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Greetings!
Here are your articles for May 9, 2012. |
"At Kiesling Associates, we make it our mission to provide timely,
quality services that exceed the expectations of our clients."
Joe Gerot & Jeff Naig, Co-Managing Partners |
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Solid State Drives: Do the Benefits Outweigh the Cost? | |
You may have heard of solid state drive (SSD) technology in the last few years. This technology refers to hard drives that are made with a solid state type of memory for storage. This memory type is similar to what you might find in USB memory sticks. Standard hard drives are made with multiple spinning metal plates and a magnetic head writes the data to these plates. The drive heads physically move back and forth across the metal plates as they spin. Solid state drives have no moving parts and operate entirely on circuits and chips.
Initially, solid state drive technology was so expensive and the sizes were so small, that it was extremely cost prohibitive and not worth the investment. As today's standard Hard Disk Drive (HDD) laptop drives exceed 250-500 GBs of space, SSD drives entered the market at 16-32 GB of space and costing close to a thousand dollars. As SSD technology has matured and become more stable, the speed of the SSD has gone up and the price has come down. SSD drives still have a higher dollar per GB of storage ratio, making them more expensive than their technologically older counterparts. The average price for a HDD per GB was $0.075 in 2011, the SSD cost $2.42 per GB. This shows a large cost difference between standard hard drives and solid state drives when comparing storage. For example a 750 GB HDD laptop would cost roughly the same as a 120 GB SSD laptop.
Obviously the benefits would need to heavily outweigh the cost in order to select an SSD. As with any business, time is money and solid state drives provide several benefits that make that higher cost easier to swallow. The first and easiest benefit that we can derive from implementing solid state drives is the stability of having no moving parts. Being mobile today puts a lot of us in a constant state of travel, requiring portability of our computers. Standard hard drives with their spinning disks and moving read/write heads are always at risk of getting jarred and causing the drive to malfunction and cease to read properly. Standard drive technology has improved in this category over the years but it still happens. Newer SSD drive models haven't been in the field long enough to have real world metrics as it relates to life spans. However, accelerated lab testing show SSD drives outlasting mechanical standard drives by a considerable amount. Most standard HDD will last 3-5 years and if the manufacturer's estimation is taken into consideration, a SSD should last 4 times longer. SSDs lack the two main killers of mechanical drives; movement and heat. Movement and heat in a component lowers the expected life of the drive. Lower failure rates mean less cost of replacement and less time lost for equipment replacement and lost data.
In addition to stability, speed is a significant benefit for SSD. This is probably the one thing that every basic user can relate best to. How often have you thought or heard, "My computer or laptop is so slow" or "My applications take a long time to open." Even users, who have very new laptops with plenty of system resources like 6-8 GB of RAM and Intel core I5 mobile processors, will see a noticeable difference in boot speeds and overall more snappiness to their applications and load times. The speed comparisons are stark. Read and Write times on SSD drives are approximately 0.07 milliseconds compared to 7-9 milliseconds for HDD drives. Transfer rates on SSD drives are 2-2.5x faster than regular drives. In our own upgrades and tests we found boot times for standard Windows XP machines were 6-10 minutes from cold boot logged in ready to use. After a SSD upgrade the same machine with the same drive image booted in less than a minute, typically between 48-52 seconds. The end user reports that applications load much quicker and the machine seems overall faster.
Finally, another added benefit for SSD drives in laptops is that the overall power consumption of SSD drives is lower than that of a standard HDD. Battery life on laptops is extended with SSD machines and allows for longer usage without recharging.
Overall SSD technology does cost more but the price point is now dipping low enough to warrant a look at the cost benefit of installing these faster drives. The advantages have started to outweigh the cost and for some users this maybe an easy decision to make especially if they require frequent mobility. Make sure you do your research to find a good manufacturer with a solid stable chipset. Tom's Hardware is a great website for detailed information on technology hardware and it gets updated frequently. Check out the most recent SSD article from February 2012.
If you have additional questions related to SSD or other technical services that Kiesling can offer, please do not hesitate to contact your Kiesling representative.
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Service Organization Control Reports | |
Companies which rely on third parties to process data will find service organization reports of particular importance. By obtaining the Service Organization Control (SOC) report, management can verify the organization has appropriate controls in place to ensure processing accuracy and the privacy of data. Management will also be able to identify key areas to be mindful of when providing data to service organizations and reviewing the results of their processing.
In 2011, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) released new guidance for three new SOC reports (SOC 1, SOC 2, and SOC 3). The new reports were created in response to the need to clarify the intent of service organization reports. The original purpose of these reports was to evaluate the effectiveness on internal controls over financial reporting, but they were being utilized for other purposes as well.
The new SOC 1 reports replace previous (SAS 70) reports by covering internal controls over financial reporting and are issued in two types, Type I and Type II. Both types of SOC 1 reports include a management assertion and auditor's opinion. Type I reports relate only to the design of the controls in place are as of a point in time. Type II reports relate to both the design and operating effectiveness of the controls in place, and cover a period of time not less than six months.
The new SOC 2 reports are also issued in Types I and II and have similar layouts to SOC 1 reports, including management assertions and auditor opinions. However, SOC 2 reports are issued on controls over compliance and operations. SOC 2 reports must consist of one of the five Trust Service Principles and Criteria (TSPC), (Security, Availability, Process Integrity, Confidentiality, and Privacy). Users typically request these reports from service organizations that perform functions such as billing, payroll processing, and transaction processing. The SOC 2 reports provide assurance that the service organization has implemented appropriate controls over the user's data.
The new SOC 3 reports also are based on the TSPCs. However, unlike SOC 1 and SOC 2 reports, SOC 3 reports do not require management's assertion, are not issued in Type I and Type II, and are not audited. SOC 3 reports are summaries much briefer than SOC 1 and SOC 2 reports, and are available to the general public, whereas SOC 1 and SOC 2 reports are directed towards customers and their auditors.
For assistance with your service organization control reports, contact your Kiesling representative.
Source: Choe, Vickie; Taylor, David; Brizhik, Aleksei. "SOC 2 Breakdown." Internal Auditor February 2012: 54-58. Print.
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Whether you're seeking to manage your own assets, control how your assets are distributed after your death, or plan for incapacity, trusts can help you accomplish your estate planning goals. Their power is in heir versatility--many types of trusts exist, each designed for a specific purpose. Although trust law is complex and establishing a trust requires the services of an experienced attorney, mastering the basics isn't hard. More |
| Information overload? What's going down on the Internet |
The Internet is a busy "place," what with all that data running across the virtual landscape.
Here's a quick snapshot at what kind of traffic it handles on a daily basis:
* Data. Enough information flows through the Internet in a 24-hour period to fill 168 million DVDs.
* Email. The U.S. Postal Service would need two years to process the 294 billion emails sent daily.
* Blogs. They're everywhere! Two million blog entries are posted on a typical day.
* Facebook. Approximately 172 million people visit Facebook in a day, spending a total of 4.7 billion minutes, updating 532 million statuses, and uploading 250 million photos.
* Video. Web surfers watch 22 million hours of video on Netflix every day; 864,000 hours worth of video are uploaded to YouTube.
* Music. People listen to 187.6 million hours of music streamed from Pandora in a day; if a time-traveling computer went back to the year 1 A.D. to stream that much, the music would still be coming today.
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Catch Kiesling at Upcoming Events | |
 Conventions and seminars provide a common forum to present new ideas, learn about industry happenings, sharpen technical knowledge, discuss new products and services, and visit with friends-new and old. Kiesling values the opportunity to participate with you at industry events and looks forward to seeing you at the following upcoming events. More
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Our firm provides the information in this e-newsletter for general guidance only, and does not constitute the provision of legal advice, tax advice, accounting services, investment advice, or professional consulting of any kind. The information provided herein should not be used as a substitute for consultation with professional tax, accounting, legal, or other competent advisers. Before making any decision or taking any action, you should consult a professional adviser who has been provided with all pertinent facts relevant to your particular situation. Tax articles in this e-newsletter are not intended to be used, and cannot be used by any taxpayer, for the purpose of avoiding accuracy-related penalties that may be imposed on the taxpayer. The information is provided "as is," with no assurance or guarantee of completeness, accuracy, or timeliness of the information, and without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including but not limited to warranties of performance, merchantability, and fitness for a particular purpose. |
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