One of the main areas SPK focuses on for our clients is backups. I won’t go into a long lecture about why backups are mission-critical for your business because you already know they are. Even the standard backup schemes, such as Grandfather-Father-Son, have been...
High Tech
In The Trenches: A Look At The Benefits of IT Outsourcing
IT outsourcing has become prominent in nearly every area of the economy -- to the point that its benefits are taken for granted. We're aware of the saving of money, of cloud technology providing cost effective high availability infrastructure, and so forth. The...
What Happened to Google Wave? A Look at Collaboration Alternatives
Two years ago, Google announced a new product: Wave. Their (and I use the term loosely, since all new Google products seem to come from the same giant, faceless Googleplex) original goal was to unify messaging – have you thought about how many tools you use to...
Four Unavoidable Reasons To Take IT Out of Corporate IT
In the world of IT, solutions become problems with alarming regularity. The new software of today is the upgrade nightmare of tomorrow. The policies that solved problems create new ones years later. The corporate IT departments that we look to for solutions are...
Distinguishing Between Virtual Teams and IT Outsourcing
One of the benefits of an IT outsourcing partnership is that it can offer companies the option of working with virtual teams who can help support different types of IT and business operations, regardless of the locations of the workers. Teams and team members who work...
Outsource Your System Administration to Set Your Engineers Free
The inquisitive nature of engineers, which makes them so good at designing, developing and building products, can also lead them to become distracted by other “interesting things” like managing the very systems and tools that allow them to do their engineering....
Remember Everything with Evernote!
Evernote has changed my life for the better since I first tried it out a month ago. I have spent much of my life wishing I could keep a little notebook on me at all times to record odd bits of information that I think I might like to remember. Little things. When...
Outsourcing of Vital IT Tasks to Grow in 2013
In 2013, roughly one third of businesses will increase their IT outsourcing budgets. Chief Information Officers and CEOs, from small businesses to large enterprises, are planning to up their spending on the outsourcing of web/e-commerce platforms, application...
Dropbox: Do Everything!
I will assume that everyone reading this is familiar with Dropbox -- my favorite program ever -- but I would like to highlight some newer features and espouse the virtues of this program in case anyone is still living in 2007. Dropbox acts as a shared folder between...
Continuous Integration Best Practices—Part 1
Continuous Integration is a leading software development methodology whereby new development is constantly being submitted and tested against the main body of work. The goal being rapid feedback on incremental changes, resulting in lower maintenance costs and higher...
Podcast: Can IoT Jump These Five Hurdles? Episode 2 – Sensor Interfaces and Smart Devices
In the second episode of our podcast series "Can IoT Jump These Five Hurdles?", we transition from a broad introduction of these five hurdles to a deeper dive into each challenge facing the Internet of Things. Let's begin with the smart device itself and it's digital...
What Do Late Product Launches REALLY Cost?
Your engineering team’s product launch date just slipped a week. Should you spend $20,000 on an outside engineering service to get the release back on schedule? In these situations, making the right decision quickly requires reliable information and analysis. As more...