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Welcome to the March edition of QTS QuikNews, our
monthly e-mail newsletter. In this monthly e-mail, you
will receive an update of what's new at QTS - new
products we support, new patches and upgrades, solution
ideas and promotions to save you money, and information
about our company and our clients.
In
this issue:
QTS NEWS
QTS
OFFERS FREE SYSTEMS STRATEGY CHECK-UPS
Having developed this unique engagement jointly with
Microsoft, QTS is now offering Systems Strategy Check-Up
engagements to qualified customers and prospects
throughout New Jersey and New York. This
high-value, half-day consulting engagement helps
businesses evaluate how they are using Microsoft
technologies and identifies best practices and
recommendations for how to best deploy Microsoft
technologies in a business. For more information
on this no-charge engagement, contact your QTS Account
Manager.
BEST
WISHES
QTS sends its best wishes to John Houston, who has
recently left our company after nearly 9 years of
dedicated and loyal service. Please join us in
wishing John the best of luck as he pursues new
opportunities.
QTS
IS HIRING!
QTS is recruiting for senior level technical personnel,
as well as entry and senior level sales
staff/telemarketers. If you know anyone who might
be a good fit, please have them submit their resume to
Liz Meechan, our Office Manager. Liz can be reached at lmeechan@QTSnet.com,
or (973)984-7600 x223.
SUCCESS
STORIES
KELLNER
DILEO COHEN & CO.
QTS
provided this financial services firm with a
non-disruptive upgrade to a highly reliable, secure
network.
http://www.qtsnet.com/about/success
stories/kellner success story.pdf
LAW
OFFICE OF STEPHEN S. WEINSTEIN
QTS
helped this small but savvy law firm implement a
Worry-Free Network so they could focus on the practice
of law.
http://www.qtsnet.com/about/success
stories/weinstein success story.pdf
PRESS
RELEASES
QTS
TO EXHIBIT AT MICROSOFT SECURITY SUMMIT
2/23/2004:
QTS announced today that it will be exhibiting in the
Partner Pavillion at Microsoft's Security Summit in New
York City on April 6th and 7th.
Read more at http://www.QTSnet.com/stayinformed/l3_stay_pr49.htm
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EVENTS
Join
Microsoft, QTS and other security partners at
Microsoft's Security Summit on April 6th or 7th
in New York City at the Marriott Marquis. To
register for this free event, please visit www.microsoft.com/securitysummit.
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PRESIDENT'S
CORNER
April
3rd is only a few weeks away from today, and
that is a significant date to me. It marks QTS' 12
year anniversary. For most businesses that doesn't
seem like a long time, but in our industry, it's a
virtual eternity. We've seen a lot of change in
these twelve years, in the business world, in the
computer industry, in our company, and in ourselves.
In
1992, we started QTS as networking was just hitting its
stride. We were installing Novell NetWare 3.11 and
Artisoft LANtastic networks, before Microsoft Windows
had built in networking. It was still largely a
DOS world, especially in our law firm client roots, and
use of the Internet was limited to a relative handful of
enthusiasts.
Now,
it's 2004. Windows Server has gone from NT 3.51
(although I worked on 3.1 and 3.5, I have a tough time
thinking of those systems as network operating systems
that were ready for prime time) to NT 4 (in 1996), to
Windows 2000, to Windows 2003. Novell has lost
considerable market share and is reinventing itself.
Most other major players of the early years are gone,
either via acquisition, merger or just plain gone.
It
is interesting looking back at where technology has
been. Windows 95 was released 9 years ago, at a
time when 32MB was a lot of memory (now, 512MB is common
on desktop systems). The 133MHz systems of that
day have long been replaced by 3GHz systems, and hard
disks have also increased in size by a factor of 10.
It would seem Moore's Law is alive and well.
The
Internet and near-universal connectivity have changed
the rules of the game, in many ways - positive and
negative. Communication capabilities are
near-ubiquitous, providing the ability to seamlessly
connect with customers and partners. Information
is so readily available that the challenge is in sifting
through everything that's available and finding relevant
information. But the dark side of this wonderful
progress is the dangers of hackers, worms, viruses and
malicious code - particularly for systems like Windows
NT that were never designed with this ubiquitous
connectivity in mind.
So,
the interesting and obvious question is, where will our
industry be 5, 9 or 12 years from now? Since this
is, at least for me, an interesting time for reflection,
I'll share some thoughts on key directions I see our
industry taking.
First,
the form factor and nature of computing devices is about
to change markedly in the upcoming years. We're
already seeing this to some degree with PDAs acquiring
the power once reserved for PCs (sound familiar?
Our industry is so cyclical...). Microsoft's
PocketPC Phone Edition and SmartPhone provide a
Windows-like interface that allows for a device to serve
as your phone and PDA, and many of the Microsoft reps I
work with are using this very effectively to stay in
sync with the office and with partners and customers
regardless of where they are. Motorola is about to
come out later this year with a next generation model
that I'm particularly interested in, based on its screen
size, keyboard and functionality (drop me a line if you
want to talk about it). We'll see an explosion of
power in these devices in the next few years. Add
to this the Tablet PC platform, which is rapidly
maturing as more vendors are coming to market with
offerings. And in the consumer space, several
computer platforms are arriving that look like household
appliances but are really networked computers.
More innovation will continue year after year, such that
in 5 years our vision of what a "personal
computer" is will most likely be different from
what it is today, driven by a combination of increased
mobility and by companies abandoning traditional
appearances in favor of more functional designs based on
the task to be performed.
It's
hard to top that one, but related to this will be a
continued explosion in connectivity and bandwidth.
Today, it is possible to have virtually "anytime,
anywhere" connectivity to email and the Internet.
WiFi hotspots are popping up all over the place, and
cellular services from Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and
T-Mobile are making it possible for wireless-equipped
PCs, PDAs and "SmartPhones" to connect to the
Internet and to internal networks from virtually
anywhere. Mobile access to email is the main
driver, and solutions like Blackberry's Enterprise
Server and Good Technology's GoodLink Server are making
it possible to be connected at all times.
Microsoft's integration of the remote synchronization
capabilities of Mobile Information Server into Exchange
Server 2003 will make this even more common, since this
is available "out of the box." However,
solutions like Blackberry have been around for some
time. What's new will be the ease of
implementation, and the broadness and affordability of
connectivity. We're emerging from the "wild
west" days of technology in this space, where
incompatible products/services and vendor confusion will
be replaced with standardization, compatibility,
affordability and broad presence.
Third,
systems will become more reliable and robust, led
largely by Microsoft's efforts in the Dynamic Systems
Initiative and also its Trustworthy Computing efforts.
Essentially, computers will become self-healing,
self-patching and increasingly reliable. Just
think about the huge improvements we've seen from
Windows NT to Windows XP/2003, in only two major
revision cycles. Systems will also become more
manageable, because they will need to be - there will be
more of them, spread across a broader range of wired and
wireless locations, in a wider variety of sizes and
shapes.
Fourth,
solutions for integrating disparate systems and managing
data will make it easier to use computing systems to
achieve goals that are more challenging today. XML
will continue to provide new capabilities and solutions
at an explosive pace, making it easier and easier to
have systems talk to each other, and for data to make
itself more self-describing. We are currently at
the stage in the evolution of our industry where there
is a great deal of complexity underneath most XML
solutions, and we are masking the complexity with a GUI.
Over time, this will continue to evolve, expertise will
become more broad-based, and commercial tools to
facilitate easier integration of applications and data
will be more usable and more readily available.
Web Services will play a major part in this, changing
the way software is developed and used.
Fifth,
in the upcoming years speech recognition will become a
widely used means of data input. I remember in the
early 1990s being one of the few New Jersey resellers
for Dragon Systems' DragonDictate product. It was
technology ahead of its time, and it worked. The
problem was, peoples' expectations were way beyond what
the product was capable of doing. DragonDictate
would accurately type text on a screen, to save the user
from typing. However, this required the
system to be trained on the spreaker's voice.
Additionally, the software did not handle navigation all
that well. People expected a solution that
replaced the keyboard, and was flawless. It wasn't
realistic, but that's what people expected. The
software actually worked quite well for people with the
patience and desire to use it within its capabilities,
and DragonDictate brought computing to many disabled
individuals who otherwise would have been unable to use
a keyboard. As Microsoft continues to integrate
speech technology into Windows and Office, we will see
it become more and more usable, and functional.
One
last prediction, unfortunately. Security will
continue to be an issue, and require ongoing effort and
vigilence. Hackers and virus/worm creators will
continue to develop new exploits, challenging security
vendors to constantly improve their products and network
administrators to keep their security technologies
current. Also unfortunately, businesses will
continue to get hurt by these exploits, since it is
human nature for many to try to get by with inadequate
security. And, the "people" and
"process" elements of security will continue
to foil the efforts of network administrators to secure
their networks, regardless of technology and investment.
The
last twelve years have seen massive change, for the
better, in the capabilities of personal computers and
related technologies, and in how we use them. As a
rock and roll band once said, "what a long, strange
trip it's been." And the future is ahead of
us, promising at least as much change in the next ten
years as we have seen in the last ten.
As
always, feel free to email me your comments or thoughts
at nrosenberg@QTSnet.com.
Thank you.
Neil
Rosenberg
President & CEO
Quality Technology Solutions
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PARTNER
SPOTLIGHT
QTS
is spotlighting Wertheim Inc., its partner for document
management, document imaging and document assembly
solutions. Wertheim Inc. is a premier provider of
document management systems (DMS) and office automation
solutions, and one of the top business partners in the
region for both Hummingbird and Interwoven. These
systems enable organizations to increase profits, and to
improve their work quality and the level of
professionalism exhibited to their customers and
partners via their electronic documents.
The
company assists clients in all areas of document
management technologies, from initial planning through
final implementation, and also provides preventative
maintenance and audit services. Because of their
extensive experience, they have a unique ability to
provide consulting expertise in the area of best
practices and benchmarking with regards to document
management, document imaging, document assembly, and
knowledge management systems.
The
entire staff at Wertheim Inc. has perfected a style of
interaction which gains accolades up and down the firm's
client list. Put most simply, clients like them.
Their roster of successful engagements includes clients
new to document management, as well as organizations who
needed to upgrade to the newest versions of existing
document and knowledge management technologies.
Their approach to customers and technology is very
similar to QTS'.
Wertheim
Inc.'s commitment to document and knowledge management
led to the creation of a robust line of software
products. These applications were written to help
manage and administer Hummingbird and Interwoven
environments by providing cost-effective alternatives to
many tedious tasks required in order to maintain a
healthy system. Their "Winc" suite of
products work with your document management system to
facilitate the synchronization of key document data
across multi-library environments; simplify the process
of granting security to users; and provide a robust
array of DMS administrative utilities.
Wertheim
Inc. is a leading regional service provider, and clients
benefit from their depth of experience with the product
offerings of Hummingbird (DOCS Open/PowerDOCS/ DM5),
Interwoven (WorkSite/WorkSite MP/TeamSite), as well as
document assembly systems from SoftWise and HotDocs, and
document imaging systems from Kofax and eCopy.
While QTS continues to build, enhance and support
networks, this partnership will significantly extend our
capabilities and the total range of services that we can
offer clients.
For
more information on Wertheim Inc., please visit their
web site at www.wertheiminc.com,
email them at info@wertheiminc.com,
or call 212-413-8600. Or, contact your QTS Account
Manager.
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