Business

Apr 08

A Successful Home Office

By admin Business, Cybersecurity, Food for thought

Boy, the world has changed in the last month, and everyone from governments to households are still trying to figure things out. With all of the stresses these changes have brought, let’s reduce some of the stress of having a productive Work From Home (WFH) environment.

As newly remote workers ourselves, we empathize with your struggles in adjusting to working from home and all the other changes, and have found these WFH tips, both technical and otherwise, useful.

Maintain a regular schedule, just as you would normally. This helps reduce the strangeness of the situation and reduces rogue tendencies to lose productivity.
Still getting dressed helps maintain a professional frame of mind.
Consider what things help you concentrate better and what distracts you, and create your work environment accordingly to the best of your ability. (noise level, visual distractions, tv/radio/quiet, computer accessories, seating, work surface, etc.)
When teleconferencing, everyone understands you have the kids at home, and things may be a bit noisier than normal. Good etiquette says to use the mute button when not talking (and remembering to UNMUTE when you are talking—I’m really bad at this part!)
Communication with each other is key—work out a system or have a sign indicating when you need to focus uninterrupted or need the internet bandwidth. Plan ahead to have quiet, attention-absorbing activities for the kids to pull out for these times. What those are will depend on your kids. Pinterest may have some good ideas.
Expect slower internet speeds and increased interruptions to service. Residential networks are being heavily strained by more people being home more, both working and streaming, and they aren’t designed for the heavy business use they are having. Unfortunately, there is nothing your IT department can do about this. A call to your home internet provider is your best resource.
1. Make sure the other denizens of your domicile aren’t gaming online or streaming Tiger King when you need that good video conference connection!
2. If you are paying for a 50 Mbps plan, for example, and getting a lot slower, your service provider may be slowing things down to keep the internet traffic moving. They do not guarantee a minimum speed, because you are sharing the network pipeline with your neighbors.
3. If you find your subscription is not cutting it, talk with your HR department whether they will subsidize a service upgrade.
Wifi connections by their nature are not as fast or reliable as hardwire connections. Also, if you are in a crowded residential space (ie apartment), your neighbors’ WiFi can create interference with your networks. If you are having network difficulty while using WiFi, the first thing to do is to get an ethernet cable, and plug your computer directly into your home modem or router. Most have at least 4 ports in the back. It does not matter which port you use. You can pick up cables of various lengths from big box stores like WalMart, HomeDepot, Lowe’s, and most computer shops. We recommend supporting your local businesses where possible. Be sure to measure ahead of time the length of the path the cord will travel (along and/or up and down walls, around corners, etc.)
If you are connected to a company VPN (Virtual Private Network), note that ALL of your internet traffic your computer is using goes through the VPN. Your office network is not designed to have lots of people using VPN to stream videos or similar heavy usage. It may struggle to have everyone on VPN at once, so if you need to video conference or have Spotify going in the background, please use a different device for those activities, or get off VPN.
Remote Desktop (RDP) does not have quite the same restrictions, and are best used when handling certain Data-intensive applications like QuickBooks, Sage, AutoCAD and so on.
Most company IT departments do not have the resources, or corporate permission, to troubleshoot most home network problems. Home networks are often unique in how they are set up, and so are difficult to troubleshoot. Your internet provider or home computer repair service is the best first contact for issues beyond having the correct settings on your computer for remote access.
Most companies have policies that VPN connections are only set up on company owned devices, and not personal ones. If you are using a personal computer for remote work, an RDP is a little more secure. As always, consult with your company about what method of access they recommend for you.
FOLLOW your employer’s IT policies!!!! The cyberbuddies have really ramped up their game to take advantage of all of the changes, uncertainties and modifications to corporate networks.
Be vigilant against phishing attempts, and if being asked over email (or even chat) to do anything slightly out of the ordinary (by bosses, colleagues, vendors, or clients), especially changes to financial arrangements, contact the other party by phone—but don’t use the phone number in the email—you may end up calling the scammer, who of course will assure you it is legit. Find the number from Google or your own or your company’s address book.
Hover your mouse cursor over email addresses or links of suspicious emails. Doing so will cause a small popup to appear that will tell you what the actual address is that the link/email will go to. Verify that it goes where you expect.
Give yourself grace. Take mental health breaks. Lower your expectations of your productivity and stamina. Get some fresh air and exercise. Take 10-15 minutes every couple of hours to give your kids/pets/significant other some attention. They will typically give you more peace when they know you’ll be available regularly.

We are walking with you through this time and are striving to help you get up and running to WFH. We hope you and your loved ones remain healthy through this situation. Don’t panic, remain cautious and alert.

Oct 11

Love0

Understanding Managed Services and How They Benefit SMBs

By admin Business, Customer Service, Cybersecurity

7 Must Haves for Your Small Business Website

Understanding Managed Services and How They Benefit SMBs

Small to medium sized businesses (SMBs) receive a lot of calls each day from slick sales people peddling the next technology trend that’s going to save them money and revolutionize how they do business. They’re all too quick to caution that if you don’t listen to them, you’ll fall behind the times, and eventually be swimming in a sea of debt and out of business.

No doubt you’ve heard, or you’ve at least read about, the benefits of managed services. Managed services refer to clearly defined outsourced IT services delivered to you at predictable costs. You know the exact IT services you’ll be getting and what you’ll pay for them. There is no surprise sky-high bill for services rendered. So are solicitation calls that pertain to managed services worth listening to? We think so. Then again, we’re in the managed services industry. There may be a bit of a bias here.

How Managed Service Providers Work

Managed service providers (MSPs) use remote monitoring and management (RMM) tools to keep an eye on their performance and overall health of the IT infrastructure that powers your business operations.

Your MSP should have a 24/7 Network Operations Center (NOC) that acts as your mission control center. If the monitoring alerts them to any issue with your servers, devices, hardware or software, they respond quickly to resolve the issue.

Additionally, the NOC performs regular systems maintenance such as

Automated tasks like the cleaning of temporary files
Applying tested security patches as required
Installing virus and Malware protection
System backup and disaster recover/business continuity processes

Additionally, your MSP should give you access to a Help Desk that services your customers and employees – speaking to and working with them directly as if they’re part of your staff.

This proactive maintenance, stabilization of your IT environment, and rapid as-needed remediation helps SMBs control technology costs and better serve the end-users who rely on their technology.

Is Managed Services Better than Other Ways to Manage IT

We find that far too many companies have no real perspective about how much IT management costs them. Let’s review some of the alternatives to managed services.

Hiring In-House IT Support

Typically, a firm with anywhere from 20-60 employees may feel that one person can manage their technology. Understand that this one full-time employee can demand a significant salary since they’ll have to be proficient with desktop, server and network support, and interact with both end-users in the Help Desk role and management. They will likely be overworked and vulnerable to error or oversights that may prove to be costly. And what happens if they’re out sick or on vacation?

The Break/Fix Mentality

The majority of smaller companies take this route because they feel as if they’re too small for a more sophisticated 24/7 approach to IT management. They also feel pressure to direct all resources on the product or service, not behind-the-scenes operations. They decide to use on-call IT techs when broken technology has already disrupted business. The on-call team’s response time and overall lack of familiarity with your systems extends downtime and proves to be a much more expensive resolution to IT management. It’s reactive, not proactive, and it’s a costly mistake too often made.

This is why many SMBs today feel that managed services are the most cost-effective way to support their IT infrastructure and the best way to get more bang for their buck.

Contact us at ALCON DTS

Sep 27

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Breaking News: Downtime Kills Small Businesses

By admin Business

Breaking News: Downtime Kills Small Businesses

Downtime is bad news for any business whether big or small.

A recent two-hour New York Times’ downtime occurrence sent Twitter ablaze and their stock price plummeting.

Google going down for one to five hours resulted in lost revenue up to $500,000 and decreased overall web traffic by 40%.

We know what you’re thinking. Holy crap, Google makes $100,000 an hour? Yeah… insane, huh?

While the hourly cost of downtime for a small-to-medium sized business won’t be nearly as large as that astronomical Google figure, downtime is often more detrimental to smaller companies. Smaller enterprises are more susceptible to downtime and are neither large nor profitable enough to sustain its short and long-term effects.

Downtime Leads to Unhappy/Unproductive Employees

Even the happiest of employees become dissatisfied when they can’t perform basic day-to-day job functions or properly service customers or clients.

While some employees may use downtime as an excuse to lean back, put their feet up, and comfortably collect their hourly pay, we’re talking about those employees who come to work to actually work.

And don’t forget your IT guy or tech crew. They can’t necessarily sit back and twiddle their thumbs when downtime occurs because they’re typically taking the brunt of the storm. They will ultimately grow tired of the daily routine of having to put out fires and having neither the additional manpower nor resources to change things for the better.

These things lead to high employee turnover and the expenses that come with training and re-training a revolving door of employees.

Downtime Leads to Customer Dissatisfaction

Customers and clients grow weary whenever critical components of your operations – or the services they either expect or pay for – cannot be accessed.

Nearly 50% of customers will move on to a competitor if they encounter downtime of five minutes or more. These customers represent significant lost revenue.

While some suggest this is a bigger problem in the retail sector, other types of businesses are impacted as well. Have you ever clicked a link from search engine results only to quickly bolt when the page didn’t load, you couldn’t complete an online transaction, or you were greeted with a “Technical Difficulties – Be Back Up Soon!” message?

Did you give up on finding what you were looking for or did you wait it out? You did neither. You went back to Google and found someone else offering a similar service or product that satisfied your yearning for instant gratification.

Downtime Ruins Your Reputation

One of the most commonly overlooked consequences of downtime is the hit your company’s reputation takes online. In this age of social media, one person’s bad experience is broadcast to dozens or even hundreds of followers. Bad news spreads faster than ever and has lasting repercussions.

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” — Warren Buffet.

Protect Your Bottom Line

The challenge for small businesses has always been how to minimize single-point-of-failure downtime using their limited IT resources. This is why downtime kills so many small businesses. They can’t prevent it and they can’t react quickly enough.

Thankfully, there are end-to-end business continuity solutions available today that integrate Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) software, 24/7 access to a Network Operations Center (NOC), and advanced backup and disaster recovery solutions to alleviate this issue.

Not only do these methods minimize downtime and get businesses back up and running quickly, but they can reduce the cost of technology infrastructure maintenance by as much as 80 percent.

It’s time that small businesses stop being victims to the silent killer that is downtime.

Contact us at ALCON DTS

Sep 20

Love0

Is That A Business Continuity Plan in Your Pocket…Or A Bunch of Jargon?

By admin Business

5 Tips for SMBs to Improve Search Engine Rankings…

Is That a Business Continuity Plan in Your Pocket or a Bunch of Jargon?

Technology is full of difficult jargon. To further complicate things, certain terms are often used in a different context between one publication or service provider and the next. An example of this is the usage of backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity. These terms are commonly used interchangeably, often resulting in confusion. In an effort to alleviate some of this confusion, let’s describe each physical process. You will see an overlay among all three, although they are each different processes.

Backup – In IT lingo, the most basic description of backup is the act of copying data, as in files or programs, from its original location to another. The purpose of this is to ensure that the original files or programs are retrievable in the event of any accidental deletion, hardware or software failure, or any other type of tampering, corruption and theft.

It’s important to remember that the term “backup” refers to data only and doesn’t apply to the physical machines, devices, or systems themselves. If there were a system failure, disk crash, or an onsite physical disaster, all systems would still have to be replaced, rebuilt, and properly configured before the backed-up data could be loaded onto them.

Disaster Recovery – Backups are a single, albeit crucial, component of any disaster recovery plan. Disaster recovery refers to the complete recovery of your physical systems, applications, and data in the event of a physical disaster like a fire; hurricane or tornado; flood ; earthquake ; act of terror or theft.

A disaster recovery plan uses pre-determined parameters to define an acceptable recovery period. From there, the most satisfactory recovery point is chosen to get your business up and running with minimal data loss and interruption.

Business Continuity – Although backup and disaster recovery processes make sure that a business can recover its systems and data within a reasonable time, there is still the chance of downtime from a few hours to many days. The point of a business continuity plan is to give businesses continuous access to their technology and data, no matter what. Zero or minimal downtime is the goal.

Critical business data can be backed up with configurable snapshots that are instantly virtualized. This allows files, folders and data to be turned on and restored in seconds. Bare metal restores of hardware, where an image of one machine is overlaid onto a different machine, is also utilized along with cloud replication for instant off-site virtualization.

Many businesses also keep redundant systems and storage at a different physical location than their main site as part of their business continuity process. They may also outline procedures for staff to work remotely off-site. Some businesses or organizations may go as far as to have printed contact lists and other critical data stored off-site to keep their business moving if a disaster wipes out power and their ability to access anything electronically.

This should clarify the differences between backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity solutions. Choosing what works best for your business will come down to your current IT infrastructure, your budget and how much downtime you can reasonably accept.

Contact us at ALCON DTS

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Understanding Managed Services and How They Benefit SMBs

Breaking News: Downtime Kills Small Businesses

Is That A Business Continuity Plan in Your Pocket…Or A Bunch of Jargon?

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