SPAM Continues to Trend Upward;

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So how do spam trends related to cloud computing? It all depends on how you block and fight SPAM.

According to the Q2 2009 Spam Trends report published by the team at Google Postini Services, spammers have developed means of releasing days worth of spam in just hours. If you are manage spam from within your network, this means your Internet connectivity and servers are more susceptible to performance degradation and failure.

Across our customer base, ~92% of email is spam. Most spam is sent to invalid email addresses. This traffic chews up bandwidth inbound. If it hits your servers, it increases the disk space used for log files as well as outbound bandwidth for non-delivery report messages.

If you stop spam in the cloud, you protect your network and server performance regardless of the volume of spam targeting your domain.

Click Here and Here to learn more …

Google Updates Sync for Microsoft Outlook

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Following the release of Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook, a number of issues were identified by the user community related to the installation and some of the settings. Last week, Google pushed out an update with the following fixes and improvements.

  • You can choose between native Outlook Search and Windows Desktop Search; Windows Desktop Search is no longer prevented from searching Outlook data.
  • You can now access Windows Live Hotmail via the Microsoft Office Outlook Connector plug-in when the Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook is installed
  • Added an option to enable or disable auto-archiving during installation
  • Improved installation to make it easier to know here data in other Outlook accounts is located

With these modifications, Google continues to improve the tools that help organizations migrate to Google Apps.

Click here to learn more …

MV=P2 The Law of Meeting Coordination

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How may attendees does it take to schedule a meeting?

While it sounds like the lead-in to a good punchline, the reality is that most organizations thrash when it comes to arranging meetings.

James Gaskin, in his Smart Tech for Small Biz blog on ITworld.com, may be the first to quantify the problem with The Law of Meeting Coordination.

“MV=P2. This formula stands for Mail Volume = Participants Squared”

James makes a compelling case for sharing sufficient calendaring information that attendees can negotiate times and availability without the flurry of “I am/I am not available” emails.

I could not agree more. As we finish our migration from Exchange to Google Apps across all of our businesses, we are experimenting with public access to free/busy information in Google Calendars.