Foundations of Technology

Technology. Business. Networking.

Archive for March, 2008

SMB Nation – Day 2

Scott Cover - March 31st, 2008 |

Day Two at the SMB Nation conference started a little slow, as I think a lot of people had lots of fun the previous night. Between the happy hour and the dinner that many of us partook in, we were all feeling a little rough that morning. But once things got going it was another [...]

SMB Nation – Day 1

Scott Cover - March 29th, 2008 |

This weekend I’m up in Northern New Jersey attending the SMB Nation East conference, spending a lot of time talking to companies and other consultants. Lots of talking, lots of looking and listening to sales spiels for software and new service solutions. The big topics of the seminar seem to be Microsoft’s Response Point, which [...]

Understanding the true Value of a Product

Scott Cover - March 23rd, 2008 |

As I have lamented here previously, we had a Juniper SSG-140 for our Firewall at the office. This wasn’t even remotely close to my choice for the firewall, as personally I would have enjoyed installing a Calyptix AE3000, but the person that was being groomed to be the Network Admin was adamant about getting the [...]

The Tenacity of the Sales Guy

Scott Cover - March 21st, 2008 |

We are currently in the process of looking for new connectivity and voice providers for our office, due in most part to long standing issues with the current provider. I have never personally been a big fan of ATX, but the list of things that have been wrong are just overwhelming if you ask me. [...]

Usability versus Unending Feature List

Scott Cover - March 13th, 2008 |

After a recent installation of a Juniper SSG-140 Firewall, I came to question the philosophy behind the development of the product. Don’t get me wrong, the product works, but it feels like the setup is needlessly complicated for the sake of complication. Frankly, I think the biggest problem stems from two items with this particular [...]

Use Lunch to get More Done

Scott Cover - March 9th, 2008 |

I know this sounds counterproductive, or even backwards. But use your Lunch time everyday to your advantage. Almost every day I use my lunch time to get done multiple minor tasks that I simply haven’t had time to do through the rest of the day. There are a couple of tricks that are required to [...]

Lose the Geek Image

Scott Cover - March 8th, 2008 |

Let’s be frank, when people think of geeks, they think of that unkempt, squirrely guy with the bad haircut and ugly glasses. Unfortunately, very few of us do anything about trying to rectify that issue. You find many a geek going to work in Jeans and T-shirts or some variation, which while fine in a [...]

Why the name of your Vendor isn’t important…

Scott Cover - March 6th, 2008 |

So many technology consultants these days all seem to have the same list of partners littering their websites, with much of it being equivalent to those pieces of flair that employee’s of Chotchkie’s love to flaunt. Everyone is a partner with Symantec, Cisco, Microsoft, and a large list of other seemingly impressive big name technology [...]