Network Velocity » Email

The cure for software upgrades?

Stuart — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 00:43:31 +0000

A software upgrade can be a major disruption to a business. We’ve listed the revisions to Microsoft’s core businesss products going back to 1995.

Windows	Servers	Office	Exchange (email)	SQL (database)
Windows 95	Windows NT (1993)	Office 95	Exchange 5.5	SQL 7.0
Windows 98	Windows Server 2000	Office 98	Exchange 2000	SQL 2000
Windows 2000	Windows Server 2003	Office 2000	Exchange 2003	SQL 2005
Windows XP	Windows Server 2008	Office XP	Exchange 2007	SQL 2008
Windows Vista		Office 2003	Exchange 2010
Windows 7		Office 2007
		Office 2010

Each upgrade represents a significant investment in licensing, migration time and user training. To make matters worse, some software vendors require an upgrade by discontinuing support on products as soon as 24 months after release!

For those looking to break the cycle of software upgrades there is an option: a move towards Software as a Service (sometimes called Cloud computing). A prime example of Software as a Service is Google Apps. With any web browser Google Apps users have access to a suite of products that are very competitive to Microsoft Office. No installation, no security patches and more importantly, no upgrades!

In addition to controlled costs and easy scalability, one of the major benefits of Software as a Service is the ease of obtaining updates. In fact, new Google Apps features are rolled out almost daily, but there is zero impact on the user as upgrades are done on Google’s Servers. The next time a user logs in new features are available. It’s that simple. No upgrades, no overtime, no risk of losing data. Since the changes are done on a regular basis vs a completely new interface every few years no user retraining!

Given the prospect of staying on the software upgrade cycle and considering a move towards Google Apps what makes sense for your business? If you are struggling with this question, or other ways to effectively manage your technology, we encourage you to contact us at 858-270-3595 x 1 to learn more.

Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook

Stuart — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 03:14:35 +0000

In early June 2009 Google announced that users can now upload Microsoft Office 2007 documents and spreadsheets to Google Apps. This was a big step for Google by adding value to Google Apps in terms of Office 2007 compatibility.

Google has dropped another bombshell with Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook. This is big news! Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook allows users to use Outlook as their interface to Google Apps hosted email. While we consider the Google interface to be superior to Microsoft Outlook, this option will ease the transition for many organizations looking to switch.

Congrats to Google as they continue to move closer to providing a seamless path to transitioning to Google Apps. Learn more in the video below.

UPDATE: 06-15-2009 See this article from CRN regarding Google Apps Sync and Microsoft Email.

Make the most of Google Apps

Stuart — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 18:19:38 +0000

Google Apps is a powerful platform, but to make it even more powerful these simple Mail settings will turn your email into a dashboard of information. We recommend giving these settings a try, we’ve found them to make a difference for our users:

Via the Settings Menu, click on Web Clips and click disable.
Via the Settings Menus, click on General and Enable Keyboard shortcuts.
Via Settings, the Labs tab enable Labs (if necessary).
From the Labs settings area click enable on the following:

Signature Tweaks
Right Side Chat
Right Side Labels
Default Reply to All
Forgotten Attachment Detector
Mark as Read Button
Send & Archive
Undo Send
Title Tweaks
Google Calendar Gadget
Google Docs Gadget

A few notes on our favorite settings:

-Keyboard shortcuts is incredibly handy, once enabled type a ? to bring up a quick link dialog of available shortcuts.
-Send & Archive. Simply the most powerful way to keep your Inbox clean. A must have.
-Undo Send. Give yourself 10 seconds to retrieve an email. Very handy for last second edits.
-Right side labels and chat. Get everything on one page with a dashboard look and feel.

What SPAM looks like

Stuart — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 03:59:25 +0000

Network Velocity provides Postini Email Protection Services to our clients. On a typical day we’ll process over 32,000 emails. Of those 32,000 emails only 5,000 will be delivered. That’s a delivery ratio of 15%.

We describe SPAM as a cat and mouse game. Postini has built the best mousetrap available, but the mice (SPAMMERS) are always fighting back. To share what we see from our console we’ve included a few screenshots of the email traffic we process. This sample was taken in the evening (between 8-9PM) so traffic is not as high as it would be during business hours.

In addition to best-in-class Email filtering Postini also provides up to the minute AntiVirus scanning of all email traffic.

Chart of email traffic for 60 minutes. The blue line represents mail that was actually delivered.

Pie chart of email for past 60 minutes. 18% of email was delivered for this one hour timeframe. At peak times the ratio of delivered email will be as low as 7%.

Raw statistics for 60 second interval. 882 messages processed, or ~15 per second!