XP’s availability is extended!

Alexander Muse , December 21, 2008

Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) system builder partners who’ve been feeling queasy about the impending Jan. 31, 2009, deadline for selling PCs with Windows XP pre-installed can now breathe a bit easier, as Microsoft is giving them a way to obtain XP licenses through distribution after the deadline.In an e-mail to ChannelWeb, a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed the existence of a flexible inventory program that will allow distributors to place their final orders for Windows XP OEM licenses by Jan. 31, 2009, and take delivery against those orders through May 30.

Catagories: IT Support | Trackback |

IE Security Flaw - How to stay safe!

Alexander Muse , December 16, 2008

Reports have surfaced that there is a serious security flaw in IE.  The flaw allows infected websites to steal your passwords.  The good news, it ONLY affects IE7 (most of you still use IE6) and it only affects little known websites.  If you are an IE7 user you can be 100% safe by only visiting websites you know and trust.  A patch should be available soon - in the meantime stop browsing the internet.  Microsoft offers these tips:

Catagories: IT Support | Trackback |

What SevenLayer means for Architel

Alexander Muse , December 9, 2008

On Friday we completed the purchase of SevenLayer™, an enterprise application support business based in Seattle, Washington.  The company’s primary assets are a) its Onboarding Team - highly skilled software/infrastructure engineers who specialize in ‘onboarding’ software and b) its proACT and reACT software platform.

The Need: More and more companies are able to secure the services of highly skilled software developers at more and more reasonable prices.  Agile development techniques have brought the cost of onshore development to very low levels with offshore development costs being even less.  Development outsourcing to India, Philippines, China and Eastern Europe have been a boon to productivity here in the United States and in the West in general.  Business owners can use software to solve complex business problems that ‘off-the-shelf’ software can’t handle.  More and more companies are using these custom applications to create a competitive advantage.  The problem, these applications are orphans.

These orphan applications have lots of parents (developers, internal IT, third-party integrators, external IT and business users).  The original developers may be onshore or offshore, but if they are worth their salt they have moved on to new projects.  Keeping a developer around for a custom application is very expensive and very frustrating to the developer.  However, most are willing to keep their toe in the water, but it is usually very difficult to engage them.  Specifically, the internal IT department is filled with highly skilled engineers and technicians who have no idea how and why software functions the way it does.  They understand servers, operating systems and off-the-shelf applications like Exchange and SQL, but they don’t necessarily understand HOW they work.  They install complex and sophisticated monitoring tools, but rarely do these tools have visibility into whether or not the application is actually functioning correctly.  The server may be up, but the transactions it is generating may be getting lost.  Third-party integration specialists may understand how the application works, but only at a very highly hourly cost.  Business users often become very frustrated because no single party will take responsibility - internal IT suggests, “We didn’t write this thing.” - the developers suggest, “It is a problem with your SQL cluster.” - the third-party resource suggests, “This is going to be great!”

In the past most companies hired their own ‘onboarding’ person ($100K+) who was responsible for purchasing an application monitoring system - usually costing more than $100,000 and $25,000 per year in licensing and support costs.  This ‘onboarding’ resource would then ‘onboard’ the application and recruit two or three ‘help desk’ people ($30K+ each) to answer alerts related to the software.  Typically these alerts are generated more by the infrastructure than by the application itself and the resulting ‘application’ support is still a frustrating and expensive proposition for the company.  Costs approaching $300K year one and more than $200K each year after that.

The Solution: SevenLayer has developed a two-stage model for supporting custom applications.  The first stage is called Onboarding.  SevenLayer’s onboarding team works with the developers, business users and internal IT to understand how the application works.  Once it has a firm grip on the application’s function and purpose the next step is to determine how and where hooks can be made within the software.  These hooks are used to connect to SevenLayer’s proACT system.  The onboarding team then writes knowledge articles for each ‘hook’ explaining a) what has happened if the ‘hook’ is triggered and b) what to do about it once it as been triggered.  The initial target is to have complete knowledge articles for 20% of all possible alerts.  The remaining 60% are written over the first few months of engagement.  Finally, we build SLAs for various aspects of the application.

SevenLayer’s reACT system becomes key for determining who is responsible for which alerts as well as how quickly (per the SLAs) issues need to be resolved.  The onboarding team determines which alerts and tickets are the responsibility of the developer, in house IT and Architel’s support team.  reACT allows multiple parties to have varied levels of responsibility over a certain application and avoids much of the finger pointing and blame associated with traditional support.  reACT organizes and distributes inbound alerts and user generated tickets based on rules created during the onboarding process.  Once an alert or ticket is sent to the appropriate team the agent is then presented with live access to the proACT monitoring system so they can see in real-time how the application is functioning.  They are also presented with the knowledge article related to the issue they are dealing with.  In many cases the agent can simply confirm the issue and follow the instructions in the knowledge base to resolve the ticket or alert.  In the event an issue isn’t covered in the knowledge base, the agent is requested to create a knowledge article related to the resolution or to escalate the issue to our tier three team who will then resolve and document the solution.

Conclusion: More and more companies are building custom applications and these applications are becoming more and more integral to the competitive advantage of these businesses.  Architel’s new SevenLayer business can help enterprise clients safeguard these ‘application’ assets at a significantly lower cost.  Typical cost for onboarding is $10-20K per application and $5-10K per month for proACT/reACT plus tier 1&2 support - total first year cost between $70K and $140K, with future costs between $60-120K.

Catagories: IT Support | Trackback |

Architel acquires BLive M2M Service

Alexander Muse , December 9, 2008

We will be talking more about BLive in the near future, but we wanted to share the basic details of the service now.  Small to mid-size businesses compete in a world that demands rapid, spontaneous response and ongoing communications with customers, prospects and employees. BLive’s revolutionary Message to Meeting (M2M) service allows you to instantly ‘get on the same page ‘ with the people most important to your business.

BLive provides four services within one affordable package:

1. Desktop Sharing
2. Remote Desktop View/Control
3. Two-Way File Transfer
4. Instant Chat

Be More Profitable - Use BLive to increase sales

• Expand your sales territory - train and support remotely
• Bill more support calls in one day - reduce travel ‘downtime’
• Get a competitive advantage by providing “click to chat” access
• Be accessible and interact with your prospects at the moment they want to buy

Be More Efficient - Phone discussions or email isn’t always enough

• Share your desktop online so that you are all “on the same page”
• Fix problems directly by controlling remote desktops
• Control the web experience by easily directing the participant’s web browser
• Transfer files to and from a remote desktop without the hassle of email limitations

With BLive, you get the following features:

• Desktop Sharing (max:10 participants)
• Remote Desktop Viewing
• Remote Desktop Control
• Instant Chat with BLiveLinks
• 2-way File Transfer
• Archived History
• Contact management
• Customizable BLiveLinks for marketing/sales

Be More Available - Encourage prospects/customers to connect with you

• Make your website interactive with a BliveLink “instant chat” button
• Add a personal BLiveLink to your email signature to provide instant connectivity
• Invite people to join you on BLive anytime

Catagories: IT Support | Trackback |

Architel acquires Atlas Technology Group

Alexander Muse , November 10, 2008

We are excited to announce that Architel has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the assets of Atlas Technology Group, Inc. (OTC BB: ATYG), including ATG US, Tribeworks, Inc., Atlas Group Holdings Limited, and Atlas Technology Group NZ.

AtlasTG, headquartered in Seattle, provides outsourced application software support services and software for clients worldwide. The company specializes in remotely supporting custom-built applications and networks using proprietary process, monitoring, and management systems.

As a publicly traded company, AtlasTG’s market capitalization was recently as high as $47,450,000.  The new company formed from AtlasTG’s assets will be 100 percent debt-free, and will operate as a private, wholly owned subsidiary of Architel.

“Recent developments in software, monitoring systems and communications now permit IT outsourcing services to be effectively offered from remote sites,” said Scott Ryan, chief executive officer of Architel.  “Adding AtlasTG’s software and support capabilities extends our ability to serve new client segments and to build upon AtlasTG’s global customer base.”

“This agreement ensures that AtlasTG customers will continue to receive the high level of service they have come to expect – and that’s only the beginning,” said Dennis Sita, chief technology officer at AtlasTG. “Combining AtlasTG’s technology and know-how with Architel’s human and capital resources will enable us to bring innovative services to market and reach our full potential.”

In addition to its core support services, AtlasTG in August introduced AtlasTG Tools 3.0, a software suite for IT management and monitoring that offers more comprehensive integration than other products on the market.  A software-as-a-service offering, AtlasTG Tools 3.0 includes reACT™ incident management software, proACT™ monitoring software, bizACT™ reporting software, and interACT™ knowledge management software.

“AtlasTG’s product development team now has the resources to drive the software-as-a-service model using the diverse toolset developed by AtlasTG over a period of three years and at a cost of millions of dollars,” said Architel co-founder Alexander Muse, who will assume the role of chairman of AtlasTG.
With the addition of AtlasTG’s support and software businesses, Architel will maintain support operations in Dallas; Seattle; and Manila, Philippines.

Also as part of the transaction, Architel will acquire BLive Networks, a hosted desktop sharing service purchased by AtlasTG in 2006.

Catagories: IT Support | Trackback |

Fun new gadget from our Big in Japan team

Alexander Muse , November 9, 2008

The guys from across the hall, the same ones that brought you SimpleTicket, have a new application for Google’s new Android mobile phone platform called ShopSavvy.  ShopSavvy is a shopping assistant developed for Google’s Android mobile phone platform and is one of T-Mobile’s featured applications in their 2008 US and UK launch. Users can scan the bar code of any product using their phone’s built-in camera. ShopSavvy will then search for the best prices online and through the inventories of nearby, local stores using the phone’s built-in GPS. ShopSavvy won Google’s Android Developer Challenge and is available in Google’s Android Market.  Check out a demo of their application:

Catagories: Architel , SimpleTicket | Trackback |

Giant ISPissing Match Today

Alexander Muse , October 31, 2008

Cogent and Sprint decided to disconnect the internet today.  Cogent Communications, a global ISP carrying more than 17% of worldwide internet traffic and Sprint carrying 12% of worldwide internet traffic are no longer sending traffic to one another.

According to Om Malik, “It is no longer possible for many Sprint customers and Cogent customers to directly communicate across the Internet,” Cogent said and alleged that Sprint was in “violation of a contractual obligation to exchange Internet traffic with Cogent on a settlement free peering basis.” The two companies are in litigation over the issue.”

The good news is that the internet is ’self-heeling’ allowing traffic to find another route, the bad news is that this ’spat’ will slow down the internet.  If your internet connection seems slow today, I would bet money it has to do with Sprint and Cogent.  Stay tuned for more information as it becomes available.

Catagories: IT Support | Trackback |

New ‘Hot Standby’ Server Solutions from Architel!

Alexander Muse , October 23, 2008

Most small companies have four or five servers that are mission critical to their business operations.  Given that, most small companies can afford to have a complete mirrored fail-over environment.  Some small companies can afford to have an extra server around in the event of a failure of one of them.  The problem with an extra server is that it can take as much as a day to get it up and running place of the primary server that failed.  Architel has a solution.

Architel will create up 10 ‘Hot Standby’ Windows or SQL Servers for a one time fee of $5,000.  Each a complete duplicate of the primary server.  In the event the primary server fails, our engineers would ‘engage’ the ‘Hot Standby’ until the primary server can be repaired.

Microsoft Windows 32 and 64 bit AMIs are supported.  Usage charges are passed through (no mark up) starting at $.125 per hour.  If you are interested, please contact sales 214.550.2000.

Catagories: Architel , IT Support , Microsoft | Trackback |

The Credit Crunch is Crushing Local IT Companies

Alexander Muse , October 7, 2008

You might be surprised, but more than 75% of all IT service providers utilize revolving lines of credit to finance their companies (Architel does not).  The average $5,000,000 IT service provider has $200,000 to $500,000 in a revolving credit facility.  Earlier this week the banks who provide these credit facilities, like Bank of America, have contacted their clients and let them know that they may not be able to draw down on the these lines.  This means that these IT service providers may not be able to make payroll in the coming weeks.  In the IT services game, if you miss payroll, your best people will leave to find more stable positions.

We have witnessed two well known IT companies in Dallas miss payroll this week.  We are working with them to transition their clients AND their employees to Architel.  We are increasing our cash reserves in order to help other local IT companies in the event the credit crunch makes it impossible to meet their obligations to employees and clients.  If your IT provider is having problems or if you are an IT provider worried about short term cash needs please give us a call, we can help.

Catagories: IT Support | Trackback |

Ike Preparations at Architel

Alexander Muse , September 13, 2008

Just a quick programming note, we have staff on-site at our INFOMART data center in the unlikely event of a power disruption.  If you experience an outage please call the help desk number 214.550.2002 and our on call tech will dispatch someone.

Catagories: IT Support | Trackback |