Dear CIO/IT managers,
This CPTTM CIO newsletter is to bring useful news to you, CIO/IT managers in Macau, for references without obligations, so that you can do your jobs easier and better! Hope you like it. if you'd like to unsubscribe or recommend your friends to subscribe, just let me know. Old issues are available here.
Kent Tong, Editor in ChiefWe all know that it is illegal to use unlicensed software. What you may not know is that, if there is any employee in your organization using unlicensed software, your top management may be held responsible in court. The only thing that can save your boss is to show that you have a proper software asset management system in place.
How to set up such a system? It's not difficult. It has two key
elements: First, an organization-wide policy to mandate licensing for
the software used; Second, auditing to verify the software
installed is indeed licensed. At CPTTM we have obtained the
support from the top management and issued such a policy. It
will be signed by every one of the existing employees at CPTTM and
by new ones whenever they sign the employment contract. We have also
assembled an auditing team to conduct audits. If you'd like to get a
copy of our policy, let me know.
Is your maintenance contract worth it? By reviewing our maintenance
records at CPTTM we fould it could save thousands! The annual
maintenance fee for monitors is about MOP20,000 in total. By
our incident record shows that that we had less than
10 incidents for monitors in the last year. So, we could have
bought new LCD monitors and enjoyed at least 1-3 years of warranty
included in the purchase. As each monitor sells for less than MOP2,000,
the total amount is still MOP20,000 but we get 1-3 years of warranty
for free. Assuming that on average we get a 2-year warranty, the
warranty for 10 monitors for 2 years is translated into a saving of
about MOP3,000. In addition, users now can enjoy brand new, large and
shinny monitors :-)
As you know we have been using OpenOffice for a few years. Now Cyber-Lab is requesting our instructors to submit handouts in an open format too such as the ODF. One day, I got an mail from an instructor saying that he couldn't do it because when his file was opened in OpenOffice, the formatting was wrong. So I asked him for the file to see what's wrong. When I opened it, it looked exactly the same as it was in MS Office. It means that it was an psychological issue instead of a technical one.
As many of us have a technical background, human psychology is often neglected, but sometimes it can be the single most significant obstacle to our projects as people are generally resistant to changes. Just like technical risks, human risks must be anticipated and managed. If you have tips or experiences in this area to share, let me know.
The announcement is here.
We will all enjoy better driver support for Linux.
We are pleased to invite you and your staff to attend the
seminar on “Macau WiFi and Mobility Prospectus: How Enterprises
Gain Competitive Advantages through Mobility Applications” to be
held on 8 May, 2007 (Tue), 3:00pm – 5:00pm, at the CPTTM
Auditorium. We have the honor to have Dr. Dominic Orr, President
and CEO of Aruba Networks and former President of Intelligent Internet
Web Systems of Nortel Networks, to be the speaker to share with the
participants the newest technology of WiFi and Secure Mobile LAN, and
how enterprises gain competitive advantages through Mobility
Applications. To enroll, click here.
For more info, call Ms. Louisa Yu at 8980840.
Any questions, ideas or experiences to share? Contact me at 28781313 or kent at cpttm dot org dot mo.
Until next time,
Kent Tong