August 2011
In this issue
►Letter from the President
►Ricky's Corner
►Making Business More Efficient
►Do You Have Control?
►It's the Right Thing to Do
►Tablets & Smartphones
►Business Continuity Tip
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Tablets & Smartphones: Business Tools or Toys?
Randy Johnson, Vice President - Network Management Group, Inc.
 Is this the year of the Tablet? Has the mobile Internet finally arrived? What business purposes are served by using mobile Internet devices, and how can they help us better serve clients? Whether you are working with products from Apple, Motorola, BlackBerry, HTC, Samsung or a myriad of other providers, access to the Internet, and applications or "apps" drive the mobile world. Today, you can use apps that give you access to paperless documents from your office, provide clarification of a business rule from a quick check of research, have the ability to take a note to jog an idea, or to take enough notes for an entire draft memo. You can initiate a print job from anywhere to shared Internet printers, read a document that has been synchronized to the mobile device after being scanned, read books, publications, news sources, email, and consume content from almost any popular source.
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Business Continuity Tip
Crisis Communications
Planning Checklist
The success of any business rests firmly on its reputation. Unfortunately your image can be destroyed in a blink by one poorly handled crisis. During an emergency, it’s imperative that those within your organization know how to communicate effectively, both internally and externally.
This crisis communications planning checklist will help you develop a plan, as well as provide you with preparedness tools to ensure continuous communications before, during and after a disaster.
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Laugh a Little
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I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.
- John Cage
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Letter from the President
Tim Rettig
What the Cloud Actually Means to Business
INTRUST GROUP and our clients have been using cloud-based applications for several years now. But recently, we’ve seen that trend rapidly accelerate. It’s become such a hot topic that I’ve started a blog dedicated to it, called Cloud Actually.
You’ve probably heard the term “eating our own dog food,” or “dogfooding” before. In the IT industry, the term was first used in 1988 by Microsoft to kick off an initiative to make sure that they used as many of their products internally as possible. We at INTRUST also make sure we practice “dogfooding” as much as possible, and the cloud is no exception. We are in the process of moving many of our systems to the cloud, and we will be sharing our successes and failures at Cloud Actually. So you will be able to find out if we are “eating our own dog food,” or “drinking our own champagne,” as I recently heard it described.
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Ricky's Corner
Ricky Phipps
Managers of INTRUST GROUP: Jason Pobozny – Enterprise Network Operations Manager
This month concludes my series introducing our Management Team to the readership. I have to start with a correction to my teaser about Jason Pobozny from the opening article.
Jason has more seniority at the company than anyone except for Tim and me . I met Jason when we were both at large consulting firms engaged at McDonald’s Corporation. The first floor of the building where we worked was a McDonald’s restaurant. Once a month or so, they offered a $0.39 cheeseburger promotion. Another consultant we worked with bet Jason the price of the Cheeseburgers he couldn’t eat 10 of them. He made it to 9 2/3 before he had to admit failure.
The correction is this: Jason does not have more seniority at the company than anyone except for Tim and me. Jason has been with us eight years as of this past May. Jesse Hughes has been with the company for nine years as of March. I’m sure, to Jason, it has felt like 80 years, since he has worked directly for me the entire time, but we are talking about calendar years here, so my apologies to Jesse.
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Ten Tips for Making Your Business More Efficient
used with permission from Cisco
 To keep pace in an increasingly competitive world, your business needs to run as efficiently as possible. "Sooner or later, any company not operating efficiently will be out of business," says Laurie McCabe, vice president of small and medium business insights and solutions for research firm AMI-Partners. Efficiency is even more important for small and medium-sized businesses, McCabe adds, because their resources are limited compared to large global companies.
Here are 10 tips for using network technology to help your business work more efficiently, cut costs, improve customer satisfaction, and stay ahead of the competition.
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Do you have control?
Can you control which applications have priority on your network? Can you see which applications are using the most bandwidth across your network? Can you determine which users need access to what online applications (Facebook, YouTube, SalesForce, etc.)? Now you can with SonicWall Next Generation Firewalls and Application Control & Intelligence.
This technology is changing the way your network is optimized and the way your users access both necessary and unnecessary applications. Watch this video to learn more about how you can operate your network more efficiently and make your team more efficient and be sure to contact us for more information!
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It’s The Right Thing to Do
By Craig Kitch - www.craigkitch.com
 I read a great story about President Dwight D. Eisenhower, relayed by one of his staff members. Apparently the Eisenhower cabinet had been in a tussle over a difficult decision. Each of the cabinet officers argued the subject endlessly from his perspective. The secretary of defense argued that if his idea were not implemented, it would damage national security. The secretary of state argued a point that would protect foreign policy. The secretary of the treasury was concerned about financial implications. Finally, a red-faced President Eisenhower asked: “Well, what’s the right thing to do?” To that, one of the cabinet members said: Well, the right thing would be thus and such, to which all of the cabinet members agreed. The president made his decision and the press was notified.
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