Welcome! Thank you for dropping by our web site. Information Technology is in a funny place, mirroring the economic dysfunction that we see all around us. These harsh times are revealing behaviors that have always existed in the technology field. Many of them are surprising to the business savvy or corporate officer struggling to maintain profitability or even to stay afloat. The typical CIO or other technology manager is paying the piper for (sometimes inherited) years of trendy technology purchasing, inappropriate vendor relationships, and poor hardware/software license management. This list and the blame-game could go on forever. What is important now is to assess the situation, reduce costs, separate your "crew from cargo" and tighten your seat belts... because we are all making bricks without straw for at least the next year. We are Americans, and will always rise to the occasion.

Five Year Outlook and Planning for Local Governments

When Financial Systems/ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems ends up getting hosted, IT Departments will indeed look much different in 5 years, as the need for all the custom report/app stuff revolving around the financial system will be assumed to decline significantly... Read More... 

Sometimes, you can get in groove where you think you're pretty much up to any task, and can rest your skill sharpening for a bit. I call it the "Superman Syndrome", and it’s a very dangerous place to rest. A few years ago, I took on a project that literally turned my hair grey with its complexity - the Modesto INET. 

I had come off a string of successful projects across the west coast including the San Diego Padres Ballpark District design, and a string of Class C to Biomed Office Park conversions in Washington State. I was asked to get the negotiations completed and a fiber project from a stall point to completion. Without asking many questions, I jumped at the assignment. 

What I did not know at the time was by the time it was completed it would include 156 miles of fiber, interconnecting 115 sites, trenched through the streets of a busy metropolitan area, to multiple organizations outside of the organizational and political control.. Read More

Editorial -There are no small decisions in IT.
 "Ethics Committee Staffer Leaks Secrets on File-Sharing Network" read the headlines in the Washington Post and Wired Magazine.  The contents of the article had me shaking my head, remembering the countless times I have been blamed for adding to red tape, preventing home productivity, and even once being called a "Security Nazi" across a crowded boardroom table.  The words used in describing the leak from a United States Congressional Committee are dumbfounding. Phrases such as "accidentally leaking... over a peer-to-peer network... on a home computer..." litter the articles, sheltering the real culprit in today's technology-savvy workplace - the battle between staff convenience and legitimate consumer data protection. 

I struggled (and failed) to find the exact phrase and author of a quote my father once told me. It goes something like this "No one can tell us what to do, there should be a law against that".  Today's staffers are not computer users of corporate networks, but see themselves as "plugged in" and any barrier to unfettered access is seen as a barrier to their rights not a safeguard to other peoples.  Throughout their day they move seamlessly through the digital world, buying gas with a PIN number, while listing to an audiobook downloaded via secure account on their IPhone.  The increased functionality of Windows, the convergence of voice, video and data to IP networking and the increased comfort-zone of staffers to explore and experiment have combined into a witch’s brew of mixed blessings
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