert the standard Sitefinity forms builder into a self help SalesForce kiosk that allows customers to create their own contact information. It really is worth the money.

Sunday, March 8th 2020