Michael Cocanower
President, itSynergy |
Welcome
This month has been a whirlwind of
activity at itSynergy.
First, we have signed two important new
partnerships that will allow us to serve
both new and existing customers more deeply.
The first partnership is with gloStream (http://www.glostream.com).
GloStream makes an Electronic Medical
Records (EMR) package called gloEMR. As of
the end of November, we are the only
gloStream partner in Arizona. We chose this
particular package for a number of reasons.
First, the package is built from the ground
up on Microsoft technology. This obviously
caters to our strong suit as a consulting
organization. Second, it allows us to expand
our offerings in the medical office field -
an area we have been focusing on recently. We really liked the idea of
being able to provide something to our
medical office clients beyond just the day
to day network care and advanced consulting.
We will be installing our first system at an
allergy and dermatology practice in the West
Valley this month. |
Second, we are the newest Altigen Certified
Partner in Arizona (http://www.altigen.com).
Our reasons for becoming an Altigen partner are
twofold: the first is selfish and the second is to
bring an additional offering to our customer base.
We were a partner of Altigen’s primary competitor
approximately 10 years ago, and implemented that
system internally. Although that company went out of
business in the dot com bust, we haven’t found
anything that could match its features and
functionality for less than $60,000 (which for our
little 15 user setup is a bit pricey!). When I
started looking seriously at Altigen, I really
became excited. Not only does it do everything our
current system does plus a LOT more, but their
’sweet spot’ in terms of pricing is 5 to 500
stations, which matches up very nicely with our
target market. We will be implementing our internal
system by year end, and are gearing up now to begin
bringing this solution to customers.
In addition to the benefits we will gain from our
internal system, our reasons for selecting Altigen
as a solution to bring to our customers are very
similar to the criteria for our selection of
gloStream. Altigen is built from the ground up on
Microsoft technology, and runs on standard PC based
servers. It is also integrated VERY tightly with
Microsoft’s Unified Communications features, meaning
that customers implementing the system will get
access to features like Outlook Voice Access (OVA)
which allows full email, calendar and contacts
access with your voice.
We are very excited to have these two companies
as partners, and look forward to talking with you
further during our Recurring Business Reviews. Of
course if you have any immediate questions, or need
to get some purchases in fast to qualify for the
higher IRS Section 179 expense limits in 2008, give
us a call!
Happy Holidays! |
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8 tips to survive in an open-plan
office
reprinted with permission from the HP
Small Business Center
 While many workers would
probably prefer a private office with a door, open-plan seating
arrangements are common in businesses worldwide. And the benefits of
"cubicle farms" are clear: they’re cost-efficient, improve communication
and collaboration between employees, and can increase productivity.
However, the open-plan office
worker may find it difficult to concentrate in this environment - with
phones ringing, colleagues talking and walking around, and office
equipment running, the number of distractions can be overwhelming.
Here
are a few tips you and your colleagues can use to help make the most of
the open office and improve the environment for everyone.
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Let
the Economic Stimulus Act and
Section 179
Help You
With
the current news that is all around us it is sometimes hard to
justify opening our pocketbooks and investing in our companies. We
all know that the best way to improve ourselves and our businesses
is to invest time, energy and money in accomplishing our goals. As
the year draws to a close take a look and see what can be done to
improve your business. The decision to improve may save you money.
 With
the changes to the Section 179 Deduction made by the Economic
Stimulus Act signed in February 2008 there are some exciting
benefits for business.
At a
basic level, Section 179 is a tax incentive for businesses to deduct
the full amount of the purchase price of qualifying equipment
purchased or financed during the tax year. That means that if you
buy (or lease) a piece of qualifying equipment, you can deduct the
FULL PURCHASE PRICE from your gross income, up to a limit. It's an
incentive created by the US Government to encourage businesses to
buy equipment and invest in themselves.
The
Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 - HR 5140 helps small business by
improving the limits of the Section 179 Deduction.
Read more |
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System Engineering Corner
Notes
from the Network Engineering Department:
Note to readers: As our network engineers
work with all of you across our entire customer
base, they observe trends and issues that many
people have in common, or that many customers will
find helpful to know about.
This section is designed
to give them a mechanism to communicate those issues
to you, with the hope that YOU might benefit from.
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Vista Safety Net
Approximately 3 weeks ago, we started seeing a problem occurring sporadically
on some of the Vista desktops in our office. After a reboot, we just get a black
screen with a mouse cursor that can be moved around, but NOTHING else.
As professionals, we said to ourselves "no problem - we can fix this" and
began the troubleshooting process. Two days later after exhausting every toolset
in our arsenal, we finally gave up and just reinstalled everything from scratch.
There is a very active ongoing discussion in the technical community among
our peers about this issue - it definitely seems to be somewhat prevalent and
not related to any particular hardware. The ONLY person we have heard from so
far that has been able to recover from this scenario did so by doing a repair
installation of Vista. One of OUR key lessons, however, from our own
troubleshooting internally is that in order to do a repair installation, you
have to log on using a local administrator account. The problem is that by
default, Vista disables the only local administrator account on a PC for
security reasons. As a
result, the repair installation wasn’t an option for us.
We are hoping our ’hard lesson’ might benefit you. Our recommendation is to
enable the local administrator account on your computer if you are running Vista
and assign it a VERY long and VERY secure password. Make sure it is a password
you will remember as you may not need it for months. On that day we never hope
comes, however, when we ask you if you have that password, it may save you a big
headache.
Feel free to contact us for instructions on how to enable the local
Administrator account if you aren’t sure. If you are an itSynergize Management
customer, we can automate this and push it out to all of your Vista computers if
you’d like - just drop us a note. |
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December 2008
In this issue
□ Welcome
□ Open-Plan Office
□ Economic Stimulus Act
□ Engineering Corner
□ Referral
Program
□ Hiring Internal IT Staff
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itSynergy Referral Program
 Can we
buy you dinner and send you to the movies? How about
make a donation to your favorite charity in your name?
Earn rewards for referring new customers to itSynergy.
For more details, please
visit here.
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Thinking About Hiring Your Own
Internal IT Staff - Think Again!
Outsourcing your IT brings additional
business value
Stuart R. Crawford, V.P., IT
Matters, Inc. Businesses today wrestle and grapple with the thought of hiring their
own technology support staff to support their daily need for IT support
without fully understanding the risks and the costs associated with
having their own team of technology professionals.
Business owners, C level
execs and Managers are attracted to the idea of having a team or a
consultant readily available within shouting distance down the hall,
basically having an IT resource committed to them 24 hours a day, 7 days
a week. However, many of today’s business owners across the country are
not aware of the total risks their business is exposed to by electing to
bring their technology support in-house.
More often than not it is
purely a cost based decision, on the surface it may appear to be more
cost effective to hire a consultant or employee who is committed as a
full time employee. CFOs and Accounting Managers often look only at the
cost of having their IT outsourced and or attracted to hiring someone
for a few thousand dollars a month as part of their staff will save
their company in the long run. This is not the case in reality and by
having a full time employee will actually end up costing business today
more in the long run.
So what are the
advantages of having an IT Partner who focuses on delivering a complete
managed technology solution?
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Quote of the
month
Open your presents at
Christmastime, but be thankful year round for
the
gifts you receive.
--Lorinda
Ruth Lowen
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7310 North 16th Street,
Suite 130
Phoenix, AZ 85020-8203
Telephone: 602.297.2400
Fax: 602.297.8703
Email: info@itsynergy.com
www.itsynergy.com |
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