New Year Preparations

The closing months of a calendar year is a time when many businesses finalize their plans for the year ahead. We recently went through this exercise at Integrated Solutions and decided to make some adjustments to our magazine.

It's no secret that the economy is causing many businesses to contract a bit. This includes many of our advertisers. While many companies have been able to move forward with their advertising plans for 2009, others have been forced to cut or eliminate their advertising budgets. Although these advertisers say they love us and value the services we provide, they are simply unable to invest as much with us this year due to their economic situation. Therefore, our challenge has been — how do we minimize our expenses without sacrificing the services we deliver to our readers and our advertisers?

In response, we are changing our publication's print frequency in 2009. You're used to receiving Integrated Solutions once every month or 12 times a year. In 2009, we will publish 9 issues of the magazine — combining our January/February, May/June, and July/August issues. Therefore, you won't receive the January issue in the mail next week like you normally would. Instead, the January/February issue will ship the first week of February.

We're taking this step as a proactive cost-saving measure in light of the current global economic climate. This is standard practice in the publishing industry and we will continue to expand and contract our publication schedule in line with the health of the industries we cover. In other words, we fully intend to publish 12 print issues of Integrated Solutions again in 2010 if the economy rebounds.

While we will be printing fewer issues this year, we wanted to ensure we didn't skimp on the amount of valuable original content we provide to you, our readers. To that end, we've planned the following:
1) Integrated Solutions will continue to produce 12 issues of Bandwidth, our email newsletter, this year. In the months where a print issue of Integrated Solutions isn't mailed (January, May, and July), this newsletter will contain exclusive original content, rather than serving as a preview for the upcoming issue. This move is intended to make the email newsletter a more valuable resource to you in 2009.
2) Integrated Solutions will produce a digital edition of the magazine in 2009. This digital edition will be an electronic replica of each print issue and will be available for viewing and download via our web site ISMinfo.com. The digital edition not only provides you with a new medium in which to enjoy Integrated Solutions, but special features of the interface, such as search functionality, allow you to quickly locate content on topics of interest to you simply by typing in keywords. Click here to view a digital edition of our December 2008 issue.
3) Integrated Solutions will unveil a new web site in Q1 of 2009. This site will include exclusive editorial content and several new features such as redesigned technology centers, a multimedia hub, and RSS (really simple syndication) feeds (a format for delivering regularly changing web content). The updates being made to our web site will be a strong complement to our print publication and serve to provide you with fresh content several times a month.

We look forward to developing and refining our magazine and these new electronic products throughout the year. In the future, as the economy bounces back, we will be well positioned to expand with it. As always, feel free to email me directly with any comments, questions, or suggestions as these new products emerge. Until then, on behalf of Integrated Solutions, I'd like to wish you and yours a happy and prosperous new year.