Survival is an instinct nearly every creature has hardwired into them. You can argue that many managers or business owners feel this instinct twofold, as they fight to physically survive as well as for their business to survive. Because of this, Disaster Recovery (DR) - the act of ensuring your systems can be recovered after a disaster - has become an integral part of the survival of a business.

Here are four ways to ensure your DR plan is sufficient and company is disaster-ready.

Are your systems compliant? Many DR systems are licensed, and it’s important to ensure that these licences are both up-to-date and supported by all necessary backup systems. If you’ve added or changed components like a server or software, but not upgraded the relevant licenses, chances are your systems won’t be covered when disaster strikes. If this is the case, when you go to retrieve the backup, you’ll just get a license error; your data can’t be retrieved.

Another issue with DR software is that it’s often not used, lying dormant for years. You should regularly check and ensure the software meets modern compliance standards, is up-to-date and licenses have not expired. You should also be aware of how the software you use integrates and interacts with the DR software. For example, an upgrade to a new email server, may not communicate well with your DR software.

What’s the status of your backup server? As most DR plans usually involve a separate server from day-to-day servers, it’s important to ensure that they are functioning properly, usually by having the vendor test them. It’s also equally important to communicate with the vendors or manufacturers of the servers to ensure that the correct software/hardware licenses are in place and cover the function. If they aren’t, you could risk legal action or being fined.

Test regularly Regular tests are an integral part of a properly functioning DR plan. You need to conduct tests on at least a yearly basis to ensure all systems involved in the DR plan function well. From these tests, observe any function that performed poorly, or not at all, and take steps to fix or replace it.

Work with a knowledgeable partner DR plans and systems can be a complicated, almost messy aspect of business. While this may be, DR is crucial to the survival of a business after a disaster, and shouldn’t be treated lightly. To get it right liaise with DR experts to create and maintain a plan that meets your needs.

If you would like help with either implementing or improving your DR plan, please contact us, we may have a solution for you.

For most of the 90s and well into the first decade and a half of the 2000s, Microsoft Office reigned as king of the Office suites. The Internet, in its early years, didn’t change that much, until the concept of the cloud was introduced. With it came competitors, such as Google with Google Drive, determined to give Microsoft a run for their money. Microsoft also has a cloud solution, Office 365. The question many managers are asking is: Which is better?

Here’s a comparison of both Google Apps and Office 365.

Cost Google has three pricing schemes for Google Apps: Free, $5 a month and $10 a month. Office 365 has eight price plans - six for normal users and two for kiosk users - these vary from $4 a month up to $22 a month. Note: all prices are in USD and are per user, per month.

With Google Apps, the majority of businesses will choose to go with the $5 a month plan, as it can support an unlimited number of users. Businesses that adopt Office 365 should chose the plan that closest matches the number of users in the organization. The only problem with the lower priced Office 365 plans ($14 a month and lower) are that they don’t include the desktop version of Office, which you will have to buy or license separately.

Setup/migration On paper the setup or migration to both systems can be easily achieved, but in reality, there are a few differences. With Google Apps, you follow an online migration process which you can either do yourself or with the help of a Google Apps Authorized Reseller.

Office 365 follows a similar process, with a setup wizard to help the transition. As of Spring 2012 If you’re a current Microsoft BPOS user, you can only do the migration at certain times, Microsoft's Online Services team will give you a schedule. This means your migration works around Microsoft’s schedule, not yours. For new Office 365 clients, working with a Microsoft vendor is your best bet to achieving a successful migration, as there have been known to be complications with the process, especially if you’re upgrading from a legacy system.

Cloudiness Both Google and Microsoft market their products as cloud solutions. Google Apps is centered around Google Drive and Gmail, with Drive being the online storage, collaboration and document creation and editing app. Basically, anything created using a Google App is accessed from Drive, which in turn can be accessed using any Web browser.

Office 365 users on the other hand will likely have to adapt a hybrid solution. You will be able to access documents through SharePoint, Microsoft’s online document management system. These documents are in turn shared with Office 365 users who can access them through their Web browser. There is also Office Web Apps which is a slimmed down version of Office for desktops, which is fully in the cloud.

Management Management of any cloud based solution should, in theory, be as easy as managing web browsers across the organization. With Google, any program updates are automatically installed by Google, and will show up often instantly, meaning that all users are always on the same version, regardless of their location. If you use a Google Apps Vendor, the updates will be available to all of the vendor’s clients when the vendor updates, which is usually close to the time Google releases the original update.

Management of Google Apps is done through the Web browser of the admin account. Users can add new services, change access rights and tinker to their heart’s content. Office 365 on the other hand relies on a fairly tech-intensive backend that requires a company to have IT staff with knowledge of Microsoft’s products. A new version of Office 365 will be available in November 2013, however, if companies want to upgrade, they may have to pay for a whole new version of Office for each user.

When it comes to support, Google offers 24/7 support for paying customers, and no physical support for non-paying customers. Microsoft offers support for some price plans, however no 24/7 support is available for businesses that chose the Small Business price plan. Both have websites and incredibly extensive forums you can access for help.

Day-to-day use If you were to compare Google Apps with just the online parts of Office 365, you’d find that the two offerings are fairly similar. Both facilitate online collaboration, while providing essential features like a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software and email, that are instantly familiar to any computer user. Strictly comparing these to Office Web Apps, both are fairly light on advanced editing and creation features that content producers and layout editors need.

Where Office 365 shines is with day-to-day integration. If it’s set up properly, Office 365 will work great with Office 2010, and allows users far greater formatting options than Google Apps. In fact, to get the most out of Office 365, you will probably want to use Office 2010 along with it.

In short, businesses that already use Microsoft’s products, have the required infrastructure for Office 365, or need the advanced functionality of the Office suite, will be better off sticking with Microsoft. For businesses that are looking for a set price solution that’s fully based in the cloud, Google Apps may be the better choice. If you’d like to learn more about the various products from either company, please contact us.

It used to be fire and thieves that destroyed or stole all your precious and important possessions. While these two things still happen, the more modern equivalent is having your various Internet accounts hacked, information deleted or confidential information stolen. There are two recent cases of this happening, both involving Apple and Apple’s products, which go to show that even Apple users can be targets.

Here’s a brief overview of the two high profile Apple security breaches and seven steps you should take to prevent these from affecting you.

Mat Honan’s problem Mat Honan is a writer for Wired, who in early August had nearly his whole digital life wiped off the map. His article on Wired is a fantastic and scary read, we highly recommend it. To summarize, he had the majority of his website accounts linked together, with one account linked to many. Hackers were able to get into his iCloud account by taking advantage of Apple’s lax password reset.

To begin with, the hacker wanted to take Honan’s Twitter account. They noticed that he had a Gmail account linked to Twitter, and from there was able to find that an Apple account was linked to the Gmail account, as a secondary account. To get access to the Apple account, they reset the password, which requires a billing address and the last 4 digits of the card registered to that account. The card number came from hacking into Honan’s Amazon account, which shows the last 4 digits of the card.

From there, it was a simple step of resetting the Apple account and shortly thereafter the Gmail password, sending the Gmail reset to the registered Apple account address (the secondary address on the Gmail account). Once in control of the Gmail account, asking Twitter to reset the password using the Gmail account and Bob’s your uncle, the hacker had access to the Twitter account.

Apple UDID leaks In early September infamous hacker group Antisec, related to the hacker group Anonymous, released over 1 million Apple UDIDs. A UDID, Unique Device Identifier, is the code Apple applies to all devices to be able to identify them. Upon the release of the UDIDs, Antisec announced that they had come from a breached laptop, owned by the FBI, and that the FBI was using the UDIDs to track users.

While it’s not known exactly where the breach came from, security experts have been able to prove, to a 98% surety rate, that the UDIDs came from Blue Toad, an app developer that had a digital breach previous to the release of the UDIDs. Blue Toad’s CEO has come forward acknowledging the leak and noted that the company is sure the info came from them, and not the FBI.

While it can be alarming that UDID were out there, users can be assured that passwords were not exposed, as the UDID tends to store information like account name, phone number and address. Yes, contact information is out there, which might raise concerns,  but don’t kid yourself, this information, or most of it, is already readily available on the Internet anyway.

With these two, fairly serious incidents, iPhone users are right to be a little wary, and should be taking steps to insure their information is secure. Related to these two events, here’s seven steps you can take to minimize the chances of this happening to you:

• Unlink all essential accounts from one another.
• Set up an email account that’s only used for other account resets.
• Regularly back up all your devices onto a secure hard disk.
• Change your password regularly and use two-factor authentication if available.
• Don’t have the same username or password for all accounts.
• If the information isn’t necessary for your account don’t provide it.
• Delete and never store any credit card numbers.

If you have any questions or concerns about the security of your accounts or systems, please don’t hesitate to call us.

There’s no doubt that Microsoft’s products and programs are incredibly useful, with most companies using at least one of their systems. One of the most used products, one that many employees don’t see, is servers. Small businesses have many options including Microsoft Small Business Server (SBS) which has recently been retired, leaving many businesses wondering what to do now?

If your company has employed a Microsoft SBS 2008 or older solution, you aren’t totally left in the dark. Before announcing the end of SBS, Microsoft announced Microsoft Windows Server 2012, which is meant to be the replacement for SBS.

In the past, Microsoft has been a company of options, not content with releasing just one or two versions of an operating system or server structure, instead opting for many. With Windows Server 2012, the options have been slimmed down to just four, of which two will be best for the majority of small businesses.

Foundation Foundation is the most basic version of Windows Server 2012, with support for common activities like file and printer sharing. It won’t however support virtual environments, meaning, in other words, you will have to stick with physical servers instead of being able to run different servers on one physical machine. It’s also limited to 15 users and under.

The downside with Foundation is that it will only be available on new servers created by Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). If you want to utilize this version, you’re going to have to buy a new server. If you’re looking to centralize basic office functions, or connect the office internally, and don’t currently have any servers, this might be a good option for you.

Essentials If you currently use SBS, or another retired Microsoft product, you’re best bet is Essentials. At a cost of around USD $425, it’s a low cost upgrade aimed specifically at businesses with 25 or fewer users. An upgrade to Essentials brings about the ability to easily connect and manage Microsoft’s cloud based solutions such as Office 365 and the cloud version of Sharepoint, as well as others. Essentials also has Client Backup, and Remote Web Access, features which are mature and have been brought forward from SBS and Home Server.  Essentials can also integrate with an onsite Exchange 2010 server if you are keeping email in-house vs the cloud.  A separate server license will be needed for Exchange.

The downside to this is if you have more than 25 users in your company you’ll either need to pay for an upgrade to Server Standard to “unlock” Essentials to unlimited users, or pick another version. Aside from this, Essentials, unlike Foundation, does support a fully virtualized server environment. Essentials will be a good upgrade for companies that are interested in transitioning to the cloud but may still want some featured in-house during the transition (Exchange, Sharepoint). Interested in learning more about integrating Windows Server 2012 in your company? Please contact us, we can help.

Business continuity - the act of ensuring that business activities are available at all times, including during disasters - is a practice all businesses, regardless of their size, should be implementing in their organization. While many businesses backup their data and think that they’re protected, they will find that during times of disaster they aren’t.

Here are five things you should be doing, aside from backing up your data, to ensure you're ready for anything.

• Where to work. One of the first things you should consider is where you're going to work if your office is inaccessible. Hotels, convention centers or other office buildings are viable locations. Whichever location you pick, you should pick at least two different places, as far apart as possible. You should also be sure to inform your staff and include maps of the routes to the locations you’ve chosen.
• Replacement equipment. It’s incredibly important that you know exactly what equipment you use and how integral it is to operations. For mission critical equipment (equipment your company absolutely can’t work without) you need to have a plan in place as to how you can quickly replace lost equipment, the cost of it and replacement time. For less important equipment, you should have a couple of vendors in mind.
• Communication systems. During adverse business conditions it’s vitally important that you and your employees are able to communicate both with one another and with your clients. You should look into a communication system that’s flexible, can be established wherever you are and allows you to keep your numbers. VoIP is a great system, telecommuting is another option as well.
• Coordinate staff. You’re staff drive your business, without them, your business likely won’t be able to run. With the continuity plan you develop, it’s important that you have hard and soft copies of the plan that are accessible to all staff, and staff know their role in the plan. When your plan is enacted you need to contact your staff and ensure that there aren’t any problems.
• Access to critical documents. If you have a good backup location, can set up equipment quickly and staff know their roles you may think your plan is perfect. You’re missing one key element: access to documents, employees won’t be able to work without them. It’s important to ensure that you can access your data backups, which means you should probably keep copies offsite and in the cloud if possible.

A continuity plan is important, hopefully you’ll never have to enact it. Nevertheless, you should plan for the worse. If you’re unsure of where to start, or feel your current plan is inadequate, please contact us.

Disasters happen on a daily basis. Sometimes they’re big, wiping out communities, other times they’re small, affecting one online machine or computer. No matter the size of disaster, it pays for businesses, especially small businesses, to prepare for the worst. The only problem is, many small businesses don’t prepare and pay the price.

When a disaster strikes, 25% or more of small businesses affected will fail. Why do they fail? It’s not because of defects in the physical location, it’s mainly because they didn’t take the necessary steps to ensure that their business’s technology and related data is protected.

Because the modern business relies so heavily on technology, it’s essential that businesses have a business continuity plan (BCP) to minimize the loss of vital data, or in many cases, not lose any data at all. This is an important asset that will, one day, minimize losses felt due to any type of disaster. Small business owners know this, but many don’t know where to start. If you’re one of these owners, here are six tips on how you can prepare.

1. Establish a backup regime. Data backup is one of the most important things you can do, be sure to regularly backup your corporate files, servers and user data files. A truly prepared company will have backups in a number of locations that can be easily accessed.
2. Ensure solid communication platforms. One of the first things people do in a disaster is try to communicate with each other to ensure everything is ok. You can guarantee that some customers and employees will be calling to check in, so you need to have communication lines that work.
3. Train employees. A BCP plan is useless if your employees don’t know their role in the implementation of the plan. It’s important that you train your employees on their roles, and that you communicate with them your expectations.
4. Contingency plans. Like storing your data backups, you should set up contingency plans with the involved parties in your business. You should know where to go to do your banking, what your vendors’ or suppliers’ plans are and how they affect you, and most importantly: you should have a few locations where you can set up your business if the physical property is damaged.
5. Review and practice all plans. Everything changes at one time or another, maybe an employee leaves or you adopt a new computer system. This makes it important to periodically practice your plans, review what worked and what didn’t, and update accordingly.
6. Work with an expert. Planning for disaster is a tough thing to do well, considering all the elements to focus on and work with. To ensure a viable plan for your business, working with a recovery expert can help ensure that you get a plan that works for you while taking the stress off.

If you’re worried about your business’s disaster preparedness, please contact us. We can work with you to develop a solution, or provide you with the information and contacts to set you on the right path.

Business Continuity Planning (BCP) - a plan on how to keep your business operational during any adverse conditions - is an important process that every small business should implement. One of the major aspects of this is where you should backup your business’s data. Having a backup of your data is like an insurance plan for your company, with it, you’ll be able to keep operating during adverse conditions.

Here are the three main types of backup you can utilize in your company.

1. On-site backup. On-site storage is the practice of keeping a backup of your data in the same location that the original data is stored. If you have an external hard drive that you back your computer onto and it stays in the office, this is a form of on site storage. The main advantage to this is that if you need to restore a system, the data is right there and the backup can be started immediately. The main disadvantage is that if there’s a disaster, your backup data will most likely be gone.

2. Off-site backup. Off-site storage is similar to on-site storage, typically using the same form of hard drive to backup your data. The main difference is that drives are stored in a remote location, away from your business. The upside to this method is that if something happens at your physical location, your data is safe. The downside to this is that it takes time to travel to the storage location, retrieve the data, backup your system and take it back.

3. Online backup. Online backup utilizes the Internet to allow you to backup your data. The backups are kept on hosted servers (the cloud) and can be accessed through an application. The main pro of this method is that you can quickly and easily recover your data from any location, as long as you have access to the Internet. The downside is that if you have a lot of data, backups will use a lot of bandwidth, thus slowing your Internet speed down.

Regardless of the method, you should be backing up your business data at regular intervals. The best solution is to backup your data using all three methods. Use on-site for short term data storage (less than 1 week), off-site for monthly, and online as your main backup. That way, if one goes down, you have it covered. If you’d like to start backing up your data, or would like to know more about the different methods, please contact us.

In business, and in life, decisions can be one of the toughest things we have to do. If you make the wrong decisions, you could be the reason a business fails. You don’t want that to happen, so when it comes to good business, a tool like business analytics (BA) can help you or others in your company make better informed decisions that could lead to increased success.

The most important thing to be aware of with BA is that its success largely depends on how astute companies are in using BA tools. Here are seven tips on how to ensure BA is working for you.

1. Collaborate to define questions. Before you approach a BA vendor, it’s important to collaborate with all functions within your company to identify questions and issues that are tough to answer. With questions clearly defined, you’ll be better able to see if a vendor can provide solutions that will answer these more efficiently than solutions already in place.
2. Start with fresh reports. After implementation of a BA solution, you should focus on developing new reports that analyze data in a different way when compared with your old reports. Doing so could help you find new ways to secure advantages, competitive and otherwise. A new solution also provides you with the opportunity to audit your data and get rid of junk data that has no viable purpose.
3. Work with BA experts and your vendor. BA is a science; it’s a lot more involved than the traditional method of comparing current results against previous reports. As such, you should either employ a BA expert who knows which questions to ask and what to do with the data or work with a consultant. Consulting the vendor you work with would be a good start, as they normally employ BA experts who are there to help.
4. Train employees. Like any business function that will be used in all departments, it’s important to train your employees on not only how to use the software, but the basics behind it. Before any training is done however, it’s important that you adapt roles to incorporate the change in process.
5. Don’t give up on Excel. Microsoft Excel, or similar spreadsheets are fantastic programs. Chances are high that the majority of your employees are competent users of at least Excel and you can use this to both their and your advantage. In fact, many BA solutions use, or are based off of, Excel-like spreadsheets which makes training a lot easier and less expensive as employees will already be comfortable with the basics.
6. BA should deliver on 2 levels. Business analytics functions on two main levels: summary and drill down. Summary encompases multiple elements, while drill down allows in depth looks at one element. When reports are compiled they should encompass both elements.
7. Don’t let BA do all the thinking. BA is not the be all and end all, it’s supposed to help your company with decision making, not make the decisions for you. There may be times when the analytical output just doesn’t match what you think will be best. Some of the most successful business people have relied on instinct even when the available data tells them they are wrong.

BA has become an important part of many businesses and while you can develop your own program in-house, many small to medium businesses just don’t have the capital, expertise or time to do so. We recommend that before you start, you get in touch with a BA expert or consultant and see if they can give you a solution. We can also help, so don’t be afraid to pick up the phone and give us a call.

One of the more popular trends companies are adopting is virtualization, moving from physical systems to cloud/server based systems. Desktop virtualization, the act of moving your desktop computers from a physical to virtual environment is a type of virtualization that’s gaining more popularity. When it comes to this trend though some companies are apprehensive about how secure virtual environments are.

In general, you can do nearly everything on a virtual desktop that you can do with a physical desktop. The majority of office oriented software now has versions that operate in the cloud, or give administrators the ability to install the program on one machine and license it out to other machines.

The largest difference between the two systems comes in the form of security. Virtual desktops are susceptible to the exact same security issues as their physical counterparts, but they also have a few extra potential problems which are unique to virtual machines. The biggest security issue with virtual desktops comes in the form of access. With physical machines, you can lock an office door which will usually prevent people from physically accessing the machine. With virtual machines you are not able to do this. Anyone with access and a password can get onto the machine.

While this may sound like a deterrence to the adoption of virtual desktops, users should be aware that vendors are aware of this issue and have adopted measures to ensure their products are safe. In fact, if implemented properly, virtual desktops are often safer.

To ensure safety of data and machines virtual desktops need to be implemented in a specific manner. For example, some solutions will create a new environment every time you need to access a different system. This is like starting with a blank slate, with unnecessary data being deleted when you log off. Users won’t be able to customize their workspace, but it can help stave off problems of errant downloading, or installation of unnecessary programs.

Other systems allow users to customize their workspace, but save the changes in a separate location when the user logs off. This keeps any changes made to the base system easy to keep track of, and it’s easier to spot security problems, while keeping them local.

If you’re looking into virtualizing your office’s desktops, we strongly recommend you work with an experienced IT partner who can help deploy a system that meets your needs, while remaining safe. We can help with virtualization, so why not give us a call?

One of the latest industries to be developed in the past 50 years is Information Technology, or IT. Many aspects of IT have become essential parts to every business and household. We rely on products and services offered by IT to conduct business and live our daily lives. It’s highly likely that IT will continue to play an important role in nearly everything, and a recent report has been released to corroborate this.

A report released in the summer of 2012 by Gartner, Inc. an IT research and advisory firm, states that in the year 2012, companies will be spending a worldwide total of around $3.6 Trillion on IT related products and services.

This represents a year on year growth of 2.5% in spending when compared with 2011. Growth like this is nothing to sneeze at, and it will continue to grow as more products and services are invented, developed and released to the mass market.

The report noted that the largest sector of the IT market is in telecommunication services, with an expected growth of 1.4% this year. It also stated that companies in emerging markets will spend more on Internet technologies and consumer electronics. This means that with more capital, tech companies in these industries will be able to invest in and release more products.

One IT silo is expected to have significant growth over the next four years. Cloud tech spending is forecasted to grow 19% year on year, and double again by 2016. This indicates that companies and developers are incredibly interested in cloud computing, and it will continue to be an important part of modern technology.

While this report is primarily inward facing towards the IT industry, it does showcase the fact that IT is an integral part of modern business infrastructure. This report also highlights the impact that companies in the IT industry will have as they continue to innovate and release new products. If the past half decade is anything to judge by, new technology will continue to get more complex. The result of this is that businesses will benefit from close relations with IT providers and subject matter experts.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the increasing complexity of programs and solutions, take a logical and simple step in the right direction and contact us. We’re here to help ensure your IT experience is as smooth as possible for the future.