A Pain In The Neck

Sitting in front of a computer all day can be a pain in the neck…literally. There are five straightforward changes you can make to your office environment that may give your back, neck, eyes and also wrists a break.

1. Use a desk or an adjustable computer workstation that is ergonomically sound. Look for a work surfaces that are non-reflective. If you have a glass desktop, you can easily add a desk pad to minimize the amount of glare and a pullout or “banana board” keyboard tray. An articulating keyboard tray makes it easy to adjust your keyboard to the height level that best fits you.

2. Use a correct office chair that boasts ergonomic features that supports your back and manages weight distribution. Ergonomically correct chairs have become increasingly more reasonable in price; especially considering desk chairs with ergonomic features are less expensive than before and offer a few features found in higher-end chairs.

3. Keep the most frequently used office supplies within reach to avoid straining your back. Often times you may find yourself in a pretzel like pose to obtain what you need, store items logically and within arms reach.

4. Minimize eyestrain and fatigue by selecting one of several lighting options. You can use ambient or general lighting, fluorescent lighting, natural lighting, task lighting etc. You can use one or a combination of these lighting sources to achieve the right amount of light for your workspace.

5. Reduce the risk of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome by using an wrist rest that’s ergonomic, mouse, and adjustable and articulating keyboard. Wrist and mouse rests made from foam-like and gel materials, are available in stylish colors and fun patterns.

The final key to giving your body a break: remember to take breaks throughout the day, especially if you stay in the same position for a long period of time.

Contact a Guidon representative today for more information on setting up ergonomic work environments for your people.

Establish a “Green” IT plan

Companies should build power and e-waste solutions into their budgets and RFPs. The greening of the technology industry is a trend that is developing with great speed, and for good reason. According to the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, e-waste (electronic waste) is the fastest-growing part of the waste stream today. The EPA estimates that e-waste accounts for 2 percent of the municipal solid waste stream in the United States. More than 1,000 chemicals used during electronics production, such as lead, mercury and cadmium, have been linked in some way to cancer, reproductive problems and other serious illnesses.

Footprint

Now that technology is considered essential to scalable growth of enterprises, the demand on US power grids has forced technology companies to begin creating and manufacturing more energy-efficient and sustainable products to reduce power consumption. Of course, there are environmental reasons for going green, but building a green infrastructure can also result in significant savings. Interactive Data Corporation predicts that the cost to heat and cool components will grow to 70 cents per dollar by 2010. Whatever the goals, IT managers have more options than ever for getting their companies thinking about and acting green.

Vital Statistics

The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition estimates there are 500 million obsolete computers in the United States, and 130 million cell phones are thrown out every year. Indeed, e-waste is a major problem that can no longer be resolved by tossing end-of-life electronics into a nearby trash bin or landfill. Both the EPA and some state environmental agencies mandate the proper disposal of e-waste. For example,California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control requires companies to manage the disposal of CRTs (the old tube computer monitors) with the same caution and care as they would hazardous waste. Meanwhile, a billin the U.S. House of Representatives-HR 233, also known as the National Computer Recycling Act-would establish an advance recycling fee of as much as $10 on desktop computers, monitors, laptops and other electronics. As some of you may know, this fee already exists in the state of California and costs the end user $15.00 per LCD. The money collected is used to help encourage collection and recycling of electronic products.

Implement an IT Recycling Plan

Companies should create a recycling plan that will address equipment obsolescence. This includes figuring the costs of recycling into your technology budget. IT managers can help the situation by accounting for electronic recycling in their budget at the beginning of each new fiscal year. Another method of offsetting the costs associated with technology recycling is to locate companies that offer minimal or even free recycling or disposal of old information technology equipment.

Contact a Guidon representative today for more information on implementing green technological practices into your IT processes.

LCD Shopping Best Practices

You’ll run across a lot of jargon when shopping for an LCD in today’s market. It may seem like gibberish, however the terms used offer pertinent information regarding the display’s performance and purpose. To aid in your pursuit of finding the perfect LCD, consider the following breakdown of terminology and key specifications.

Brightness or Luminance

This rating is stated as cd/m2 (candelas per square meter) and describes the level of light a display emits. In general, 300 cd/m2 is fine, but for video or production work, you’ll find a higher brightness rating is preferred. But, if you plan to sit in front of a display for long periods of time, you may want to turn down the brightness to 300 cd/m2 or below.

Contrast Ratio

The difference in luminance between a monitor’s brightest and darkest possible output is its contrast ratio. Comparing contrast ratios between competing displays accurately is difficult at best as manufacturers use varying measures of calculating contrast ratio. The best way to compare two displays is to look at them side to side.

Response Time

Response Time is the amount of time in milliseconds that it takes for a pixel to go from black to white and back to black again. The lower the number, the better. Pixel response time is key for fast action video games or watching movies. Unfortunately, comparing different manufacturers claims for response time is difficult due to varying measurement methods. Generally speaking, most displays built today are fast enough for all but the most hard-core gamers and production editors.

Aspect Ratio

Widescreen displays with 16:10 aspect ratios are now the norm, replacing the standard aspect ratio of 4:3. For daily computer use, whether office or home, the widescreen format allows extra horizontal space for applications and windows. The widescreen format also allows for a more cinematic experience when watching movies or playing games.

HDMI

High Definition Multimedia interface, or HDMI, is a connector that uses a single cable to carry digital video and audio signals from HD cable and satellite receivers. Most computers are not HDMI-capable, but HDMI is backward-compatible with DVI.

Rotating Screen

Computer screens are almost always wider than they are tall. This default landscape mode works best most of the time, enabling you to view multiple windows side by side. Occasionally, a taller, narrower screen may be preferable for reading manuscripts, information display or for point-of-sale purposes. For these situations, a display that can rotate (or pivot) from landscape to portrait orientation can come in very handy.

I recommend doing your research ahead of time, prior to being mauled by overzealous Best Buy employees etc. Use the information above as a way of setting a benchmark for alternatives you may be considering. Remember, it’s a buyer’s market and prices will only come down over time. Happy hunting.

Contact a Guidon representative today for further information and tips on shopping for your perfect LCD.

One way to address the problems associated with server sprawl is through physical consolidation. Through physical consolidation, an organization reduces the total number of servers in use by merging the workload onto fewer servers.

Organizations are able to make more efficient use of their computing resources, not to mention free up data center space, reduce power and cooling costs, and reduce complexity to make management easier.

Blade Servers

The use of blade servers in the data center is one approach to physical consolidation. Blade servers are different than traditional rack-mount servers. Blade systems are built with a modular infrastructure that can share many resources with fewer components. Unlike rack-mount servers, blades do not have their own power supplies or fans.

Rather, they share these components with other blades in a chassis that they all reside in. Another key difference is that blades do not have traditional input connections that can be found on the back of a rack-mount server. Communication is performed through the chassis mid-plane, which interconnects all of the blades to the chassis.

Blade Benefits

Blade servers offer many benefits of physical consolidation within the data center. Their consolidated design is more affordable to purchase and maintain than traditional rack-mount servers. Less rack space is used, and blades offer an almost 20 percent reduction in server airflow and close to a 30 percent power savings over traditional servers. With some manufacturers, up to 16 blades can fit into a 10U rack space. That’s quite a space savings compared to the traditional 1U “pizza box” servers of the past. Blade deployment is also much easier.  Blade servers can be set up in minutes. And best of all, the IT team can add resources to the blade setup without having to rewire the entire rack.

Blade servers may not be a good fit for every situation. If an organization is only looking to replace one to three servers, blades are probably not appropriate. Or if an organization’s storage needs are great and there is no budget for a centralized storage system, then rack-mount servers may be a better fit given their greater internal storage space.

Government Network Security

In order to achieve its goals, the information networks that government entities use to connect various constituencies must be secure from intrusion and disruption. This should not be an additional category of hardware, software and services. Rather, it should be an essential quality of the system components selected.

Government Information

To protect and serve, federal, state and local government organizations are leveraging technology more than ever before to improve government services, making agencies more responsive, efficient, integrated, cost-effective and accessible than ever.  In order to achieve agency goals, the information networks used to connect various constituencies must be secure from intrusion and disruption. Large companies in the private sector are realizing cost-savings and improved customer service through the use of interconnected information systems. These same capabilities and benefits are also now being obtained by government agencies at all levels. An example at the Federal level comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which has networked its nationwide secure national weather satellite station communications to warn of dangerous weather and its location.

Secure From the Edge to the Core

Given the wide range of users who need to use government information, network security must account for users and connections of all kinds. The systems must be able to securely protect, transport and backup two categories of information: shared information like public records and protected information like personal health records.

Network protection can be conceived as three essential categories of systems:

Perimeter

This is the most common conception of network security — a wall around network resources to protect them from outside threats. In practice, a distributed network may connect multiple locations so that the perimeter is actually a bright line between “trusted/approved” versus “unknown.” In this construct, it is necessary to inspect all traffic for any of the myriad of threats that can come from the outside. The most common tool for this is a firewall or security appliance. The most common applications for traffic analysis include anti-virus, anti-spyware and intrusion prevention. The applications that perform the analysis/approval/denial can either be implemented as modules or as a collective, cohesive whole.

Internal User Level

A recent report by the GAO noted that 54% of the agencies surveyed had identified spyware in their users’ systems which had adversely affected productivity and network performance. Since spyware almost always requires user installation (albeit, inadvertent), the spyware issue points to a larger concern: users – or, more specifically, user behavior – constitutes a threat of its own. In addition to being duped into launching viruses or installing spyware, users may engage in high-risk activities that open vulnerabilities of all kinds. Such activities include file-sharing, streaming recreational media files or instant messaging with someone outside the enterprise.

Core Assets

Threats of network disruption or data corruption in transit are the most obvious security concerns. But, every security standard – including FISMA, HIPAA and others – includes guidelines regarding protection of stored information. Not only is such information frequently a target of attacks, but it can be a secondary victim of system failures during an attack that impacts network operations.

Summary

Private industry has achieved considerable improvements in productivity, cost savings and customer service by leveraging securely networked information systems. These same improvements are available to government agencies at the federal, state and local level.  Networks can be provisioned for maximum security using conventional equipment, provided the equipment implementation has been designed with security in mind. What’s more, a network built on a secure foundation goes a long ways towards satisfying the various relevant regulations. A well provisioned network even provides the management systems necessary for satisfying the audit requirements that are a part of regulation compliance. By paying attention to the three elements of information security – the perimeter, the users, and the data – you will have the foundation of a much more productive, efficient and successful organization.
Contact a Guidon Representative today for further information on how to increase your network security.

Guidon Technology Solutions and Key Ovation announced a strategic partnership today to distribute Key Ovation’s cutting-edge ergonomic computer products to Guidon customers.

Key Ovation is the manufacturer of the renowned Goldtouch line of ergonomic products for both home and office. Each Goldtouch device has been ergonomically engineered using world-leading technology to help reduce repetitive stress injuries and increase productivity.

The ErgoSecure SC2.0 adjustable keyboard is one of the only ergonomic keyboards to integrate smart card technology for positive verification of user identity. All of the Goldtouch security-engineered products conform to the requirements of the Department of Defense Common Access Card (CAC) program and support a wide range of e-commerce, authentication, PKI and network security applications.  Consequently, the ErgoSecure combines proven ergonomic design with a high level of access, communication and transaction security.

Contact your Guidon customer service representative for more information on how your organization can improve productivity, reduce repetitive stress injuries and maximize security with the Goldtouch line of products.

What is the IT Myth?

The IT myth says IT is a subsection of your business, best tended by specialists. Technology decisions for your business should be made by IT professionals who understand that capabilities and limits of technology. Only a trained IT professional can decipher the tech lingo and dizzying array of options to deliver the best possible technology.

The Truth

IT is no longer a simple subset of business and is often absolutely critical to reaching your goals. Most IT professionals are experts in technology, not necessarily in business. Technology decisions too often begin with “What would IT like to work with?” not “What business problem are we going to solve?” In the worst cases, we’ve seen IT use huge budgets to finally get a system they’ve been wanting for years, ignoring more recent, superior solutions that are a fraction of the cost.

Your business needs technology that serves your business strategy. Good technology decisions are made by business leaders for business reasons.

The jargon and options in IT can disempower business leaders and owners from leading their business in areas related to technology. Owners and leaders need straight talk from voices that understand business strategy and processes as well as technology-advice that starts with “What problem can we solve?”

Guidon is breaking the IT myth with fundamentally sound business and technical advice on identifying and solving problems using technology. We want to help you lead your organization by using IT to reach your goals.