) 
Amazon Cloud Outage Sparks Concerns/Questions
You may have read recently that Amazon experienced various levels of service outages in their cloud offering that lasted a full 24 hours. Many sites, including some for large organizations, experienced serious performance issues. Many businesses that rely on various cloud offerings residing on the Amazon infrastructure were rendered unable to transact their business properly for a full business day.
I’m not really interested in why this happened, or what happened. I have long been nervous that too many are jumping too quickly to cloud offerings without understanding the limitations, challenges, and realities. The simple fact is, this issue pointed out that there are risks that are very real to business who have moved to cloud. This particular outage also showed that many cloud customers failed to have proper disaster recovery plans in place, mostly because they were led to believe (or just did believe) that cloud computing was exceptionally robust and that they should not and would not have significant failures.
Another lesson learned is about terms of service and up time guarantees. The fact is, despite the large outage, Amazon did not break its service level agreement! It is critical to really understand what the SLA is and what it is actually promising you, and what your responsibilities are under the agreement. In many cases, the SLA covers specific requirements, such as the ability to connect to the platform 99.9% of the time, but does not cover the actual functionality of the solution itself. That was basically the issue with Amazon, so though folks could not run their business applications, Amazon was not in breach of their SLA’s. I bet a lot of folks were angry about that, but at the same time, we HAVE to understand what these SLA’s are and they are not. After all, it is your business at stake here!
On the whole, I still think cloud computing is coming our way, and is something that should be part of all strategic IT discussions. BUT… more importantly I firmly believe that CONTROL is an important part of IT and that it is critical to understand that YOU the owner of a business are going to pay the price for large failures of infrastructure, not a cloud provider, so you must ensure that you have the ability to control your environment and ensure that you can control the process of recovering your environment should something go wrong. If you are deploying in the cloud, make sure you have images of those servers you can spin up virtually locally. Always have redundancy in your plans. Amazon is one of the most credible companies in the world for this type of service, and yet, even they can experience crippling downtime.
At the end of the day, PLAN carefully any cloud deployment and ensure that you have answers to the following questions:
1. If my cloud provider goes down, can I continue to run my business?
2. How long will it take me to recover my data and applications in the worst case scenario?
3. What is the provider’s actual service level agreement and what recourse do I have if any if they break it?
Many have gone with cloud computing to save money. I wonder if a number of companies, after a day of downtime, are still feeling like they have saved money? I wonder if any businesses were irreparably harmed? I wonder how many may rethink their cloud strategy at this point?
Go slow. Plan carefully. Be prepared.
That way you can make sure you continue to experience
Happy Computing!
Richard Brunke
In: Uncategorized
What exactly is Happy Computing?
I was recently asked about my blog tagline ‘happy computing’ by a friend who wondered what it meant.
After a moment of that cow looking at a new gate look, I answered, ‘which word don’t you understand?’
You see, most people are not used to associating the word happy with the word computing. It is sort of like carefree and driving. While in theory they sound good together, they just don’t seem to be allowed to coexist. Happy computing is about the ability of a user to actually take for granted the productivity enhancements that computing offers without having to worry about how it all works, why it all works, and what to do if something is not doing what you expect it to.
At the end of the day, we just want things to work, and want easy solutions if for some reason they don’t seem to work the way we want. We don’t want to feel insulted or stupid when we ask for help, and we don’t want to be expected to ‘get’ all this stuff. The average user experiences computing through a keyboard, mouse, and screen. All the actual things going on are a mystery, and best left that way for most of us.
If I can sit back and experience the advantages of technology, and not worry about the headaches (OK, I get it, things go wrong and sometimes for no apparent reason with technology systems), then I am experiencing happy computing. It is not about everything being perfect, it is about knowing that everything is going to be OK and that I, and my employees, are going to have the best possible experience when working with out mission critical computing. That summarizes happy computing for me.
I find that focusing on these higher level goals, rather than low level symptomatic ones is very empowering for my business, and our customers. After all, do you really get excited about long lists of capabilities and technical performance promises that really may not align with what you really want? Do you even believe them, or know how to hold someone accountable to them? We all know what happy is, and I know that when I look at feedback from my customers, I can measure if I am delivering happy computing.
After all, don’t we all simply want to feel supported by our services providers, so we can be productive? Both receiving and giving that level of service certainly makes me happy!
As a matter of fact, the simple idea of helping to provide users with the experience of happy computing is THE central theme of how we are building our business. I can think of no better compliment than hearing ‘I am happy with my support from ISOutsource’.
Happy Computing!
Richard Brunke
In: ISOutsource News, Other
Remember Y2K? Well, Brace Yourself for IPv6!
Every now and again, certain milestones are reached in the world of technology that mean change, and they are usually brought about by the simple fact no one ever expected the whole world of technology to get so darned ‘big’ (well, ok, with Y2K apparently they did not expect computers to have to operate 10-15 years into the future… and that still mystifies me today).
Back on topic though.
Unbeknownst to all but the most devoted closet techies, the last block of IPv4 addresses are being sold off as we speak. What is an IPv4 and why do you care? Well, that is an IP address. Every smart phone, router or other Internet device must have its own IP address to function (its that number you see that looks like 192.168.123.190). When the schema was dreamed up, the 32 bit standard with 4.3 billion or so available numbers seemed like, well, a lot. A whole lot. Turns out, it was not enough, and now we are going to run out.
But, there is always a fix! Say hello to IPv6, which uses 128 bit numbers. How many is that? To be honest, my calulator shows an E when I try to come up with it. Suffice it to say that it is enough that every person on the planet could have trillions of devices needing their own IP address and we would still have lots of room to grow. Based on my one router, 3 cell phones and 2 iPads, I’m going to be just fine… even if I add a few things. It makes the current 4.3 billion look like a really teeny tiny number.
But, there is a hassle of sorts for us all to be aware of, and one that the media may play up (if it is not deemed to techie to be scary). Sometime in the next few years, all the remaining IPv4 numbers will be assigned and we will have to transition to the new system. Kinda like Y2K.
But, this should not be too painful. For most of us it means a new router shipped from our Internet provider. For SMB IT it will possibly mean replacing some older routers or other equipment, or perhaps just firmware updates and some elbow grease. Software won’t have to be re-writting in mass scale as Windows has been ready for IPv6 since XP SP1. For most of my readers (yes, both of you), I anticipate this won’t be a massive issue, but it is not a bad idea to be thinking about IPv6 when purchasing new equipment or upgrading, just to be sure that all investments are appropriate in light of upcoming changes. A few simple questions of your IT support and you can rest assured that you will not be making any short sighted decisions today!
Well, if you remember Y2K, you may remember that despite all concerns, planes did not fall out of the sky, and the world did not come to an end. IPv6, much like Y2K will be more of a media event than a real event for most of us. We have not yet found the proverbial ‘end of the internet’. Take a deep breath and relax knowing you will be just fine with your dozen mobile devices and home computers. IPv6 is here to help us avert disaster.
If you want to learn more, just google it. There are mountains of technical articles out there!
Without IP addresses, we would not be able to continue practicing
Happy Computing!
Richard Brunke
In: Uncategorized
Windows 7 Security Tips
There are a lot of good reasons to upgrade to Windows 7, but today I am just here to talk about security! I recently had to completely re-load my son’s computer at home due to a particularly pernicious virus. After doing the clean up and the reloading of everything, I realized that there were a few things I could have and should have done to help protect that computer. The fact that ‘nothing valuable’ was on it did not make it less costly and time consuming to fix! Please note, these are really tips for you home users… if you are on a corporate network, some of these settings may be an issue, and you should just call IT (after all, IT guys gotta make a living too).
Clearly, you need to have anti-virus software. Everyone should be nodding their heads at this point in agreement, glad in their knowledge that they have already taken this critical step. Unless of course you are not nodding your head. Then I’d advise hopping on Amazon.com or running the the nearest store and buying a good security suite, or heck, there are good free ones (Avast, Microsoft Security Essentials, AVG Free) that you can download.
But of course I know we already all had that step down. What I wanted to talk about was configuring Windows 7 to really help keep the world of computing a happier, safer place.
First – Turn on Automatic Updates!
Make sure Windows Update is turned on. To do this, just type the word ‘update’ in the search box when you click on the Start Button and (without hitting enter) click on Windows Update, which will be listed above. In the left pane click on Change Settings then under Important Updates you can choose to install new updates automatically. You can also select the day and time that will least inconvenience you. Under Recommended Updates chose “Give me Recommended updates the same way I receive important updates” by checking the box next to it and then click OK. Easy Peasy.
Second (and building on our newfound confidence in complex windows configuration as shown in our achievement of the above step) – Turn on Windows Firewall!
Now this is starting to sound important, right? Well, this one is simple! Click Start and select Control Panel. Click on Systems and Security. Take a break. Let your fingers rest. No reason to get carpal tunnel here. Ok. Now click on Windows Firewall and to the left you will see Turn Windows Firewall on or off. Click on it and then select the button for Turn on Windows Firewall for each type of network. Just turn them all on. Again, bask a moment in the glory of the control you are taking here! If you have never configured anything other than iTunes, this is pretty cool stuff!
Third – Windows Defender
Windows Defender is the built in anti spyware software in Windows 7. Let’s make sure it is on and working for you! Click on the Start button and type in “Defender” and hit enter. If you get a dialog box that says This program is turned off, AND you don’t have any purchased anti spyware running (remember above when we bought that fancy security suite?) Check the box and see if it is doing this! If not, then click on the words “click here to turn it on” at the bottom of the dialog box. Done.
Fourth – Getting to Know the User Account Control
This User Account Control is the doorman at the IT party. It keeps out the undesirables and ensures that your computing fun is only enhanced by all the things that may want to come in. Click on Start button and click on control panel. Type UAC in the search box and click on the Change User Account Control Settings link. Now we get to tell the doorman how selective we want him to be! Power… so much power. Ok, let’s focus, we are almost done here. The settings here are from lowest protection (Never Notify) to highest (Always Notify) I strongly recommend using one of the top two settings. This may slow you down on occasion when using the internet, but it will give you a chance to recognize and respond to strange files downloading and executing themselves. Now, unless you give them permission (which my son still did) they can’t install or take any action. Go for the big beefy hard to please doorman at the top of the list. You’ll thank me later.
Final Step – The Action Center
This is it. We have reached the Star Chamber and have shown we desire mastery and enjoy the control of our own computing destiny. The Action Center is the home base of PC security. This is where we validate we have done everything correctly. Click on Start button, Control Panel, System and Security and Action Center. Sit back and look at the status and revel in the protection you have created for your home Windows 7 computer! If anything is missing, you have the steps above to fix it!
Happy (home) computing!
Richard Brunke
In: Security, Uncategorized
ISOutsource announces new telecom audit offering!
ISOutsource is excited to announce our new telecom audit offering. We have established a partnership with Trinity Network Solutions to offer all of our clients free telecom audits. The goal of the audit will be to determine if you can receive better pricing, or better service levels for the same pricing on all of your telecom needs. Whether you have contracts ready to expire or not, we have found that there may be significantly reduced costs available to you or significantly better service for the same costs, and of the customers we have already done telephony audits we have seen many receive significant savings (as much as 30% in some cases).
Again, this is a free offer as a value add to our customers.
You’re primary consultant will be scheduling a meeting to do the audit over the next 6 months. This audit will give us the information we need to manage your telecom budget and options in partnership with you on an ongoing basis, and will result in immediate and long term recommendations specific to your circumstances. You will receive options for all major vendors, including the vendor you are currently using.
If you would like an audit sooner, then please contact sales@isoutsource.com and we will get you scheduled as soon as possible.
We have been working with Trinity for a number of years and have had 100% positive experiences when we have brought them into meet our customers. Based on this, and based on the savings and service they have helped us deliver, we decided to formalize our relationship and ensure that, as part of our managing your IT infrastructure, we offer this as an ongoing service to all or our customers.
Again, if you would like to meet someone right away, or have any questions about an audit, or the service, contact sales@isoutsource.com and we get you taken care of.
If you are not a customer of ISOutsource, we can make this service available to you also. Just send an email to the sales email address and let us know that you are not a customer but would like a telecom audit. Happy to do it!
Happy Computing!
Richard Brunke
In: ISOutsource News
In an IT divorce, who gets the passwords?
It is certainly common that when ISOutsource steps into a new account, someone has been there before. One recurring theme we run into (fortunately not all the time!) is the issue of how information will be recovered from the outbound service provider.
We often hear quotes like ‘I don’t know if they have any documents, but I’ve never seen them’ or ‘We have tried to get our password list from them, but are not having much luck’. These issues are a great cause of frustration and concern for companies that outsource, as they worry about what happens if they ever decide to part ways.
Those concerns can be well grounded. It is tough enough worrying if a problematic outgoing vendor will exit gracefully (and how will you really know?) without wondering if you will get back your passwords.
The answer is simple, talk about these things up front. Think of it as an IT prenuptial. If documentation is created on your dime, you have the rights to that documentation! When an IT vendor leaves, you have the rights to all of your information that they collected as part of doing the job, such as passwords. When an IT vendor departs, or even while they are still helping you out, you should have access to core documents and passwords. You paid, you are the customer, you should be able to see these things and keep copies if you wish. Ask about that with your current vendor! Make sure you are comfortable with the answer. Always remember that you are the customer, you have the right to feel secure in the fact that you own the value of deliverables you pay for!
If your IT provider can’t or won’t comply, then perhaps it is time to talk to a new IT provider!
2011 – Four Early Trends to Think On
Been a while since I’ve been able to post (you all know how busy the holiday season gets…), but time to kick off the new year with a few predictions.
There will clearly be many things happening in the world of IT during the year, but I think few trends bear watching.
1. You are likely to want to add bandwidth this year (and may or may not really need it). With cloud computing initiatives, online backups, online virtualizationstrategies, as well as a continued desire to have super fast connectivity and the ongoing move to VoIP phones, the odds are good you will be looking to add bandwidth. Fiber costs have come way down, and in many cases you can have a massive pipe for about the same cost as you may be paying for a couple of T1 lines.
2. Droids will take over! Well, droid phones, along with iPhones and others are taking over. Prepare to have far more employees ask that you support their personal devices. I’ve blogged on this before, and it is a great trend, actually. These smart phones are the next big thing, and getting ahead of the curve of supporting them is going to help your IT department keep your employees happy and productive.
3. Cloud computing will continue to be the big buzzword that no one really understands in full. Companies will throw the word ‘cloud’ into their branding with the same wild abandon we all saw a .com thrown on every company in 1998. The cloud is coming… slowly, and perhaps not the way we think. 2011 is not yet the breakout year, perhaps, but the buzz will only continue to grow!
4. Windows 7 has ascended, and upgrades will drive a lot of IT spend. Over half of all computes in business are still on XP or Vista (gasp!). The time to change is here, and I’d advise you start planning early and thoroughly to ensure your users have an excellent experience in your upgrade process.
While I am sure that this is not an all inclusive list, I am confident that these 4 items will be a big part of your upcoming year in IT.
Happy Computing!
Richard Brunke
The Fixed Price Services Conundrum
In my role as COO, I manage our sales team. We reach out to literally hundreds of prospects each week, and one question we are asked a lot (because it is a common practice in the IT services market) is whether we will do ‘fixed price services’.
Such a simple question, such a complex answer.
It seems on the surface to be a universally good thing- you fix a price with a vendor for a service so that you can control your expenses, and they can build recurring and predictable revenues to plan their staff around. And in many cases, it can work. Fixed pricing works best when the work is well understood, repeatable, and lacking significant outside variables. An example would be a cleaning service. In general, a cleaning service can use historical data based on the size of the space, the usage, and the number of people using it and determine with great accuracy how long they need to clean it. It is unlikely that at random, an entire football team is going to show up after a game in the mud and roll about on the carpets, it is unlikely that a food fight will break out in the kitchen. The variables are very small. If the vendor is super efficient, they finish a little early, and no one is the wiser, but they are a bit more profitable. All is good from both parties standpoint.
This means that the estimated hours they spend are going to just about equal the hours you expected them to spend. They put in what they expect to put in, you get back what you expect to get back, and everyone is happy. The key here is that the deliverable is also visible. You KNOW if your building is clean or if the work is substandard.
The problem with IT is that there are many variables. As much as we all wish it were not so, it is impossible to completely nail down risks around things like power spikes or outages, Internet slow downs and outages, random equipment failures, viruses, user issues, etc. These are all risk elements that can moderated, but not fully controlled. So, when a vendor fixes your price, how are they doing it?
Well, there are a few common approaches.
- Pad the price based on some formula to account for these types of issue
- Create extensive lists of ‘exclusions’ and put them in the small print
- Use a combination of the above two (the most common)
Their is no Santa Clause in business. No one is fixing your price as a favor, but they are doing so because they believe they can most efficiently and profitably run their business this way. On average, some clients will overutilize their services, and some will underutilize, and the goal for the business is to achieve a state where they are making more money on these contracts in total than they would if they were time and materials. You serve more clients with less labor. That is the ‘insider secret’ of fixed price contracts. Well run fixed price shops can be EXTREMELY profitable.
And how does this work? Well, unlike your cleaning service, the deliverable is not easy to see. If nothing happens for a month in your IT infrastructure, and no labor is applied to you as a customer, you simply get the bill and are glad ‘things kept working’. It is all a black box. The vendor will use automated tools to do as much of the heavy lifting as possible, and apply least cost resourcing to minimize costs. It is not about providing bad service, to be fair, but about providing the least cost service over the long term to ensure that the fixed revenue model provides maximum profits, often to offset those others that are unprofitable (every fixed price portfolio has its huge overage accounts, and someone has to pay that bill).
This creates a ‘push/pull’ environment. The client is trying to pull as much resourcing as possible to ensure they get value. The vendor is trying to push the lowest cost resource and push automation and labor reduction. There is an inherent conflict that begins on the day the contract begins. The parties have different interests, and the vendor best protects their interests by keeping the situation a ‘black box’ and not creating visibility into actual expenditures on the account. In fact, its worse than it appears: The more you pull, the more likely the vendor will have to push lower cost resources on you to keep the profits in balance. In other words, the higher your needs compared to expected needs, the more likely you get less expensive and skilled resources to manage those needs and issues, often creating a downward spiral of dissatisfaction.
And then there is the whole flexibility thing. When you sign up for a fix price, and over the course of the contract (often 2 years) get more than you expected, you feel like you have won. Perhaps the exclusions did not capture some part of your growth and you did indeed get more than you bargained for. It seems like the optimal case. Well, it is, but most contracts have small print for upward price adjustments based on adding employees or changing your infrastructure. They exclude disasters and projects. It’s a tough game to win. Inversely, however, it is not a hard game to lose. With the recent economic downturn, an unexpected thing happened to many prospects we have spoken to – their business downsized. Many have stated that the contract for X dollars per month was great at 50 employees, but is not so great at 20 and the associated revenues of that level, and the contract did not allow for a cost float down!
Perhaps your business is cyclical, or seasonal? Fixing a support cost on a variable business model is not a good practice!
Well, here is what my point is really all about. As an IT provider, I can fix a price. If prospects insist, we will do it. We use the same model as bullet pointed above. However, despite this, 95% of my business is regular time and materials. Contrary to popular opinion, that does not indicate open season for billing! We work within budget requirements and partner with our clients. We are a non contractual vendor, so the ONLY reason we have our customers come back month in and month out is based on the quality of our deliverables and the integrity of our consultants and our business. Time and materials is not about spending more but about spending CONTROL!
It is also about visibility and accountability. You should know what you are spending your hard earned money on. You should have full visibility into those costs and the ability to manage those in a pro-active manner. When your IT vendor plans with you and develops your infrastructure plan, you should expect that your costs become more managable and your infrastructure becomes more stable and less costly. Therefore costs are driven down on average, and when you have a low usage month, you get a low bill. You should expect an invoice with full details of activities and reserve the right to understand and question those activities. THAT is what openness and integrity is about.
The reality is that no one can promise you a true long term fixed price for IT services. The exclusions alone will put that myth to bed. Or, if they try, then you are paying an escalated rate every month to cover the expected difference when something happens, and perhaps paying too much overall. I believe in simplicity and openness. I believe that there are aspects of pricing that bear fixing (like remote desktop support, or server monitoring) and there are other aspects that are best served under a time and materials model. I believe that a budget should be agreed upon and worked to by both parties in coordination. WE SHARE the goal of getting to that budget. I also believe (because my client base has shown this) that most small business is susceptible to a certain amount of variability, be it seasonal, or due to economic cycles, and your service vendors should be easily able to adjust to those changes with you and keep your spending in alignment with your business size and needs.
Finally, I believe that the services industry has done a great job of marketing the ‘fixed price’ model and done a great job of making this interchangeable with ‘managed services’, and that the primary reason behind this is that this model benefits the business! It is very profitable. If you can service more customers with less labor, that is a win for the business.
This is a topic that is very near and dear to my belief system, and one that I believe really requires that you do your research. Ask yourself ‘what is in this for me, and what is in this for them’. If something seems to good to be true, question why, and look for the small print. I believe if you ask the hard questions, and do your homework, you may indeed find that there is much more to the question of ‘to fix price or not’ than most vendors want you to see.
Make your selections with your eyes wide open!
And you will continue to have
Happy Computing!
Richard Brunke
In: Uncategorized
IT’s Biggest Money Wasters
When thinking about IT budgets, it is important not only to look at new requirements, but also to look inside of current expenditures and make sure that every dollar is being used to its best purpose.
Last week I saw a great article on the biggest sources of waste associated with IT and technology, and thought it worth summarizing.
The 6th worst money sink in IT is failed projects. While this covers a lot of ground as a subject, the simple matter is that IT organizations have reported average project failure rates between 30 and 70 percent. Even at the low of 30 percent, this is an amazing number, considering IT projects often represent a quarter or more of an IT budget in some years. Clearly, project management and planning are critical here.
The 5th worst money sink in IT is, somewhat surprisingly, excess bandwidth. We all love massive bandwidth, and it is often the cure allfor network speed issues. The point in the article is that there is a declining curve of value at some point where we are simply way overestimating our real ongoing bandwidth needs. Think of it like having a 2,000 minute plan on your cell phone when your average use is 500 minutes. The rest is just waste and profits for the data line provider. We all WANT to believe we need it, and feel good having it (more IS better right???) but at the endof the day, many companies are buying bandwidth for an imagined peak usage that may exceed reality by several orders of magnitude.
And on to number 4 – uncontrolled email usage. Yep, email. There are two aspects of this mission critical piece of all of our lives that costs companies so much money. First, it is a productivity draw down. Clawing through hundreds of emails to find the critical hand full is a daily part of our lives, and it is expensive. Spam filters, etc, play an important role, as well does having smart inbox management policies and rules in place. The hidden costs, however, lie in storage costs, licensing, costs, and the ongoing battle against viruses, malware, anddata protection. Make sure you understand the costs of storing and backing up those unlimited email inboxes and decide if perhaps some limitations and rules are in order. Not only does storage cost money, but backups cost money, often by the gigabyte of storage, and the larger the backup, the slower the recovery, and unlimited email storage in a large company can really hamper disaster recovery times. There are about 250,000,000,000 (250 BILLION) emails sent a day. Think about storing and backing all of that up!
Moving on the the IT money wasting winners circle!
In 3rd place we have high level product and software service agreements. Although many of us shy away from those expensive in home warranties for our appliances, knowing they are huge profit makers for the manufacturer, we gladly sign up for 24/7, 99.999% uptime, 10 minute phone response, and 4 hour onsite repair guaranties. In general, the bigger the promise, the higher the cost, and in most cases, we really don’t need the excessive service level. Take a look at your service plans and warranties and align them with your actual business needs. IT systems are business tools, so reduce the fear factor and think of them as business tools and pay for service levels associated with the criticality of those tools to your ability to transact business.
In 2nd place we find an old favorite – The Paper Chase.
OK, the paperless office has not happened. We love print outs. But, can’t we at least try for the LESS PAPER office? The average employee consumes 10,000 pages per person per year. In terms of the paper and ink costs, that is about $80 per person. While not a lot individually, it adds up across a company. What is really frustrating on this one is that it is estimated that over 50% of those 10,000 print outs end up in the garbage the very same day they are printed! Money thrown away every day. Make a policy, educate your employees and in general, try to make sure that things like emails and simple reports are viewed digitally, not in printed copy.
And the added benefit here is that reducing print outs is one of the simplest and effective ‘green’ efforts you can undertake!
Well, I know you have read this far primarily because you are dying to see #1. I did this whole thing in reverse order just to ensure you would read this far!
The #1 money waster in IT is unused and overbought software licensing! Studies show that the average enterprise has between 25 and 75% of enterprise software licensing is unused or underused. ERP systems are an even bigger problem, as they are very expensive, and studies show that 50% of installed ERP modules are not used.
Do an audit, look at all of your applications and make sure you are only paying licensing for the correct number of employees. Evaluate all components of your line of business applications, and make sure you are not paying for unused modules. All of these costs add up, and they add up large amounts. An example (a rather large one just to make the point) is Proctor & Gamble who assessed their Oracle and SAP systems to trim unused modules and save $30,000,000 annually.
At the end of the day, IT can be a significant part of your budget, but spending IT dollars on things that add no value is simply not acceptable. Talk to your IT department or provider andwork through these issues, then ask them what other areas of IT spend you can look at to create savings and more efficient use of your budget dollar.
Happy (and less expensive) computing!
Richard Brunke
In: Business, Tech Education
We Need iPads!
A quick post here, not so much about iPads, but more about the emerging trend of employee consumerism in IT. Like it or not, IT is not just about ROI anymore, and IT departments can no longer hold the lid down on all of the incoming technologies and always pick a ‘best fit’.
IT will have to be more flexible and more attuned to the reality that technology is about productivity AND employee satisfaction.
Good article to take a look at.
Happy Computing!
Richard Brunke
In: Business, Tech Education
