Great Enterprise Backup for
Less Than $100

Message from the Mavens

With the weather cooling down things are starting to heat up at Mavenspire. Most prominently, our PearsonVue, Prometric, ISO testing center has been booked non-stop from the day it was opened in our new location. We are so pleased to fulfill this need for Annapolis and the surrounding areas. We look forward to doing more.

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Special Offers and Announcements

Mavenspire Now Offers Hosted Online Backup!

Ensure that your users don't lose information in the event of a computer malfunction. With Mavenspire's hosted online backup, files are saved to an offsite serve. After the initial backup, only changes are uploaded, and files are synchronized. To get started contact us.

Annapolis Linux Users Group Meetings to be Held at Mavenspire Office on the first Monday of each month.

Meeting Time: 7PM-9PM

Corporate Training and Videoconferencing space is available.

Our facility has high speed wireless and a place for more formal presentations.

Parking: There is a large empty lot east of the main section that has over 30 parking spots

 Open Source

In an effort to share its applications with other government agencies, the Department of Defense's IT services arm, the Defense Information Systems Agency, is making its suite of administrative and work-flow applications available via open source. The agency is working with the Open Source Software Institute on the plan, which it hopes will lead to more government open source projects. http://tinyurl.com/nk44hb

Open House! October 29th!

Mavenspire will be holding our first open house event in Annapolis! We've already met so many wonderful new people, and we look forward to meeting more! There will be food and drinks of many kind. You will have the opportunity to speak with partner representataives from several major technology vendors as well as see demonstrations of the various technologies. There will also be prizes!

Product Updates

 Cisco

Smart Business Communications System (SBCS) Release 1.5

SD208P 8-Port 10/100 Switch

Citrix

XenDesktop Standard Edition no longer offered after September 30th, 2009

Novell

GroupWise 8 SP1

Polycom

DMA 7000 Release 1.1.1

Zultys

MX Mobile for Blackberry

How do you create the perfect enterprise backup solution for less than $100
Written by Michael Tanenhaus

Truth? You can't. No, not because of the $100 budget - because the word "perfect" is a trap. A perfect solution would work in all possible (and unforseen) circumstances. The best we can hope for is a solution that addresses all of the major and minor disturbances that we can think of. Why am I talking about this anyway? Well with the recent anniversay of the events of September 11, I was also reminded of some of the aftermath scenarios which our company was involved with. Several companies had perfectly good data backup systems - but no one had really looked at the impact of losing the PAPER files (which of course were not backed up - they were in the filing cabinets)

How do I reduce the impact of a disaster on my business?

Work Enablement = Lifestyle Enablement
Written by Jessica Tanenhaus

My son has just turned 4 months old today and, as I sit with my laptop and work at home while he naps, I've been thinking about how much easier this whole life change has been due to the technology we use as a regular part of our business. Voice over IP means that I can take and make calls from wherever I am and still show as part of the corporate whole. Remote desktops let me accomplish what I need with a minimum of local resources, since I can connect to whatever desktop I need for the necessary tools to do my job. Remote control software lets me connect to and support my clients from anywhere, removing the need to go onsite for every little thing and allowing me to be more responsive than Baltimore-DC traffic would generally allow me to be if I were driving to every job. Corporate instant messaging and third-party instant messaging let me quickly respond to issues, even when the baby is crying and I couldn't do a coherent phone call if my life depended on it. My Blackberry has become my lifeline when Miles won't sleep anywhere but in a carrier with me hiking around Annapolis; I've responded to press enquiries, called customers, checked online systems, handled critical emails, and generally kept in touch and on the ball without ever slowing down to the point where the baby starts to protest my lack of mobility — and I'm keeping in excellent shape, too.

TIP OF THE MONTH:
Mobility Applications for Business - My Live-or-Die Blackberry App List
Written by Michael Tanenhaus

OK, so maybe I won't die if I don't have these applications — but I would certainly be less productive. Let's face it, mobile phones are dead — it's all about the mobile communication platform these days. My phone needs to make coffee, right before it returns calls for me and then downloads my special, selective list of important news for the day. OK, fine, if it can't make the coffee, it should at least give me directions to the best coffee shop in Annapolis (which happens to be, hmmmm, Caffe Pronto...).

So here it is — my list of absolute musts on the Blackberry platform. I encourage feedback — so send me your favorite applications, even if you don't have a Blackberry. And, btw, better and better — most of these are free in some form or another.