Magenic Community Blog - Excellent Stuff

Though a lot of technology companies now have blogs, I'm constantly amazed at the number who don't realize what a key driver blogging is for thought leadership (which enhances credibility and, indirectly, increases sales). There are a number of excellent corporate tech blogs out there of course, such as Dave's Blog, written by NetApp CEO Dave Hitz.

Another outstanding tech blog I recently came across is the Magenic Technologies Community Blog. Magenic, a Microsoft-focused IT consulting firm with five offices across the U.S., has a great developer blog covering topics such as IT events, SQL Server, code testing, .NET, system mods, C# and other software development subjects. Definitely worth checking out.

The main page is actually a collection of postings from consultants such as Jeff Knutson, Aaron Erickson and Sean Schade. Doesn't look like there's a FeedBurner feed for the main blog page, which is kind of odd, but these guys are smart—I suspect this will get added sooner than later.

KudoSurf Me!

"Onshoring" Support - A New Trend?

In a drive to reduce costs, IT companies have increasing turned to offshoring in recent years, to countries such as India and the Philippines. First went development, and later tech support. But while offshoring support has been popular among IT vendors, it has been less so among customers, who often have difficulty understanding the heavy accents of offsore support personnel.

Now, some vendors are bucking the trend. Redundant Internet access appliance maker Astrocom even makes its onshore tech support a selling point. As one customer put it, "If you can understand a Minne-soowta accent, you can understand their tech support people."

Finance and accounting (FAO) outsourcer API Outsourcing understands that it is handling sensitive client data as it processes payments, invoices, billing and other backoffice documents. While some competitors seem to have no problem sending such work overseas, API seeks to protect this information by doing all of it's backoffice processing in Minnesota and Wisconsin (okay, some Vikings fans may consider Wisconsin a foreign country, but most Americans accept its statehood).

Finally, enterprise content management consultant MBS Technologies avoids the accent problem by providing tech support from South Dakota.

Smaller tech vendors are often more nimble than their larger counterparts; could there be a trend here?

KudoSurf Me!