Let's talk business

Softalk Share Server reviewed in Personal Computer World

Softalk Share Server has been recommended by the editors at Personal Computer World. It received an overall 4/5. For more details, see www.pcw.co.uk/personal-computer-world/software/2202379/softalk-share-server-3443671.

Recruitment difficulties

Boy are we finding it hard to recruit the right candidate for a support position that has become available in Softalk! It certainly seems to be an employee's market currently. In times like these, good candidates are few and far between, with the best ones being snapped up before we get a chance to interview them. And it seems recruitment companies are taking advantage of the shortage of good candidates by charging up to 40% of annual salary. This makes it incredibly difficult for smaller companies to get the best candidates and ironically it is the smaller companies that have the most to lose by recruiting the wrong staff.

I'm interested to hear from other small to medium sized businesses. How are you finding the current recruitment climate? How do you find the best staff in times like these?

Softalk Share Server beta going well

Softalk Share Server, our latest Exchange alternative product for sharing Outlook folders, has now been in beta for about four weeks and testing seems to be going very well.

The remaining piece of functionality to add is a comprehensive backup and restore mechanism. This will allow administators to make both full and incremental backups of the data store and then subsequently restore data down to the user or folder level. This is something that Exchange Server simply cannot do. If any data in the Exchange data store is lost or corrupted there is no alternative but to perform a full restore of the entire store from backup. Surprising really, that a product used by so many organizations is so light in this area of functionality.

We're still keen to hear from anyone that is interested to evaluate the beta version of Softalk Share Server. For more information and to download the beta, please go to http://www.softalkltd.com/products/softalkshareserver/beta.asp. All things going well, we're planning a release candidate by the end of April 2007.

UK small businesses set to boost IT budgets

Silicon.com's Gemma Simpson reports that UK small businesses will increase their IT budgets by 10.7 per cent in 2007. The top priority will be better ulitisation and analysis of their data.

This is obviously good news for Softalk, as all we do is software for small and medium size businesses. Very soon we'll be announcing a new product that makes it even easier for SMBs to use their data by sharing it more effectively.

If anyone has seen some similar figures from the US we'd be interested in hearing about them. Let us know in the comments. Thanks in advance.

Technorati tags: SME, SMB, software, business, small business, Silicon.com

Top ten fastest growing software company

The blog has been a bit quiet recently because we're all so busy preparing for an exciting new product launch. The tech team are burning the midnight oil to get the coding finished, while I'm working away behind the scenes to get ready to let customers and prospects know all about it.

In the midst of all this we were delighted to find out that the 2006 Deloitte Technology Fast 50 has ranked Softalk as the eight fastest growing software company in the UK and the 35th fastest growing technology company overall.

You can see the official news release in our media center.

 

Technorati tags: fast50, fast 50, Deloitte, technology, software, UK

Work.com for small business owners

Work.com is a new Web 2.0 site designed to help more than 25 million US small business owners run their businesses. The launch press release says:

"Work.com features unique "How-to-Guides" for more than 1,000 business topics, ranging from start-up basics to advanced management techniques. The Guides are written by business experts who can now share their expertise with others through a new form of "Expert Generated Content" (EGC). Work.com is being launched by Business.com, the leading business search engine and directory."

I'm delighted to add that the Softalk Let's talk business blog is featured as one of the Best Blogs and Forums (well actually the only one at the moment) on the messaging how to guide.

 

Technorati tags: small business, work.com, business.com, web 2.0, messaging, management

Softalk in the news

If you subscribe to the RSS feed you might not have noticed that we've got the decorators in at Let's talk business. We're not finished yet, but the first thing you should notice is we've added a Softalk In the News section in the right sidebar.

It's actually an RSS feed of Del.icio.us bookmarks. If you spot any Softalk coverage that isn't listed then please let us know. You can see the full list here.

VNU covers WorkgroupMail

VNUnet journalist Clement James has written a news story about the release of WorkgroupMail 8.1 to "take on Microsoft in the SME space."

UPDATE: In PC Magazine

tags: WorkgroupMail, email, messaging, email+server, small+business, SMB, SME

WorkgroupMail 8.1 out now

Just a quick note to let you know that the latest version of our small and medium size business / organization email server WorkgroupMail 8.1 is now out. You can check out the news release here. And if you like it please don't forget to Digg it to help us spread the word. Thanks.

tags: WorkgroupMail, email

18 ways to say focused at work

Lifehacker points to an interesting post with 18 ways to stay focused at work. OfficeTalk makes it really easy to use some of these tips:

1. Write out a daily task list and plan your day. You can schedule any OfficeTalk task simply by dragging it onto your diary. The Activities view is also really useful as it will just show the tasks that are due on the day, week or month that you are viewing.

2. Allocate time slots colleagues can interrupt you. This is where OfficeTalk knocks the socks off the competition. Not only can you easily view colleagues' diaries (if you've been granted permission) but you can also create groups and view diaries alongside each other. Meetings mode will search for free time slots. Makes it really easy to let people know when you and can't be interrupted.

3. Apply time boxing. This is something I've always done, but I've never called it time boxing. Working on something and then switching to something else does keep you fresh and for me certainly helps me to think better. Using OfficeTalk you can mark a task as being partially finished so that colleagues can see where you are on it. We also use the notes field and time stamp to keep a note of what's happening, making it easier for colleagues to update clients if you're not available.

4. Setup filters in your email. Not only does OfficeTalk let you create all of the rules you would expect to filter your email you can also set flags for follow-up or assign a task to yourself or a colleague.

 There are 14 other tips to check out - not all of which I would agree with. For example the 'Do not check personal email in the morning' wouldn't work for me as all of my email accounts go into into OfficeTalk so that I can keep track of all of my conversations and tasks. The history and pending views on contacts are ideal for refreshing your memory before you speak to friends or business contacts.

tags: productivity, collaboration, email, scheduling, calendars