This is a great topic to keep track of. Microsoft has announced an innitiative to help train AND certify California residents. Here is a snipit of the page linked to the article for you. California is trending towards the top of all states in unemployment rates, somewhere between 11 and 13%, and residents could use all the added resources they can get. The article has more information, however the vouchers can be found at your local workforce center. Here is a link to the California Employment Development Department for more information.

I love to learn when I make a mistake, because it gives me the opportunity to correct and learn from it! I had an epiphany this morning about a mistake that I made on our website. You see, we have all been trained to look for a “Search Box” in any website. We have AOL (yes they were once a monster), Yahoo, and Google to thank for that.  The point of the search box is to get to your desired destination quickly. This is the reason why Google controls the majority of US search traffic. They produce more relevant results for web searchers quicker and easier than any other search engine. I am an avid Googler, so I find it amazing that I made this mistake. The story started when I received a phone call from someone asking about some of our partnerships, and whether we carried certain products.  The answer was yes, but what I didn’t comprehend, until this morning, was why she asked the question. You see, search algorithms look through text for matching keywords, letters, terms etc. What it will not do is see images as text unless they are tagged with keywords. The mistake that I made was not that I have images or logos on that unique page, but I forgot to insert the meta data (text) in the web page to allow it to be searchable through our website.  I have since corrected the problem, but I am extremely happy that I spoke with that person and learned a bit. So to her, thank you! Remember, tag or insert meta data when using images on your website. Have a great weekend!

I was thinking about my first job out of college the other day. We were a 7 person team that didn’t put too much into marketing. (at least outside of paper print) We were a brick and mortar that had local connections and a number of repeat customers. It was great when we grew organically, but there were severe limitations and risks to that type of business. Large corporations, with buying power, could put the wraps on our profit margins pretty quickly, if they moved into town. Outside of the fact that, we relied heavily on the local economy being robust.  I think there are places for both large and small companies in any economy though. The point is you have to find out where the opportunities lie and figure out how to distinguish yourself!! For instance, how many days a week can you walk into a Wal-Mart and speak to the CEO???? This is not a knock on Wal-Mart, but I believe their headquarters are in Arkansas. Yet, a local reader can catch your blog of the week and actually walk in and talk to you …or email… or call…  
To me that is pretty useful customer service. Our job, as entrepreneurs and employees alike, is to be creative. We need to utilize our resources as much as possible and work lean. The last time I checked, blogs were free, Twitter is free, and Facebook is free. Email can be free,(I suggest against it) and websites can be extremely cheap to put up. Use them, try them, get familiar with them, or just call us. Our team will be happy to talk to you about them and help you get started. I still believe that paper print is useful, (such as OC Business Journal), but newspapers are struggling for readership and direct mail has less than a 1% capture rate. Therefore, you need to diversify and use any and all capable resources. Once you get comfortable with them, I suggest tying them in together and automating wherever possible.  

Also, good luck to the Virginia Cavalier wrestling team this weekend at the ACC’s!

LinkedIn, the social networking site for professionals, has become the first social network to announce a “working” relationship with Microsoft Outlook Social Connector. Social Connector is Microsoft’s way to merge all your online connections and social activities into the outlook user interface. There are clear advantages and reasons for Microsoft attempting this network merge into their current offerings, but I am not going to dive into that aspect of things. Rather, I decided I would play around with the Beta. The steps can be found here, but as most Windows users know, they entail: DOWNLOAD, NEXT, NEXT, FINISH, RESTART
You then have to go to the LinkedIn site and download their plug-in. This is pretty much the same procedure as above. After a few restarts to Outlook, you should have a new contact folder called LinkedIn. I have pulled up my own profile for privacy purposes, but you can see it will automatically link to your LinkedIn profile picture(which is part of my team and I at our charity golf outing). This plug-in is definitely not for those that are camera shy with their email contacts.

However, there are some nice features to both products. Here is a better image of the social connector window pane that gets added as a 3rd pane to your outlook window.

There are a total of 6 tabs that you can choose in this pane: 1. the current shown, which is an aggregation of the other 5, 2. news feed updates, 3. emails, 4. Attachments sent by this individual, 5. calendar items shared with this person, and 6. status updates (ie. the LinkedIn updates that you share with your LinkedIn connections)
I found the attachments tab to be the most useful. These tabs act as an auto-sort for you, which is already a feature in Outlook, but the attachments tab produces the last 10 or so attachments sent by this individual. It enables you to find attachments without having to scour through emails hoping to know the name of the attachment that you are looking for. It is a pretty handy feature!
The status updates are currently on hiatus for me, I have separate work/LinkedIn emails, so they are not updating at this point. However, it could be a useful feature to have real time information on what is going through your contacts head. Or in other words, the potential to a better way to email market in real time! In my opinion, it’s worth the 5 minutes of install to spend a day and see if it is useful.

I found myself working in our lab today. For those of you who don’t know, our lab is filled with 3 racks of servers. (view a schematic here) I have never paid much attention to how loud it was, until today, when I tried talking on the phone while in front of the terminal.  Let’s just say it was challenging.  For an example, go find the largest industrial fan out there and turn it on high. From there, put your right ear right up to the fan and try talking on your cell phone with your left ear. You will find yourself 70% deaf.  It is even more challenging trying to type while talking. Needless to say, it is not the ideal situation. So I decided to figure out a better solution.
I often find myself using Windows remote desktop protocol(RDP) to port into other computers for access to different applications.  This is pretty useful when you are porting into other Windows machines. However, this does not work when you are porting into a Linux box, which is what I was working on today, and why I was in the server room.  Of course, as we all strive to work smarter, and frankly my ears were buzzing, I remembered that I still had access to HP RGS. RGS (Remote Graphics Software) was designed for remote multi-person collaboration with advanced graphics capabilities. It is a pretty cool solution for design/manufacturing/simulation industries. However, one of its features allows you to do a screen scrape from a Windows box to a Linux box. Or in other words, it will deliver the Linux server screen to your windows desktop similar to RDP.  So after a quick and easy install of the RGS sender software on the Linux box, I installed the receiver on my Windows desktop. Connecting was a breeze with the Linux IP address and my log in credentials.  Here’s a screen capture to give you an idea of what it looks like. By the way, Jing is a really useful tool for screen captures.

RGS is free on the receiving end and a software license can be purchased from CB Technologies pretty inexpensively for the RGS Sender. However, it is a free download and trial for 30 days, so if nothing else, play around with it and see if it is a useful tool for your everyday work needs.

From Green IT and Virtualization to Cloud Computing, today’s mega-trends demand a new approach to infrastructure-an infrastructure that matches the supply of IT resources with the demand for business applications.  See how the HP converged infrastructure architecture is breaking down technology silos to simplify IT and accelerate business results.

Day 1 will highlight the following:
Managing explosive data growth
Transforming productivity through Unified Communications
Bulletproofing your virtualization strategy
Thermal Logic and Dynamic Power Capping reduce costs and extend the life of your datacenter

Day 2 will highlight the following:
HP BladeSystem Matrix and Insight Software: Converged Infrastructure solution for delivering shared services
Flex Fabric to dynamically connect resources
Unified Storage for flexible, resilient scale-out storage
BladeSystem with G6 processors for maximum performance and power efficiency
Detailed technical teardown of competitive systems to see what’s really under the covers
*Day 2 is in select cities only

Tour Schedule
Boston, MA
January 14-15, 2010

Los Angeles, CA (Anaheim)
January 19-20, 2010

Seattle, WA
January 21-22, 2010

Denver, CO
January 26-27, 2010

Phoenix, AZ
January 28-29, 2010

Dallas, TX (Plano)
February 2-3, 2010

Houston, TX
February 4-5, 2010

Washington DC
TBD Feb or March 2010

San Francisco, CA (Palo Alto)  
March 11-12, 2010

Contact a CB Technologies Team Member to reserve your spot or you can go to the registration site.  

Registration site:  www.hp.com/go/ciroadshow

Westminster, CA 1/7/10- CB Technologies today announced that it has received a 2009 Boeing Performance Excellence Award. The Boeing Company issues the award annually to recognize suppliers who have achieved superior performance. CB Technologies maintained a minimum Silver composite performance rating for each month of the 12-month performance period, from Oct. 1, 2008 to Sept. 30, 2009.

This year, CB Technologies, which supplies Boeing with IT products and Services, is among 358 suppliers to receive the Silver level of recognition. In 2006, CB Technologies was also a recipient of the Boeing Supplier of the Year award.

“This award is a testament to the relationships we build with and the support we provide our clients. Each time we receive referrals or awards like this it solidifies our belief that a commitment to excellence and teamwork is appreciated and rewarded “ commented CB Technologies co-Principal and CFO, Kelly Ireland.

About CB Technologies

CB Technologies is an award winning and leading IT solutions provider and Systems Integrator to the Aerospace, Government, Commercial, and University sectors. In 2009, CB Technologies was named to Inc. 500/5000, Orange County Business of the Year, VAR 500 and was an active participant in FiRe.

For More Information on the Boeing Performance Excellence Award, visit

http://www.boeing.com/companyoffices/doingbiz/supplier_portal/bpea.html

For More Information on CB Technologies visit

http://www.cbtechinc.com

I have many interesting newsletters, RSS feeds, and blogs come across my desk in the course of a month. When I get the chance, I like to skim through them and read the most unique or thought provoking. Today, one sparked my interest. A friend of mine, at Growthink, pointed me to an article in the Wall Street Journal about the last decade of investing. As the article states, “Since the end of 1999, stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange have lost an average of 0.5% a year:” That is pretty awful for a person, such as I, that began investing in 2001. Now I am not going to dive into my portfolio, but I will point out that, this is why we diversify our investments. By investments, I don’t just mean our pre-tax retirement funds. Wikipedia states that investments are “the active redirection of resources/assets to creating benefits in the future.” Investments can be in yourself, your education, gold, or your family.  I think this article is really stating that the 10’s, as they are being called, are a great time to start diversifying your investments. I could predict your portfolio will increase 10% on average over the next 10 years, but I can tell you there is another less risky way to get a solid return. Invest in yourself! How can you make yourself a better employee, a better father, or a better person? I am lucky to work with and for great people, and they have given me the opportunity to continue to invest in my education and myself, with a full lab and multiple training courses. However, there is a little known fact, that they have given that opportunity to all of you as well. CB Tech opens its labs and partnerships to clients, both current and potential, to learn about new technologies, take a test drive, or find a training course to help better your business, yourself, or just learn something new. Feel free to reach out to me at chris.kelley (at) cbtechinc.com to learn more about our lab or partnerships. However, on the dawn of a new year, I wish you a safe and wonderful New Year! Remember, the 10’s are a GREAT TIME TO INVEST!

Data deduplication was the “Buzz” word of the month a little while back. Many cold-callers would open with “If you aren’t using dedupe, you are wasting money.” I don’t put much stock in the buzz word of the month club, but data deduplication does offer some value to clients.  Before I dive into the value that I see, let’s get a brief definition of what it is. Good old Wikipedia says data deduplication is “the elimination of duplicated or redundant data.” Well, we already got that much from the name, so diving a little further in, deduplication cuts down on copying the same data over by referencing the original full copy, similar to when I just referenced Wikipedia. I gave you a hyperlink or pointer to go see all that Wikipedia had to offer without copying the entire page. Data deduplication works very similarly, it consolidates all that duplicate data of  and replaces it with pointers to the original material.

Now that we have a basic understanding of what it does, the real question is WHY does it matter to you? Company storage data doubles every 1 to 2 years. Storage product, such as disk and tape, costs continue to decrease per GB, but they are not keeping pace with the amount of increased data that must be stored. There are also recurring costs of storage; such as power, cooling, and real estate. Therefore, your storage costs are increasing exponentially every time you plug in a new device. What deduplication allows you to do is minimize the space required to store your files, thus allowing you to get more out of every disk, limiting power consumption, and keeping data center sprawl to a minimum. This equates to saving you money! In short, you should consider data deduplication when you want to store more data, in less space, for less cost.

There are multiple companies that offer deduplication software and each claims to have a better “special sauce” than the other. Some of these vendors are HP, NetApp, and Data Domain. A good IT partner can help you work through the particulars of which product will work best for you, and why and where to use deduplication technology.

A few interesting links on the topic:

HP White Paper: http://h20195.www2.hp.com/V2/GetPDF.aspx/4AA1-9796ENW.pdf

List of White Papers by multiple vendors: http://whitepapers.businessweek.com/rlist/term/Data-Deduplication.html

Westminster, CA November 13, 2009.  Carrillo Business Technologies, Inc. (CB Technologies), an award winning IT reseller and solutions provider, has announced the hiring of Colonel Steve Christian (US Army, Ret) as Sr. VP, Business Development. In this role, Steve will work on new business generation and strategic alliances with a strong focus in the government, military, and DOD verticals.

Colonel Christian, a native of Las Vegas, NV, enlisted in the service in 1978 and rose in rank from Private to Colonel.  His distinguished career spans 31 years and includes Battalion Commander at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii, a tour of duty in Afghanistan as Battalion Commander and as Legislative Liaison in Washington, DC.  At the time of his retirement Colonel Christian was serving as Garrison Commander of the Ft Monmouth NJ army base.

Colonel Christian received his education in the service including US Army Officers Candidate School and US Army Command and General Staff College.  He was awarded a BS in Social Psychology from Park University where he was a member of the Pinnacle Honor Society.  His MSA degree in Administration was earned at Central Michigan University.  In 2007 he received an MS in National Security Strategy from the National War College and most recently he completed the Six Sigma Executive Project Sponsorship training at the Armed Forces Staff College.

His personal awards and citations include the Legion of Merit, two Bronze Star, Joint Meritorious Service medal, six Army Meritorious Service medals, Humanitarian Service medal and the Global War on Terrorism medal.

Colonel Christian brings 31 years of experience successfully leading and managing organizations of increasing complexity and responsibilities.  His record of applying analytical skills, solving complex problems and strategic planning along with his superior interpersonal skills will make him a valuable addition to CB Technologies’ team.

About CB Technologies:

CB Technologies is a leading IT solutions provider to the Aerospace, Government, Commercial, and University sectors. CB Technologies current growth includes leveraging their High Performance Computing expertise into other verticals such as Web 2.0 and Cloud offerings that are looking to utilize a Scalable Computing Infrastructure. CB Technologies is one of the premier High Performance Computing Solution providers on the West Coast. In 2008, CB Technologies was named to Inc. 500/5000, Orange County Business of the Year, VAR 500 and is an active participant in FiRE. CB Technologies is experienced in Virtualization, UNIX, Linux and Windows environments including Windows HPC server 2008.