R.I. companies impart advice, forecast trends
For the body, New Year’s resolutions can often consist of trimming down and finding new companionship.
In the information technology world, however, those resolutions can often consist of bulking up in space and keeping others out.
With the needs for upgrades in mind, Providence Business News spoke to three Rhode Island-based IT firms to find out what they anticipated companies will be looking for after the ball drops.
SECURITY
Security will be a big issue this year, said Tim Hebert, chief technical officer for Atrion Networking Corp. in Warwick, which specializes in voice and data systems. The company offers customers a program that will check each computer as it logs onto the system.
Laptops, which travel back and forth from work, can often become infected, Hebert said. With the protection that Atrion offers, any damage done to a computer away from the offices will not be allowed onto the server. The infected unit will be kept offline and quarantined.
“It’s kind of like a customs agent for a country,” Hebert said.
Atrion also expects more companies to look for protection for their wireless networks, Hebert said. Many places are looking for a more secure way to have a wireless network than going to a retail store and purchasing a router, he said.
Gordon Tempest, a service manager at PC Troubleshooters in Warwick, said that many companies are looking to add Web encryption for their wireless system. Even systems that have passwords can be tapped into, Tempest said.
David Sylvestre, Lincoln-based Lighthouse Computer Services’ vice president of marketing, said he anticipates the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to have a huge impact on companies’ networking and IT needs.
The act, passed in the wake of scandals involving companies such as Enron, was originally thought to be an issue for a publicly traded business’s accounting and legal departments, Sylvestre said.
But with rules that govern networking and access to system servers for the companies, he said the IT industry is already seeing the affects of Sarbanes-Oxley.
“Especially in 2006, companies are going to realize that Sarbanes-Oxley is going to have huge implications,” Sylvestre said.
Business records must not be able to be manipulated in any way and must be able to be retrieved in the event of an outside audit under the act, Sylvestre said. To see what upgrades are necessary to become compliant with the law, Sylvestre recommended that companies have an audit of their system conducted.
NETWORKING
Hebert said he anticipates IP telephony will be popular in 2006. With the service – also referred to as “Voice over Internet Protocol” (or VoIP) – companies can fuse their e-mail and voice systems by sending messages to both at the same time.
Other services available with IP telephony allow a customer’s service history to appear on an employee’s screen by the time the call reaches their phone. This was something Hebert said was beneficial at businesses such as mortgage companies.
“It allows them to do more work in less time,” Hebert said.
“Webinar” is a new application that Hebert said is starting to catch on. The program eliminates the need to fly people in from all over the world for one seminar. Through an online system, the application creates a “virtual meeting space” that allows lectures and training to be done while users sit in their office.
The system allows users to add to the notes in real-time to create a virtual chalkboard.
STORAGE
In terms of server space, Sylvestre said Lighthouse offers its clients virtual technology that will maximize the amount of memory being used by the system.
Often, companies will go out and purchase additional servers for their network when the existing ones are only functioning at about 30 percent, Sylvestre said. All of that is not necessary, he said.
“Because of all of the new needs to store data, companies have been buying huge amounts of storage hardware,” Sylvestere said. “That’s probably not going to go away, but companies can potentially save a huge amount of money.”
Sylvestre also said that Lighthouse has seen large jumps in the number of companies looking to add document management systems to their networks.
At PC Troubleshooters, Tempest said that hardware will likely be a big seller again in 2006, especially with Windows slated to release a new operating system later this year.
