) 
The Catch Up Game
Normally I post about tech trends, but today I want to talk about what appears to be the beginnings of a business trend in the Puget Sound area. The fact is, the gloom seems to be lifting, and IT spend is coming back into the market at levels not seen for a while. Granted, much of this is driven by projects held off for, in some cases, several years too long, but the fact is, the economy no longer feels as much like the great black hole that may swallow businesses whole, and pragmatism is taking hold.
It is very difficult to know in real time where the bottom of an economy is, and when we are heading up or down, but at the end of the day, there are things we have to do to keep the doors open such as pay our employees, pay rent, and keep our computing infrastructure running. And more importantly, there comes a time when we realize that we don’t just want to keep the doors open, but we want to grow and thrive.
My experience is that many smaller businesses stretched their dollars by holding back on IT spend by holding off on upgrades and routine maintenance. This generally has little impact in the short term, but has an increasingly growing cost the longer you wait. As it has become increasingly evident that, while the business environment is challenging, it is still driven by the same requirements it always has, and putting off investment will hobble growth, productivity, and competitive advantage.
Due to this, project spend is on the rise, and rather rapidly. It’s the old catch up game as businesses realize that they are overdue for moving off of XP, for moving off of old versions of Microsoft Server or other core applications, and for updating hardware, upgrading networks, etc.
As all of this pent up demand hits the market, it becomes a bit of a feeding frenzy for qualified resources. As you plan for getting the help you need to catch up in IT, ask yourself a few key questions:
- Am I ready to increase my fixed costs in IT, or should this be variable project work?
- If I am ready to increase long term fixed costs, how do I do so in a way to maximize the quality of support and quantity of support I get for that spend?
- Have I kept up on technology offerings to the extent that I can make solid decisions regarding upgrades, changes, and purchases to ensure I don’t waste any money short or long term?
Make sure that you invest in IT the same as you would invest in any other aspect of your business; thoughtfully, carefully, and with foresight and after doing your homework.
This is a great time to slow down a bit and assess where you are in regards to your technology and your business needs. Slow down long enough to develop a plan for your IT spending and make sure you evaluate options. Otherwise, working from old upgrade plans may bring about wasting money on plans which are no longer appropriate from a business and technology standpoint.
It’s been great to see more energy and enthusiasm about IT spend, as it is part of a general increase in confidence in business, and often goes hand in hand with hiring. Just make sure you step back and validate your plans and realize that a small investment in planning now may save you a lot of money over the next few years, and, if in doubt, call us and ask for help!
Happy Computing!
Richard Brunke
Should you Upgrade to Exchange 2010?
I know I talk a lot about these upgrade questions, but I think it is important to take a look at the real value behind an upgrade, and make a decision based on whether it makes sense for your business.
Fundamentaly, I can see two real reasons to upgrade any major system:
- There are features in the new version you want
- The new version will positively impact productivity or reduce costs
With Exchange 2010, there is a bit of each, depending on how you use it.
In terms of features, there are a few really interesting new features – my favorite being the voicemail preview function, that transcribes voicemails so you can quickly scan them in an email. I can’t think of how much time I would save with that function in addition to the times I am in a meeting and can’t listen to voicemail (I admit, I do email in meetings). There are also some handy changes coming in the Outlook Web Access, Archiving, and Compliance management that may be of interest to many types of users such as Public Companies, Doctors, and Lawyers.
As to reducing costs and improving productivity, I think that the improved I/O (input/output) capabilities are the big sell. Microsoft claims that 2010 will require 70% less disk I/O, which means a few important things. First of all, it means that in large data stores, you can use lower speed cheaper hard drives and still get excellent performance, and this can save relevant amounts of money. It also means that really huge inboxes will be much easier to manage with far fewer errors than has historically been true, and this is really relevant with lawyers for example, that often keep very large inboxes. I for one struggle with trimming my inbox all the time keep it within recommended best practices.
All in all, the world will all get to 2010 eventually. Adoption is often slow, and a rough economy does not help, but I for one see Microsoft really working to put interesting and value added features into their most recent spate of releases (Windows 7, Office 2010, and now Exchange 2010) that will help speed up adoption. For many users, the new features and potential increased productivity make this a smart move!
The User’s Strike Back!
I’ve posted a few times about the importance of understanding the user, and ensuring that they are happy, productive and supported by IT. It all sounds very mom and apple pie, and yet, it continues to amaze me how many stories I hear about IT departments that simply don’t understand that they are in fact a service department.
A fantastic example is an article I just read on CIO.com entitled Stupid Users Are So Stupid. What a great example of the point. The writer points out that he simply wants to be a ‘happier worker’ but then laments that perhaps he is asking for too much.
IT has to come out of the black box and realize that times are changing, and service requirements are increasing. It is not enough to say ‘I can’t do it, and I can’t tell you why’. Time to share the secret handshake and open up the book of secret three letter acronyms. The fact is, many IT departments have become trapped in their own processes and history, and may in fact not be flexible enough to adjust to the future. While this may indeed be a boon to outsource firms (who don’t have the luxury of simply saying no, since we clearly know who are customers are), it is not good for the industry as a whole.
Businesses need to learn to trust IT and trust that IT not only understands business needs, but wants to understand business and user needs. A true service attitude that makes it clear that IT infrastructure is a tool, and tools are to be selected to fit the needs of the user, rather than the user being forced to use the tool given them (for some reason I picture a construction worker pounding a nail with a wrench at this point).
At the end of the day, job security will come from truly meeting business needs and creating flexible policy that enables individuals to truly be happy with their IT infrastructure, not from adhering to old policies that were created to make IT departments easier to run. If IT must be slightly less efficient to make business more productive and efficient, then so be it.
That is what service providers do, after all.
Rant over -
Happy Computing
Richard Brunke
Do You Speak “IT”?
I was reading an article on CIO.com and watching the video clip that accompanied it entitled Enterprise IT’s Top Enemy: Its Own Arrogance this morning and after watching the video, I had a minor epiphany. Minor only because it is not a new concept. I hear it from our customers all the time, but the video really brings it home.
We all hate it when someone who knows something we don’t lords it over us.
Yes, and more-so, we hate the embarrassed feeling we get when someone speaks over our head and makes us feel dumb for not understanding.
It is a trap we all fall into, myself included. At the end of the day, what IT has to keep in mind is that you have needs, but they are not technical needs. Technology is the tool by which your need will be fulfilled, but you should not have to do the translating, nor should you have to sit and listen to all the translations, unless you want to. The job of IT is to interpret business needs and translate them into technology solutions, then communicate back, in plain English, how you will experience your new solution as a user. You really do have the right to not care about the technical terms.
This is something I talk about a lot with my teams – the concept of being an invisible provider, when that is what the customer desires. Our importance is defined by our success in keeping employees productive and supported, not in our ability to mystify and impress with techno jargon. I often think that IT, at its best, needs to behave like the electric company. Our users don’t thank us when things work (I know I did not call the electric company this morning to thank them for my lights turning on). Nor do our users usually want to understand all the difficult technical ’stuff’ we have to do to make it all work (yeah, I know something goes on beyond that little outlet in my house, I just don’t care what). And when something goes wrong, they just want it fixed quickly and efficiently without having to understand all the details. Fix it, and do what you can to assure me it will have as little downtime in the future as possible.
So take note – I get it. We get it. While the desire to explain the work we take such pride in can be overwhelming at times, we understand that you reserve the right to not hear all the details. Whomever you work with in IT, tell them how you want to be communicated with. Just be honest and let your IT know what you do and don’t want to know. After all, it is the job of IT to work to meet your needs; technical, business, and communications.
After all, you just want the stuff to work, right? If you wanted to understand it all, you’d likely be doing what we do!
Happy Computing!
Richard Brunke
In: Business, Technology
Office 2010: Pros and Cons
Every time Microsoft develops a new release of Windows and/or Office, the questions begin around upgrading. CIO Online recently put out a great high level summary of the Pros and Cons of Office 2010 for Business. Follow the link and take a read. In a nutshell, if you are an office users, you are likely going to want these upgrades. The increased integration with Sharepoint and simplified ability to share and edit Sharepoint content coupled with a slew of new features, including many that integrate social media sites such as LinkedIn via the Outlook Social Connector make this a really innovative and valuable release.
But don’t forget the challenges! As more and more users switch to 64 bit from 32 there may be real compatibility and integration issues, and you should speak to your IT professional about these issues and how they will impact your business. While integration and upgrade issues will drive complexity, the upgrade to 64 bit enables many things such as much larger Exel workbooks for example.
As always, the choice to upgrade will be divided between the desire to have the newest and coolest, and the need to balance productivity gains with upgrade costs. I think this particular release brings some new innovations and ideas that will begin to change the way we look at productivity suites, and bears some careful thoughts when planning your IT budget for the next year!
Happy Computing
Richard Brunke
In: Business, Technology, Uncategorized
Things To Think About as IT Spend Comes Back
Although economies rarely behave in an orderly and predictable fashion, the industry experts are claiming that good times are returning for IT and that IT spending will be increasing in a ‘V’ shaped fashion in 2010. While it is always hard to really know what will happen with IT spend, it does indeed seem likely to me that IT spending will increase, and increase at a strong rate in 2010. This may not be driven by the economy, however, as much as by neglect and natural replacement/upgrade/maintenance cycles.
Let’s face it, 2009 was a scary year. Many companies pulled back on all spending to ensure they had the reserves to survive a downturn that at some points appeared to be an ever deepening pit. As preventative IT spend went down, coupled with holding off on many much needed infrastructure and computing equipment upgrades, a backlog of spend was being created. In IT, that backlog always has to clear at some point. Server upgrades become needed, user machines have begun to breakdown, software upgrades have been skipped – ultimately productivity is impacted.
Yet, despite the significant need, there is lingering fear of hiring in a world with a lot of uncertainty around the recovery, taxes, and health care reform impacts. For SMB’s, there are added questions around keeping IT costs variable to match business cycles.
This becomes a perfect storm for growth in the IT outsourcing world, as businesses scramble to play catch up without having to over commit to long term labor costs. There are countless articles and white papers on how to select IT providers. Many of these provide potentially valuable information on ensuring that your provider can support your business and technical vision.
All this is very educational and interesting. What always seems to be missing from these discussions is what the underlying motivations behind IT support really are. At the simplest level, business owners (and computing users) just want to be productive and feel supported. You want to be happy with your IT provider without having to get distracted from your businesses core mission. These things have less to do with the technical details of how work gets done and more to do with how that support is systemically delivered. In my experience, many computing users feel annoyed, frustrated and abandoned as they have disruptions, followed by a feeling of desertion as their vendor is delayed in providing the support they need.
Ask any potential vendor how they will help ensure your computing users will be happy, and wait for the blank stare. Ask about how they minimize delay and ensure you’re never deserted. Ask them how they limit disruptions in the first place! At the end of the day, those are the real key questions, and the key to finding a great IT service provider. Any smart IT consultant can explain the specifics on how they remediate an issue, but at the end of the day, that is a transactional approach. Take the conversation up a notch and ask a few key questions about their client support model:
- Do you have the breadth and depth of expertise to ensure you can manage all my needs now and as I grow?
- Do you have the size and scope to ensure you can always respond to my emergencies? What if a local issue causes multiple clients to go down at once, how can you handle that?
- How do you handle inbound client calls and emails? Do you count on a field technician to respond to those when they can, or do you have live dispatch that can triage, prioritize, and assign all issues to the best resource?
- Do you have live local remote staff that can immediately solve my user issues when needed?
- Will I have access to multiple resources, or just one?
These are basic business level questions that will help you gain confidence that your selected partner can fulfill the goal of ensuring your users don’t feel disrupted, delayed and deserted, but instead feel happy, productive and supported. At the end of the day, THAT is the real end goal of all IT support.
Happy Computing!
Richard Brunke
Smart Phones – Blurring the Distinction Between Work and Home
I was reading an article about smart phones and I had a few thoughts perhaps worthy of comment. The first is that consumers want smart phones. People want to be seen using the coolest gadget to update Facebook, check email, and tweet the details of your dinner. The second thought that came to mind was ‘is this making us more efficient, or just more available, and what is the impact of all that real time availability’?
There was a time, not so long ago, that we had to consolidate our thoughts and questions, organize them, and present them over a phone in a conference call, or face to face in a weekly meeting. ‘Oh the humanity, Oh the hard work’ people think. How did we ever crawl out from the primordial slime without our smart phones to keep us in touch with everything and everyone! Well, I for one wonder if we are always better off. There is a certain scattered pattern to communications today, as each thread of thought is tossed out to the world to be digested and replied to. The simple art of organizing ones thoughts and creating some cohesion is getting lost. Then there is the simple concept that your mind blowing revelation may not really need to interrupt me in real time. It is hard to find a half hour of truly uninterrupted work time these days without changing gears a dozen times to answer all sorts of emails, texts, etc.
So, am I against these ubiquitous devices? No, of course not. I do, however, think that we need to learn how to live with these devices in a smarter way. Clearly as an employer, you should buy one for every employee. It has been shown time and again that people will embrace being online all the time when it comes to having these smart devices! Email is no longer a chore, but something you do in line at the movies, during dinner, and at all sorts of other little pauses in life. It’s like getting 20% more time from your employees!
Maybe…
Smart phones are electronic crack to be sure. You just can’t say no to those little buggers. You bring them to the bathroom with you, you look at them while eating, and they even go on vacation with you. We are addicted to information. We crave it. We crave the sense of connectedness to the world that we get surfing the web while simultaneously checking email, tweeting, and letting our face book friends know that we just saw the greatest movie ever… For all the home time that we seem to spend on work with these devices, we also see more personal time spent at work. On the whole, I don’t know if they add to productivity or detract from it, but they do integrate work and home life more deeply than ever before, and perhaps, given time, the right functionality will continue to push the needle towards productivity enhancement.
There is no slowing momentum on these cool gadgets. They are here to stay. But, perhaps we can at least realize that not every time is the right time for online… and that sometimes always on is not such a good thing. Balance is a key we have not found with these devices. We need to discover the difference betwee ”can’ and ’should’ (texting or tweeting in a public bathroom stall for instance should be grounds for an immediate device time out). Employers will increasingly realize that these devices are as critical of enablers of productivity as desktop computers and will soon find themselves pushing them to all employees. Pagers and cell phones are obsolete methods of communication, and the incremental costs of a smart phone should be minimal compared to the potential return. It is the equivalent to the difference between getting an employee a calculator and a notepad instead of a computer.
A final thought is this: the adoption of smart phones broadly across business will drive new IT issues and challenges. Just like laptops, these devices will have critical data on them. Just like other technology, they will need to be supported and managed. The concept of complex and mission critical business applications being served by a handheld smart phone may not be new, but it is just now becoming a widely adopted reality.
Once again, time to rethink how we do business, how we do leisure, and where the distinctions are between the two.
Other key questions to be asking:
- Do you have a plan for the adoption of high end smart phones or are you sitting on the sidelines?
- Is your IT ready with a plan to support them, keep them secure, and integrate them into your technology plan?
- Do you understand the HR implications (what happens if hourly employees have them?)
Happy ‘handheld’ computing!
Richard Brunke
Free IT Budget Planning Guide
Although IT budgeting can be complicated, if done correctly it can help your business prevent costly budget overruns, plan more effectively for future business growth, and maximize your IT infrastructure investments.
We developed this white paper to demystify IT budget planning for small and medium businesses.
- Learn what must be included and considered in your budget.
- What are common mistakes and how you can avoid making them.
- Learn simple solutions to the most daunting IT budget planning processes.
Download this white paper and learn the basic steps you should follow in order to develop an accurate IT budget.
