I polled IT professionals from the ForeSite team and beyond to determine what key things every business owner, director of a school or nonprofit should know about their network.  My goal was to create a checklist that will help “nontechnical” people who have the ultimate responsibility of making technology related business decisions and protecting sensitive data to better understand what questions to ask of their IT professionals - whether you rely on an internal IT staff or a technology firm.

Some of the questions are obvious, such as making sure that your critical data is being backed up and that you know important passwords.  But there were also questions that could be eye-opening, such as “what remote access is being allowed?”.  I think back to a meeting with a Head of School when this question was asked, and it was determined that a former vendor and two former employees still had remote access to their server (and the data residing on the server)  simply because no one had thought to regularly audit the remote access and disable accounts that were no longer valid.

We hope this checklist will help you to get the information you need to make informed decisions about your network.  Your comments and questions are welcome!

Without a doubt, the answer to the above question is THE BUSINESS!  But it’s amazing how often we forget this when looking at new technology to implement in a business.  Far too often, a cool new technology noticed by a business owner or the desire of their IT company to play with a new technology drives the decision for an implementation.  While there may be merits of the technology, the decision to affect a business’s production environment should be driven by a business need.  For example, we have clients come to us all the time saying something like, “Shouldn’t we be upgrading to Windows 7?”.  Our reply is usually, “Why?  Do you feel that one of the new features can help with a business problem you are having?”  While the answer is sometimes yes, most often it is because they have a friend who got it or saw a good ad on TV.

As a technology partner for our clients, we use the mantra that business needs should always drive technology implementations, not vice versa.  To help our clients make the best use of their technology investments we will work to understand their business so we can help them make informed decisions.  Some of the things we want to determine are:

• Is there a business problem you are having that is driving this?
• Have you considered all of the costs of this implementation?
• How will this affect your interactions with your clients?

By working in this fashion, we believe it build good long term relationships as we are not simply looking to book every billable project we can get our hands on.  In the long run it is a win/win.

We have compiled a more thorough list of the things we evaluate when helping a client determine if a new technology is right for them.  Download our “10 Reality Check Items to Consider in any Technology Implementation“.

When I was working from home the other day, I started to feel a sharp pain in my side.  At first, it was just annoying but it really started slowing me down.  I was working on filing the forms for my defense in the murder charges that had recently been brought against me which really isn’t that fun so I decided that instead of continuing, I would give myself surgery to see if I could find the cause of my pain and resolve it.  I figured hey, I’ve been living with this body for 38 years, who knows it better than me?

So I got out my trusty pocket knife and jammed it into my side just above the area where the pain was so I could look around.  I took out a few organs and made quite a mess before I realized that I was probably in over my head, so I jammed everything back in and used my trusty Swingline stapler to close my side up.  Then I went back to the murder defense because I was there, who could defend me better than me?

Sound ridiculous?  Of course!!  But for some reason, we step into situations every day where non-technology folks decide that they can setup a new server or firewall themselves because they figure “how hard could it be?” only to find out that their “work” has not not only delayed the project, but for us to undo what they did will take twice as long as if they had simply let us take care of it.

We have created a checklist of questions to ask yourself before embarking on an IT project on your own.  By answering these questions honestly, it will help you decide if you should call a professional.  You can probably come up with a similar checklist for when to call a doctor or lawyer as well.

Download 5 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Starting an IT Project on Your Own

Over the years, I’ve worked with businesses, schools and nonprofits to help them find the right technology resources to meet their particular needs and goals.  In many cases, the “devil they know” is the resource that they continued to use year after year -  either because they were concerned that change might not bring something better, or because they weren’t sure if their expectations of a better partnership were realistic.

Let’s start by considering when you might look for a technology partner.  The obvious answer is when you don’t have a full-time IT person, web site designer or developer on staff.  But even if you do have someone handling the day-to-day needs internally, planning for a project that they haven’t done before or discussing possibilities of how technology can help you reach your goals may be areas where you can have the best of both worlds - someone who knows your environment and your culture and someone who can bring an outside viewpoint and a wide-range of experience and training.

No matter what your specific network includes or what your challenges are, there are 5 critical factors that you can use to evaluate your technology resource - whether you rely on internal staff, outside consulting or a combination of the two.  Download the list of 5 critical factors to keep in mind as you plan for 2010.

Great question.  Maybe you shouldn’t?  We talk to clients about this all of the time and have counseled many businesses into and out of replacing network equipment currently in place.  Often the issue if forced when there is an outage of an aging server but in our network support model we try to be more proactive about the process and help a business owner understand the potential business benefits to replacing a server, leaving it as is, or even extending the warranty for another year.

The first thing you should do in considering a server replacement is calculate the ROI for the project.  Unfortunately, there is no magic number for the payback of a new server as all businesses are different but we have compiled 10  Things to Consider when making this ROI calculation.   The list includes hard calculations like the average hourly wage of your employees and the amount of time spent on repetitive processes but it also considers less concrete items like peace of mind of the business owner as that is also definitely worth something in today’s stressful business world.

Some quick guidelines as to whether or not to replace would be:

Replace if:

• There a positive ROI (as discussed above) for the project
• The server is out of warranty (if it is, it will more likely have a hardware failure) and it can not be extended
• The server does not meet your basic business functions and is holding you back

Extend the Warranty if:

• The warranty can be extended and the server is meeting your basic business needs
• You do not expect your business needs for the server to expand greatly in the next 12 months
• You would like to replace the server and it is borderline, but you need to plan for the expenditure in the next budget cycle

Generally, a server will be an effective business resource for 3-5 years depending upon business growth.  After 5 years, server hardware can become unreliable, sluggish and apt to fail.  If you are in the gray area somewhere, you may want to consider calculating the ROI of replacement to see if there is a real payback for your business.

Download 10 Things to Consider when Calculating the ROI of a Network Server Replacement

As many people in the business community are trying very hard to make the most out of a year when all the cards seemed to be stacked against us, it is easy to put off the task of figuring out what we will spend next year to move our businesses forward again.  While budgeting for technology can seem daunting at times, it is the best way to make sure that you take into account all of the things that will help your business run most efficiently with minimal downtime.

We must first consider the standard operational items such as preventative maintenance and support - which every business should have in place.  There are also a myriad of other items that often get overlooked during the budgeting process that can pop up during the year causing undue stress on the budget and the management.  Some things to consider include  software renewals,  such as anti-virus or backup software.  You should also review your current hardware to determine what is out of warranty.  Based upon the function of the device, a warranty renewal or hardware replacement may be in order.

For those of you who have already considered the items above, congratulations!  You are ahead of most businesses at this point.  There are a few more strategic items you might consider,  a new business resumption plan or updates and testing to the one you have to ensure its viability.  Also, in today’s world of hackers and viruses, many businesses are being proactive about auditing their network and web site security to protect their valuable business data.

While this all may seem overwhelming, it doesn’t have to be.  You can use a budgeting template much like the one we use for our clients or simply hire a technology company to review and plan all of this for you.  We have seen many cases where our involvement early in the process has helped our clients plan better and avoid unexpected expenses during the year.

Download the Technology Budget Planning Worksheet

Good news!  In response to concerns voiced by many small business owners in Massachusetts, the Office of Consumer Affairs has announced revisions to the identity theft regulations that were set to take effect on January 1st 2010.

New language in the regulations includes risk-based in implementation -  requiring safeguards that are more appropriate to the size of the business, the amount of personal data stored (client or customer data and employee files), and the type of business.

The revised regulations are more consistent with Federal law, and therefore an appropriate guideline for businesses and other types of organizations in Connecticut to measure their risks and identify what steps they can take to minimize their exposure to security breaches and the potential remediation and litigation that follows a breach.

A public hearing will be held on the changes on 9/22/09 at the Transportation Building, 10 Park Plaza in Boston at 10 a.m.

Click the link below for a copy of the compliance checklist: 

http://www.foresitetech.com/forms/download_compliance

I was opening my email one morning and noticed that the “out of office” message from an IT Manager of a local small business that said he was out of the office for the next two months. This was a company I had called on 8 months earlier and the company’s president had referred me to the IT Manager as their technology resource, so I looked up the company president’s name and gave him a call.

The President took my call. He explained that the IT Manager had been in an auto accident, and would be out for at least two months, and maybe longer. They didn’t have anyone else internally that knew the network, and he was concerned, but wasn’t sure what to do. He couldn’t replace an employee who would be coming back at some point, but what would he do if an issue came up in the meantime?

I suggested a Network Health Review to allow us to get an overview of his setup and any initial concerns without any cost or obligation. We both agreed that this would be a good starting point. I set up a review for the following day, and two days later, sat down with the management team to go over the findings. Overall, things were in decent shape. We identified some potential issues that we could easily fix, including:

• Incomplete backups which included data, but not the system state (registry and other system information that needs to be restored in the event of a hardware loss)
• Battery backup software was not configured to shut down the server gracefully in the event of a prolonged power outage.
• Lack of system documentation – No network diagram, no inventory of hardware/software, no master password list, etc.

We also came up with some other questions that no one in the room knew the answer to. This discussion led to us assigning a systems engineer to the company on a weekly basis for the duration of the IT Manager’s sick leave. We addressed the issues we had uncovered in the review, we found the answers to the questions about how the network was configured, and what the contact and account number information was for their key vendors. We set up Help Desk coverage for his staff so they had a resource to resolve issues on the days when we were not on site. This was critical to maintaining their productivity since they were accustomed to having someone else to ask for help and were not IT savvy.

About 3 months later, the IT Manager was ready to come back part time. He was able to quickly come up-to-speed on the changes we had made from our documentation. The management team was so pleased with the information that we provided to them, the level of support, and our ability to work well with their IT Manager that they decided to keep us on board with a scaled back schedule. Now they know that they have a backup resource when needed who is familiar with them and their setup.

8 months earlier when I contacted the President of the company, he was all set, he had someone handling his network. You never know when things could change, but you can be prepared by knowing where you stand BEFORE it happens.