DataSync Business News

DataSync is proud to announce the release of DataSync Suite 0.6 beta early December, 2008. This release is focused on fully revamping the architecture of our software, making the system easy for developers to use and much more flexible for adding users and applications. This release showcases the addition of the “DataSync Suite Extension” system, a flexible, pluggable architecture for adding features and new applications.

The new 0.6 release also adds full menu navigation. Application features can now be accessed directly from the top DataSync Suite menu bar. This feature drastically increases the efficiency of navigating through supported applications.

DataSync Suite 0.6 marks the move away from Zope/Apache to CherryPy/nginx. The new architecture allows for much more rapid development, and has increased the speed of our suite by over two times. This architecture will allow for adding the following planned features into future versions of DataSync Suite:

• Support for any authentication system (LDAP, Active Directory, OpenDirectory etc.)
• Automated application installation/configuration (using VirtualMin)
• Easy adding of new applications (planned: Magento, Alfresco, Quickbooks)
• Full administration suite (user/group classes, password resets, complex permissioning, delegated administration)
• Application information syncing

DataSync Suite 0.6 will be fully open source (GPL 3), and available for download on SourceForge.org. Documentation and developer support will be released in the coming weeks. Find out more on our website such as the DataSync Suite community and forums.

DataSync will also be offering corporately supported DataSync Suite 0.6 in our on-demand hosted environment 2 weeks after the beta release.

If you have questions or comments don’t hesitate to contact us with your feedback.

We’ve done a brief side-by-side comparison of Microsoft Exchange vs. Zimbra features. For those of you who don’t click on links, here’s the comparison:

Cost

Zimbra hosting is more cost efficient than Exchange hosting:

• Zimbra hosting: $3.95 to $9.95/mo per user
• Exchange hosting: $9.95 to $24.95/mo per user

Flexibility

Use Zimbra on any platform (Windows, Apple, Linux), with any mobile device (BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, flip phones).

Better administration

The Zimbra online administrator is light, simple to use, and flexible across multiple domains

Solid security

Full integrated antispam and antivirus capabilities protect your users

More than just the basics

Zimbra goes beyond just email, calendar, contact and task sharing. It adds a document center, instant messaging, and a collaborative wiki to the collaboration suite experience.

Great features!

Zimbra has all the major features of Exchange, and more!

Wyatt Walter has a great tutorial on the process for migrating email from Zimbra Desktop to any IMAP server:

 The Zimbra Desktop mail client is a great mail client that gives the look and feel of the Zimbra Collabroation Suite, but the migration path out of the client has been less than easy. I wrote up a quick tutorial on steps that I took to help someone pull their email they had downloaded via POP into ZD and had gotten stuck there.

Happy migrating!

The election results are officially in, and Barack Obama will soon be at the helm of our great nation. He’s built “change” into his mantra, a theme that’s also closely tied to technology. Indeed, Obama built the largest internet-driven grassroots campaign movement in history, has 2.5 million Facebook friends, and is frequently seen typing on his Blackberry. However Obama faces a daunting challenge to  modernize our government’s IT systems.

It disturbs me how many manual “paper pushing” processes still confront me when I deal with our government; processes that have long been fully automated in the business world. For instance, when I voted yesterday, my name was crossed off a paper list and I filled out a paper ballot. Databases and computer terminals have been around for 30+ years, why aren’t we using them for voting? The savings of a fully automated system would be in the tens of millions!

Technology has the potential to help our government become drastically more flexible and responsive. Leveraging technology can also help our government become much more efficient, saving taxpayers money and cutting deficit spending.

What are Obama’s tech claims? According to Obama’s campaign website, he intends to appoint our nation’s first CTO (Chief Technology Officer). The federal government is currently plagued with a highly proprietary and legacy technology system that isn’t connected. In the past, each government agency has chosen their own tech infrastructure, making many systems incompatible and isolated. Creating a centralized decision making body for IT in the US makes sense.

The challenges facing Obama and his administration are immense. In our experience working with government entities, the problems inherit in integrating highly customized and proprietary systems are daunting. Convincing highly opinionated technical people to work together on a national information system will be a frustrating to leaders as well. Technical people like myself are known to society as inflexible and focused on pushing our opinions on implementation, not on moving forward. Technical leaders throughout government must shed this attitude and work together closely to implement a stable, integrated, secure, and flexible government IT architecture. Obama must also deal with “old school” government officials that do not understand or embrace technology. The United States is now competing in a global economy, and to compete taking advantage of efficient systems is a must.

If successful, these changes will eliminate paper forms, standing in lines to register vehicles, voting registration and many other manual tasks. This could all be done online from a single secure interface. Disasters could be quickly assessed and responded to with unified communication, asset allocation, and satellite driven systems. Vast information pools that are stored today in isolated data centers could be connected, organized, and accessible by all areas of government. Intelligence could be gained on-demand through properly networked law enforcement and submitted by qualified individuals.

Although our government today is at the dawn of these capabilities, a properly designed and managed system could give America the edge to win in the long-term global economy. I hope Obama and his new administration will follow through with promises to use tech to improve our economy and government. The benefits to America both financially and to the lives of its citizens are immense. Achieving success will be daunting. Good luck, President-elect Obama!