A recent article in the New York Times indicated that several technology companies are finally showing signs of recovery. Major vendors like Intel, I.B.M. and Google posted better than expected quarterly results and top executives at Cisco and Dell have also become more optimistic about the future potential for growth. This bodes well for the economy, as many analysts view technology a leading indicator of its overall performance.

These are all good signs for Wall Street, but what are we seeing on Main Street?

While Util-IT is seeing indications of improvement for our clients, we have yet to see this growth make it to down to small business. As mentioned in the article:

Managers who make technology purchase decisions have yet to really open their wallets, although recent surveys of their intentions have become far more positive. Corporate buying tends to trail an economic recovery because companies routinely take several months to budget and plan technology projects.

Hopefully John Chambers is correct and these indicators truly show signs of a rebound.

To read more from the New York Times article Click Here.

Issues with Google Mail in September, and more recently with Google’s Postini and T-Mobile’s Sidekick data hosted by Microsoft and Danger have brought to light one of the important aspects of using cloud computing: your data integrity and system performance is based directly on the technology partner you choose. These issues are not necessarily a failure of cloud computing, but an example of what can happen when you have poor IT management.  SaaS solutions can be more cost effective initially, but having your data managed by large scale third parties could lead to some dire consequences for your business. As we have seen with Danger, Google, and other SaaS providers, there is no way for you to be entirely sure your data is secure or your systems will always be available.

Today, some of Util-IT’s customers were directly affected by the issues at Postini. Fortunately, because of our monitoring and management solutions we were able to quickly work around the issue, allowing their mail to flow into their inboxes without delay. While they may have lost some of their SPAM filtering features provided by Postini, the important thing was they were able to get their messages. All of our clients have their e-mail hosted locally and manged by Util-IT. This gives them direct control of there data and the ability to react quickly to any issue. And while bringing services like e-mail in-house instead of hosting them with a third party may be more expensive on the front-end, there are clear advantages to having them there if you are working with a knowledgeable technology partner that has a financial responsibility to keep them up and running.