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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
Seven Features in Windows 7 You Probably Don’t Know About
I’m not even going to try to take credit for this one! There is a great article in CIO.com called, suitably, Seven Features in Windows 7 You Probably Don’t Know About, that gives some fantastic tips on features in Windows 7 that are incredibly useful. As a user, I like the sticky notes, but as the manager of an IT business, I hope you all learn about the Problem Steps Recorder! That is a very handy feature when you have had an issue and are struggling to explain it to your support person!
Take a look and learn a few more reasons to jump on the Windows 7 bandwagon!
Happy Computing!
Richard
In: Uncategorized
My Blackberry has been Bing’ed!
If you are a Verizon Blackberry user, you may have noticed that suddenly, and without warning, your default search options were changed to Bing earlier this week. When you search via your BlackBerry ‘Start’ or ‘Go to’ page is now Bing.
First of all, don’t panic. You have not been the target of malware, or a prank, or any other bit of random reprogramming. All is as Verizon intends it to be.
Clearly, Microsoft and Verizon made a deal of some sort, and clearly not everyone loved the idea. I’ve certainly heard some feedback in the last week about the change, most of it simply related to having the choice taken away. Take note, you can still enter ‘Google’ or any other search engine you want to, but it is an additional step. In the grand scheme of things, while having choices reduced generally does not make anyone happy, this is most likely not the worst thing that will ever happen in the world of technology.
This type of behind the scenes marketing deal makes sense from a dollars and cents standpoint, I am sure. It just feels a bit intrusive. That being said, it is hard to believe that this will reduce the functionality of anyone’s Blackberry in any way, after all, although we all love having more choices, either Google, Bing, or one of several other search engines will serve perfectly well to deliver up the information we are looking for.
I think it is safe to say, that in a world where consumers are subject to marketing in everything from the internet, television, and even their movies, it is not a surprise to see marketing enter into the ubiquitous world of smart phones. As these types of partnerships and marketing programs mature, it seems likely that we will see a lot more sponsored links, preferred vendors, and pre-loaded applications on our smart phones.
In: Tech Education, Technology
From the ‘Technologies to Think About’ File…
With the proliferation of data from multiple sources, hard drives are filling up faster than ever. Frankly, even with reduced costs of storage, content is being created at unprecedented rates, and the cost to store and back up this mountain of data is becoming a real concern to business managers. Stack on this the increasing need to find green IT initiatives, and you have real issues – but at least these issues have real solutions available!
The answer, which is rarely spoken of in small business, but commonly utilized in larger companies, is data deduplication. Data deduplication is, at the simplest level, a process undertaken by software or a hardware device to find duplicate data and replace that data with a marker pointing to the original data. Think about a file or segment of a file that is saved in 30 employees personal file folders. The deduplication process finds the original, then puts a pointer in each of the other locations, cutting the space to 1/30th approximately of what it was on the storage device with no change to how the user experiences their data.
The benefits are significant:
- Has been shown to reduce size of back ups by up to 90% in some environments
- Reduces required disk space thus reducing disk expansion costs
- Reduces energy costs as less hard drives are utilized, less heat produced, etc
- Restore times reduced due to less actual data in data or disaster recovery
If you are interested in data deduplication as part of a cost reduction, a ‘green’ initiative, or just as a sensible way to manage growing data stores, talk to your IT staff or IT consultant about it. There are numerous choices on the market with different costs/benefits to fit your business needs.
Personally, I think that the combination of reduced hard drive requirements coupled with the positive impact on total data being backed up alone would be a motivator to take a hard look at these solutions!
If you would like to learn a bit more, take a look at HP’s data deduplication page for some additional information -
Happy computing!
Richard Brunke
In: Tech Education, Technology
Microsoft’s The Big Easy Offer
The Big Easy Offer is back for a limited time!
Free Money from Microsoft – Now is the time to jump start your long awaited IT projects and receive money from Microsoft to put towards the implementation!
For every qualifying product you purchase, Microsoft pays you subsidy funds you can use with your IT vendor to help with the implementation of your Microsoft solution.
To find out more information, please contact your ISOutsource consultant or IT vendor. For a list of included products, please visit The Big Easy Offer website.
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.
Windows 7
Do you need a solution that helps you stay competitive, efficient and productive?
Designed to meet the needs of small and midsize businesses, the Windows® 7 Professional operating system delivers a powerful combination of innovation, improved performance, and productivity. At ISOutsource, we’re ready to help focus on what matters most, your business, by providing you with a solution that:
- Works the way you want. Fast, reliable, and compatible, Windows 7 Professional delivers a solid foundation for running a business in today’s competitive environment.
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Experience the powerful combination of innovation, improved performance, and productivity Windows 7 Professional delivers.
Contact your IT department or ISOutsource today and develop a plan to get you and your team on the most powerful operating system on the market!
Technology.dot.life
We are excited to announce the launch of our new blog!
Technology.dot.life — bringing people together, making technology work for you, dedicated to helping you grow your business!
We are dedicated to bringing you relevant technology and business news that you can use! Our mission is to provide information that can help you grow your business by keeping you informed of new or changing technology and other business news related to small and medium sized businesses in the greater Puget Sound area.
We encourage you to join in the conversations! We guarantee you will find information that will get you thinking, help grow your business, and answer your technology questions.
Subscribe today and receive new posts in real-time!
In: ISOutsource News
