The weekend always brings about a sense of calm, reflection, and a little reprieve from the day to day struggles we face in our businesses.  One of the struggles that shouldn't get swept aside during this time off though is the concept of Business Continuity (sometimes knows as Business Disaster Recovery - BDR).  It actually should be something we've planned for and acted on long before any time away. 

Despite the continued lowering of costs for IT solutions and infrastructure, small businesses can still run into significant challenges in the design and implementation of backup and business disaster recovery (BDR) strategies. Businesses are using more and more storage, and as business volume and connectivity grows, the need to retain transaction data, log data, and archive databases increases.  The continued move towards more and more virtual server solutions only increases the size and complexity of the situation.  We've been seeing a trend where existing backup and BDR solutions (ie: backup software, tape and disk drives, and imaging software) are being outpaced by storage needs, and the "always on" mentality of business is beginning to make off-site storage of tape media not only impractical in terms of restore response time, but also antiquated and unable to meet the desired service level of businesses.

Fortunately, new technologies are available making business continuity and BDR solutions significantly more cost effective.  Over the last few years increased Internet bandwidth at significantly more affordable prices as well as the proliferation of off-site remote backup storage has helped.  Other factors such as cloud computing, WAN fail-over, multisite clustering, and other "high availability" and load balancing solutions have become more cost effective that they're starting to make inroads into the SMB market.

The key in all of this though is managing the client's expectations about what business continuity and fail-over really mean and what they really cost.  Simply put - what you think you're getting vs. what you're actually getting.  This also has to be balanced between what you think you "need" vs. what your actually willing to pay for (both initially as well as ongoing to maintain and support).  We've also seen a trend lately when taking on new clients of all sorts of misinformation being pushed out there about the simplicity of BDR solutions.  While there are several different "flavors" of Business Continuity, the difficulty lies not only in effectively communicating the differences, but in having clients who are willing to take the time to understand them.  The thing is - most clients don't really want to understand the complexities of the differences.  And they shouldn't have to.  But, they do need to understand the core differences.  There's backup, then there's offsite backup, then there's server virtualization, there's onsite server fail-over / redundancy, there's off-site server fail-over / redundancy, there's site replication, there's co-located server redundancy.  All having different impacts and all requiring different investments.

So, what are you trying to accomplish?  The key thing to keep in mind AND plan for in all BDR solutions is - it's all about the restore.  Even just talking about backup goes down the slippery slope of having to understand all the restore considerations... What's being backed up?  How's the restore process managed?  Who's responsible for it?  How is the restore tested?  How often is the restore tested?  How good are the restore capabilities? What is the true interruption to business operations?  What can be restored?  How long will a restore take?  Who needs to be involved in the restore?  All good planning points that should be part of everyone's Business Continuity Plan. 

My point is, Business Continuity and Business Disaster Recovery is not simple and it's not easy.  Regardless of what anyone may tell/sell you.  But, with the right plan, the right guidance, and proper communication it can be highly effective.

I've noticed a trend lately. I'm meeting more and more with business owners who are looking to improve their IT infrastructure but aren't getting the level of expertise or service from their existing (outsourced) IT company that they feel they should be getting, so they're looking to make a change. While many of these businesses are at a similar maturity level, the consistent thing I'm noticing with many of them is that they have networks band-aided together from years of neglect, cutting corners, and (from an outsider's perspective) not taking IT "seriously". I don't know how much of this is on them solely or if there's any shared blame with their existing "IT Guy".  Often, it's just the natural progression of a network that's expanded and pieced together over time by different people through different phases of the growth of the business. But, it still begs the question - when do you start taking your IT seriously?

While they know they've outgrown their current IT company, they're still coming to grips with the thought that they need to outgrow their approach to IT. The bad news is that after all the years of neglect - both physical (ie: not spending the money as they should have) as well as spiritual (ie: viewing IT as a cost center rather than as a way to reap the benefits of improved productivity and efficiency) - have left them in a difficult situation. The difficult situation isn't the state of their technology, but rather the state of their mindset. Bottom line - because they haven't spent on IT for so long and have muddled through, most still think they shouldn't have to (spend on IT). There are some who think they've changed their view, but still think that once the network's "fixed", spending should go back down to a minimal level. The reality couldn't be further from the truth. The reality is - there is some minimum that needs to be spent to ensure the initial investment is maximized to achieve some basic benefits - extending the life of the assets, improving staff productivity, and ensuring stability.  Significant business benefits can also be achieved by looking at specific IT spending as opportunities to increase business efficiencies by improving, enhancing, or even sometimes simply utilizing, systems, processes, and work flows better thereby significantly impacting the bottom line. 

There are ways to spend to improve efficiency and effectiveness - but you have to have the mindset to do this. What would you be willing to spend to improve your staff's productivity by 10%? 20%? Or more? Or, would you at all? How much do you value your staff's time?  When was the last time you looked at their productivity and thought of ways to improve them?  Do you look for ways to increase staff productivity at all?  How often do you send them to training?  What are your performance schedules like?  How do you look at an increase in productivity?  In dollars?  Dual monitors improve the productivity of staff by at least 5%. For a staff member costing $50k/year this would amount to an increase in productivity worth $2,500. If it costs $500 to do this, this is over a 500% ROI. And for just the first year! If you can improve the productivity of a staff member by 10% by replacing their 3 year old computer, would you? Are you looking at your business this way? If not, a mindset shift needs to happen.  This ties in to the findings of a previous entry I wrote Businesses Who Value IT Outperform Those Who Don't.  I believe if you want to operate your business at Best in Class levels, at the core you have to adopt their mindsets.

I liken this mindset needing to be changed to be like going from your first bike when you're a kid to getting your first car to getting the SUV you need to trust your family's life with - but thinking you should still be spending at the same level as for your first bike. Certainly you can, but I wouldn't trust my family to this level of care. Nor would I (nor do I) run my business this way.

So, what's really your approach to your IT?

Microsoft Corp. recently released its global SMB IT and Hosted IT Index 2010, which investigates how small and midsize businesses (SMBs) across multiple segments fared during the recession and how they use technology. The research finds that businesses that value IT as an enabler for better business productivity and effectiveness and those that use hosted services performed better fiscally than those that do not.

The interesting findings include the fact that despite the global recession, more SMBs surveyed in 2010 reported an increase in revenue for 2009 than in 2008. Those who reported growth view IT as critical to their business success.  Let me repeat that...

Businesses who reported growth view IT as critical to their business success. 

While I think this is huge, I also have to clarify this.  Every business owner I've ever met THINKS they view IT as critical to their business success.  Yet, NOT every one of them actually acts this way.  From where I stand, it's actually a pretty small percentage that act this way.  There is a difference.  And it is a critical difference.

In a recent meeting with business owners and key decision makers, I threw out the question asking who thought they valued IT and if their IT was critical to their business' success.  Every one of them raised their hands.  Then I asked if they knew or planned on how much they spent on IT.  Only a handful knew what they spent or were of the mindset that they viewed their IT spending as an investment.  The remainder viewed IT as a cost center (whether they admitted it or not).  One of them (who raised his hand earlier) even commented, "I only spend when I have to AND as little as possible."  Clearly this is NOT the mindset of someone who values IT.

Clearly the study backs this up. In fact of the SMBs that view IT as critical, 60 percent saw revenues grow over the past 12 months. In contrast, among SMBs that stated IT is not important, less than 29 percent saw revenue increase. 

In addition, the 2010 index indicates SMBs are beginning to see the benefits of cloud computing; more than 40 percent of the respondents that use hosted or cloud technology reported revenue rises of 30 percent or more compared with 90 percent of respondents not using hosted technology that saw decreases in revenue. The advantages of hosted or cloud technology are viewed as reduced cost and IT management and maintenance, as well as increased business value, productivity and competitiveness.

“Our assessment of the report tells us that an increased focus on IT correlates with good performance in all of the size categories surveyed,” said Dale Vile, research director of Freeform Dynamics. “This whole picture corroborates the notion that technology and hosted services can provide tangible business advantage, even for smaller companies, and it’s not surprising to see that investment in IT and hosting goes hand in hand with good financial performance.”

One of our successes at FPA has been our ability to align ourselves with growing companies who value IT and see it as an integral part of the success of their business.  There are meaningful acts that back up this thinking - acts like IT budget planning, implementing proactive maintenance, business continuity planning, and looking for meaningful ways to leverage technology to improve business processes.  Also, the perception that ROI is measured against true costs, not just the IT dollars spent.  What I mean by this is considering the impact of hidden costs of IT when making spending decisions - ie: reduced or lost staff productivity, reduced or lost sales, delayed orders, delayed receivables (impacting cash flow), etc.  Some people get the value of this and some don't.  Luckily for them, the majority of our clients seem to get it and get IT!

February second is the exact halfway point between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox.  What does this mean in layman's terms?  Well, today is Groundhog Day.  The day where Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow and tells us whether or not we're going to have more cold or a sooner spring thaw.  Bill Murray made Groundhog Day the longest day ever in his 1993 movie of the same name.  This is the movie where he relived that day over and over and over again. 

How does this tie in to technology you might be asking yourself?  Well, these days I'm feeling like we're reliving the same thing over and over and over again with much of what's going on with technology these days.  Every day it seems to be more of the same - this is faster, that's the latest thing, this will change your life, you can't live without that.  While there are a ton of new great things that keep coming out, where are the truly life changing things at? 

Case in point - the iPad.  Do we really need another "gadget" -  one that fits somewhere in between our smartphone and our laptop?  How does this really make our life that much better?  I understand how it will make Steve Jobs or an Apple shareholder's better, but c'mon - seriously?  The latest and greatest from Apple is a device that's vying for the space that's currently filled by Amazon's Kindle and a Netbook.  I can see where this could get to (and "could" is the operative word in this sentence) once they work out the kinks and add the other features it really needs.  When I can replace my home computer, laptop, netbook, smartphone, AND Kindle, then we're talking.  Till then, it seems like the same thing over and over again - promises, promises, promises.

"The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to outsource its e-mail system to Google Inc., making it the largest city in the nation to make the move and handing the Web search giant a major victory in its quest to become a software provider to the world's cities and businesses." stated the article in the LA Times.

So, what does this REALLY mean? It doesn't mean that if you want to email the mayor, his new email address is going to be TonyV at gmail.com. What it does mean is that the concept of "Cloud Computing" is maturing and getting a resounding vote of approval from a major organization. While I'm not here to voice my opinion on whether Google's solution is better than Micosoft's or Novell's (the other competitors), I am interested in what this means to the millions of other businesses out there and the trend towards more and more cloud computing.

If you're not familiar with this concept, simply put "cloud computing" is about moving the computer systems you rely on from being at your location to someone offsite who can provide these same functions through your internet connection. This also goes by the name "Software as a Service" (SaaS). This greatly reduces the strain put on your business to own, manage, and maintain pieces of your own network infrastructure and put this responsibility on to someone else who's sole purpose is to provide these services. We're seeing this more and more these days. The greatest example of this are things like Salesforce.com, Google apps, Mint.com, etc.

What does this mean for you practically speaking? For many of our clients this can be seen in hosted email and hosted spam filtering. You can run MS-Outlook internally on all your workstations while NOT requiring an internal MS-Exchange Server (but rather using one out in "the cloud"). While this has many advantages: lower cost to start, lower cost to maintain, upgrades taken care of, etc.) there are also a number of significant disadvantages: data stored offsite, reliance on your internet connection, reliance on a 3rd party, etc. Like I said, we are seeing this more and more these days. While it's not for everyone and certainly not for every application, for certain size businesses and certain applications, it's a very cost effective and valuable solution that we will be seeing more and more of in the future.

While the base need to leverage technology to achieve your business goals hasn't changed, what has changed is "how" (technically) this gets accomplished. And how, we, as a company are changing "how" we do what we do is changing. While historically we've been focused on internal technology and how we manage, maintain, and support it for our clients, we now are moving in ways to ensure that we're able to effectively provide similar consulting services for hosted or SaaS or "cloud" technologies to ensure the technology our clients' are using are as effective for them as possible.

Here are some statistics to ponder...

• According to research by the University of Texas, only 6 percent of companies suffering from a catastrophic data loss survive, while 43 percent never reopen and 51 percent close within two years.
• According to a recent NFIB National Small Business Poll, man-made disasters affect 10% of small businesses, whereas natural disasters have impacted more than 30% of all small businesses in the US.
• According to analyst firm IDC, about 70% of all successful attacks on computer networks were carried out by employees and insiders.
• Gartner estimates that only 35 percent of SMBs have a comprehensive disaster recovery plan in place.
• According to a recent Touche Ross study, the survival rate for companies without a disaster recovery plan is less than 10%!

So, if your network crashed tomorrow what's the likelihood that your business could survive? How prepared are you?

One of our engineers was pondering this exact question at 2:00 in the morning the other day trying to rebuild one of our client's drive arrays. Much to our comfort, he was able to rebuild it and get our client back up and running before the day started. But, this brush with catastrophe really made us ponder how seriously all of our clients take the responsibility of securing their data.

As much as it's our goal to "remove the worry" surrounding IT for our clients, often times we're handcuffed by the limitations our clients put on us because of budget constraints.  And while this is (somewhat) understandable, from my perspective it seems like only those who have "felt the pain" have any sort of perspective on this issue and have taken proactive actions towards ensuring their data is safe. This is a tough one for businesses to consider - how do you justify spending money where there is no quantifiable ROI. In the best cases (ie: where you won't ever have to use it), this is money spent that will never be recouped. On the other hand, if it's not spent and you are hit, 90% of you will be out of business within the year.

So, how close do you need to come to losing all that you have to finally act on this and begin your Disaster Recovery planning?  This shouldn't be a question you put off answering for too long.

Before you ask yourself - Do I have an "IT guy" or a "Trusted Advisor"? - first you have to ask yourself, "do I care?" If you don't, then there's no doubt that you have an "IT guy". Regardless of what he's capable of, if that's all that you're ever going to see him delivering, then that's all he's ever going to be. If you do care, then even before you ask yourself what you have, you have to consider what you want.

My point is, it's quite difficult (if not almost impossible) for your IT Service Provider to be a Trusted Advisor if you won't let them be one. We run into this all the time. If all the client cares about is doing the absolute minimum, reacting to problems, keeping costs down (at all costs), and always thinking short term, then you're in trouble.  There's almost no way to be a trusted advisor to someone who doesn't want it.

The word "advisor" is an active noun. It implies action. It implies proactive action. It's professional. If you're not planning, then your partner can't be advising. To have a "Trusted Advisor" is a two way relationship. It requires involvement on both sides. For us to be a "Trusted Advisor", we literally have to be a partner with our clients in their business.  We can recommend till we're blue in the face, but if nothing is done about it, are we truly advisors? No.

Now, you have to ask yourself - are you willing to pay for it? If the answer is no, then we're back to "do I care?" If you are (willing to pay for it), then regardless of whether you actually have to (pay for it, you've just escalated the discussion up to a whole 'nother level. The fact that you are willing to pay for it will take you to the level where your expectations are higher and the demands you'll be placing on your IT service provider are higher. And this is key. But - "willing to pay for it" doesn't necessarily mean what you think I mean - paying more for our services. On the contrary, we often times advise clients to spend less on us by spending more on something else. We may ask clients to spend for a better solution so that our ongoing support fees will be less and their productivity will be more (long term thinking)

For you to take your business to another level, you need to be surrounding yourself with advisors who bring more to the table than what you may be asking for. You need someone who will add value above and beyond what you ask for, but rather - what you need. This is where your IT Service Provider is truly a "Trusted Advisor".

So, back to the question - do you have an "IT guy" or a "Trusted Advisor"? The difference could be the difference between your success and failure.

Business Before Technology - We Get IT!

How often have you ripped out a weed only to find it growing back a week later? Annoying, isn't it? As I'm sure some of you know, it's not because of any magical thing that's going on, but rather because the part we remove is only the part we see. What we don't see is really one of most important parts. This too can be said about the cost of IT.

When people think about the cost of their IT, they tend to think about only the costs they see. This would seem to be logical - how do you think about things that you don't know about? But the problem is - When people think of the cost of IT, and more specifically, reducing their cost of IT, most of the time they're thinking only of the costs they see - the cost of the hardware, the software, and the related service fees. Rarely, in my experience, do you really see clients considering all the "hidden" costs.

Some of the most obvious "hidden" costs are those associated with lost or reduced employee productivity, wasted dollars spent on poor investment decisions, unseen administrative costs, and costs resulting from poor planning. Drilling down further, a lot of these costs are caused by things like downtime (caused by insufficient budgetting for proactive maintenance), poor performing machines (reducing staff productivity), redundant work (increasing staff costs), insufficient training (reducing performance), over-extending the life span of machines (causing increased support $'s and increased replacement costs), and improper configurations (also causing increased support $'s). Some of these are soft costs (lost productivity impacting staffing costs) while some are hard costs (increased replacement costs).

Rarely do we see clients considering the long term costs of their short term decisions. It's almost always, how do we cut costs NOW! But the reality is all of these decisions go to the bottomline impact IT has on your company. And more often than not, the long term impacts are way more costly than the short term savings. If I don't stay current with patching all my machines, I can save some $'s this month (while fixing that infected workstation will cost way more next month). But again, I believe one of the key components here is how clients define the word "cost".

You can easily have a conversation with a client contemplating spending $100,000 on a new piece of machinery with a 5 year life span, but talk about replacing the $3,000 server the business completely relies upon BEFORE it crashes and it's like pulling teeth. Why is it that people are ok running computers into the ground but wouldn't think twice to do this with almost any other part of their business? Why is it so rare that a business owner strategically acts to take a proactive approach to deal with IT issues BEFORE they bring their company to a screeching halt? Again, it comes back to the definition of "cost" (ie: how business owners currently think about costs).

I believe a lot of it has to do with the oversimplification our industry (with Microsoft leading the charge) has done over the last five to ten years. Everyone still thinks these machines are like calculators or dishwashers. But the reality is, when something that could bring your whole company to a complete standstill is treated like this, these hidden costs will continue to have a bigger impact on profitability than they really should. We (as an industry) need to do a better job of helping our clients understand IT "costs" and the business impact of them.

So, before you yank that weed (ie: make a short term decision re: IT), think twice about what's going to happen when it grows back...

Imagine a car where the only thing on the dashboard is an on/off switch. No speedometer, no tach, not even a gas gauge. Oh sure, it has a radio and a/c. It has navigation. It can do all sorts of things above and beyond just taking you places. But there's nothing on the dash to tell you anything about how it's running. It works. It does exactly what it was intended to do and it actually does it pretty well. And everyone has one. And, everyone can (more or less) fix them well enough to keep them running (most of the time). Sound familiar?

Now imagine this car is responsible for generating your income. Imagine you own a fleet of these cars and your business depends on them. Sometimes you take them in for servicing, but most of the time you'd really rather not have to. And with the economy the way it is, you only want to take them in when something's not working - like it won't go fast enough to get on the freeway or it doesn’t turn right anymore (making 3 lefts does the same thing so you put up with it for a while). To cut costs, you'd do anything other than spend money on them. You basically drive them till they stop working (they're running, so shouldn't they just keep running?).

This scenario seems a little far fetched, right? Now replace the word "car" with "computer" and maybe you can see where I’m going. Driving a car without a dash is like running a network without a monitoring system. Literally. It's scary to say but probably 99% of businesses out there do this! They think that because this is the way it's always been, this is the way it should always be. When it breaks, call the computer guy. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. It's "fine".

Well, it's not fine. It's just an accident waiting to happen. The best computer guys in the world are still at the mercy of the laws of probability reacting to things over and over again till something major happens. And the reality is, something major will happen. Machines last between 3 and 4 years. Sure you can push them longer, but why do you think all major manufacturers (Dell, HP, IBM, etc.) limit their warranties to 36 months? Because their actuarial tables tell them their machines won't last longer than this! Statistically speaking, this means pushing machines past this point will almost always ensure some system failure. Now, if you have 3 servers on your network, you could be looking at a crash, on average, of one per year! Still want to drive without a dashboard?

When clients ask me what's the one thing that they could do that would be the most impactful way to use their IT dollars, without a doubt the answer is - implement a network monitoring system and start proactively managing your network. But you have to notice how this question is phrased. It's not, "how can we save money?" It's, "how can we better use our money?" Because, the reality is, you have to spend a little to save a lot. The ROI is there.  But, it's all in how you view IT.  You can't just think "save" (as in "not spend"). Because it will backfire on you.

So, the next time you're thinking of ways to cut costs, don't drive blind - add a monitoring system to your network.

I don't know if you noticed, but two events unfolded this week without all that much fanfare. Only time will tell if these things will turn out to be significant or not.

The first is the release of Palm's Pre. This is the supposed "iPhone killer". It's actually garnering rave reviews.It does sound pretty good.   It has all the bells and whistles of the iPhone but supposedly integrates the web much further. It also has some intelligence to integrate all your address books and contact lists into one. If it works, this would be pretty cool. Since the OS is based on the web, the apps are more platform independent and should be easier to build than iPhone apps. Palm says they're not looking to take over or cut into Apple's dominance in this area. Their approach is there's still plenty of room for a competitor.

Ths second item of interest is Microsoft's release of bing! (ie: www.bing.com). This is their response (again) to Google. How high are the stakes here? In their first TV commercial, it seems that they even go so far as to accuse Google of causing global economic ruin! Do we need a "better" search engine? Does anyone trust Microsoft to deliver completely objective results?

So, what do these two things have in common? Not much on the surface. But if you dig deeper, plenty. What it means to me is as comfortable and as ingrained as things could be in our daily lives (ie: the iPhone and Google), anything can change at any time. There were search engines before Google (hard to remember, huh!). And there were smartphones before the iPhone. What will the landscape look like in a year, two years, or more? I don't know, but it does remind me to not get complacent. We always need to be thinking about what the future may hold for our businesses and our lives to be successful.