As part of my work, dealing with inquiries for IT support and visiting prospective clients, I come across many different IT setups both good and bad. When meeting prospective clients for the first time my approach is simple; it’s to sit, listen and understand why they’ve called Abussi in the first place. It’s not to judge, its not to criticize and its certainly not to sell – That can only come once you understand.

First meeting

One such example was found on a recent prospect visit to the Black Country, on a day when I had 3 meetings with prospective clients. On that day I met with a prospect that has since become a client because they were unhappy with their current IT provider but who had systems that while were ‘ok’ were in need of some refresh. I then met with a company who were in need of IT because their existing IT provider had gone into administration but their systems were old and in need of significant upgrade. Finally I met the prospective client in the Black Country and this is where the need for IT change was most evident.

The discovery process

Their systems appeared old when I arrived and the big give away was that at the Directors desk, and their assistants, there was a desktop PC plus a laptop. This is usually a sign that the PC is not offering the service they need and so the laptop comes into play to try and do things they can’t do on a single PC. Little did I know and the truth was to emerge in the following 2 hours meeting………….

We chatted about the current situation and the needs moving forward. It was interesting to learn about their business, a manufacturing business with sales into most territories throughout the world, and it was good to hear some positive news about their business with sales being good and business going well in these difficult times. I then raised the issue that the email I sent them to confirm our meeting had ‘bounced’ and thus there might be something that needs looking at with the current system. They were aware of ‘issues’ but had raised it to their guy, a man described as a ‘one man band’ that had looked after their systems for some time but whom they felt was getting past the point of usefulness due to lack of knowledge on their systems as they’d grown from 3-4 users to around 20 users currently.

Sage for DOS

In the following hour I found out that most of the hardware was around 8 years old (average), their server was probably 10 years old, they ran Windows 2000 on each desktop, they had no security policy to speak of, no planned anti virus solution, a backup policy that could be described as ‘untested’ at best and that the accounts department (5 full time users) were managing a multi million pound business on ……….. wait for it………… Sage for MS DOS. Now many readers many not grasp the full significance of the software versions noted above, but let me tell you, anyone using applications for MS DOS in 2013 is seriously behind the times. However, having those MS DOS applications at the heart of your accounts system is a real issue. They are largely unsupported and so ‘legacy’ as to be almost impossible to migrate in the future.

Resistance is futile

One issue that came up during the conversation was “well the Accounts team don’t want to change and don’t see why they need to upgrade”. This is astonishing as the Accounts team are looking at only the smallest section of the business as a whole and forcing the retention of out of date systems for their own agenda. The result is that the IT at this business has been allowed to slide past the point of any sensible upgrade point and is not at a level where only wholesale replacement and renewal can be considered. This has huge implications on training for all staff, especially the Accounts team, and that was my overriding point to the prospective client.

The requirement 

Replacing 20 PC’s and a server over a weekend is what Abussi does – its our job and we can do that with limited impact to the business. The company can switch off on a Friday and return to work on a Monday with all systems operational and new PC’s operational at each workstation. However – the training implications this throws up to users that on Friday were using Windows 2000 and Sage for MS DOS is massive. The productivity levels will dip and unless staff are given the option to ‘buy in’ to the updates then they could hinder or even kill off the benefits of the upgrade. The key to this project would be full and focused training for all staff to make sure they understand what’s going to happen, what the new software can do and to offer familiarisation before the switch is made.

It’s not always about the hardware

To conclude, the point of this story is to show that if you are looking to upgrade your IT systems and move forward a number of steps then you have to allow for staff to catch up and you must help them as much as you can. Some staff (younger) may find the transition easier than other staff (older) but all should be trained and all should be helped through the transitional stage. It also highlights that at Abussi we don’t simply sell IT and then run, we highlight the areas where IT will impact on the business process and offer help and support either directly or with partners (training partners in this case) to offer the best possible service we can.

If you want to explore the benefits of an MSP relationship rather than an old fashioned IT Support relationship then come and talk to us today : Why Abussi ?

In a recent blog I responded to an article in which the role of MSP’s was being discussed and debated. In that original article it was stated that : “.. [an MSP's] mission is to convince customers that the personal relationships, intimate knowledge, and trusted adviser roles you bring are worth the little bit extra they might have to pay..”. In recent weeks this has turned out to be so true as I work with both existing and prospective clients. Lets look at a couple of examples.

Going Mobile

The first example is a prospect I’m talking to and who is in the process of finding a new IT provider. I’ve known the company for some time and attended networking events with the Director. She purchased a new iPad Mini last Friday and so called her current provider (you know, the one trying to retain her IT business) and said “can you help me setup my iPad to work with my office email system” – a sensible and reasonable request.

The response was “urm…. we don’t support Apple products….. if we can make it work….. and we are not sure….. then its charged at £40 per 15mins”. This isn’t really the response you want and so Abussi got a call, in desperation, to see if we might be able to help. Well, long story short is that although we don’t have any current knowledge of this clients IT systems, we did a little IT trickery to find out 4 of the 5 key things they needed to know to setup the iPad (their password was the 5th) and within an hour it was working. They were impressed and of course I doubt the current provider is going to have their contract renewed !

Domain or not a Domain ?

The second example is rather more straightforward and involves a current (recently acquired) client with whom I was chatting about Domain Name Hosting. Many businesses don’t really understand this service and so at Abussi we provide it as an included part of our monthly management fee then take full responsibility for it, as outlined in our recent Vendor Management blog .

We wanted to move their domain hosting over to our platform to make them ‘standard’ as per our other clients. However, while planning this move we looked at all the invoices they had regarding hosting and found something odd. We identified that the client already has their domain name within a personal Fasthosts account, which they pay for and which only they have access to, yet a 3rd party company is charging them £120 per annum (for the last few years) for ‘Domain Name Management Services’.

This £120 per annum invoice had been paid as the client didn’t really know what it was and didn’t want to ‘not pay’ in case it created a problem. After Abussi had looked at this and understood it was for services that the 3rd party could not actually be providing, we challenged it and a full refund was provided.

Too Busy, Need Help

It’s clear that in these two cases the client was not at fault. The client was seeking support and advice on their complex IT systems and in the case of the iPad they were not forthcoming from the provider who saw the chance to simply charge money for some time spent trying to help. In the second case it was an example of how a business owner with too much to manage day-2-day and too little IT knowledge can easily overlook or misunderstand the fees or costs coming into the business for technology services.

Neither of these are criticisms of the business or business owner but show how a good MSP can “..convince customers that the personal relationships, intimate knowledge, and trusted adviser roles you bring are worth the little bit extra they might have to pay..”. In both of these cases I think we did just that.

If you want to explore the benefits of an MSP relationship rather than an old fashioned IT Support relationship then come and talk to us today : Why Abussi ?

Here’s a question. If your email suddenly went down, who would you turn to? The IT company that looks after your servers? Your broadband provider? Or your hosting service? How many of you reading this will be honest and admit that you don’t really understand the difference between those last three services?

Its too important

How much business could you lose until the problem was resolved? And whose valuable time would be spent sorting it out? Like most businesses these days, you probably rely heavily on your IT and communications. When they’re working well, it’s great. But when they don’t, it can be a nightmare. And an expensive one, in terms of lost time and opportunity.

On top of this, IT is interdependent as never before. Office and mobile devices are all increasingly expected to work together. Yet most businesses have separate supplier arrangements for all these – with the high risk of different parties passing responsibility when things go wrong.

Get your vendors managed

This is where the Vendor Management concept comes in. One client described it to me recently as having just one throat to choke. And it’s that simple. By giving a company the responsibility of managing the relationships with all your different vendors, you just have one number to call – for your computers, landlines, mobiles, copiers, printers, website and email host, broadband, networks and so on.

Vendor Management is traditionally an add on service that’s offered by your IT Support or Managed Services Provider as they have a better overall view of the disparate services working together. An example could be  that they might be so concerned about the quality of a broadband provider being used by a client that they recommend a change. By monitoring reliability, they can identify potential problems before they get really serious.

One throat to choke

So vendor management gives you a single point of contact for all vendor issues. It keeps your entire IT infrastructure regularly reviewed, managed and refreshed. And it allows you to concentrate on what you do best – leaving the rest to an outsourced partner. We have a number of examples in our Case Study section

If you want to explore the benefits of Vendor Management as part of a wider Managed Services agreement then come and talk to us today : Why Abussi ?

This blog is the result of my online reading and findings presented by many companies, vendors, commentators and Managed Service Providers (MSP’s) who offer a wealth of information on IT related subjects. A recent article from IT Channel Insight offers an interesting debate about Cloud Services and specifically how one of their guest bloggers, Casper Manes, feels that Cloud Services may present a risk to MSP’s.

The Issue

The article presents an interesting dilemma for clients and MSP’s alike. Cloud Services are presented as simple, easy and self managing – which for MSP’s is something that presents a possible risk in that clients might simply go off and purchase them independently and no longer see value in the MSP. This is certainly a possibility but I think that from my experience  Cloud Services can be used to replace certain aspects of a clients IT solution that used to be very ‘hardware heavy’ – but which still require expertise to manage as a whole on behalf of the client.

Not as easy as it looks

Lets take Hosted Email as a simple example. Office 365 and other similar services offer the chance to get your email moved to a hosted platform with ease. Well, that’s partly true but has anyone who is non technical tried to change an MX record ? Or perhaps like many of our clients do they even know what or where their domain name is held ? This will require MSP services to make work, as will the migration of legacy information and management of the whole migration. It’s a service that can be provided and charged for by the MSP and ongoing management of the solution charged for long term. Even better, save the client the trouble of even paying for the mailbox(s) themselves and re-sell a solution with some margin.

More than just IT

In recent months I have been asked by clients a whole variety of questions that to them are IT related but to me were not as clear cut. I have been asked to help them find Time Management software, to assist in putting a spreadsheet into Google Apps for multi-user access, to offer domain migration advice and also to review a clients telecoms services to reduce complexity. The Channel Insight article does contain a sentiment that I agree with wholeheartedly – namely that “.. [an MPS's] mission is to convince customers that the personal relationships, intimate knowledge, and trusted advisor roles you bring are worth the little bit extra they might have to pay..”

Bigger picture

Many clients feel that IT is getting easier and therefore its something that they can do themselves and save money on internal or external IT providers. Well, Accountancy software has become simpler to use in the past 10 years but do companies feel less need for professional accountants to supervise their books each year ? You can get much more legal information online now but do companies feel able to take on a legal case independently of a lawyer or solicitor ? Cloud Services are just one aspect of what should be an MSP’s wide range of skills and services that they provide to clients. They can be seen as a threat, but in my mind they allow the MSP to offer ‘big company’ IT services to smaller clients and in that way retain more business in the long term.

If you want to explore the benefits of Managed Services then come and talk to us today : Why Abussi ?

IT Support has always been the key term businesses use to describe the service they need to ‘make the computers work’. However, as IT moves forward its no longer a matter of just fixing the computer(s) but also managing the security, SPAM filters, broadband, remote workers, VoIP and a multitude of other services that impact your IT systems. That’s why a new term has emerged in the world of IT – Managed Services – a term that simply is an updated reference to IT Support but with an eye on the fact that its now about managing a wealth of IT services as a whole.

The importance of stability

Let’s start with a question. How much inconvenience would you suffer – and how much business would be at risk – if your system failed and you didn’t have adequate back-up? Or if your security was breached? Or if your email went down, even for just a couple of days? And how much would it cost to put it right on an ad hoc, emergency basis?

Well, we’ve seen it happen far too often to companies who weren’t protected – with disruption to the business, and disproportionate costs. And that’s why a managed services programme can make so much sense.

Think about your car for a minute. Regular servicing and preventive maintenance keeps it running smoothly. You wouldn’t wait for it to break down and leave you stranded. It’s just the same with IT – only even more important.

What’s the SP on MSP’s ?

So what are managed services? What does a Managed Services Provider, or MSP actually do? Well each month, they examine and check every aspect of your network and system, including key areas such as security, back-up, usage levels and operational effectiveness. You get clear and detailed reports of what’s been tested, work completed and pending, and any potential problems that need attention before they become serious.

In addition, you get levels of support that normally only large companies enjoy. Unlimited telephone support, via a dedicated helpline. Unlimited remote monitoring and support – with links from your server to a monitoring dashboard. And unlimited engineer support on site, if this becomes necessary.

Insure against failure

For some, it helps to think of it as an insurance policy that buys you peace of mind, confidence in your IT operations and systems that are smooth-running and problem-free. And most importantly, it’s an insurance policy that buys business uptime and continuity, which are very hard to regain quickly if serious IT problems occur. DTI statistics show that 70% of businesses don’t trade again after a catastrophic IT failure including virus infection or hard disk failures on the server.

Some find it hard to believe that MSP need to be this proactive, instead thinking that the IT systems just sort themselves out. Others struggle to change from the old break and fix way of doing things, or muddle through with the false economy of IT being done on a part time basis by an enthusiastic amateur.

Real benefits

But clients who are using managed services know for themselves that it really is the way forward – taking away the burden of day-to-day IT management, and enabling them to really focus on running their business and improve strategic direction as they develop and grow. We have a number of examples in our Case Study section

Additional to Managed Services, many MSP’s can provide Vendor Management – an add on that puts the MSP in the firing line, not you, by managing not just the IT systems but the technology that touches them. This can cover your telecommunications, both fixed and mobile, along with cabling, broadband, copiers and printers.

If you want to explore the benefits of Managed Services then come and talk to us today : Why Abussi ?

Christmas; what is it good for, absolutely nothing….. say it again. Oh no, hang on……. that’s war isn’t it ! Anyway, the truth is that Christmas, or to be more precise the period leading up to Christmas, is actually good for many things in business, but perhaps things you had not considered before.

December is traditionally very quiet in the IT Services sector as business owners and MD’s are not looking to make investments in new equipment or entertain the idea of getting started on new initiatives. Therefore, I use December as a time to ensure we investigate new business ideas, new services and new opportunities which we can present in January as people return to work and are more inclined to listen. The world of IT moves quickly and so services or solutions that were very ‘current’ in 2011 may have been surpassed by 2012 and need replacing in 2013…………… time to get to understand the benefits and prepare to sell those to our clients.

December is also a great time for getting close to your clients and using the festive cheer as a lubricant to help build client relationships, find out about their plans for the New Year and ensure you offer clients the chance to ‘off load’ any problems they may have experienced. At Christmas time, clients are more likely to open the door and let you in for a chat as they are less stressed and looking forward to the end of the year when we all get what is traditionally one of our longest holidays.

The festive period is also a good time to do what few people want to do during the rest of the year; when pressures of time and activity leave little space for the ‘details of business. Take backup for example. Many people will be away for 10 or more days and a lot can happen in that time to their IT systems. I find that it’s a great time to put new backup and business continuity solutions in place which can stop problems from occurring or at least ensure you have all the information you need if a problem does occur. You might not think that Christmas is a good time to do this, but after Boxing Day when you have faced the 10th Turkey sandwich, another day of kids playing with noisy toys and the prospect of in-laws staying till the New Year then you’ll consider doing anything to get away for some peace and quiet !

So, use your time wisely and think of Christmas as a period when you can recapture some of your lost enthusiasm for new ideas and maybe use the holiday to deal with the details that get overlooked during the rest of the year.

Happy Christmas to you all

One thing that a good website, well planned SEO and simple to understand marketing propositions offer me is a steady stream of inbound enquiries. Many of these enquiries are from companies looking for IT Support in the West Midlands who, for a variety of reasons, are looking to change their provider either because of poor service, cost issues or a combination of both. This is normal and all IT providers will get varying degrees of this over time.

What prompted the writing of this blog is the increase in times when I sit there pulling my hair out as SME’s lose sight of the importance of IT to their business, and how looking for the cheapest IT service is actually going to cost them money over time. I know we are in ‘difficult times’ and I know SME’s have little ‘spare’ cash but the importance of IT means it should be seen as key to the success of their business over time and not an expense which should be reduced to the lowest amount they can find.

Cheap as (Micro) Chips

This approach has a knock on effect in terms of service and the managing of expectations with clients. Let me use an example. In a recent prospect meeting the MD of the company was telling me all about the poor level of service he was getting from a local IT provider and how he was fed up of being left until last, as he saw it, on the list of work the provider was carrying out. After some searching questions it was made clear that the MD had agreed the ‘Ad Hoc’ service plan with his IT provider and so would not be seen by the IT provider as important as his regular monthly contract clients. Now it may be that you feel any service you pay for should receive equal priority but that’s just not realistic and so by making a commitment to the IT provider they will make a commitment to you.

Something for Nothing

The fee’s companies are paying to receive IT support are, in my opinion, far too low to get the level of service they expect. One recent prospect told me that my prices were high due to the fact that he was paying around £80 per month to have his server and 6 computers looked after. He went on to say that he was disappointed with the service he was getting and that he was making this enquiry to me in order to look for better options, while making it clear he wanted to pay the same as he was or even lower !

I wonder what reaction you would get if you walked into a BMW dealer and asked to buy a 5 series but then said, but of course I want it to cost the same as a Ford Fiesta. Many people find it hard to understand that IT services, similarly to Accountancy services, Legal services and other professional services are priced according to the service you get. Cheaper = less service; Cheaper = lower skills; Cheaper = lower quality

Fixer not Consultant

Another trend that these recent prospect meetings have highlighted is the fact that SME’s are still focused on their IT provider being an emergency fixer and not an advisor or business development consultant. I regularly hear that my service level, which is a flat monthly fee with all you can eat support is ‘too much’ in terms of cost and service because the prospect makes it clear that they don’t call out their IT provider that often. This shows a fundamental lack of understanding in what the modern IT provider offers to its clients. IT support companies should be advising you regularly on how you can increase efficiency, reduce cost, enhance flexibility and develop new services. None of this is about ‘fixing’ anything; it’s about making the best use of your investment.

Conclusion

So, next time you think about your IT provider and if you are getting the service you expect, consider that you get what you pay for and that a good provider can help you save the value of your investment over time with good advice and zero computer crashes

About Craig Sharp

As the owner of Abussi Ltd, a West Midlands based IT Managed Service Provider, I can help you and your company gain maximum benefit from any IT investment while providing a professional support service to resolve any day-to-day issues. High quality IT services are only a phone call or email away - contact me today

Blessed with great business instinct, but limited IT skills, many micro business owners find themselves in an office with IT that is at best “non standard”.

And this is a problem for two main reasons.

Firstly good IT need not be difficult. There are many companies and consultants out there who can help businesses sort through the IT minefield.

Secondly reliable, fit for purpose and dependable IT is no longer something that’s a “nice-to-have”. Instead it’s a necessity for running a business. In fact, it’s the only way a business can remain competitive with larger firms without increasing their costs by employing large numbers of staff.

What to focus on

In my opinion there are 4 key areas where a business should focus their attention in order to get the best value from their IT investment :

• A functional email system that links to their Laptop, Desktop and Mobile Phone
• Preferably Cloud services like Hosted Exchange or Google Apps Email (like G-Mail but using your domain name)
• Some form of regular backup procedure that allows company documents and files to be stored and recovered.
• Preferably Cloud services for file storage like DropBox or Google Docs
• Protection from an increasing number of Internet threats that include SPAM, Malware and Viruses
• Achieved with PC / Laptop anti virus software and an effective firewall on a router
• Business grade IT hardware that’s built for business users, not home users
• Not the latest deal in PC world but a business brand like HP or Dell

How you’ll benefit

Whether you ensure these areas receive the time and thought to be set up correctly, or if you elect to outsource the management of these services to an external suppler, you can be certain your business will receive the following benefits:

• A rapid response to email inquiries along with timely replies to emails plus retaining an audit trail over multiple devices
• Confidence that lost or deleted information can be recovered with no noticeable impact to you or your clients
• Certainty that your business is protected against avoidable threats that could impact your ability to function or put clients at risk
• Reliable IT hardware that is going to last and provide good long term value and in turn increased efficiency for staff

Get your head in the cloud!

So let’s focus a little more on the two Cloud services mentioned.

By getting your email and files (data) into a Cloud location, the information can be accessed from anywhere and not just from a single PC or laptop. This is very useful if, as many micro businesses do, you collaborate with others but don’t share a fixed office. If you do have an office then it allows you to work more flexibly such as from home.

Affordability…

Let’s now put some outline costs to these services.

A Google Apps account is free from Google and a Hosted Exchange account will cost around £6 per month.

The Google Apps Email service is great for those micro businesses starting up from scratch. For those who are coming from a corporate environment and who prefer the familiar feel of Outlook, then the Hosted Exchange solution won’t break the bank.

Something like Google Docs for data storage is again free, but you also get online versions of a Word Processor, Spreadsheet etc.

DropBox is free for up to 2Gb of storage and just £8 per month for up to 50Gb but it’s more focused on storage and sharing with other users as you don’t get the ‘apps’ like you do with Google Docs. These are low costs, especially given the huge flexibility your business will gain. In addition it takes away a worry about continuity in the event something fails, is lost or stolen.

In respect to Anti-Virus services then one of the best around is currently FREE and is called Microsoft Security Essentials. It’s a Microsoft product and protects you against viruses and malware and can be installed (for free) in a business of up to 10 users.

Hardware purchase requires a little more discussion than is available here, but make sure you get the right hardware from a business focused manufacturer. It will offer better long term value, it will last longer than the equipment designed for home use and it will result in your business being more reliable and thus profitable in the longer term.

Getting reliable IT services may not be as difficult as you might have first thought

But the benefits of such services, especially Cloud services, are huge.

Smaller businesses, in my opinion, have the most to gain from Cloud services. 1-5 users can have full email and file sharing features allowing them to compete and challenge larger competitors who have bigger IT budgets.

I’ve worked with lots of business and have seen that by tackling just email and data storage it can transform your business. So imagine what could be possible if 3 or even all 4 of them were covered?

Don’t neglect your IT services. Instead spend a bit of time ensuring what you have is fit for purpose. And if you’re not sure where to start or are wondering what you should focus on, have a chat with Abussi. We will be only too happy to help and advise.

“You’ll miss me when I’m gone” is a phrase I’ve heard various (older) family members say to me, usually as I roll my eyes at the latest bit of wisdom they’ve decided to impart. However, it’s apt for business IT.

Recently we’ve seen how a seemingly small ‘software update’ resulted in a broad outage of NatWest’s banking systems. It led to an unheard of step: banks opening on a Sunday. If, like NatWest, IT is at the heart of your business then what are the implications of such a problem if it happens to you? What should you do to maintain reliability?

We take IT for granted

IT has become a hidden service that we take for granted. The internet, once derided as a fad, is now a key service in our lives. From shopping and booking travel to connecting with friends and researching school projects, it’s essential.

What’s more, people have started to view broadband as a basic human right, almost in the same league as water, food and sanitation. This is the level to which the internet has risen in just over 15 years. It demonstrates how important IT is to our everyday lives.

If you run a business then this trend will have spread into your world too. It was not that long ago that IT was the preserve of the accounts department who used it to process payroll. But today it’s used by every member of staff for almost everything they do.

If your business depends on IT, do you give it the attention required to keep it beating at the heart of your company? There are four simple steps you can take to make sure your IT provides good service – day in and day out:

1. Buy the right equipment

I recently visited a prospective client who wanted to set up a call centre. Staff would use their computers as the base from which to make calls and update their customer relationship management (CRM) database. They told me they were planning to buy refurbished (second-hand) computers to keep costs down.

My advice? If you plan to base your company on a database that requires reliable IT, second-hand equipment is a false economy.

That doesn’t mean you have to buy super-expensive business computers. But most well-known brands offer PCs with a three-year warranty and next-day help if you need it. What’s more, buy business-grade IT, not computers designed for domestic use. There’s a difference – and it could mean you get a PC that lasts four years instead of two.

2. Monitor your systems

There are many free or cheap services out there that can monitor your systems for problems like low disk space, a failing networking connection or high memory use. These services are simple to install and can be combined to create a single web page that puts a green, amber or red dot next to each IT asset to show its status.

Two good tools are GFI and CentraStage – they’re free for the first 30 days, and can give you a valuable glimpse of how your IT is operating (or not).

3. Audit your equipment

This one’s easy. The main aim of auditing is to stay ahead of the IT age curve. A computer’s average lifespan is three to five years, so it makes sense to look at replacing each computer once it’s four years old. If you don’t know how old your equipment is then you can’t make that assessment.

The simplest approach is to note the purchase date of all assets in your business. Then rank them in order, newest at the top, oldest at the bottom. If any computers are over five years old, replace them immediately. Put any over four years old on a list for replacement soon. Keep updating your list and you’ll stay on top of your hardware replacement (this helps spread the costs too).

4. Take security seriously

I see too many companies that don’t take their IT security seriously. They think staff will self-manage things like spending hours on Facebook or emailing friends from a work computer. Of course, they don’t – so you need to manage this through a policy or software.

Internet security is a large and growing problem. Simply going to the wrong website can result in malware, spyware and unwanted software ending up on your computers. Stop this, and you’ll significantly reduce the chance of system failure.

Conclusion

Following these simple steps will help ensure your IT systems stay working to the best of their ability: as a vital business tool that helps to generate revenue. As my old Gran always used to say, “you’ll miss me when I’m gone”.

“..I would never put my critical data in the cloud..” It’s a prevailing point of view. The idea being that putting your personal data, documents, or music on a computer other than your own means that you are somehow more vulnerable to privacy invasions, hacking, and other problems.

There can be no argument that you are taking a risk by trusting someone else with your data. However, it’s worth pausing for a moment and asking yourself a question that few ever think about: Is your data really safer if you manage it yourself? Here are a few things you may want to consider.

1) You probably don’t already have a good backup of your vital data

Sure, you run your backup program every so often (maybe even nightly). Perhaps it backs everything up directly to your trusty external hard drive that’s constantly plugged into your computer. Maybe the IT guy comes into the office every so often to swap backup tapes on the server.

Now consider – what happens if your house burns down, your office floods, or someone breaks in and steals your laptop and backup drive? What happens if your computer gets a virus which decides to delete all of the files on your local hard drive as well as any external drives it happens to be connected to?

Most importantly, how often do you actually test your ability to restore from the backups you create? Are you sure the tapes created by your IT guy actually contain your critical data?

The reality is that there’s no cost-effective backup strategy the typical home-user or SME can implement that provides a truly secure, always-accessible solution to protecting against all of the scenarios mentioned above unless you use the cloud in some way to create off-site backups.

Cloud-based backup solutions give you a simple, cheap way to keep your important data backed up in a location other than your home or office (the key here being that your backups must reside in a location separate from your computer, so that if one is stolen, damaged, or lost, the other remains intact).

Plenty of online backup solutions today offer fully encrypted backups (the kind that can’t even be decrypted by employees of the company) – so you should obviously do your homework before choosing one. Any (minimal) risk associated with your backups possibly being stolen and decrypted by a (very ambitious) hacker should be mitigated by the fact that your data is actually backed up properly, and not vulnerable to every-day threats.

2) Your most sensitive personal information is probably already in the cloud

Most people don’t understand that their personal data exists in the cloud today, even if you didn’t put it there. Your bank account details exist on the bank’s website, your credit scores are on the servers of credit bureaus and your travel reservations are on the airline’s web-site, along with hundreds of other pieces of important information about you are out there, waiting for you to view it.

Obviously, these companies go to great lengths to keep your data private, but there have been cases where something happens and criminals are able to retrieve the data. Remember, in many cases, this is data you didn’t even put there, but it’s sensitive information about you, nonetheless.

The point is – you’re likely safer taking an active role in knowing who has your personal information, and managing those accounts carefully.

3) Your computer is probably full of spyware, viruses or malware

Unless we’re talking about the true computer-geeks of the world, statistically speaking, nearly every Windows home and SME computer out there has some sort of spyware, virus, adware, or other form of malware installed and running. I’m sure you faithfully run your favorite anti-virus software in the background, but remember, virus creators test their stuff against the latest and greatest as well (to make sure it’s not detectable).

The typical business computer user is really not professionally qualified to be the system-administrator of their own computer, and yet that’s precisely the role they’re asked to assume. This leaves the door wide open for hackers.

In a cloud-storage scenario, you mitigate this risk by trusting your data to people who are security experts and make their living by providing clean, secure, and hacker-resistant storage solutions. Do they always get it right? Definitely not. Is your data safer with them, than in your spyware, virus-infected laptop? Absolutely.

4) Your laptop is at risk of being lost or stolen

One of the most common arguments people make for not storing their data in the cloud is that they don’t want their documents and data to be stolen. I can certainly respect this, and I understand why someone might feel safer if they keep their data in a place where they see and touch it.

Why, then, does the typical laptop owner leave their computer sitting on the front-seat of their car while they stop in for their morning cup of coffee?

If you don’t want your data to be stolen, you’re far better off keeping it in a location where it’s not vulnerable to being lost, damaged, or stolen with one of your devices. Keep it in the cloud where it’s being stored in a military-grade data-center, behind bullet-proof glass, biometrically secured, and watched 24×7. This way, at least you’ll have the peace of mind knowing that, even if someone steals your laptop, they’ve gained access to nothing.

Conclusion

The cloud isn’t perfect, but it provides an opportunity for the average SME employee to step up their game in terms of providing better security, backups, and overall protection in what is otherwise a very dangerous technical landscape. Unless you plan to become an expert in computer systems administration and data security, your best option to keep yourself as safe as possible is to put your trust in someone with expertise in these areas. It’s the same reason you use a bank to store your cash instead of handling it yourself– the bank is simply better equipped to keep your money safe than you are.