Scott Spiro Blog

Cali Lewis, Neal Campbell, Scott Spiro, Friends

I had a chance to meet Cali Lewis and Neal Campbell as well as some additional friends here at Pink’s this evening. It was great to talk tech over the best hot dogs on earth!

Yeah, that's right these are the best hot dogs on the planet!

Cali Lewis (host of Geekbrief TV) is on her way to Australia to compete for the “Best Job In The World”, hosted by Tourism Queensland.  In fact, Cali is one of 16 finalist picked from around the world from thousands who applied. As I finish up this blog post, Cali and Neal are one hour into their flight to Australia. I wish them both the best of luck and safe travels!

As some know, I am a UCLA Alumni and as such it is always a thrill to work with other Alumni and Students. This afternoon I had  a conversation with Anantha Ramamurti (MBA, 2009 Anderson School of Management) in regards to a project that his class has been assigned. Anantha and his team are providing market research and consulting for a data recovery firm located in Chile.  I was contacted to offer my feedback to a strategic plan being offered to this foreign firm wishing to penetrate the US data recovery market. While data recovery services are typically expensive, this firm hopes to offer a lower cost alternative, but not sacrifice quality or security.

Anantha, I trust my feedback was useful, and I am hoping that you will get an A on this one!

Seriously, how many toner cartridges do you throw away each year? If you consider that your company probably has multiple printers, scanners, and fax machines, the total number of spent cartridges begins to add up. Fast.

In this short video, I’ll tell you why you should think twice before trashing these little suckers, and how easy it is for you to recycle your old cartridges. Call it toner cartridge reincarnation!

I want to thank Ryan Grant of Ingram Micro for treating me to lunch today at Ingram’s Santa Ana corporate headquarters. Ryan oversees multiple Ingram Communities including VentureTech Network (VTN) (of which I am a member as is my company, CSG).

Why am I proud to be part of this organization? How does it benefit my customers? The VTN community is composed of North American professional IT Firms who focus on small to midsize businesses, and have unmatched technical expertise as well as geographic coverage. It allows my company, CSG, to leverage the purchasing power of a $2.5 billion dollar organization to benefit our customers and community. It has made our relationships with firms such as Cisco, HP, Sonicwall, NEC, and others that much stronger.

VTN has provided my team with new opportunities to partner with other VARs across the country; again helping us bring more value and better solutions to our customers. I have also met great folks like Ryan who have become my friends.

Ryan Grant, Director Channel Programs - Ingram Micro

I appreciate Ryan’s insight and am looking forward to working with him in the future. Thanks Ryan!

As we celebrate Earth Day I have prepared a short video giving an inside look at the new CSG Green IT Data Center (DC) here in Los Angeles. The data center is still in the buildout phase, however our goal is clear: to showcase current green IT technologies in an environment that not only contains real companies receiving measurable results from the DC, but also to display metrics on large displays that provide a real-time look into how the technology accomplishes its green mission (i.e. metrics containing the number of virtualized servers, energy and emissions saved, dollars realized, etc). As the buildout moves forward I’ll post video to show our progress.

CSG is currently working with Ingram Micro, Sonicwall, HP, Alchemy Communications and others to bring the concept to fruition. Hope you enjoy it!

We had a productive meeting today with Tim Aitkens from NEC. As it turns out, NEC offers the largest selection of monitors that comply with the new EPEAT standards. EPEAT is the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool that helps large-volume purchasers in the public and private sectors evalutate, compare, and select monitors based on their environmental attributes.

I am very excited at the prospect of NEC partnering with the CSG Team in providing display technologies for the CSG Strategic Green IT Data Center! To learn more about NEC’s “Keeping it Green” initiatives visit http://www.necdisplay.com/EnvironmentalInitiatives/

NEC has some really exemplary methodologies for keeping businesses running cleaner including their “TotalTrade” replacement and recycling program, their energy star compliant equipment, as well as their in depth training programs for their customers.

Thanks again Tim for the visit today!