Today is Christmas Eve, 2010. Well, at least it is/was when I wrote this. I woke up this fine morning at about 6:15 and started working on some of my 2011 projects. I like the "break" between Christmas and New Year's Day as most normal people are out with family and friends and doing the "Holiday Shuffle" with the in-laws and such. We do the same, but at the office, during the week, it is a great time to reflect, catch up and invent new things.

This year I am going to focus on three areas that will make a significant impact on my clients and the business as a whole.

1) Backup. Backing up your computer is important, but you don't do it do you? Right now you are reading this and thinking, you know, I really should back up my computer just in case the Konscriptonator Worm eats my files. (Don't bother looking up Konscriptonator Worm, I just made it up. But, if was real, it would eat your hard drive and rotate all the images on your computer 16 degrees to the left.) Back to backups. What I am thinking here is that there are some great solutions out there for Server Level backup. NAS, SAN, HSM and others come to mind for the network and enterprise. But for the average home user, the little guy, you. What is out there?  Well, over the past year Evolve Systems and I bought or subscribed to most of the personal backup systems that we could find. We spent a total of 96 hours evaluating the various systems and invested just over $2800 in subscriptions and software to test what would work the best for our customers. (And, of course, have a reseller program so that my For Profit company can stay in business!) The criteria was pretty straight forward: easy to use, simple to understand, simple to buy, simple to get your files when things go bang.  The result: www.evolvevault.com. Yep, new product, new offering and swanky new website. The concept is simple: Use the cloud, back up everything, just buy 1 account.  Cost: $50 per year for backup or $150 a year for backup and briefcase.  Backup is just that.  Backup.  Briefcase: simple. Think: A USB drive on the internet.  Yep. That simple.  And at $50 a year for backup the only reason you will not buy it is you really like the idea of all your pictures being rotated 16 degrees to the left.

2) Amiro.CMS - Free Addition.  We still have the other editions of Amiro.CMS availible, with lots of modules and great things built in, but we felt there was something missing out there.  A way for our potential clients to try the system out so to speak.  The free edition is going to be a way for us to reach markets that we have not been able to approach up to now. Couple this with what we are doing with Ecwid and we have a very powerful force multiplier in the market.

3) Video: We see video in 2011 as a Huge inroad to businesses. And the new system we are rolling out in 2011 is, quite frankly, awesome. I am personally going to be marketing out video solutions around the country this year, and I think that 2011 is going to be the year that businesses adopt closed community as they way to go.  Eyeballs are great, but control is what businesses need.  Look for more information at www.caelumen.com and www.evolvecast.com over the coming months.

Well, that is what I am doing on this wonderful, lazy Friday morning, Christmas Eve 2010.  Marnie just made some fresh ground French press coffee and I am going to go and wake up the children with hot chocolate and kisses.

Merry Christmas everyone. God Bless, and try and have some fun this year!
(Donny and I just hit level 85 in World of Warcraft, so it IS going to be a great year!  Whoot!)

Don

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