Your Insurance Office

[retread]

... YIO is fine if all you want is a stand-alone desktop solution OR if like Robert Barney you don't trust the Internet with your data and applications. Me? I'm fine with the Internet... have been for years... but if you won't sleep at night knowing your data is on a server then YIO is what you probably want.
...
Al

There is more to the issue of having your CRM in the cloud than trust. What if you lose your net connection... What if you are in an area with only dial up available? What if the server is under DDoS attack? What if their server goes down? What if a price increase makes it untenable, either the ISP or server site? I can protect my data with a firewall and encryption, and it is my responsibility. I don't trust some other system administrator to maintain security... that's where the trust issue lies with me.

Having the software on my PC gives me more control. That's what PERSONAL computers are all about.

 

[Guest]

What if you lose your net connection...

If you are using an SugarCRM it's easy to set up a copy on your local machine and update it every hour like I do. Thus if the net goes does you are still in biz. If you make changes to the local database it is not hard to re-initialize the master database in the cloud.

What if you are in an area with only dial up available?

Good point... but most places that can't get DSL or cable CAN get satellite, which is way faster than dial up (but cost about $75 a month.) Personally I don't know how anyone COULD run a successful agency these days WITHOUT high-speed internet service. I doubt there is anyone on THIS board who does because this site is graphics intensive and each screen would take a longer than you would want to wait to down/up load. (One could use a text-only browser like Lynx but who would want to?)

What if the server is under DDoS attack?

Most ISPs can easily cope with a denial of service attack these days. When was the last time YOUR host had one such that your service was impacted?

What if their server goes down?

What if your hard disk crashes? Can you be back online as quick as an ISP who is using mirroring and a ton of other redundancy systems?

What if your computer is stolen?

What if you get a virus and your hard drive is wiped out?

What if you find that your backup software has a bug and your backups are bad... or if you find out that the media you were burning was bad?

What if a price increase makes it untenable, either the ISP or server site?

I agree that if the provider (say AgencyIQ for example) jacks up the price, you will either have to pay it or figure a way to get your data out of it and move somewhere else.

However if you are using an open source package like SugarCRM, you just take it to a different ISP host. It might take me about 20 minutes to set up my current CRM to another host. Done and done.

I can protect my data with a firewall and encryption, and it is my responsibility.

Are you kidding? You are going to tell me that your dinky little router is going is a match for a tech-savvy teen-age war-driver parked in a beat up van around the corner? (see: Wardriving - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Are you saying that even someone with moderate tech hacking skills from someplace like Russia or Albania couldn't hack into your average small biz or home network?

I don't trust some other system administrator to maintain security... that's where the trust issue lies with me.

Well, there are people who would never trust a financial planner to give them advice on investments and financial vehicles. However, like dealing with good financial people on financial issues, if you deal with a rock-solid, highly-respected ISP (Pair, Dreamhost, Hurricane, etc.) you will have 24/7 monitoring of your server and a lead-blanket of security around your hardware and data.

Having the software on my PC gives me more control.

Yeah, it's easy for you to erase all your data by accident... or if the cat does it when it jumps on your keyboard.

That's what PERSONAL computers are all about

That was then... this is now. It's all about the networked computer. The applications will all be online, data storage will be online, and YOU will be online most of the time. If you don't see that coming, well all I can say is that you will probably not be happy when it does.

 

[Mr_Ed]

If you are using an SugarCRM it's easy to set up a copy on your local machine and update it every hour like I do. Thus if the net goes does you are still in biz. If you make changes to the local database it is not hard to re-initialize the master database in the cloud.




Good point... but most places that can't get DSL or cable CAN get satellite, which is way faster than dial up (but cost about $75 a month.) Personally I don't know how anyone COULD run a successful agency these days WITHOUT high-speed internet service. I doubt there is anyone on THIS board who does because this site is graphics intensive and each screen would take a longer than you would want to wait to down/up load. (One could use a text-only browser like Lynx but who would want to?)



Most ISPs can easily cope with a denial of service attack these days. When was the last time YOUR host had one such that your service was impacted?




What if your hard disk crashes? Can you be back online as quick as an ISP who is using mirroring and a ton of other redundancy systems?

What if your computer is stolen?

What if you get a virus and your hard drive is wiped out?

What if you find that your backup software has a bug and your backups are bad... or if you find out that the media you were burning was bad?




I agree that if the provider (say AgencyIQ for example) jacks up the price, you will either have to pay it or figure a way to get your data out of it and move somewhere else.

However if you are using an open source package like SugarCRM, you just take it to a different ISP host. It might take me about 20 minutes to set up my current CRM to another host. Done and done.




Are you kidding? You are going to tell me that your dinky little router is going is a match for a tech-savvy teen-age war-driver parked in a beat up van around the corner? (see: Wardriving - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Are you saying that even someone with moderate tech hacking skills from someplace like Russia or Albania couldn't hack into your average small biz or home network?




Well, there are people who would never trust a financial planner to give them advice on investments and financial vehicles. However, like dealing with good financial people on financial issues, if you deal with a rock-solid, highly-respected ISP (Pair, Dreamhost, Hurricane, etc.) you will have 24/7 monitoring of your server and a lead-blanket of security around your hardware and data.




Yeah, it's easy for you to erase all your data by accident... or if the cat does it when it jumps on your keyboard.



That was then... this is now. It's all about the networked computer. The applications will all be online, data storage will be online, and YOU will be online most of the time. If you don't see that coming, well all I can say is that you will probably not be happy when it does.

Great points, Al.
My first thought was, "What if retread's laptop gets stolen?"
I use Salesforce.com. It's not cheap, but I know I'll never outgrow it.

(fyi... my wife and I attended Salesforce's annual conference in SF in November. We went on a little drive and stumbled onto John Muir beach, just north of the Golden Gate. It was just gorgeous.)

 

[radiusbob]

I would say your wife and you are hardcore users to attend DreamForce 09...

 

[Guest]

Great points, Al.
My first thought was, "What if retread's laptop gets stolen?"
I use Salesforce.com. It's not cheap, but I know I'll never outgrow it.

I like Salesforce. Everyone likes Salesforce. However, it is over-kill for my small operation. But for some of the larger agents who have many subs out there, it would work well.

(fyi... my wife and I attended Salesforce's annual conference in SF in November. We went on a little drive and stumbled onto John Muir beach, just north of the Golden Gate. It was just gorgeous.)

He is referring to a slide show I put together last week when an old (like almost 40 years ago old) girlfriend of mine visited San Francisco and I took her for drive to the beach and took some pix. I'd not seen her in 35 years but we kept in touch all these years:

Click this line and then click the image. I hope it works!

Lovers then... just old friends now. My advice to you younger guys... take many lovers and make many memories before you marry. It's more difficult to do afterward.

Al

PS: IF you are going to see an old flame make sure your current wife or GF is OK with it!

 

[David C]

Al, It's good that you have remained friends through the years. I've got an old flame I see on business several times a year, we 've been friends ever since the eight grade.

Then there's one I still pray for. I pray for her b**bs to fall off. Just kidding.

 

[johndale]

I just downloaded a trial version of this program. It seems to be a great CRM tool. I especially like that it not only organizes clients but also prospects.
I will be purchasing this next time I am flush with cash and recommend the same for any new agent.
No, I am not Franks cousin and get nothing from this endorsement.
It really is a excellent tool for any agent and all I am saying is check it out. I didnt find myself saying once,"why doesnt it do this?"

This is a great program!!!
Nice job Frank.

I might try that tool I hope the trial version will last for many months

 

[Frank Stastny]

I might try that tool I hope the trial version will last for many months

The trial version will last for many years.

Providing you never have more than ten clients and prospects.

 

[retread]

If you are using an SugarCRM it's easy to set up a copy on your local machine and update it every hour like I do. Thus if the net goes does you are still in biz. If you make changes to the local database it is not hard to re-initialize the master database in the cloud.

> Update it every hour? You gotta be kidding me!


Good point... but most places that can't get DSL or cable CAN get satellite, which is way faster than dial up (but cost about $75 a month.) Personally I don't know how anyone COULD run a successful agency these days WITHOUT high-speed internet service. I doubt there is anyone on THIS board who does because this site is graphics intensive and each screen would take a longer than you would want to wait to down/up load. (One could use a text-only browser like Lynx but who would want to?)

> I use HSIS at home, but I don't like the high price of 3G service on the road. If a laptop is used, YIO is more cost effective.


Most ISPs can easily cope with a denial of service attack these days. When was the last time YOUR host had one such that your service was impacted?

> DDoS is not frequent, but there were several last week.


What if your hard disk crashes? Can you be back online as quick as an ISP who is using mirroring and a ton of other redundancy systems?

> Actually my HDD crashed last June. Frank helped me recover my data and I was back in business when I built another computer complete with a new HDD.

What if your computer is stolen?

> I would have more problems than just a stolen computer. They would have to break in my home... and there are more valuable things in it than a crummy old computer.

What if you get a virus and your hard drive is wiped out?

> That's what AV s/w is for, also backups, and NAS is as wonderful as sliced bread!

What if you find that your backup software has a bug and your backups are bad... or if you find out that the media you were burning was bad?

> Maybe the world will come to an end tomorrow, too!

I agree that if the provider (say AgencyIQ for example) jacks up the price, you will either have to pay it or figure a way to get your data out of it and move somewhere else.

However if you are using an open source package like SugarCRM, you just take it to a different ISP host. It might take me about 20 minutes to set up my current CRM to another host. Done and done.

> Not a problem with YIO.

Are you kidding? You are going to tell me that your dinky little router is going is a match for a tech-savvy teen-age war-driver parked in a beat up van around the corner? (see: Wardriving - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Are you saying that even someone with moderate tech hacking skills from someplace like Russia or Albania couldn't hack into your average small biz or home network?

> I've been a computerist since 1982, Al. I'm not a newbie. You are an alarmist. I have had only one virus in all those years and that was quarantined and eradicated easily. My next door neighbor's kid tried that and has not been successful with me. I have moved from WEP to WPA, etc. over the years, and have enough sophistication to not worry myself to death over these issues. I worry more about alien invasions and communist conspiracies.

Well, there are people who would never trust a financial planner to give them advice on investments and financial vehicles. However, like dealing with good financial people on financial issues, if you deal with a rock-solid, highly-respected ISP (Pair, Dreamhost, Hurricane, etc.) you will have 24/7 monitoring of your server and a lead-blanket of security around your hardware and data.

> All of Bernie Madoff's clients trusted him, too. After all, he was former head of the SEC.

Yeah, it's easy for you to erase all your data by accident... or if the cat does it when it jumps on your keyboard.

> OR... if you accidentally hit the mainframe with a sledgehammer while trying to remove Windows!!! What are you talking about? What if a tornado hits your house and destroys it and at the same time hits the server where your ISP is housed? What if, what if, what if....

That was then... this is now. It's all about the networked computer. The applications will all be online, data storage will be online, and YOU will be online most of the time. If you don't see that coming, well all I can say is that you will probably not be happy when it does.

>>>Al... you are dedicated to a concept. Good for you. YIO is not for everybody, and certainly not for you. I do not like the concept of cloud computing, and am satisfied with having my own PC. I am old enough to remember what happened to businesses that put their trust in IBM back in the 60's. I would rather not take my chances on this new trend for my own reasons. Others may think it is great, and I don't fault them for it. It is just not for me.

So, Al, I am happy with YIO. It is cost efficient and a good program for small agents like me. I have used SugarCRM and don't like it. If I had a large agency, perhaps I would reconsider.

 

[Guest]

>>>Al... you are dedicated to a concept. Good for you. YIO is not for everybody, and certainly not for you. I do not like the concept of cloud computing, and am satisfied with having my own PC. I am old enough to remember what happened to businesses that put their trust in IBM back in the 60's. I would rather not take my chances on this new trend for my own reasons. Others may think it is great, and I don't fault them for it. It is just not for me.

So, Al, I am happy with YIO. It is cost efficient and a good program for small agents like me. I have used SugarCRM and don't like it. If I had a large agency, perhaps I would reconsider.

Well, that's why there are "horses for courses." If you are happy with YIO than by all means use it, but my guess is that eventually "cloud" computing will be the "norm" in the industry and the vast majority of agents will "go" with it... leaving a very small minority of Luddite-agents who seek a desktop (non-web) solution... and Frank will end up discontinuing development of the system.

I'm surprised he has not invested in porting YIO to the web and making it a subscription system like my Jaya123 system is. (Actually I've heard rumors that he IS developing a web-based system of YIO, but I hear lots of rumors about lots of things. Maybe he will respond here about them.)

> Update it every hour? You gotta be kidding me!

Oh... and as for your issue with my taking a backup each hour, I make a lot of cold-calls (I'm old-school about selling as you are about info-management) and so I need to keep a lot of notes, records, etc., on prospects that I uncover.

I have a simple script on my server that runs every hour on the hour that dumps the database to an industry standard format (called SQL-Dump) and pops it in a directory as well as a directory on my MobileMe system (Apple's cloud-storage system... $99 a year for 15 GB.)

I have another simple script on my iMac that runs five minutes after the hour that logs on to the web server, downloads the database dump file, and then "feeds" it to my local copy of the MySQL database. (It also archives the last 10 database backup (dump) files. I'll be happy to share either or both scripts to anyone who wants them... both are fairly simple.)

I have the SugarCRM application and a database for it on my server (actually in two directories just in case), and on my local iMac. I do all my work on my "main" version of Sugar on the web. Each hour I take the production data and feed it to the back-up database on my server as well as bring it down to the local machine and update that database. I also copy the dump-file to the Apple storage. Once you set this up, you never have to touch it... and it is rather simple to set up.

If you are happy with your YIO data being in the Microsoft Access database format, then go with it. I would not put ANYTHING mission critical on Access. It's fine for a simple phone list or simple invoice program... but I would never sleep at night knowing that the integrity of my agency data depended on Microsoft Access... because compared to MySQL or Oracle or Sybase, it is a "toy" database. It's fine for low volume applications (like a phone list) but when you start putting many thousands of records with a complex schema, you are just asking for corruption of data chains, external keys, etc.

YIO as a program is fine. It is easy to use and has a huge number of features for the agent. But the back-end database is simply not secure enough for me to feel comfortable with it. And knowing what you know about computers, I'm surprised it meets your standards as well.

But if YIO works for you... then by all means use it and enjoy it. Rick loves it. There are a huge number of other agents who love it. I would love it too... if it were web-based and ran on an industrial-strength database engine like SQLserver or Oracle or MySQL.

Like I say, I don't know why Frank does not create a web-based version. YIO would not be all that difficult to program in PHP and still have a rather robust system that agents would pay a monthly fee for as many small businesses (especially small publishers, graphic artists, and photographers do with our Jaya123 system.)

Al