• From Kyle Designs: >Personalized Gift Ideas for Computer Geeks
• From CRN: Holiday Gift Guide 2011: 25 Hot Ideas For Your Techie
• From ZDNet: Digital Gifts for Gadget Geeks
• and of course, the Apple store: 2011 Holiday Guide

Our personal fave? The Celluon Magic Cube Laser Virtual Keyboard. Cool as can be – and fairly reasonable too! Happy Gifting!

• Cost Avoidance: Monitoring Systems and personnel
• Predictable IT costing over long term
• Allowing cutomer’s IT staff to focus on strategic projects

maybe it’s time to take a closer look at the advantages of Managed Services. 

We’re also hosting our 2nd Charity Golf Tournament in San Ramon, Calif. tomorrow, benefitting the American Heart Association. The first of these events was held in June in Southern California and raised over $7500 for the Orangewood Children’s Foundation.

In mid-August, a group of employees helped clean and bag 2,000 lbs of corn at the Alameda Food Bank – corn that went later that day to various food kitchens in the community that afternoon for the folks in the county in need. Our Valencia office also participates annually in the Santa Clarita Valley Make a Difference Day – last year, they helped with paint and landscape projects at a local school. During our annual holiday food drive last year, we donated over 3-1/2 tons of food - the size of an elephant! – to local food banks.

The point of all this though, isn’t to pat ourselves on the back for our spirit of giving, it’s that every time we do an event like this, we’re surprised by what we get. It’s a great feeling to know that you’ve helped someone in need, and it strengthens the camaraderie of our internal teams. We get to spend time together, TEAMing for a good cause, and it reinforces our company manta that Together Everyone Achieves More.

Take a look around in your community and see where you could lend a hand. It’ll reinforce your brand reputation in the community with your customers and prospects and give your teams a chance for some bonding. Post a comment below about ways you or your company have given back recently!

So when it came time to upgrade their data center, GCA sought out partners who were uniquely positioned to help them in their mission: To ensure that cash can be delivered to casino patrons in a fast, reliable and secure manner. With help from Nexus, GCA migrated its data center to Switch Communications’ SuperNAP – one of the greenest, most powerful data centers in the world. Its network and data center infrastructure now includes:

• Cisco Unified Computing System with Cisco, EMC and VMWare’s Vblock infrastructure – for end-to-end provisioning and migration support.
• Cisco Nexus® switches – for converged network fabric, virtual device contexts to secure traffic, and a 10 Gbit backbone.
• Cisco ASA 5585 Series Adaptive Security Appliances – for comprehensive network security and intrusion prevention.
• EMC & Cisco MDS 9000 Series Multilayer Switches – for highly available, scalable storage.
• Cisco 1841 Integrated Services Routers – for customer edge, provides branch connectivity for extensive WAN topology.
• Cisco Catalyst 3000 Series Switches – for enterprise access providing security and scalability to support IP telephony, wireless, and video initiatives.

If you’re ever in Las Vegas, the 407,000 sq ft Switch SuperNAP is well worth a tour. They are the world’s most powerful and greenest data center, and have recently announced a planned  expansion to 2.2 million square feet, making it the largest commercially available and independent technology ecosystem in the world. Security is unparalleled, with armed guards and elaborate protocols required just for the tour. So while the idea of an incident ever striking the facility seems highly unlikely, GCA’s entire data center setup is replicated at their corporate offices for backup and redundancy.

In addition to 100% availability, security and reliability, GCA has realized the following benefits from their data center upgrade:

• Gained unprecedented scalability and ease of management, freeing engineers for critical projects and reducing operational costs.
• Saved $800,000 in capital costs and is expected to reduce database licensing costs up to 40%.
• Reduced carbon footprint by several hundred thousand tons per year.

GCA plans to complete its IT implementation in 2011 and begin migrating its credit-card processing operations in-house in late 2011 or early 2012.

By decoupling applications from operating systems, we can deliver information securely to virtually any device today - and devices that have yet to be introduced - without significant effort. With virtual collaboration, applications can run on devices such as iPads, Cius tablets, zero client backpacks, PCs, and Macs transparently. Applications such as WebEx Connect can run in a virtual environment, yet still control physical phone devices on the user desktop.

Nexus experts understand the data center, borderless network, and collaboration elements involved in delivering applications to any device safely and securely. This demo we recently gave at Cisco Live shows you the first phases of virtual collaboration, and where the technology is headed:

But the video doesn’t just stop with that question. It’s a thought-provoking commentary on the value/worth of technology today versus its actual cost. In its Visual Networking Index, Cisco estimates that by 2015, the number of devices connected to IP networks will be twice as high as the global population. And with internet access available for  just pennies a day, the value/cost ration of the internet is without equal.

It’s a fun video and an interesting social commentary. Give it some thought – would $1 million dollars make YOU give up the internet?

Forrester’s tablet forecast for 2011 offers their perspective and predictions on market drivers and the competitive landscape. Their call: The tablet market will grow rapidly, from 10.3 million US consumers in 2010 to 82 million in 2015. As the tablet market grows, product strategists must nurture both the app ecosystem and the browser environment — both will be key channels for delivering content experiences on tablets.
 
So what constitutes a tablet, exactly? This definition by Gartner, sums it up nicely: Media tablets are slate devices that support touch and run a lightweight OS such as iOS, Android, WebOS or Meego. Examples of media tablets are the Apple iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab and the Cisco Cius.

Over 100 tablets were unveiled at CES in 2011. This list compiled by BGR’s Zach Epstein shows the entire line-up, making it clear that the Android operating system is poised to grab major market share from Apple, just as they did over the last year with the sale of Android smartphones. It’s an impressive list, but doesn’t include the dozens more tablets designed for enterprise use, including those by industry leaders Cisco, RIM, Avaya, and HP. 

The struggle to support tablets at the enterprise level is eloquently articulated in this CNN Money blog. As author Michal Lev-Ram puts it, “Tablets are small and lightweight, and they have the computing power to accommodate enterprise-class applications. But they’re also expensive, and can’t do some of the things a smart phone can (like make calls and fit in your pocket). What’s more, tablets have yet to prove their return on investment in the workplace.”

Security is another grave concern with the rise in tablet usage. This Information Week report sums it up: Smartphones have already altered the enterprise risk landscape, and tablets will only accelerate the pace of change. Employees want access from their personal devices, and companies need to provide it. The report offers 4 possible strategies for tackling mobile security, from Basic Device Management, to Enhanced Device Management to a Walled Garden Approach, to Risk-Based Management.

Innovative CIOs will turn the mobile device management challenge into a business opportunity—and show that IT can help people be more connected and collaborative, regardless of location.