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TECH SUPPORT Business nalytics Human Assets Operational Infrastructure Client Services Financial Performance Alignment of Activities for Business Optimization Where are we now? How did we get there? Where should we be going? What must we do to get there? VIRTUAL SAF EKE EPING H ewlett-Packard's new online backup and data-sharing service, Upline, and its competitor Egnyte's similar service are virtual gadgets, if you will. They're also a great idea, for small firms especially. You get the security of online backup over the internet to an offsite location — if your office burns down, you can still access your data from any internet-con- nected computer — plus the ability to selectively give others access to your data over the net, which is more efficient than e-mailing files back and forth. Upline is attractive: it's offered by www.dexco.com ntitled-5 1 30 SEPTEMBER 2008 www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com 7/31/08 3:38:16 PM a blue-chip supplier and it's cheap. A single-user plan gives you unlimited storage (for shared files or backups) for $5 a month. The professional version, which includes three licences, expandable to 100, costs about $300 a year. But Upline's sharing features are rudimentary. You can only e-mail a link to a file, which allows the recipient to download it. If you later change the file, Upline automatically e-mails previous recipients a link to the new version. Egnyte has been offering its service longer, but the company itself is a relatively young start-up. Its service is also more expensive — $15 a month for a single-user, unlimited-storage licence. It offers better features, however. Egnyte continuously backs up files as you modify them. And it lets you give team members direct access to shared files at the Egnyte site, and even set permissions for each user — read only, read/write, read/write/ delete. You can also set up the Egnyte storage space to appear on a Windows or Mac desktop as a shared drive. Bottom line: convenience and added security at a very modest price. Worth considering. — GB the primary drivers — it's more about partner productivity and team effective- ness — but the technology does save some travel, Hause and Srinivasan point out, which has a positive environmental impact. Siskinds has recently launched a pro- gram to replace the lighting in its offi ces with new power-effi cient fi xtures con- trolled by computer systems — to turn them off or dim them automatically outside offi ce hours, for example. "Our goal," says Hause, "is to consume up to 50-per-cent less power, which will save 48 tonnes of CO2 emissions [annually]. That's the equivalent of taking eight cars off the road or planting 141 trees." It's not primarily an IT initiative. It's a proj- ect promoted by the fi rm's environmen- tal committee, but IT systems enable the power savings and positive environmen- tal impacts. What else can you do? Dispose of IT junk responsibly. Give no-longer- needed-but-still-usable equipment to charities or to employees. Ensure that unusable junk — old monitors, printers, printer cartridges, CPUs — is disposed of safely. (See page 48 for more tips on greening up your law practice) And measure the success of your ef- forts. Stikemans is currently in the pro- cess of taking a baseline measurement of its carbon footprint. "So we'll see in a year or two now how we've improved," says Srinivasan. Gerry Blackwell is a London, Ont.-based freelance writer. He can be reached at gerryblackwell@rogers.com Gadget Watch