Did a colleague forward this newsletter? Please email me to join the list and receive your own copy. Blog and Syndicated Articles Please visit the Technology Reflections Blog on the Web for new articles, explainers, and opinion. Here's a sampling of entries made this last month. Without Search, Are You Real? A Future Career in IT? Disintermediating the Realtor New Hack Attack Bundled in Ads Google Streetview Microsoft's Big Licensing Push Yahoo! Fixes IM Flaws Annoying RDC 6.0 Problem IRS Phishing Scam The 64bit Question Neolingo CAPTCHA Ever been asked to type in a phrase or a word being displayed to you as a distorted graphic image - like this? The technology is called the "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart" - yes, an utterly ridiculous name better deserving of its acronym: CAPTCHA. Its purpose is to prevent automated processes on the Internet from setting up bogus accounts. CAPTCHA works because Optical Character Recognition (OCR) requires a stable character set to recognize what the letters in an image might say. Instead, CAPTCHA distorts the image so that OCR fails yet a human can still read the image.  Thus, a positive result from this Reverse Turing Test would indicate that a requestor is most likely a human being. News and Announcements Mickler & Associates, Inc. welcomes its new customers: Best Western Hotel of Battle Ground, WA   Battle Ground Printing Bugs and Viruses A couple of scams and viruses to watch out for in the next month: Phish: the Capital One Bank Scam This phish is making rounds, asking users to click-out to the website to verify personal private information and update a capital one account. Instead, upon linking to the spoof website, hackers will be more than happy to accept the voluntary data. The link shows an example but generally users should avoid responding to solicitations that ask for any kind of verification. If there is a legitimate concern, better to make a telephone call than risk sharing confidential information across the web. The W32.amca Worm This worm was discovered on June 28. It copies itself to networks and thumb drives, then opens a back door on infected computers to allow a hacker to gain remote access to the computer. The W32.amca Worm is prolific because it relies on weak passwords to compromise network shares. It's also carried behind firewalls and "injected" directly into a trusted network with thumb drives. The best offense would be a good defense: create stronger passwords and instigate a policy prohibiting the use of personal thumb drives on the company's network resources. Click here to take our online survey on Webinars! Additional Resources for Technology and Business Professionals Is your website profitable? A great question for many is how to create a system of metrics that evaluates the material benefit of owning a website. This article is very good for the small business looking to measure the success of its web investment. The Five Sins of Windows Vista I thought this was a good article for technical professionals, or students interested in microcomputer technology, on some of the failings of Vista from a software design perspective.

Technology Reflections is a newsletter sponsored and prepared by Mickler & Associates, Inc. of Battle Ground, Washington.  The newsletter addresses the technology concerns of small business in every day lingo, and reflects on trends, issues, and tips to help your company gain competitive advantage from tech spend. Please feel free to distribute to colleagues and partners.

Online Collaboration

So, do you ZoHo? No? Maybe you should.

ZoHo is an online productivity and collaboration software ran across the web as a service.  ZoHo is a spreadsheet application, a word processor, a wiki, a presentation utility, notebook, online meeting center, project management tool, customer relationship management system, chat, email product... well, ZoHo is a lot of things. ZoHo is generally free and it can help your business.

1. ZoHo - Basic Productivity. 

There are four basic applications that most small businesses need: a word processor, a spreadsheet, a presentation software, and an email client. Imagine if many of the root capabilities of Microsoft Office Standard were available to everyone in your company... for free?  You can save files and use them interchangeably with other productivity applications, even Microsoft Office. Best yet, these applications run across the web through your Internet browser, they're automatically updated every time you use them.

2. ZoHo - Advanced Productivity.

There are an additional three applications small businesses might need in addition to basic productivity: a database utility, a project management solution, and a planner. ZoHo offers them all and gives you the immediate ability to share these resources with people both internal and external to your office environment. These advanced offerings do come at a cost but the licensing - $5/mo, for example - is much smaller than the outlay a small business might incur with comparable Office products.

3. ZoHo - Interconnectivity.

And if that wasn't enough, ZoHo offers a chat utility, an online meeting space, a wiki, and even a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution.  Although they're generally not very customizable, these solutions might fit the bill of any small business. Besides, free is a very good price.

4. ZoHo - Off-line Support.

ZoHo as a suite of managed applications fits into two contemporary software licensing models: SAAS (Software as a Service) and open source. One of the drawbacks of running productivity software and tools as a web service is, when the web is down, accessing critical business data could be rendered inoperable. Well, ZoHo has overcome this problem by creating desktop widgets and applications that allow you to create, use, and distribute content without having to be online.

So far, this may sound pretty attractive. What we're talking about here is a return for thousands of dollars of commercial software licensing for fractions of the cost, eliminating price as a barrier to gaining their capabilities. To the established business, this may be a strategy to gradually shift from commercial licensing to open licensing to preserve capability but eliminate ongoing software expenses tied to growth. And for the new small business, ZoHo is a means to acquire functionality at practically no cost - allowing for immediate competitive capability without licensing investments.

I'd be remiss, though, if I didn't point out the risks of using an SAAS or open licensing model.

Risk 1. Sustainability. ZoHo and other SAAS tools like it aren't capitalized nor branded like Microsoft. The existence of ZoHo suggests that productivity applications are commodities and that, eventually, all of these capabilities will be free to everyone. Whether or not that business model is sustainable has yet to be proven, and the small business would be tying their software strategy to uncertainty.

Risk 2. Interoperability. Although the ability to transfer data and information between ZoHo and commercial applications have vastly improved, it's not entirely perfect and this may frustrate some.

Risk 3. Connectivity. SAAS only works when connectivity is available to the Internet; SAAS functions are severely crippled if the Internet is not available. This may affect some business models that take users into areas of spotty or unpredictable states of network connectivity.

Risk 4. Support and Training/Look and Feel.  These applications don't come with much support or training, so the small business would be on their own in figuring out how to use them. Also, end-users may not feel entirely comfortable with the applications as they don't work exactly like their commercial counterparts or may be missing familiar features.

Undeniably, there exists some opportunity for the small business in pursuing SAAS solutions to their productivity management problems, but ultimately, the small business should weigh the risks and benefits of using SAAS models like ZoHo.

Russell P. Mickler, CISSP | MCSE
Principal Consultant, Mickler & Associates, Inc.
360.600.9508 | rmickler@micklerandassociates.com