There was a significant development in TAA compliance for federal resellers, when a recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit dismissed a False Claims Act suit filed against contractors for reselling Chinese-made (non-TAA compliance) technology products to the U.S. government. In case number 13-7049, Govplace, Inc. and Government Acquisitions Inc. were accused of engaging in fraudulent behavior because they relied on their product supplier’s (Ingram Micro, Inc.) certification, which stated that the technology products supplied were from a TAA compliant country.

Many GSA Schedule Holders and prospective government contractors believe that selling to the government is a simple task. Hold on there - selling to the US government, the largest buyer in the world, is no easy task. Organizations need to market toward the government through an extensive and developed strategy. This requires organizations to do their homework about Business to Government (B2G) marketing.

Growing viruses and continuous cyber hacks have government agencies and corporations concerned about the safety of their IT assets. Most organizations fail to realize that simple steps taken toward protecting IT assets are essential and will save them tons of costs, and seize the possibility of an attempted hack.

ITSM – Service Desk Ticket System Field and Categorization Simplification As anyone who owns a home or has a garage knows, we tend to collect stuff over time that we no longer need (or maybe never really needed) and then keep those items stored in places where they are in the way, or where they just simply look out of place. Maybe those items are now keeping us from seeing or even getting to the useful stuff that we are actually looking for. Well, this might also be the same problem that some of you are experiencing with those seldom or never used fields and selections in your Service Desk or Help Desk online ticketing systems. IT specialists would identify these as categorization selections like “PDA”, “dongle”, and “floppy drive”, or selections of application systems that they probably retired three years ago. These applications may even have fields that that no one uses anymore because they are not sure what those fields were intended for.

In the IT world, challenges always exist, whether we can currently identify the challenge or not, one will always arise. Rest assured, when an IT challenge becomes apparent, there is also usually a solution in existence. Often enough it’s the problem solving techniques that reach the end of the challenge, and delineates the solution.

In a world where the industry standard is always changing and methods for these changes are conjointly working together, one can’t help but feel like they’re always falling behind the curve. Welcome to the world of Information Technology (IT), where changes typically come in 12 to 15 month increments and the last 10 years has been one of the greatest technology booms in the last century. Over the last decade, IT businesses and users have seen innovations of all sorts of technologies such as the iPod, new Operating Systems, and massive changes in IT management. For example, as Microsoft Windows ends support for Windows XP this April, organizations will find themselves migrating and attempting to the stay ahead of IT to continue their business operations. At this point, you may be asking “How can I stay ahead of all these IT changes and learn about what challenges all these different technologies can solve?” In a World Where IT is Always Changing, How Can we Keep Up? The answer arrived with a benchmark idea called information exchange. Information exchange is loosely defined as “a bidirectional information transfer” in related topics such as telecommunications, computer science (IT) and other communication systems. You can find this exchange and sharing of ideas occurs between IT leaders at conferences and events around the world. This avenue of communication allows IT specialists to return to their coworkers and peers with greater knowledge of the leading IT innovations and transformations. Every year, new IT discoveries are released with new models and advancements for the future. IT specialists gather and attend conferences to share their insights and learn about the ever-changing advancements that require their understanding to stay ahead. These idea exchanging events continue to improve and provide vast benefits to attendees, but not just to simply discuss new technological advancements, but to reach the core of IT and how to enable IT in the most effective manner. A focus area that is becoming more prominent to the IT and business industries today is the emergence of IT Service and Asset Management (ITSM/ITAM). A very valuable event that addresses this core component of IT is the BMC Exchange. This event gathers in various locations around the world to encourage and promote information exchange and idea sharing with leading IT organizations and leaders. The next upcoming BMC Exchange is the BMC DC Exchange being held in the greater Washington, D.C. area. Attending the BMC DC Exchange on February 20th at the Ritz Carlton Pentagon City will be a great resource for learning about how ITSM and ITAM are changing the surface of the IT world. Among the many distinguished speakers there, James Staten from Forrester Research will be discussing the transformations of IT in his keynote. Attendees will also connect with IT leaders and share IT ideas to learn how properly enabling IT can provide the best means for effective business growth.