Dear [firstname,fallback=customer],
Thank you for your continued custom.
To unsubscribe follow the directions given
at the end of this newsletter.


In this issue

Editorial
Email Archiving

[photo: Editorial - How do you get the most value from IT?]

In 2002, when one of our Engineers suggested to one of our customers to back up their email, they laughed and said “who backs up emails?”. There was about 2GB of emails sitting on their desktop. They lost all of their email when the desktop crashed. We were able to recover the data eventually. But for 2 days, the customer was in agony!

Retaining email in some form or another is more critical these days, thanks to a host of regulations that require it. But a new study in the US notes that only about 14 percent of all corporate email accounts are being backed up and archived for future access. The figure will probably be the same in Australia. The study also indicates that the number is expected to rise to nearly 70 percent by 2011.

Choices for deploying an archiving solution include implementing a product in-house or using a product as a hosted service.

Do let me know if you want a hand with archiving your emails.

Happy networking

Maria Padisetti

Data Storage Technologies Explained

[photo: Collaboration Tools Can Save Your Money]

Data is the lifeblood of any business. Digital storage solutions are a priority of an IT department and nowadays eat up a large part of their budgets because the protection and availability of vital data can spell the success or failure of a business.

In an ever changing business climate where terrorism and industrial espionage are an every day security threat a backup and disaster recovery plan is essential to an organization’s survival.

Compliance legislation makes data storage an even bigger problem for businesses.

Users want to save as much data as they possibly can. How can you solve this problem without blowing your budget?

» Read more

Productivity Boosters & Cost Savers

[photo:How secure are you?]

5 tips to increase your email productivity

1. Close auto-check - Either turn off automatic checking of emails in your email client completely, or set it to something reasonable, like every 20 minutes or so.

2. Pick the easy ones - If you can retire an email with a 1-2 line response (< 2 minutes; pref. 30 seconds), do it now. Remember: this is about action, not about cogitating and filing.

3. Write less - Get better at just keeping the conversation moving by responding quickly and with short actions in the reply.

4. Cheat - Use some e-mail templates to help manage answers to frequent email subjects. Templates let you create and use boilerplate responses to the questions and requests to which you usually find yourself drafting identical replies over and over again from scratch.

5. Be honest - If you know in your heart that you’re never going to respond to an email, get it out of sight, archive it, or just delete it.

Reducing your Phone costs

1. Growing competition has made phone services more affordable and easy to use.  The standard call rates have come down.  Nowadays, there is an option of using Voice over internet (VoIP).  When we say VoIP most of us think of the poor quality internet calls. There are providers that offer guaranteed quality of calls. You will save at least 30% (often up to 50%) of your call costs, when you use such providers.

2. Consider using an IP PABX. These are state-of-the-art telephone systems with plenty of features that can make you and your colleagues very productive. We at DA have a lot of expertise in helping customers with IP PABXs. The solutions we offer will cost 1/5th of what a similar solution would normally cost. Talk to us on 02 9420 0961, if you want to explore this option for your business.

3. If you don’t want to use or upgrade your PABX, then instead of a separate fax line, consider having a hosted fax facility such as efax (www.efax.com.au) or ozefax (www.ozefax.com.au). You can send/receive faxes via email when you use these providers.

Important Security Note For Anyone Using Instant Messaging

[photo: "The world is flat - A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century" by Thomas Friedman]

Instant Messaging is a common feature in most businesses nowadays.  As much as IM is a convenient and an excellent communication tool, the risks for your network and data are high as the hackers are developing new ways of attacking using instant messaging.

» Read more

At the water cooler

[photo: "The world is flat - A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century" by Thomas Friedman]

“In my previous company, a customer of ours sells peripheral hardware, like printers etc, for computers. They asked me to post all the latest drivers on the web site we made for them. My genius co-worker arranged for a professional photographer and two days of studio time to take photos of our company truck drivers!”

Feedback

Your opinion is invaluable. Please state your suggestions and feedback here. If you are having a problem viewing this page, please click here.

Email:

Message: