The wonderful standard “Take the A Train” is a terrific example of early social media marketing.  Although originally crafted as a result of directions Duke Ellington gave Billy Strayhorn to get to his house in Harlem, the song was later heavily promoted by The Cotton Club, also located in Harlem, and accessible by… the A train.  What better than to have a popular song let your prospective patrons know how to get to your club, long before such things like Google Maps or Siri were around?

Now that insurance companies and other payers have cottoned on (yes, pun intended, sorry!) to the fact that preventative medicine lowers health care costs, primary care and other specialty providers are starting to dip their toes in the waters of better managing their patient acquisition methodologies.  Practices whose revenues rely more on elective procedures have traditionally been leaders in the medical marketing space, and as we all know, the Internet is where marketing lives these days.

In that regard, I was very pleased to be invited to speak at the upcoming Medical Internet Marketing Symposium being held in Boston on October 29-30.  Their website is http://www.mims2010.com.

The symposium addresses not only core Internet marketing challenges, but also is intended to help attendees with related issues and opportunities: e.g. how iPad usage in medical practices creates tremendous efficiencies; what to look for when evaluating patient portals; Google’s perspectives on patients’ use of medical information; good website design; computer security and data breaches, and more.

Targeted specifically for medical practices, the attendees already registered comprise a mix of physicians, practice managers and other senior, non-technical medical executive staff.  So, while many of the presentations cover technical topics, the goal is to empower attendees to plan and execute an Internet marketing strategy appropriate for their practice, and not how to code middleware between Centricity and a third-party web portal (although we can certainly do that for you if you need us to).

I hope you will consider joining us at MIMS 2010 later this month!  (You can register directly on the site.)

All the best,
Mark
CIO

P.S. Please feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions about this conference.

Reliable Networks is pleased to host the April meeting of the New England ISO group, a collaborative group of Information Security Officers and Chief Security Officers from New England enterprises.

During the meeting, I will be sharing our best practices regarding email server security. The talk will be less bits ‘n bytes technical (no procmail rulesets for example!) than it will be strategic; intended to provide ISOs with both a framework and a template for securing email systems.

Malware infestations typically penetrate enterprises through web browsing and email payloads. While there is no substitute for good end-user security training, there are some things which can be done on the email server-side of things to mitigate risk, at reasonable cost, and without inconveniencing end users unduly.

NEISO meeting attendance by non-members is by invitation, so if you would like to come, please follow the link on the NEISO website.

Hope to see you there!

All the best,
Mark
CIO

Zimbra is a fast-growing competitor to Microsoft Exchange with more than 55 million paid mailboxes globally and some multiple of that in free mailboxes provided via their unpaid open source version. Full Disclosure: More than two years ago we chose Zimbra for our own use, and soon thereafter became a Zimbra Premiere hosting provider.

We don’t play favorites here at Reliable Networks, and we think Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010 are very good products, much improved over Exchange 2003 and earlier versions. We support Exchange at our clients as well as Zimbra; which platform they choose is based on each client’s unique needs.

VMware is now headed by Paul Maritz, who many pundits feel left Microsoft in a “three’s a crowd” situation nearly a decade ago.

Zimbra has been taking away some very big Exchange accounts from Microsoft since being acquired by Yahoo, and we expect that trend will accelerate with Zimbra now under the VMware umbrella.

So the good news for clients is that, when it comes time to upgrade your old Microsoft Exchange installation, you now have more interesting options than you did yesterday.

And watching the action as VMware and Microsoft compete on this new front, at least to techo-heads like us, is more entertaining than a new season of American Idol!

If you have questions about your email/collaboration choices, give us a call at (207) 772-5678. Zimbra isn’t for everyone, but neither is Exchange. We’ll help you make the choice that’s right for your company.

All the best,
Mark
CIO

Over the past year we have helped a number of our clients reduce their costs and improve reliability by getting rid of premises-based servers in favor of hosted services (e.g. Drop Box for file sharing) and/or data center hosting for mission-critical vertical applications.

Once the servers go off site however, the office’s connection to the Internet becomes the “weak link in the chain.” Some clients attacked that link by swapping out their current Internet connection for a more enterprise-grade connection (e.g. SDSL or bonded T-1s), but that still represents a single point of failure. Other clients upgraded their router/firewall to a device that can load balance or failover between two simultaneously active Internet connections. So when the cable modem service is down, the router automagically switches over to the DSL connection — totally seamlessly to the end users. Some router/firewalls even allow you to use one of those Sprint/Verizon Wireless PC Cards traveling laptop users have for the office’s secondary Internet connection. Which mix of redundant connections to use is a complex matter, requiring careful analysis of not only your bandwidth usage as a whole, but the workflow processes utilized by your employees, customers, vendors and others with whom you connect over the Internet, even if only by email.

As the Commonwealth of Virginia has discovered, not having any redundant Internet connectivity, even when using so-called “bulletproof” network connections, is just not acceptable. (You can read the story here.)

Consequently, we find our clients’ businesses increasingly require a conversation about the merits and costs of redundant Internet connectivity. For increasing numbers of clients, redundant Internet connectivity is no longer a luxury; rather, it is very cheap insurance if not a necessity.

If you need help deciding if redundant Internet connectivity is appropriate for your business, please feel free to give us a call at (207) 772-5678.

Mark
CIO

Welcome to the Reliable Networks blog! Here you will find informative articles on network best practices, network security, news on cutting edge networking technologies, and much more. These articles will be written by experienced network engineers who will pass on their own experiences to you. Check back soon for more!

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