It wasn't too long ago Apple was a mere blip in a Windows-dominated world. At least its modest market share meant they flew under the radar among most cybercriminals.
But now that Macs are hot again we're hearing more about malware attacks. And with Apple's monstrously successful iPhone and iPad product lines there's a growing concern these iOS devices could also be an obvious target by tech-savvy thieves -- and pose a threat to the entire corporate network.
Before allowing these devices into the organization, IT must educate employees to the risks, use tools to safeguard company data and develop policies that can reduce the odds of a security breach.
Or do you ban consumer devices altogether?
"Your company should not develop policies that excludes iOS devices," says Kevin Sterneckert, Research VP at the Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner research and consulting group. "Your employees are going to use these devices with or without permission – and with the latter, it could expose your network to major security breaches." "In other words, don't adopt a stick-your-head-in-the-sand strategy."
In fact, allowing users to choose the device they want has its benefits. "It could be less expensive for the company if they're not paying for device," adds Sterneckert, "so we're seeing more of a 'you bring the device and we'll provide the service' kind of scenario in the workplace today."
Sterneckert says there are different approaches to protecting mobile devices on the network, but there are three minimum "behaviors" every company should adopt:
• A four-digit PIN (passcode) on the iPhone and iPad, plus an "auto-wipe" option that deletes data after a few incorrect login attempts.
• Encrypted back-up on the local workstation the iOS device is connected to. "This will protect and secure all data on the device," says Sterneckert.
• Ensure the "Find My iPhone" service (free) is enabled, so a lost or stolen device can be located remotely and/or wiped clean.
Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync is also recommended for email. "The challenge is to make sure you put the right guardrails around environments, like email and web use, that include the right permissions, certificates and keys," says Sterneckert. "Apple has done a great job at that."
IT departments should also create policies based on the company's needs and/or industry's regulations. Make sure people understand their importance and why they're in place. For example, it's possible to limit the downloading of applications ("apps") from iTunes, disable the iPhone or iPad's cameras or curb corporate Wi-Fi use for personal reasons.
SMBs not doing enough?
It is incumbent upon businesses to develop these policies, but it's not yet highly prevalent in the small-to-midsized business space, says Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies, a Campbell, Calif.-based firm that provides industry analysis for the tech sector.
"Less than half of small businesses have formal IT policies in place," estimates Bajarin. "Even when they do, they struggle to enforce them given the mix of corporate and employee-owned devices across multiple platforms and device categories -- although there's policy management features available through mobile email servers."
At a minimum, companies should create policy rules and give them to employees, advises Bajarin. "Offer periodic reminders as well as education on security risk." "These policies should also encompass use of employee-owned devices to access company data -- things like mandatory password use, reporting lost/stolen devices or data and avoidance of removable storage are the bare bones minimum."
Mobile device management (MDM) software can help enforce these, as well as more advanced policies.
As smartphone and tablet adoption continues to increase, there is more of an "addressable market" for phishing and hacking of each platform, cautions Bajarin.
The financial crisis hit the global economy in late 2008. In the wake of this downturn came an economy-wide wave of layoffs and a significant increase in the unemployment rate. As the economy weakened so too did corporate profits.
At the time, the TELUS-Rotman security research team predicted that such economic downturns would increase the security risk profile of all IT systems. We also predicted that as corporate profits and government tax revenue fell, so too would corporate and government IT security budgets.
It was clear that preparedness and risk were moving in opposite directions: preparedness would fall as IT security budgets fell and security risks would rise with the rise in unemployment and a weakening in the economy.
We tested our hypotheses in the 2009 study. Not surprisingly, we found that budgets were cut on average by 10%, and breaches were up dramatically: from 3 per responding organization in 2008 to 11.3 in 2009. We also documented a doubling in the number of insider breaches: in 2008, 17% of Canadian organizations reported breaches related to insider activity, whereas in 2009, this statistic increased to 36%, completely in line with predictions that departing employees or employees who became increasingly concerned with the security of their jobs undertook activities that resulted in increases in insider breaches.
Therefore, the growing threat landscape that came with the financial crisis rendered most security budgets inadequate. In 2009, the average security budget was 7% of the IT budget. Top performing respondents spent at least 10% and several spent 15% or more of their IT budget.
However, spending alone did not guarantee a better posture. In 2008 we found that a budget of at least 5% correlated with high satisfaction with the security posture. In 2009, we found that high satisfaction with security posture required at least a 15% investment. This shift is mirrored by a significant increase in the number of breaches suggesting that the effect of security budgets, often planned a year in advance, is highly sensitive to sudden and major changes to the threat environment.
In last year’s (2010) survey we tested whether the effects of the financial crisis had passed – after all the economy in Canada is doing significantly better. The 2010 survey results indicated however that IT security budgets remained below their 2008 levels, thus carrying over the austerity measures implemented during the financial crisis. In 2010, respondents reported that security budgets were on average slightly above 6.5% of IT budgets. This represents a slight reduction compared to 2009 when respondents reported security budgets just under 7% of the IT spend.
As the figure below shows, the majority of organizations reported security budgets that range between 3% and 9% of the overall IT budget.
In terms of performance, respondents with budgets in the 7% to 9% range were most likely to reports satisfaction with the effectiveness of their security program.
Taking into account our finding in 2008 that a budget of at least 5% of the IT spend was required to achieve satisfaction with security posture, our 2010 result suggests that the security budget heuristic is sensitive to a decline in IT budgets.
In other words, as investment in IT drops, including in process and IT controls, the proportionate need for security investment rises. The financial crisis was both a fundamental cause of the worsening risk landscape as well as the inability to respond by increasing budgets.
Share of IT Budgets Allocated to Security
Of course, it is not just IT security spend that explains satisfaction and performance with IT security. We also found that in the aftermath of the crisis, many security professionals have broader roles with specialization in teams diminishing, and security professionals are being asked to do more with less.
In 2009, the majority of respondents indicated that the financial crisis had not forced them to cut staffing levels; however, contractors were impacted by austerity measures. Respondents to the 2010 survey note that internal staffing levels decreased.
Specifically, 50% of organizations are more likely to report to teams of 1-5 full-time employees and only 12 per cent reported that they report to teams of 6-10.
A potential explanation is that while these employees were employed in 2009 to oversee contractors, in 2010 when their contracts expired, the full time employees overseeing the work were also no longer needed.
The effects of the financial crisis have been significant and many of these effects have not dissipated, but continue to impact the security preparedness of many Canadian organizations.
Furthermore, it is especially important to recognize the need for investment in security budgets, as the proliferation of new technology, such as mobile devices and social networking drive the need for new, more secure technology, governance and education.
The sooner the effects of the financial crisis can be overcome, the better prepared organizations can become as they move to higher security budgets, hire the needed talent, both in quality and in numbers. Until that happens, there will remain significant room for improvement.
This summer, TELUS Talks Business bring you Security 360, a one-of-a-kind limited series on information security from Dr. Walid Hejazi, professor of international business at Rotman School of Management and a world-renowned expert on IT security. Dr. Hejazi has primed the TELUS-Rotman Joint Study on Canadian IT Security Practices on behalf of Rotman since its inception and has unique perspective and insight into IT security in Canadian business. Your comments and questions are welcome here.
Attention IT security professionals – your perspectives matter. For the 4th straight year, TELUS Security Labs and the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, are partnering to conduct a study on Canadian IT security practices. It’s the only original Canadian research of its kind. Add your perspective to the research (input is anonymous) and you could win a BlackBerry Playbook and receive a complimentary copy of the results. Click here to take the survey: http//www.telus.com/securitystudy
Each year the Federal Government invites individuals and businesses to make recommendations on what should, or should not, be included in the coming federal budget through the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance. This year, as TELUS prepares its own recommendations, we want to hear from you, our business customers, on what your priorities are for the 2012 federal budget.
The committee is specifically interested in views targeting four primary areas:
how to achieve a sustained economic recovery in Canada
how to create quality sustainable jobs
how to ensure relatively low rates of taxation
how to achieve a balanced budget
With that in mind, we at TELUS are interested in any and all ideas you have on how to strengthen our local, regional and national economies, keep taxes competitive and create new opportunities for growth in each of your sectors. Consider the following questions:
Given the current global economic situation, what ideas do you have to help the federal government balance the budget and should that be a priority?
What would incentivize you to make a capital investment in your business?
What would incentivize you to expand your business and grow your employee base?
Are we sufficiently capable to compete in the global economy and what would make us more competitive?
What specific areas should government focus its spending given the current fiscal situation?
TELUS is preparing a written submission for the committee for August 12.. In order to compile your recommendations and complete the submission by the August 12 deadline, we will need your recommendations no later than August 5, 2011. If the standing committee is interested in our submission, I will make a 10-minute presentation to its members this fall based on the feedback we receive from you. In our view, your expertise is critical to help shape future government policy and priorities and we want to do everything we can to help facilitate direct involvement for our customers. Please submit your ideas, recommendations and priorities at your earliest opportunity before Aug 5 and we will bring those forward to the federal government on your behalf. More information of the federal process can be found here: news release.
Michael Sangster is vice-president, government relations, at TELUS.
It’s been an exciting year for tablets with more to come. Over the last 6 months, as new devices continue to launch, more and more clients have been asking me “why do I need a tablet for my business?” and “what do you think is the best tablet out there?” As someone who has an opportunity to use multiple tablets day to day, these are difficult questions with difficult answers, however still very important and common ones. In this new 6 part series on tablets I’ll discuss these questions and share the insights I’ve gained about various tablets, with the goal of helping your business build a tablet strategy, evaluate your choices and hopefully help you understand which is the best tablet for your business.
Tablets are the next generation of mobile computers, leveraging wireless networks for Mobile Internet access.
Mobile Internet is a fairly broad category for devices, including not only tablets, but also USB modems and wireless routers. The common use is connecting users to the Internet while working outside the office, which the majority of time is a connection for some kind of computing device, typically a laptop or netbook. For decades laptops have been the standard in mobile computing. Tablets have been around almost as long but in very different forms (and price ranges) than the tablets hitting the market today. Rugged tablet computers used in health care could run between $3000 and $5000 just a few years ago. Wikipedia has a great history of tablet computers to help illustrate the significant improvements in tablet technology. Given that tablets are mobile computers, if you currently use laptops, then you’re a likely candidate for tablets and the question becomes, ‘is a tablet the right device for my mobile computing needs?”
Tablets are not quite laptop replacements, but they come close.
The popularity and reputation in the consumer space of today’s tablets precede them into the business space. While traditional computer manufacturers continue to enter the tablet market (Dell’s Streak tablet has been out for months with Samsung, HP and Lenovo recently announcing devices), the reputation of tablets as more consumer focused media consumption devices stems from the current best selling tablets produced by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) dominant in the smartphone market, such as Apple, HTC, Motorola and RIM. A lot of that popularity (and reputation) comes from the apps most popular on tablets (how many times have you asked someone if their device plays Angry Birds®?).
This can leave business owners and IT staff who understand where mobile computing is trending to ask themselves if they want to expose their business and employees to this type of mobile computer that are arguably more consumer oriented. However applications continue to drive the use of mobile computing in the field for business as well. The same technology that allows developers to render high definition video or gaming content can also help create dynamic graphics in presentations and design programs on tablets.
Applications become a large part of building a tablet strategy. We’ll discuss in more detail the various operating systems (OS) and app stores in a later post in the series.
Mobile computing means mobile working.
When a business pulls all of these pieces together, tablets can become a very powerful tool. For example, a parts manufacturing company might deploy tablets to some of their engineers enabling them to access design schematics or reports via email on the tablet. They might even use an engineering design app such as a computer-aided design app (CAD app) to sketch out new ideas or tweaks that come up as they are in meetings – all enabled by a 3G tablet outside the office, or while visiting various manufacturing locations, both locally and abroad.
This same parts manufacturing company could also enable its sales team with tablets. As salespeople visit with prospective and existing clients, a tablet could allow them to communicate back to the office or to their inside sales team with questions, share presentations and collateral, track expenses, even take orders and fill out digital forms, right on site with the client.
Now you might say that both of these examples sound like they could be using laptops and through the pairing with an embedded SIM card or Mobile Internet key, it is possible. However tablets do present one last advantage in these examples we haven’t yet discussed. They’re hot – offering more portability, easier use and enable a number of the top technology trends for 2011.
Tablets are the latest and greatest when it comes to technology and there’s something to be said for the pride and competitive edge that your business can hold when you’ve equipped your employees with these devices. Tablets also offer businesses that are using these devices with the opportunity to attract young new talent that equip staff with cutting edge tools.
The right tablet can be a powerful tool, but how do you choose the right tablet for your business? It’s all about needs analysis. Do you have a specific business issue or improvement you think can be addressed through mobile computing? Is there a specific software application your business wants to leverage out in the field? The answers to these questions become the first element of building your tablet strategy.
Next week we’ll take a deeper dive into the type of use for business tablets - where and how can the device be used (in the office or in a field environment) and delve deeper into developing your strategy, answering questions such as whether your tablet strategy is for a business need or just a technology upgrade. What does your IT environment look like (are you a Windows or Linux or Mac shop?) What OS ecosystem is your IT team more comfortable with? Finally we’ll begin looking at the various OS options and how they fit your business needs.
If you have a question about creating a tablet strategy for your business, leave a comment below, I’d like to hear from you. I will be using the last post in the series to answer common questions that I hear from you and our customers on creating a tablet strategy for their business.
Andrew Scott Reid is a product manager for business Mobile Internet and Tablets at TELUS and consults with business clients on a regular basis, helping them establish the right mobile tablet strategy for their business. Follow Scott on twitter: @andrewscottreid.
LindaOJ here again and I have been thinking a lot lately about business coaches, gurus, and experts. I have to admit to being a couple of those things myself, but I will let you make your own mind up on that one! I don’t like to blow my own trumpet as they say.
There is a place in everyone’s life I believe, for coaches—whether they are personal or business related, or even both. I had no idea coaches existed before I entered the world of business. In the early days of me struggling to build my first business (Motivational Steps) I was bombarded with coaches suggesting I hire them because I needed their help. There was a big problem with me hiring them though: I had no budget at all for a coach! I had started my business with nothing, not a penny in the bank and this was because I knew I wanted to build a better life for myself after two cancer diagnoses and working three dead-end jobs.
I managed to find wonderful mentors who coached me in my early days, mainly because they liked me and also because they knew I was passionate about helping others and would give back in time. When it was suggested I diversify slightly and become a business/personal development coach during my slow times I made a deal with myself. I would never charge over-the-top rates because I knew the people I was going to work with would be new small business owners or people who really and truly could not afford to pay, like me those years ago. I would offer short-term mentorship and set them on their way. We all know that old proverb: Give a man a fish, and you’ll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you’ve fed him for a lifetime. My point here is that there are a lot of different ways to teach someone something. We have to know that ‘our way’ does not always work for everyone.
Since the popularity of social media platforms has grown there is no shortage of coaches, gurus and experts offering us the chance to learn from them. This is OK but what really confuses a lot of people, including me, are the ‘experts’ who become successful by doing something in a certain way, insist we should all follow suit and when we do they decide on an even better way! I realise change is good but a lot of these people want to stand out, for themselves, and keep finding ways to be different so they won’t be forgotten. Change for the sake of change is as useless as no change at all. For the complete newbies this can take away their confidence and sometimes the desire to carry on. Then we have the coaches who offer a crumb and when that’s gone they reel us in by telling us without paying them a certain fee there is no way we will be successful, and we have to do it their way.
So… How do we find a coach, guru, or expert who is on our wavelength? Who we trust and respect and isn’t just into making money? Who is really passionate about helping their clients?
Ask a trusted connection who has used a coach if they could refer someone to you.
Check out the coaches you are interested in online, check for references and ask around before you decide to use anyone.
Set the guidelines before you sign on the dotted line. Ensure that whomever you are engaging to act as your coach knows what your expectations are. Spend some time with them to ensure your personalities work well together. Know your own mind, be open to listening, but in the end what works for them might not work for you. An example of this might be: you are a shy and quiet person and the coach you are thinking of hiring is a social butterfly and very much likes being in the spotlight. They tell you that you have to act like them, learn how to step out of the shadows and take over centre stage. This might be a disaster if you really are the shy and quiet person you always have been and if you truly feel that you are not comfortable doing that.
We all have instincts and an idea what works for us. A great coach knows us well enough to work with us and not against us. I invited a member of the Small Business Community Network - Christine McIver of Inspired Choices Inc., who is a coach herself to answer a few questions for me and offer some tips that might help us when we are thinking of hiring a coach:
How do you know your client is right for YOU?
In many cases a new client comes as a recommendation from a current/previous client so they already have an idea of the areas I coach in. Once we meet, share the challenges or goals we begin to see if there is a “fit”. This involves many areas; personalities, determination, openness and desire. A coaching client needs to be willing and eager to move forward with their life, either personally or professionally. They are not hiring someone else to do all the work, such as a lawyer or advisor. I work as a co-creator with them sharing new perspectives and possibilities. They need to do be ready to do the work of self-discovering and evolution.
What happens if the client feels your coaching is not working for THEM?
Firstly I encourage them to share all their feelings about what is and is not working for them. We will discuss the challenges to see if we can move forward. My desire is to see people get their desired results. If they cannot get it working with me then I encourage them to find someone who is a better “fit” for them. There are all sorts of great coaches in the field and not everyone is going to be a match. This is normal and expected.
Do you ask your clients to find themselves or do you offer them all the way you do things so ideally your way should work for them?
When coaching with a client, a coach brings their own personal experiences with them but also brings many other resources in order to find what best works for the client. Hiring a coach who has been professionally trained within the standards of the ICF (International Coaching Federation) standards is a great start, but also a coach who is continually growing themselves and evolving their abilities, I believe, is a must.
In the end if we stay true to ourselves and know who we are, we can't go wrong. As always, I welome your comments and would love to hear your thoughts on today's blog.
"Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand."
- Chinese Proverb
Linda Ockwell-Jenner is the Social Sweetheart. She is President of Motivational Steps and Co-Founder of the Small Business Community Network (SBCN) based in Waterloo Region. Find out more about Linda at www.motivationalsteps.com and www.sbcncanada.org
'Tis the season to head up to a summer cabin – be it your own or a friend's place – and while you probably should "unplug" to enjoy the weekend, staying connected might mean you can spend more time away from the city in the tranquility of nature.
That is, nature and technology probably sound like mutually exclusive concepts, but choosing the right tech solutions could enable you to get more done in places you want to be.
After all, if you could access corporate email, collaborate on documents in the cloud and videoconference with colleagues, wouldn’t you rather do it on a cottage deck, overlooking a lake and with the sound of loons in the background?
And so it's no surprise Canadians are scooping up 4G "keys," "sticks" and "hubs" to remain connected at high speeds – wherever life takes them. These mobile solutions are especially ideal for those who don't have a fixed broadband Internet connection at the cottage.
Hubs, such as the Telus Smart Hub ($99.99 on 2-year plan), are wireless modems that plug into the wall and let a number of Wi-Fi (802.11) devices in the cottage get online wirelessly (with up to 7.2 megabits per second downloads and up to 5.76 Mbps uploads). This product works with up to 15 simultaneous Wi-Fi N devices, such as laptops, smartphones, e-book readers, tablets, video game systems, televisions, and more.
If security is a concern, take comfort in knowing the Telus Smart Hub includes options such as WPA data encryption, SPI Firewall and VPN.
Simply plug the black hub into a power outlet, insert an active SIM card and you'll get a password for all other devices to get online.
The Telus Smart Hub also lets you plug in a landline phone, if desired, but that requires a separate voice plan for local or long-distance calls.
Wireless "keys," on the other hand (also referred to as "sticks"), snap into a laptop, netbook or desktop -- via its USB port -- and also provides high-speed Internet access. Unlike the hubs that require an AC outlet, these can be used on the go, too, such as in the back of the year for the kids to stream YouTube videos – but be sure you have a decent data plan for that.
For example, the Telus Sierra Wireless Key ($59.99 on a 3-year term) or Telus Huawei Wireless Key ($39.99 on 3-yeear term) let you download files at up to 42 megabits per second and is compatible with Windows and Macs. For the differences between the two solutions and an explanation of the various data plans, be sure to click on their respective websites.
Depending on where you're using it, a similar product is the MiFi wireless hotspot, which is smaller and lighter than a bar of soap but lets all nearby devices get online.
Over the last ten years I have talked to hundreds of CEOs of small and medium-sized businesses in the Business-to-Business (B2B) sector about what works and what doesn’t in building a repeatable lead stream for their business and a marketing engine that delivers measurable business results. I started to keep track of what CEOs were telling me and devised a list of the attributes of marketing programs that succeed. My last post talked about the importance of customer understanding and how this information gets used to build marketing programs that succeed. Today’s post is about the value of strong web presence for your business.
Paul Timoteo of Car Cost Canada started his business in 1999 but didn’t gain significant market share until he decided to harness the power of an online strategy for his business. Today, he has 28 full time employees and 130,000 paid subscribers. It’s a pretty savvy business model in a cluttered and competitive market segment. His advice to other entrepreneurs with respect to a strong web presence is timely.
“We were enjoying steady growth but about four years ago I figured we could be better if I could just figure out this whole Internet thing.”
What grade would you give your web presence? Does it support your business objectives? Would it pass or fail as a consistent lead generation engine that delivers measurable business results?
There has never been a better time than right now to take stock. Your current website and web presence do not have to fail but in order for it to pass, you need to view it as more than a corporate bookmark on the web.
We have developed a quick scorecard to help you assess your corporate web presence.
Score the following statements on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being “poor/never” and 10 being “always/outstanding”.
I have Google Analytics (or another analytics package) running on my site and check it weekly to understand who is coming to my website, what they view and how long they stay.
I update my website weekly with new content that is optimized for the keywords I know my customers are searching on.
I spend the same time on my web presence than I do on other sales and marketing activities in my business like trade shows, networking, telemarketing or sales prospecting.
I have signed up for at least one social media tool like Linked In and use it weekly with respect to updating my profile and seeing who is connecting with me and looking at my profile.
I have made a 12 month commitment to building my web presence and realize that, like all things that deliver measurable results, doing something once will not pay off. Web presence activities are part of our monthly execution plan.
20 or less – Total up the numbers from each answer and if you scored less than 20, you are likely not harnessing the power of what a strong web presence can do for your business.
20-30 - You are getting it but you should dig deeper into what people are doing on your website to understand how to align the buying process of your potential customers with how they interact with you online.
30-40 - You are venturing into rock star territory and have likely realized that a strong web presence for your business does much more than just generate leads. It helps you to nurture relationships in a much better way than traditional marketing tactics and you have likely found new business opportunities via the web.
40 or higher – Your business has taken off. You can’t keep up with the demand.
The questions on the scorecard are important and align with the following reasons:
There is data available to you via free tools like Google Analytics that can help you make informed business decisions. Let’s say you are wondering about where your web traffic comes from and whether you're getting found for phrases on the web that prospects who don’t know you would use to find you. This is a whole pool of potential customers that you would never have access to otherwise.
Search engines and human beings both love new content. Search engines like it because it gives them something to crawl and something to rank. Humans like it because they want fresh ideas and to work with companies that are current and timely. If the last press release on your site was posted in June 2009, take it down and drive on. No one wants to read anything on the web that is three years old (unless you are an historical reference on Wikipedia).
98% of people searching for a solution to a business problem start their search on a search engine. Forget all of the other marketing tactics and build your web presence. This is a no-brainer.
People like to people watch. This is what social media is about and it’s free. At the very least, a business owner should leverage Linked In. Its professional, a great source of information and its personal. Know who is out there to connect with and see who is looking for you.
Time, commitment and execution are the most important ingredient to harnessing a web presence for your business. It didn’t take a week for your telemarketing strategy to pay off back in 1999 and a sales rep in most industries takes at least 12 months to ramp up. You have to view your website and web presence in exactly the same way.
A good marketing program is all about consistency and execution. Always has been – always will.
Marie Wiese of Marketing CoPilot can be found online at www.marketingcopilot.com and is the author of the eBook, “Why marketing fails... and what you can do about it!” You can follow her on Twitter @mariewiese. Marketing CoPilot fills the marketing void for companies committed to building marketing that works. Marie is a 20 year veteran of the B2B marketing world and is currently the Chair of the Board of the York Technology Alliance in the greater Toronto region where she gets to interact with all types of businesses every day.
A major finding of our research is that it is crucial that organizations must be staffed with enough experienced leadership and skilled talent so as to ensure the best security strategy possible and hence outcomes.
As the security landscape changes and the effects of the financial crisis on security budgets persist, demand for experienced leadership has increased.
Consider the change in average salaries by position in this table:
Salaries, by position
2009
2010
% change
CIO
139,000
137,000
-1%
CSO
96,000
115,000
20%
Security Director
132,000
149,000
13%
Manager
103,000
102,000
-1%
Security Analyst
89,000
89,000
0%
System Administrator
77,000
76,000
-1%
In 2009, respondents to our survey that received the highest salaries, on average, were CIOs, followed by Security Directors, Managers, CSOs and Security Analysts. Security Administrators received the lowest salaries. The responses from our 2010 survey highlight changes in relative demands for talent in these different positions. In particular, the table shows a dramatic increase in salaries for CSOs and Security Directors, receiving an average increase of 20% and 13%, respectively.
There are several ways to interpret these results. One of course is simply that the pool of respondents in 2009 was different than that of 2010. I discount this as the most likely interpretation. Rather, an explanation based on a significant increase in talent embedded at these levels, especially in the aftermath of the financial crisis, has become more valuable to organizations. As such, talent in these positions are experiencing significant increases in salaries.
It is useful to focus on government salaries as well. In 2009, salaries for security directors averaged $132,000 across all sectors of the economy. Within government, security director salaries were $118,000, but close to $160,000 in finance, IT, and communications. In fact, the 2008 TELUS - Rotman study documented the migration of talent from government to the private sector because of a large compensation gap. The earnings gap has in fact increased over time. In 2009, about 35% of security professionals working in government earned over $100,000 per year, compared to 47% of those working in private companies and 57% in publicly traded companies.
The earnings gap between government and the private sector has led to a brain drain. This brain drain, together with the change in the nature of breaches towards valuable information that can be monetized and the introduction of better detection methods each help explain why in 2010, government experienced, by a large margin, the biggest increase in the breaches.
The challenge for government is also reflected in budgets allocated to IT security, as displayed in the figure below. The share of the IT budget allocated to security for governments is skewed to the left, meaning that a significantly larger proportion of government departments reporting have lower budgets than do private sector organization. In fact, in the highest two categories of budgets reported in the figure, governments are not represented.
Share of IT Budgets Allocated to Security
Together, this discussion highlights the importance of high-skilled talent in maintaining the preparedness. Budgets must be made significantly flexible to respond to market pressures on salaries for the skills that are most in demand. These trends point to an important challenge for organizations that experienced significant budget cuts during the financial crisis. As the security risk landscape worsened, demand for experienced directors and CIOs increased.
Those organizations that are able to retain and or attract the very best and well paid talent have been rewarded with better security performance. Organizations that fail in this talent war risk falling behind in their security preparedness.
Next week: The effects of the financial crisis persist
This summer, TELUS Talks Business bring you Security 360, a one-of-a-kind limited series on information security from Dr. Walid Hejazi, professor of international business at Rotman School of Management and a world-renowned expert on IT security. Dr. Hejazi has primed the TELUS-Rotman Joint Study on Canadian IT Security Practices on behalf of Rotman since its inception and has unique perspective and insight into IT security in Canadian business. Your comments and questions are welcome here.
Attention IT security professionals – your perspectives matter. For the 4thstraight year, TELUS Security Labs and the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, are partnering to conduct a study on Canadian IT security practices. It’s the only original Canadian research of its kind. Add your perspective to the research (input is anonymous) and you could win a BlackBerry Playbook and receive a complimentary copy of the results. Click here to take the survey: http//www.telus.com/securitystudy
Launching a start-up without a business plan is like taking a trip around the world without having your passport, updated vaccinations, an itinerary, luggage, suitable clothing for various climates, travel insurance, toothbrush … you see where this is going. Disaster land.
And yet, too many promising businesses fail because they are founded by visionaries with great ideas who didn’t take time at the outset to map out The Plan in detail.
The basics are these: Do it early. Do it now. It will save you pain later. The blueprint for your company can be revised and tweaked; but it can’t be tweaked if it doesn’t exist.
Key to turning your vision into success is working through a business plan which will help you determine:
who your customers and competitors will be;
what you can offer that make your products or services different and appealing;
how you will get your products or services to your customers;
whether or not you need financing; and ultimately
whether or not your business idea can be profitable.
Not only is writing a business plan for a start-up crucial, it can save you a lot of pain when looking to make substantial changes to your existing business. I once read about a small business owner who ran a printing press and created brochures and flyers for local businesses. He had an MBA, had worked for a Fortune 50 company in New York City and Hong Kong and was a sharp fellow. However, when it came to his own business, he faltered. He decided to expand his business by purchasing a $150,000 digital press for high-end digital printing, which would allow him to create full-colour magazines and customized content for clients in the tiny community in which he lived. He was convinced this was the way to go, so he took out a bank loan and expanded.
The problem was none of his clients were asking for it. They were tremendously pleased with the one-on-one attention he and his designers gave them and they paid decent prices for it, but they didn’t need the glossy brochures and two-sided bus shelter ads or customized mailers.
In order to repay the bank loan, the small business owner had to raise prices. But soon his loyal clientele were uncomfortable walking into his shop because they felt pressured to make pricey orders and left for Staples and Business Depot. Within six months this business was on the brink.
If he had taken the time to conduct market research, or just sat down and spoken to his clients (both parts of working through or updating a business plan), there is a good chance this business owner would have realized that he didn’t need a digital press.
There are no sales or promotional strategies that will work magic if you haven’t done your research. Learn from this business owner’s mistake. Take that trip around the world but don’t forget your passport.
Brian Chan has been with TELUS for more than four years and specializes in small and medium business.
Did you have a business plan for your business and if so, where did you start in terms of building it? Share tips for others here. For links to business plan examples and a list of common business plan errors – and how to fix them, check out our New Business Start-up site.
My name is Evan Carmichael and I believe that the fastest and most effective way to build a business is to model the strategies of people who have already done what you’re trying to do. I call it Modeling the Masters. My last post was: How to Hire, Be a Leader, and Empty Your Mind Like Dee Hock (VISA founder).
Today we're going to look at how a young entrepreneur had to decide between launching a fashion business or supermarket business. He chose fashion and created on of the most recognizable names in the industry. This is the story of Calvin Klein and the top 3 lessons that you can learn from his success.
Must Watch Video
"I think fantasies are for the birds. If there's something I want, nothing stops me." - Calvin Klein
Calvin Klein (born 1942) is an American fashion designer and founder of the company that bears his name. As a young child instead of playing sports like the other kids, Klein spent his time indoors teaching himself how to sketch and sew designs. He didn't have many friends and would often accompany his mother on shopping trips throughout the city on her quest for discount clothing.
After graduating from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, Klein was practically broke, still working part-time at his father's grocery store, and decided he would take his $2,000 life savings and start his own business. He started by designing a line of coats. The company’s first major step to success came by accident a year after its inception, when a businessman got off the elevator on the wrong floor and happened to wander into in Klein’s office. This businessman turned out to be a coat-buyer from the major department store Bonwit Teller. After placing an order for $50,000 worth of coats, he told Klein, “Tomorrow you will have been discovered.” In its first year, the company booked $1 million worth of business.
In 2002, Klein sold his company for $400 million and $30 million in stock. Before the sale, Calvin Klein Ltd. had 900 employees and worldwide sales of over $3 billion.
Action Item #1: Be The Expert
If you're going to have success in creating and selling your product or service you better be really good at what you do. Take classes, sign up for internships, volunteer your time, take jobs, and get as much hands on experience as you can to learn about your industry before you start your business. The more you know going in about how your industry works, the greater your chances of success will be.
In order to succeed, Klein exposed himself to as much informal and formal training as possible.
Whether it was sewing lessons from his grandmother, shopping trips with his mother or an apprenticeship with the esteemed coat manufacturer Dan Millstein in the New York fashion district, Klein knew that if he was going to succeed in the fashion business, he was going to have to take advantage of every single learning opportunity that presented itself. The Millstein apprenticeship only paid $75 a week but it gave Klein first-hand experience in the fashion industry which proved to be invaluable.
According to Klein: “I learned a lot, because he threw me into the snake pit. It’s a fiercely competitive business, and Millstein was a perfect example of that world... People have done it without having formal training in design, but I don't hire people unless they've been formally trained. I look for people who really are talented, creative, inventive, modern in thinking and hard working. Because we’re in a very hard, tough business.”
Action Item #2: Reach A Wide Audience
You never know where your next customer is going to come from and you don't want to make the mistake of picking such a small niche market that you won't be able to make enough money to stay in business. Make sure the market you're choosing is big enough for you to create a profitable company now and has room for growth into the future.
Klein rose to the top of the fashion industry by creating products and advertising campaigns that appealed to the broadest cross-section of the population. By not limiting himself to a certain market and creating a wide range of product lines to accommodate all segments of society, Klein helped solidify his position at the top of the American fashion industry. The key to his success was his attempt to attract customers from all walks of life. The ultimate attempt to broaden his appeal came with the launch of his fragrance line cKone, the first unisex perfume ever created. By allowing anyone to wear the same scent, Klein broke down all the barriers between his customers. Klein understood that if his business was going to sustain a significant market and have any kind of staying power, he had to create as broad an appeal as possible.
According to Klein: “Fashion is about selling clothes. I’m in a business where no one cares about anything except how well your last collection sold...You can’t advertise for one group. Otherwise, you end up having a very small business!... I want everyone I can get. Jews, Catholics, gays straights, you name it!”
Action Item #3: Stay Focused
Entrepreneurs are easily distracted. We see other people launching successful companies and it often raises doubts as to whether your business will succeed or not. Sometimes we just get bored of our businesses and want to do something else, often before we've given enough time to make sure our companies hit a critical level of success. The entrepreneurs who achieve at the very highest levels stay focused on their goals. They don't allow other opportunities to distract them and they keep working on their businesses until they reach what they set out to do.
From a very early age Klein's goal was to follow his passion for designing clothes for every American. Every step that he took along the way from attending fashion school to taking low-paying internships to launching his own business brought him closer to achieving his goal. Everything else he ignored. He wanted to live his life with no regrets and not be left wondering what would have happened if he gave his very best.
According to Klein: "The money is not that important to me, whether it’s $800,000,000, a billion or two billion... I think fantasies are for the birds. Anything I wanted to do, I did. If there’s something I want, nothing stops me.”
True Story
In the early days, when he was still working for other designers, Klein actually considered quitting the fashion industry altogether and going into the supermarket business. His friend Barry Schwartz had just taken over his father’s grocery store in Harlem and had turned it into a successful venture in his first six months. Klein was becoming increasingly frustrated with his jobs and when Schwartz offered him full partnership in his supermarket, it was hard to decline. Klein had worked at his own father’s supermarket for numerous years so knew what he would be getting into.
But, a conversation over dinner one night with his father would change Klein’s life forever. He had gone to his parents to ask for advice, expecting them to agree with his decision to go into the supermarket business with Schwartz. Instead, Klein says, his father shocked him. “‘I think you would be making a tremendous mistake,’ he said. ‘I don’t understand what you’ve been studying all these years, but whatever it is, I don’t think you’ve given it enough of a chance.” Klein’s father warned him that if he didn’t continue what he was doing, he would regret it for the rest of his life. Klein stuck to his vision and stayed in fashion.
More Quotes
"I think fantasies are for the birds. If there's something I want, nothing stops me."
"You can’t advertise for one group. Otherwise, you end up having a very small business!"
"Doing everything as well as possible meant survival."
What Do You Think?
Are you an expert in your industry? How do you stay focused? What part of Calvin Klein's message impacted you the most? As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts if you leave a comment below!
Last week we looked at five recommended Windows apps for small businesses – ones that could help increase productivity in and out of the office, and won’t cost you a dime.
This week's column focuses on hot Mac downloads.
Specifically, the five following free apps are available at the Mac App Store. They might not all benefit the same kind of business or entrepreneur, but surely you'll find a few that'll help you save time, aggravation or money (or all three).
Here we go…
Share and share alike
The free CloupApp from Linebreak lets you easily share documents, images, links, media and other files with coworkers and clients. Once installed, simply choose a file you want to share (such as retailreport.zip), drag it from Finder or the Desktop to the menubar on your Mac and you'll be provided with a short link -- automatically copied to your clipboard – to share your upload with whomever you like (and accessible on multiple devices, including iPad and iPhone). Plus, you can view, manage and delete shared files right from your menubar. Unless you want to see more than your last five file drops, there's no need to open the CloudApp itself. Powered by Heroku and Amazon's Simple Storage Service, CloudApp securely stores its files on multiple storage facilities to help prevent data loss.
Make a note of it
Written about previously in this column, Evernote helps you flesh out ideas using a number of tools, on a number of devices and everything is cleverly synchronized so you're never without your digital notes. Whether it's on your Mac, smartphone or tablet, you can type or draw, save webpages and to-do lists, attach images and PDFs and more – whether you're conceptualizing a new sales campaign, organizing ideas pulled from a meeting or coming up with the idea for a new web service. Helping you find information you need in your notes is a feature that can make printed and handwritten text searchable by keyword. Preview, edit or share these notes or access them on other devices via the free app, as all information is automatically kept up to date.
Zip it, pal
The no. 1 free utility download at the Mac App Store is the Unarchiver, an open-source unpacker program for Macs that handles many different formats you can through at it – a lot more than Archive Utility, in fact -- and with a familiar Finder-like interface. Supported file formats include Zip, Tar-GZip, Tar-BZip2, RAR and 7-zip, and many older formats like StuffIt, DiskDoubler, LHA/LZH, ARJ and ARC, to name a few. It can also handle ISO and BIN files (disc images), some Windows EXE installers and non-English filenames created using foreign characters. Available in 12 languages, Dag Agren's small (3.8MB) but powerful utility has garnered an average review score of 5 stars out of 5 among nearly 500 ratings.
Video vixen
Are you responsible for managing video at your organization? With ShedWorx's free and fast Smart Converter, you can simply drop a media file, such as an .AVI or .MOV into the program, choose a preferred conversion type and the app will immediately analyze your file and perform the desired task at hand. The aptly-named Smart Converter preserves as much of the original file as possible, optimizing conversion speed and quality, before spitting out the newly-converted media – including support for multiple portable devices, web services and Internet TV platforms, and the option to auto-import your video or audio directly into iTunes. The app also keeps the original file for your records, too.
Bill me
While this popular Mac App Store download isn't free – it's only free for 30 days – it's still a worthy consideration for small-to-midsized businesses. Billings Pro from Markham, Ontario-based Marketcircle is a handy and powerful time tracking and invoicing solution for the Mac – as well as iPhone and iPad via a free app – with an intuitive web interface called Timecard (for non-management staff). Ideal for service-based businesses and consultants (with up to 50 users), Billings Pro for Mac lets you track time, expenses and mileage – and invoice right from within the app. Keep in mind you'll also need to install and set up Billings Pro Server on your Mac before you can use Billings Pro Mac or Touch (or Timecard). After the month-long trial, the cost is roughly $200.
A marked trend in our analysis has been an increase in sophisticated and targeted attacks. That is, attacks are becoming increasingly focused and targeting data that can be monetized.
At the same time, organizations have become well prepared to defend against attacks that I will call nuisance attacks – for example, viruses that impact the operation of an organization’s websites but not necessarily financially benefiting the hackers.
An interesting result came out of our 2010 study: breach numbers are up, particularly for government, whereas breach costs are significantly down across the board for government, public and private organizations.
But how can the fall in costs associated with breaches be consistent with the statement above on the maturing of the hacking business and the move to target valuable information that can be monetized?
There are two potential explanations.
First, as a result of better defending against these attacks, organizations have been able to reduce the costs to their organizations associated with such attacks. These technologies have to some extent offset the reduction in manpower that otherwise would be used to deal with such breaches.
Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, since organizations are significantly better prepared to defend their IT systems, the likelihood of a significant incident that can deface or temporarily shut down IT systems or websites is reduced. In other words, organizations are both preventing more attacks, and at the same time, detecting more breaches that are occurring, detecting them sooner, thus being able to respond more effectively and before the implications of the breach becomes more widespread.
The second potential explanation for the drop in “measured” breach costs relates to the nature of the breaches and who is bearing these costs.
As noted above, breaches are becoming increasingly focused and targeted, going after data that can be monetized. As a result, the organization being hacked is not bearing the direct costs but rather the individual or related parties bear the cost. A good example of this is the theft of credit card information or identity-related information. Once stolen the targeted company bears little direct and measured costs, whereas the individual whose information was stolen and used illegally, their credit card companies and related financial institutions bear the costs of the breach when the stolen information is used illegally.
In other words, the costs are quite high, but are being borne by parties outside the reporting organizations.
There is an important lesson, if not warning, for organizations that misread the fall in breach costs. I want to loop the discussion here back to the theme of the first post I made in this series – that is, in today’s information based economy, information, technology, strategy, client lists, and so on, are what enable companies to maintain a competitive edge over competitors.
Much of this information is housed on IT systems, and hence is vulnerable to attacks. As attacks become increasingly sophisticated and targeted, measured costs fall for the reasons noted above. Also, to the extent the information taken is related to the customers, than there may be no direct impact on the organization hacked. But to the extent sensitive corporate information is taken and then used in the market, then this represents a potentially significant loss to the organization that is not directly measured by the organization.
Therefore, organizations experiencing falls in measured costs of breaches should not be lured into this false sense of security. As attackers become more focused, organizations need to ensure their corporate information and the information of their customers and partners is as protected as possible.
The organization’s measured costs may be low, whereas the unmeasured costs are likely significantly higher.
This summer, TELUS Talks Business bring you Security 360, a one-of-a-kind limited series on information security from Dr. Walid Hejazi, professor of international business at Rotman School of Management and a world-renowned expert on IT security. Dr. Hejazi has primed the TELUS-Rotman Joint Study on Canadian IT Security Practices on behalf of Rotman since its inception and has unique perspective and insight into IT security in Canadian business. Your comments and questions are welcome here.
Attention IT security professionals – your perspectives matter. For the 4thstraight year, TELUS Security Labs and the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, are partnering to conduct a study on Canadian IT security practices. It’s the only original Canadian research of its kind. Add your perspective to the research (input is anonymous) and you could win a BlackBerry Playbook and receive a complimentary copy of the results. Click here to take the survey: http//www.telus.com/securitystudy
Long before people started trusting the cloud as their backup ‘repository,’ the Internet, through a range of capabilities, was being used to store and share information in various forms between users and between organizations.
One of the first applications of cloud storage is the ability to store and share content between users, especially if the files being shared are serving multiple users or cannot be effectively delivered through means such as FTP or e-mail. A couple of weeks ago we mentioned DropBox, a service that has gained popularity mostly among consumers likely largely due to a free space limited service tier and a mobile access option. The web is littered with a multitude of “file sharing” services, many of which are commonly used for underground peer-to-peer activity. This broad category of solutions also spans subscription based services such as YouSendIt that are more effectively designed to bypass e-mail limitations.
The common themes for many of those services are the low (or even free) pricing options designed to convince users about the benefits of the services. There is even an experimental Windows add-on called GMail Drive that allows you to use a Gmail account as a virtual disk drive. Not all alternatives offering extensive security options or guaranteed reliability; your mileage will vary greatly.
For organizations that seek secure and reliable content sharing and distribution, commercial grade cloud storage services and technologies can include other capabilities such as strong authentication, secure transfer, tracking options and functionality to integrate the storage as an extension to another application or web site.
A historic perspective on web content
As you can imagine (and see from this graph supported by UN data), the Internet has gone through tremendous, quasi exponential, growth since 1990. But the world wide web (does anyone still refer to it that way?) grew wider not only in its geographical span and complexity but also in the huge variety of applications and content it supports.
The files comprising this consumable content were originally limited to rather static web pages, images and a constrained variety of files that would be ‘understood’ by web browsers such as Netscape (RIP) and early versions of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Since the early nineties the types of content we can access evolved greatly to support a myriad of unstructured content (i.e. documents) and multimedia types.
Another dramatic contrast is the change in content complexity and sizes we consumed then and now. Not too long ago, relatively speaking, early web users visited pages containing a few images, links to documents and the odd background midi sound file totaling up to several tens of kilo-bytes in size.
Things have evidently changed quite a bit over the years - in an article authored by a Google search engineer several weeks ago the average web page is almost 400 KB in size. No longer constrained by modem era bandwidth speeds, we now gobble up dynamic content that is much richer and encapsulated in data files that are many times larger than what we could dream of what for many of us seems not too long ago.
Web content is versatile and complex
While there are a number of standard mechanisms to transport application data over the Internet, the most pervasive access mechanism to the abovementioned content is HTTP.
HTTP and its secure (and slower) sidekick HTTPS have over the years become synonymous with Internet. These are transport mechanisms supported by the browser you are using to read this blog as well as support secure web based applications and on-line shopping transactions.
The browsers, with their ever increasing capabilities, have evolved as one of the primary means to transport and present content, and through a variety of add-on's present an increasingly rich and multilayered experience users can interact with through numerous devices, including smartphones and even some TVs.
The richness of web content and the great diversity of devices, languages, bandwidth speeds and screen sizes require both content and the systems that supply content to be ever more versatile. Web sites today have the “intelligence” to adapt and optimize the user’s experience based on those and other factors. In order to achieve that, the web content we use is in simpler term an assembly or layer cake of multiple types of content of varying quality and from different sources.
The same Google article mentioned above succinctly illustrates this point through some factual data. Current web pages include on average 30 unique images and represent over 40 distinct sources of information, each requiring the browser to fetch these images and data fragments to assemble a web page we can read.
The richness of the web meets cloud storage
The fragments of data displayed through a web browser can come from a variety of sources and depend on the composition of dynamic and static content being pulled from various sources. While some of these sources are proprietary and secure systems such as the databases containing information, others can be more open content repositories that are optimized for delivery of content objects.
Let’s use an online travel booking site for example.
Consumers looking for hotel properties for their next vacation will search the hotel or travel site looking for properties that meet criteria such as star ratings, amenities and room availability. Information such as pricing, availability and even reviews will be predominantly textual and prone to change, therefore originate from data systems and are formatted for display in real-time. Much of the compelling content a hotel property may use to convince you into booking a vacation (beyond a great price) is visual – ranging from basic pictures of the property and amenities to captivating 360 degree virtual tours of guest rooms and videos of activities the property offers.
This type of content, albeit visually appealing is relatively static. The same digital assets (multimedia files of different kinds) can be displayed to any user browsing through the hotel web site, shared between different properties of the same hotel chain or even used by other travel sites and affiliates promoting this property.
While you can still pick up a glossy printed brochure at the local travel agencies these are becoming a thing of the past, online alternatives have evolved to provide a richer and more compelling buying experience as well as a more efficient and effective means to update content and adapt it based on the user, device or the popularity of the content.
Content Delivery Networks
Another approach that is often used for the last 15 years or so is a Content Delivery Network (CDN for short). These services are designed to replicate copies of files (often images, multimedia and even software applications such as mobile apps) to servers (known as Points of Presence – POPs) globally and maintain an up-to-date repository (cache) that would be accessible to users and their various devices with minimal delay.
While CDNs were originally developed to address issues like shopping cart abandonments, there are numerous free and commercial CDN options today in the marketplace that have evolved significantly with the growth and proliferation of the Internet, including services that are optimized for delivery of mobile content, flash content, small objects (small images) or large objects (electronic delivery of software for example).
Cloud Storage and CDNs are interrelated and share some similarities and benefits. One such great benefit is achieved by replacing static and sometimes rich and heavy content within a web page with a reference to an object stored on the cloud. That way resource demanding content (due to size or repetition) is offloaded from the web servers such that web sites are able to scale significantly better.
Depending on the situation some web sites will work better with one approach, in others both approaches can provide a complementary solution.
Shawn Myron is the director of products and services for TELUS hosting and data centres.
The vastness of the Internet and human ingenuity creates new breeding ground for innovative forms to share and consume content through the Cloud. Cloud storage entails several characteristics that allows it to be used as an abstracted utility for storing and retrieving these content objects. Stay tuned for the next time where we weigh in on the benefits and risks of cloud storage. If you have any specific questions about the cloud or what you're reading here, please leave a comment.
LindaOJ here again and I want to share with you in this blog how I managed to stay motivated during many challenging times whilst building my two businesses.
Bearing in mind I had no intention of starting a small business when I returned to school in February 2001, I find it remarkable that I managed to stay around this long. I often say I fell into business. That is exactly what happened when one of the teachers asked me if I would offer a presentation to her health & wellness class. Like an idiot (or a very brave person) I didn’t hesitate and said yes immediately! Even though I had never spoken in public before and had no idea what I was going to say, other than tell my own story.
After my year at school I had been rather spoiled in the fact that I had spoken at most of the schools in my area and had even been paid to speak at some. I imagined that it would be really easy for me to find work once I was out there on my own. It was during that first year when I realized no one knew who I was and I had two choices: go out and about networking and meet as many people as possible, or sit at home and sulk. I chose networking and meeting people, and even though I felt like I was wasting my time because I was not making money, I carried on every day because my instincts told me it was the right thing to do. The point here was I’d had quite an easy time of it up until this point and I could have given up but I chose not to. A few reasons I kept going were:
Before I returned to school (due to being diagnosed with breast cancer twice) I had worked 3 jobs. I was earning minimum wage and was treated badly at some of the jobs.
I had found my true passion: Public Speaking. This in turn led me to another passion I had no idea about until it found me: Networking and Social Media.
One of the main reasons I wanted to own my own business was to help people.
By 2003 Motivational Steps was doing really well. My husband and I then founded the Small Business Community Network (SBCN) and by 2004 everything was going smoothly. Or so I thought. I had not planned for an operation in October 2004, which meant I could not do the work I loved most: standing on a stage and inspiring the audience.
What motivated me to keep on going was my dream of writing a book, due to bed rest I had plenty of time to write my first book: A Life Like Mine. After a successful book launch in 2005, I was still being plagued by biopsies but my motivation was strengthened once my results came back OK. I loved my work and I was determined to grow my two businesses.
2007 was the best year ever from a work perspective. I was kept busy with keynotes, business development coaching and offering monthly meetings and special events for the SBCN. My motivation plummeted when it was thought I had bone cancer. As luck would have it I was rushed to hospital with a kidney infection! I then discovered I had skin cancer on my nose and the results came back when I was resting at home that I had osteoporosis not bone cancer, I felt quite blessed.
Now you might think because I offer motivational presentations along with my business related ones that it is easier for me to stay motivated versus a regular person, so to speak. Believe me I have found some of my challenging times hard to bear, but my secret weapon is my family and close friends. Being able to talk about my personal and business challenges helped also. I always believed in myself, but not always in certain aspects of my work, so that is when I turned to my mentors for advice.
Neither of my businesses has needed a lot of money to start up. I have a home office but always recognize when I need to be with people and this is where networking comes in handy. Some of the attributes people tell me keep me going are:
Perseverance
Belief
Passion
Dedication
Maybe I have been relatively lucky escaping some of the business related challenges many small business owners face. For different perspectives I turned to a couple of friends and business connections of mine I met when I was in the UK presenting at a conference recently.
Colin Durrant is Managing Director of Colins-IT and had this to say:
Well it can be really tough and recently I have had some tough times. Clients not paying, huge bills to pay and you wonder if it is all worth it. I think the best thing is to talk to someone about it and then usually they can put things into perspective and if nothing else point out how well you are actually doing.
I have a business coach and he is very good and helping me with various challenges I come across.
Having a sales pipeline also helps I find. When you can see what work is potentially coming in it motivates you, if there is a lot coming in that is.
Having strict processes in place for how you work also helps me. We have put a lot in recently. Customer quote, customer sales order, invoice etc. Just a process for how you deal with quotes and orders and chasing money. Also contracts are very important. This is exactly what we are going to do for you and this is exactly how much and when you are going to pay us for doing it. Saves so much mis-understanding in the future….
As a businessman, when faced with a challenge – my instinct is to “crack on” and resolve that issue as quickly as possible. What I’ve found is that it’s typically better to stand back, assess the challenge fully – often seek the advice of others for a separate viewpoint – and then move forwards to try to resolve the challenge.
The key to staying motivated for me is to regular take time-out of my business and to turn my attention elsewhere. This could be by visiting a seminar or presentation, a conference or workshop, or as simple as taking a walk or reading a book during the working day. When our focus is taken off “doing” in the business, our sub-conscious mind often re-charges our batteries with new ideas and motivations that we’d otherwise have missed.
"Life takes on meaning when you become motivated, set goals and charge after them in an unstoppable manner." - Les Brown
Linda Ockwell-Jenner is the Social Sweetheart. She is President of Motivational Steps and Co-Founder of the Small Business Community Network (SBCN) based in Waterloo Region. Find out more about Linda at www.motivationalsteps.com and www.sbcncanada.org
Thousands of downloadable programs and online services exist on the web -- if you know where to look, that is.
From free anti-virus to no-cost alternatives for storing important files, there's no shortage of quality programs. There might be a catch, however: some of these apps may be advertising-supported and don't offer extensive tech support, if any. In some cases, you might also see a "nag screen" to upgrade to a pro version of the software.
But for Canadian entrepreneurs or small businesses looking to save some cash, these are often minor inconveniences.
And so the following is a look at five recommended freebies.
To serve and protect
A small handful of anti-virus programs are available to download and use – for free -- but one of the highest-rated is Avast! Free Antivirus, which has received an average user score of 4.5 stars out of 5 at CNET.com. This program protects your computer in real time from viruses and spyware, the latter of which can be Trojan horse files buried in another download and secretly spying on your web surfing activity. Spyware can also slow down your PC, cause inappropriate pop-up windows or even add a toolbar to your web browser without your permission. Time is money, as they say, so your business likely can't afford to slow down over an infected computer. Avast! isn't just for web protection, but also filters your emails, instant messaging programs, and more. A simple-to-use interface also makes it a great pick for computer users on a tight budget.
What's up, Docs?
While Microsoft Office is the granddaddy of office productivity software, you could spend up to $669 for the suite of programs ("Professional Edition"). Instead, the completely free OpenOffice.org from Oracle includes a number of powerful applications that include word processing, spreadsheets, presentation creation, databases and graphics. OpenOffice.org is also available in multiple languages and runs on many operating systems, plus the suite supports a wide range of file types created by other programs (yes, you can even import your Microsoft Office files such as .doc, .xls, .ppt, and others). Because this is "open-source software," you can install it on as many computers as you like and make copies for your employees, friends and family.
To the cloud!
It's important to back up important files to protect them from theft, fire, flood, nasty viruses and power surges. Instead of buying an external hard drive or USB thumbdrive, however, you can take advantage of free online storage with services such as Microsoft's Windows Live SkyDrive. Consider it a password-protected virtual drive that resides on the web, with up to 25 gigabytes (GB) of free storage offered per account (you can have multiple accounts). Not only is Windows Live SkyDrive easy to use, but you can also access your files from any Internet-connected computer in the world, and, if you like, even section off part of your storage folders for colleagues or clients to access with a different password -- ideal for sharing large files.
Customer care
Customer Relationship Management software could run you a pretty penny, but a small business might first consider a free alternative to see if it suits their needs. FreeCRM.com, for example, is a web-based solution for managing customer data and sales force automation – including common tasks ranging from contact/lead tracking, sales forecasting and pipeline management, group calendaring, support ticket and customer service, call automation, integrated email campaigns, and more. This software is free to use for up to 50 users, while the "pro" (paid) version adds advanced features such as support automation, XML web services, synchronization tools, technical support, unlimited data storage and no advertisements.
Picture perfect
Chances are your business deals with photos on a daily basis, whether it's product pictures, website design, editing for social media initiatives or newsletters and brochures. So, how do you organize, edit and share these assets? One of the most intuitive and powerful – and free -- photo management programs is Google's Picasa. The 12-megabyte download is a breeze to use, offers many editing tools (including exceptional one-click red-eye fix) and has a clever "tagging" feature that scans all the photos in your collection, identifies the ones with faces, and groups photos with similar faces together; then you can add name tags to dozens of photos at once by clicking "Add a name" below a photo and typing in the person's name. Picasa currently works on Windows, Macintosh and even Linux operating systems. More advanced users in search of free photo editing software might consider GIMP, also available for Windows, Mac, Linux and other operating systems.
Over the last ten years I have talked to hundreds of CEOs of small and medium-sized businesses in the Business-to-Business (B2B) sector about what works and what doesn’t in building a repeatable lead stream for their business and a marketing engine that delivers measurable business results. I started to keep track of what CEOs were telling me and devised a list of the attributes of marketing programs that succeed. My last post talked about why marketing is of vital importance to today’s small business owner. Today’s post is about understanding your customer and why they buy from you.
Thank goodness for all of the small business owners who are helping fuel the Canadian economy. These heroes start with a vision. An entrepreneur somewhere wants to fix a problem or offer a solution and the journey begins. Over time, this journey hits the usual speed bumps:
• Selling the vision of the product or service • Finding Customers • Growing the business • Keeping customers
The typical early stage company relies on sales wins to build their customer base. As the business lifecycle evolves, the marketplace provides feedback about the product or service and the business grows.
Then a strange thing happens!
A gap starts to develop between what a company thinks it does and what a customer perceives the value to be of the product or service. We call this the Marketing Void. The marketing void occurs because many companies fail to understand why and how their customers buy from them. In turn, they push out marketing tactics that don’t deliver measurable business results because the marketing tactics are not aligned with the buying process of the customer. When you really understand how and why your customer buys from you, you the close the gap between what you do and what your customers believe your value to be.
Marketing programs fail because potential customers are confused about why they should buy from you. This happens because we spend too much time talking about what we do and no enough time explaining in our marketing content and tactics about how we help solve problems.
To fix this, we need to walk through and document, step-by-step, what a prospective customer is thinking and doing when they seek a solution to a problem. In order to do this, we first need to identify our ideal customer and map their buying process.
An ongoing customer scorecard is a great way to track your customers over time. It can be as simple as the customer scorecard in the book, or more complicated with additional metrics you deem appropriate to your business. The idea being that you can start to draw similarities between your best customers, the problems they are trying to fix and can you use this information to create content and tactics to attract more good customers like them.
But the fundamental questions a business should be asking themselves every day is this:
• Why do customers buy from us versus our competitors? • How do they buy our product or service?
The answers to both of these questions create the foundation for marketing programs that deliver measurable business results. Knowing the steps that a customer is taking to make a decision to buy a product or service like yours is the cornerstone of your marketing success.
Many companies struggle with these questions because they confuse Buying with Selling. To truly understand your customer, you must look at the buying process which is about them. Your selling process is about you. To do this properly, a business needs to focus on the customer.
Here are three important steps to help you document the buying process:
Remove the assumptions. Don’t assume you know why a customer initiated their search – ask them (and ask them what they searched on in Google).
Remove the product bias. Don’t map the process based on what your product or service does. Map it based on the problem you are solving.
Forget about competitors. Think instead of alternatives. How else could a potential customer solve this problem and how does my product or service address that? By thinking through alternatives, you will be better positioned to describe your ultimate value.
Intimate customer understanding is what separates a good marketing program from one that delivers minimal business results.
Marie Wiese of Marketing CoPilot can be found online atwww.marketingcopilot.comand is the author of the eBook, “Why marketing fails... and what you can do about it!” You can follow her on Twitter @mariewiese. Marketing CoPilot fills the marketing void for companies committed to building marketing that works. Marie is a 20 year veteran of the B2B marketing world and is currently the Chair of the Board of the York Technology Alliance in the greater Toronto region where she gets to interact with all types of businesses every day.
Outsourcing is essentially the movement of functions undertaken within an organization to an outside provider. Although one often associates outsourcing with the movement of such activities to far away countries like India or China, in fact a majority of the world's outsourcing takes place domestically, such as the movement of IT functions, including security, to a local outsourcing provider.
The benefits of outsourcing are many, but there are two that top the list. The first is costs. What would it cost an organization to undertake the activities that can be provided by a specialized outsourcing provider at the same level of quality? It is most often the case that the organization cannot do the activities as well as the outsourcing provider - after all, the outsourcing provider specializes in the activities being outsourced. Hence it would be prohibitively expensive and therefore infeasible to produce at the same quality level as the outsourcing specialized provider.
But the second benefit is perhaps more important. All organization (ie. corporations) have core competencies that it should focus on - it should not do everything! By focusing on the activities it does well, it allows the organization to drive a profit in the marketplace. Activities that are not within its core competencies are candidates to be outsourced.
IT security is most often an activity that is not a core function to organizations - that is, this is not a function that most organizations knows how to do relatively well, nor is it a function that directly relates to the company's profit model. While critical for the its survival and hence success, it is not a driver of profits.
Our survey evidence is consistent with the evidence for the broader economy. Organizations that have outsourced their IT security functions have experienced better IT security outcomes, and these companies also have higher levels of satisfaction with their IT security posture. Since the IT aspect of their organizations is being taken care of by a specialized outsourcing provider, they are left to focus on their core functions, and hence work towards enhanced financial performance.
In addition, to being more satisfied with their IT security posture, companies that outsource IT security also tend to have a good understanding of their risk profile and security posture. It is often thought that those that outsource are companies that don't understand the functions being outsourced. This tends not to be case. Once a sufficient understanding of the function (in this case security) is obtained, organizations will therefore be in a better position to both partner with, and hold to account ,the outsourcing provider. The evidence of our research clearly bears this out.
This summer, TELUS Talks Business bring you Security 360, a one-of-a-kind limited series on information security from Dr. Walid Hejazi, professor of international business at Rotman School of Management and a world-renowned expert on IT security. Dr. Hejazi has primed the TELUS-Rotman Joint Study on Canadian IT Security Practices on behalf of Rotman since its inception and has unique perspective and insight into IT security in Canadian business. Your comments and questions are welcome here.
Attention IT security professionals– your perspectives matter. For the fourth straight year, TELUS Security Labs and the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, are partnering to conduct a study on Canadian IT security practices. It’s the only original Canadian research of its kind. Add your perspective to the research (input is anonymous) and you could win a BlackBerry Playbook and receive a complimentary copy of the results. Click here to take the survey: www.telus.com/securitystudy
If you're an Apple iPad owner and spend a fair bit of time away from the office, two new and inexpensive tablet apps might be able to help you remain productive while on the go.
One is a powerful note-taking program that can help you flesh out your ideas in a number of ways, organize your thoughts and easily share them with others. The other iPad app is a remote desktop solution – so you can access another PC or Mac over Wi-Fi or 3G -- that goes above and beyond what other similar iPad apps offer to date.
Here's a closer look at each recommended download.
Make a note of it
Notability [http://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/notability/id360593530?mt=8] can best be described as a cross between a multimedia notepad — allowing you to type, draw, speak and copy photos and web links onto a digital canvas — and a powerful word processor, like Apple’s Pages, that lets you type up longer-form pieces, such as essays, work reports or blog entries.
While not perfect, the app delivers a lot of bang for not a lot of buck.
Oh, and that’s a serious understatement as Notability costs just $0.99 cents – a full one-tenth the price of Apple’s Pages.
More so than other note-taking apps for iPad (such as Notepad+), Notability is a versatile tool for capturing thoughts and ideas, creating content or copying media from various sources — all in an accessible way.
Open up a new or existing note, and you can pull up the virtual keyboard to type out notes — and select the font type, size and colour — plus, you can easily copy, cut and paste, as well as underline, italicize or bold words. Too bad there’s no spell-checker or word-count tool, though.
Alternatively, use your fingertip to draw on the screen as you would with a pen on a napkin — and you can adjust the pen size, colour and transparency, too. You can also select from various shapes, and after laying them down on the screen, adjust their size to suit your needs.
If you need to record audio — be it an idea while you’re on an airplane, during a business meeting or perhaps to archive a professor’s lecture — you can tap the Record button to add audio to the note, as well. You’ll know if your note has audio in it because of a small red dot beside the name of the note on the summary screen, along with the date and time created.
Notability also lets you insert a picture from your camera roll or photo library; adjust the size of the photo on the white backdrop; and if you like, crop it, add a caption or draw on the photo. Browsing the web and see an article or web page that’s relevant to one of your notes? Simply select “Insert Web Clip,” and you can link to a desired URL (including support for bookmarks).
Perhaps a future version of Notability will support video, too, so you can drag and drop video clips into a note just as easy as you can audio, photos, websites or hand-drawn illustrations.
Once you have a few notes created, they can be grouped by subject or organized by name and date, plus you can easily search by keyword if you can’t find what you’re looking for by browsing.
I also wish Notability had alarms you can set to remind you of things — or the ability to export a note to your calendar, perhaps for use in a business meeting. But at least there’s no shortage of ways to back up and share your notes — this includes e-mail (as PDF, RTF or Notability file), wireless printing, exporting to iTunes or using “cloud” solutions such as Dropbox or iDisk or via WebDav server.
For less than $1, Notability has a lot going for it — especially for budget-conscious folks who’d like a powerful note-taker with clever word processing features.
Remote access in a 'splash'
A business application for iPad has taken the top spot among paid software at the iTunes App Store -- in 48 countries around the globe.
It’s not the first solution to do this — we’ve looked at the TeamViewer app previously on this Telus Talks Business blog — but Splashtop does one better by letting you stream full-motion video from your computer to the iPad (DVD movies, video files or online services such as Hulu) and audio files including MP3s, WMAs or AACs from iTunes or Windows Media Player.
This $1.99 software also lets you access your desktop’s Web browser to surf to sites with Flash — something that’s not as easy on iOS devices such as the iPad, iPhone or iPod touch.
But while the company claims you can also log in to your home computer to play games — ranging from casual Facebook diversions, such as FarmVille, to graphically intensive, massively multiplayer online role-playing games like World of Warcraft — I was unsuccessful at doing this with any game I tried, unless I went into the game’s settings and have it run in “window” mode.
As with any other remote desktop app, it’s simple enough to access your email remotely, such as booting up Microsoft Office, as well as reading, editing or creating Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other files. You’ll use your finger on the screen to move the cursor, tap and hold for a right mouse click or open the virtual keyboard for when you need to do some typing.
Set-up is a breeze, but it does require you to first download and install computer software on the computer you want to access remotely (it works with Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows Vista or Mac OS X 10.6 or higher). You’ll be given a unique IP address and prompted to create a password, in order to log in via the app when away from home.
Everything worked quite smoothly on my Windows 7-based desktop PC, but I found Splashtop performed much better over Wi-Fi than 3G connectivity. It’s not just about speed — logging in remotely wasn’t as smooth over a cellular connection until I tried the optional “experimental” feature from within the Splashtop app that uses a Gmail address to log in back home. This did the trick.
Along with English, Splashtop Remote Desktop for iPad is also available in Spanish, French, Italian, German, Chinese, Korean and Japanese.
Despite a few niggles, this remote desktop app worked very well — especially for those who’d like to access media as well as information while away from home or the office.
Marc Saltzman is one of North America's most recognized and trusted technology experts. Based in Toronto, Marc currently contributes to nearly 50 publications, has authored 14 books and is the host of CNN's "Gadgets & Games" (seen on Sundays) and Cineplex's "Gear Guide" (in movie theatres across Canada).
My name is Evan Carmichael and I believe that the fastest and most effective way to build a business is to model the strategies of people who have already done what you’re trying to do. I call it Modeling the Masters. My last post was: My Junior Achievement Experience - Evan Carmichael.
Today we're going to look at how a former brick mason refused to settle for less than he felt he deserved and went on to build one of the most successful financial companies in the world. This is the story of VISA founder Dee Hock and the top 3 lessons that you can learn from his success.
Must Watch Video
"Money motivates neither the best people, nor the best in people." - Dee Hock
Dee Hock (born 1929) is the founder and former CEO of VISA. In 1968, when credit cards were first starting to get popular, Hock convinced the Bank of America to release control over their BankAmericard credit card program. He started a new company to control the credit cards. It was called National BankAmerica and later changed to VISA.
Hock came from a modest household. His father was a utility lineman and after marrying his high school sweetheart, Hock's first jobs were working in a slaughterhouse and for a brick mason. He became interested in the banking world and walked away from three separate jobs at respected financial companies because he thought they were too hierarchical and controlling which limited his creativity.
Hock went looking for an opportunity to build a different type of organization, one that valued the creativity and enthusiasm of its employees. The result of this plan was VISA. Today VISA has over $8 billion in revenues and processes over 60 billion transactions per year.
Action Item #1: Hire People Different From You
We all like to stay in our comfort zones and many entrepreneurs make the mistake of hiring people who are exactly like them. If you're great at sales you don't want to hire all sales people or your company won't have any organizational structure. If you're great at programming, you don't want to hire all programmers or there won't be anybody to promote your product. Successful entrepreneurs realize what they're good at and what they need help with and surround themselves with the people who best compliment their strengths and weaknesses.
Here's what Dee Hock has to say about hiring and managing people:
“Never hire or promote in your own image. It is foolish to replicate your strength. It is idiotic to replicate your weakness. It is essential to employ, trust, and reward those whose perspective, ability, and judgment are radically different from yours. It is also rare, for it requires uncommon humility, tolerance and wisdom.”
“Hire and promote first on the basis of integrity; second, motivation; third, capacity; fourth, understanding; fifth, knowledge; and last and least, experience. Without integrity, motivation is dangerous; without motivation, capacity is impotent; without capacity, understanding is limited; without understanding, knowledge is meaningless; without knowledge, experience is blind. Experience is easy to provide and quickly put to good use by people with all the other qualities.”
“Money motivates neither the best people, nor the best in people. It can move the body and influence the mind, but it cannot touch the heart or move the spirit; that is reserved for belief, principle, and morality. As Napoleon observed, ‘No amount of money will induce someone to lay down their life, but they will gladly do so for a bit of yellow ribbon.’”
Action Item #2: Be A Leader
As soon as you start building a team they're going to start looking to you as their leader. They'll not only look at what decisions you make but also the process you go through to make those decisions. They're going to want to see someone who they respect and can learn from. Your leadership skills might be weak right now but you'll need to start improving them as soon possible if you want to build a successful organization.
Here are Dee Hock's thoughts on leadership:
“Here is the very heart and soul of the matter: If you look to lead, invest at least 40 percent of your time managing yourself – your ethics, character, principles, purpose, motivation, and conduct. Invest at least 30 percent managing those with authority over you, and 15 percent managing your peers. Use the remainder to induce those you ‘work for’ to understand and practice the theory.”
“Think back to the best boss you ever had and the worst boss you ever had. Make a list of all things done to you that you abhorred. Don’t do them to others, ever. Make another list of things done for you that you loved. Do them for others, always.”
“People are not things to be manipulated, labelled, boxed, bought and sold. Above all else, they are not human resource. They are entire human beings, containing the whole of the evolving universe, limitless until we start limiting them. We must examine the concept of leading and following with new eyes. We must examine the concept of superior and subordinate with increasing scepticism. We must examine the concept of management and labour with new beliefs. And we must examine the nature of organizations that demand such distinctions with an entirely different consciousness.”
Action Item #3: Empty Your Mind
Many entrepreneurs have a hard time focusing. We're simply doing too much and never get the chance to empty our minds of the day to day to focus on the big picture and where our businesses are going. Creative ideas can't be forced and if you want more of them then you'll need to free up your mental energy so you can focus.
More than being just a businessman, Dee Hock considered himself a theorist. He enjoyed playing with ideas more than spreadsheets, with concepts more than numbers. Despite a successful career in the financial industry, Hock was also an active theorist, spending his free time developing new forms of social and business organization.
Here's what Dee Hock thinks about emptying your mind:
“The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get old ones out. Every mind is a room packed with archaic furniture. You must get the old furniture of what you know, think, and believe out before anything new can get in. Make an empty space in any corner of your mind, and creativity will instantly fill it.”
True Story
After building the company he felt proud of, Hock resigned from VISA in 1984 and spent almost 10 years farming a 200-acre plot of land in California, isolated from the business world.
He used the time to think about corporate life and how companies should be run. According to Hock:
“I left VISA in 1984 because I had proved everything I had set out to prove about the effectiveness of these concepts of organization. When VISA became so extraordinarily successful, I thought the world would beat a path to our door to explore the concepts, but it largely ignored us."
“It was so different, people couldn’t quite understand it. There was no stock, so it didn’t fit the normal business model. I decided I wanted to return to nature and seclusion and try to develop these ideas further, so I bought 200 acres of ravaged land in a tiny, isolated community on the coast of California, built a house with a library of four or five thousand books, and spent ten years in manual labour restoring the land to health and beauty and studying incessantly trying to develop these ideas. I wanted to see if they were applicable to other organizations and industries, or merely unique to banking and credit cards."
More Quotes
"Failure is not to be feared. It is from failure that most growth comes; provided that one can recognize it, admit it, learn from it, rise about it, and try again."
"If you don't understand that you work for your mislabelled 'subordinates,' then you know nothing of leadership. You know only tyranny."
"Given the right circumstances, from no more than dreams, determination, and the liberty to try, quite ordinary people consistently do extraordinary things."
What Do You Think?
How do you hire and manage your employees? Do you have a hard time focusing on the big picture? What part of Dee Hock's message impacted you the most? As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts if you leave a comment below!
Like many other small-to-midsized businesses, Matthew Traub – managing director of the DKC News public relations agency – has discovered tablet computers are an effective tool to remaining productive throughout the day.
"I primarily use my iPad 2 in meetings with colleagues and clients as a combined mobile file cabinet, research assistant and display screen," says Traub. "Where I used to bring stacks of paper just in case I needed documentation -- only to inevitably leave behind something I wanted to use -- I now have it all in one place."
Traub says the touchscreen interface is "fast and efficient," therefore he can access information quickly. "It allows me to be better informed and better prepared, even between meetings, so I can stay fully connected."
As for where the iPad 2 falls short, Traud says it "doesn't offer the full functionality of a laptop," especially when it comes to crafting editing presentations. "But unlike the first iPad, there are dual cameras, which are more like a computer webcam for video conferencing."
Experts chime in
Apple's second-generation iPad is enjoying tremendous critical and commercial success – but do analysts agree with Traub about the tablet's place in small business?
Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies Inc. says security is always the most important consideration when adopting new technologies into a business. "Is the iPad 2 more secure than others?" Bajarin asks, rhetorically. "It's somewhat debatable as it depends on the app -- if it's a banking app it would have same level as security as online banking because the secure layer is on the bank's side." That is, Bajarin says Apple backs major email security standards, such as Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, but when it comes to web browsing and apps, the level of security changes based on who the app is from.
"The iPad 2 is the best offering at the moment," believes Bajarin. "It has the best ecosystem for software apps and services; it's the easiest to purchase as you simply go to the Apple store or online; and from my experience it's still the best designed tablet out there."
By comparison, BlackBerry PlayBook, while designed around email security, doesn't have the breadth of applications and support that Apple and Android has, says Bajarin. "While RIM is supposed to change this, the fact you need a nearby BlackBerry to read email on the PlayBook is not optimal."
"iPad 2 is nicer than iPad 1 and other tablets – perhaps with the exception of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 – but we don’t recommended it as permanent laptop replacement as there's no guarantee of full fidelity for Microsoft Office applications," says Ken Dulaney, vice president of mobile computing at the Gartner research and consulting group. Specifically, Dulaney says Office documents don't always translate well to iPad 2 because some animations don't work, and smart objects or macros get dropped here and there. "You have to make sure the file you're getting from customers is exactly as they sent it."
"That said, I think the iPad 2 can be a good business tool -- especially for those vertical markets where people are standing or walking," adds Delaney.
Delaney says Apple's iPad 2 is the "best of the bunch" out of today's tablet, but he stops short of saying it's as secure as the PlayBook. "It's not at the level of say a BlackBerry or BlackBerry [PlayBook] tablet, but iPad 2's security should be enough for most as it supports Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync and the option for thin client apps."
Marc Saltzman is one of North America's most recognized and trusted technology experts. Based in Toronto, Marc currently contributes to nearly 50 publications, has authored 14 books and is the host of CNN's "Gadgets & Games" (seen on Sundays) and Cineplex's "Gear Guide" (in movie theatres across Canada).
