Technology Archives – Page 4 of 4

17 Aug 2009

Build Versus Buy (Software)

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:25:15-06:00August 17th, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Software Development, Technology|

There are two main reasons to build your own software versus buy an existing software product:

A preexisting software product does not exist; and
Competitive Advantage.

The impact of competitive advantage through software and automation is underestimated by most small and mid-sized companies (and many large corporations too).

Non-Existent

Despite the vast amount of software out there in the cloud and available to be run in your own enterprise, there are still a number of business problems that cannot be solved by off-the-shelf or preexisting software.

And even if that software exists, it may have been tooled to be too specific to one environment and the cost […]

4 Aug 2009

The Gloves Are Off

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:25:40-06:00August 4th, 2009|Categories: Current Events, Doug's Blog, Technology|

I was off reading some blogs today and came across an interesting exchange in the comments section.

It started off on a technical argument, got nasty and then got personal.

When the insults on personal choices of cell phones started flying, I knew the gloves were off.

Yup, your choice of a cell phone says a lot about you.

The Mac, iMac, iPod and iPhone were all initially about going against the herd. Forget the technical arguments for a minute. People are proud that they are not getting what the majority are getting, it says something about you. And Apple? Brilliant at consumer marketing… they […]

28 Jul 2009

Choosing a Content Management System

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-06T12:25:18-06:00July 28th, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Marketing, Sales, Technology|

Historically we have been a Microsoft .NET shop with some experience in Java. It is not that we are against other technologies, it is just that we don’t see a reason to jump all over if the tools you have do the trick.

In the case of choosing a content management system (CMS) for our corporate website, we looked at open source and low cost CMS products on the .NET platform and found them not as mature as we needed.

We have therefore chosen Joomla as our CMS. It is a well supported and widlely used CMS developed on the PHP platform […]

24 Apr 2009

Day 4 – New Website

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:30:22-06:00April 24th, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Marketing, Sales, Technology|

It's been challenge to work on a website this week with eyes not quite working right.

I've been looking at what we have done over the past 9 years and it seems quite impressive. Our industry experience has clearly been Human Resources, Actuarial and Financial Services. However, many of our core capabilities could easily be applied to just about any industry… web applications, modeling, complex form/surveys, data migration, integration, project management, etc.

In fact we are launching products aimed at the small and medium business market that will maximize the human capital in your business inside and outside of the traditional […]

16 Apr 2009

Senior Cyborgs

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:31:22-06:00April 16th, 2009|Categories: Doug's Blog, Technology|

Read an interesting online article at PCMag.com about robotics that people wear to help with limited mobility.

With advances like these and those in medicine, life is going to be quite different for those people reaching retirement in the next 10-20 years than it was for prior generations.

Check it out complete with pictures and video.

8 Apr 2009

Web Site Redesign

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:31:37-06:00April 8th, 2009|Categories: Doug's Blog, Marketing, Sales, Software Development, Technology|

I have spent the last year or so thinking about redesigning our corporate website. I'll be the first to admit our company's website is dated and the content is a bit stale. It has been kind of the story of the shoemaker and his kids… too busy working on other people's stuff.

I could just take the existing content, update it a bit and put a new front on it. But that didn't really feel right.

Sure there are lots of static and dynamic brochure style websites out there to emulate. This is who we are, these are our products, these […]

31 Mar 2009

Intel’s New Nehalem Zeon Processor

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:32:02-06:00March 31st, 2009|Categories: Doug's Blog, Technology|

Just read some reviews on Intel's newest Zeon processor. Looks like the increase in processing power over prior versions and the competition is a very substantial jump… like double. Just as big is the increased support for virtualization to take advantage of features in Windows Server 2008.

Doubling the processing power while reducing or keeping steady the power consumption is significant.

We are hosting some client applications at Q9 Networks. They charge for power and bandwidth. If I can cut my power consumption in half to get the same work done, that would give us a substantial power […]

25 Mar 2009

Caught a Worm, Gone Phishing?

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:32:28-06:00March 25th, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Technology|

I was watching the news this evening and lo and behold, Stuart Crawford from BulletproofIT is talking about a worm that is set to wreak havoc worldwide.

Shows you the importance of keeping on top of patches and security best practices.

The three founders of Sunwapta Solutions (Doug, Al and Glen) all came from an enterprise technical support background at a big information technology (IT) consulting firm (that just got bought by HP).

From day one we have tried to run our own IT like we are a big company. We take it seriously. That doesn't guarantee anything, but it does […]