Customers: Support is No. 1
As business
executives debate the importance of customer service in board rooms
around the nation, new research conducted by the nonprofit Information
Technology Solution Providers Alliance (ITSPA) and Yankee Group
validates those discussions by identifying technical support as the
service area with the widest performance gap in customer satisfaction
between leading computer hardware manufacturers.
HP ranked
highest in support across all the product categories and was rated at or
above all competitors across a variety of performance, reliability and
service factors. Lenovo also did very well, in a statistical dead heat
with HP, but Dell trailed significantly in several categories. Questions
in the survey covered a range of topics dealing with hardware and
software problems, initial set-up experience, reliability, technical
support and likelihood to recommend.
Santex-net site
honored
San Diego-based Santex-net, a Web design agency
specializing in online marketing solutions, received the Web Award from
DesignFirms, one of the world's leading directories of web designers,
developers and graphic designers.
Chosen from among hundreds of
entries in the April 2006 contest, Santex-net's design of the Santex
Standard Web site scored high marks on creativity, programming, and ease
of use and effectiveness.
Users main culprit in security
breaches
Organizations are doing little to address the most
serious threat to their information security and technology
infrastructure, according to new research released by the Computing
Technology Industry Association (CompTIA).
Human error was
responsible for nearly 60 percent of information security breaches
experienced by organizations over the last year, according to the fourth
annual CompTIA study on information security and the workforce. That
figure is significantly higher than one year ago, when 47 percent of
security breaches were blamed on human error alone.
Yet despite
the prominent role that human behavior plays in information security
breaches, just 29 percent of the 574 organizations that participated in
the survey said that security training is a requirement at their
company. Only 36 percent of organizations offer end-user security
awareness training.
Unlimi-Tech teams with Canadian
company
Apposite Technologies of Ottawa, Canada, and Los
Angeles-based Unlimi-Tech Software Inc. announced a strategic
partnership to make Apposite's Linktropy 4500 WAN emulator available to
distributors of Unlimi-Tech's FileCatalyst file transfer product family.
Unlimi-Tech will become an authorized worldwide reseller of the
Linktropy 4500.
Unlimi-Tech's FileCatalyst software accelerates
file transfers across global networks, overcoming the performance
limitations of FTP and other TCP-based transfer mechanisms over long
latency or loss prone WAN links.
IT worker confidence on
the rise
Worker confidence among IT professionals increased
in July, as the sector's Hudson Employment Index rose 4.3 points to
112.5. The latest reading is higher than last July, when the sector's
index was 109.9. Based on responses from approximately 9,000 workers
nationwide across all industries, the composite Index held steady,
inching down .5 points to 101.9.
The Hudson Employment Index for
IT workers also showed:
* The number of workers who expected their
firms to hire rose six points to 40 percent in July. This is the most
optimistic IT workers have been in this respect so far in 2006.
*
The number of employees who rated their finances as excellent or good
rose four points in July to 56 percent. There was also a seven-point
increase to 49 percent in the number of workers who indicated their
financial situation was improving.
* Three-quarters (74 percent)
of the work force was happy with their job in July, up from 71 percent
the previous month.
* Conversely, the number of workers concerned
about losing their job rose from 19 percent in June to 25 percent in
July.
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