How Managed IT Services Can Reduce The Cost Of Running Your IT

Have you ever wondered why your office administrator is spending more and more time on the telephone to your IT company when they should be dealing with your customer correspondence? Whatever the reason, time spent troubleshooting problems on your IT systems costs you real money, either because your staff are diverted from the jobs that they are meant to be doing, or because you need to pay your IT engineer another couple of hundred pounds to come in and sort the problem out for you.

If you want to cut the real cost of supporting your IT, you need to makes some changes. You need to do a little housekeeping to delete some of the digital clutter that PC’s accumulate as a result of carrying out your day-to-day work. You also need to make sure that your PC’s are kept updated with all of the latest patches to protect you from viruses and trojans that you can download from the internet without even realising it.

Ask yourself a few questions

• When did you last defragment or run disk cleanup on your PC hard drives?
• Would you know if one of your PC’s was running out of Hard disk space?
• How often do you check that Windows Updates are installing properly on all of your PC’s?

These are all straightforward tasks that can help you to spot potential problems before they bite you. Think of it as being the equivalent of a car service. I’ll bet that you take your car in for a service every year because it makes your car run better, and because if you don’t your engine will eventually seize up and cost you ten times more than getting it serviced regularly. Computers are no different, except that computers really need to be checked on a weekly basis.

If that sounds a daunting task, why not outsource your IT Support to a company who can manage your IT for you. Just like your car dealer, they can use automation software to perform the equivalent of a service on your PC’s via the internet. This is by far the least expensive way of performing the regular housekeeping tasks that will keep your PC’s running reliably and virus free, and as a consequence you won't need to call out an engineer to your offices so often. The net result is that your IT keeps running, your employees can get on with the job that you pay them for, and your IT costs are kept as low as possible. 

Let me know if you need an IT tip to make your PC's and Servers work better for you. Where possible, one of my engineers will answer your question on the blog. If we can't we will at least email you back and try to point you in the right direction if we can.

Five Ways That Cloud Storage and Collaboration Is Good For Business.

Wouldn’t it make life so much easier for your business if your staff could use the cloud to collaborate on project documents within their teams as well as with business partners and clients? What about using the cloud to back up information on your company laptops and tablet computers so that you never need to worry about loss of data due to a hard disk failure or malware attack again? But can you trust public cloud services with your company data?

In truth, unless you need to store highly confidential or personal information, it's not difficult to set up secure online data storage for your employees as and when you need it. Where confidential information needs to be stored online, low cost encryption software can be used to secure files that you upload to protect information from prying eyes in the unlikely event that your account is compromised.

Today’s online storage and data sharing services also make it extremely easy for your employees, partners and customers to share files online. The reputation of organisations such as Google, Trend Micro and Accellion stands or falls on their ability to protect your data, so as you would expect they have made a significant investment in both technology and specialist staff to ensure that every reasonable precaution is taken to protect your confidential information.

Cloud based data sharing between project teams helps to increase the productivity of your staff. New versions of documents generated as part of a project are automatically updated on all relevant devices using data synchronisation. This significantly improves collaboration between distributed teams since everyone can be sure that they always have the latest copies of project documentation and drawings to hand. 

Setting up data synchronisation between your PC and the cloud is a simple operation. You simply download the software which sets up a synchronisation folder on your PC / device. You can create subfolders which will allow you to group items together (e.g. for different projects), and from then on the whole process of synchronising changes to the cloud and your other devices (e.g. your iPad) can be automated. The automatic synchronisation process runs silently in the background and requires no investment in hardware or training.

How safe is my data?

Cloud based storage encrypts all files stored in the cloud in secure data centres. Backup routines will also be used to ensure that your data is safe in the event of equipment failure and can be recovered quickly in the event of a technical or human error. The weakest link in the security chain is therefore the password that you use to access your account. To address this threat, two factor authentication can be used in conjunction with services such as Google Apps for Business.

Five key benefits of cloud data storage:

1. Simple File Sharing: Online file sharing services allow you to access your files from any device. For example, you may create a document on a work PC, but may also need to access it from home PC or on your iPad / Android tablet when you are on a client’s premises. With a few clicks you can also share any of your files with your clients.
2. Access anywhere: Your data is always accessible to authorised users at any time and via any internet connected device (including smartphones and tablets).
3. Safe storage: Data is automatically backed up to secure online storage. Robust security is provided to secure your confidential data, including encrypted transmission and malware scanning.
4. Synchronisation of all devices: As you update your information, it is automatically synchronised across all authorised devices, including PC and MAC clients as well as IOS and Android tablets and smartphones.
5. Efficient management: It is simple to create new user accounts from a central management console. In addition, you can allow users to create their own personal areas to manage their data.

For startup and small companies, it is entirely possible to use cloud storage instead of incurring the expense of installing your own file server. It allows you to store, synchronise, and secure your files online in a single location and share these files with colleagues and business partners at the click of a mouse button.

If you would like to know whether online collaboration services such as Trend Micro SafeSync for Business or Google Apps for Business would meet your needs for online data storage and collaboration, please call us on 01707 255060, or email us at info@clearview.co.uk. 

The 7 Secrets Of Successful IT Support

Your business needs expert IT support to keep your business running, and you expect good value for money, but what services should you look for from a potential supplier to keep your systems in good health?

There are a number of components of IT support that need to be costed and catered for to keep your IT running smoothly, protected from internet borne malware, and also to ensure that any IT issues can be rectified as quickly as possible.

1. Hardware Asset Management
By maintaining accurate records of our customers’ installed hardware, we are able to arrive on site ready and prepared to set about the task of repairing or rebuilding the system that has failed. Without this information, it can take an hour or more from the arrival of an engineer on site for them to identify the problem, work out which item needs to be replaced, and then buy a replacement from PC World (the most expensive place to buy replacement parts) before coming back to your office to effect the repair. All this time, the clock is ticking costing you money unnecessarily.

2. Software Asset Management

Software auditing allows us to monitor licence usage within your organisation on your behalf and better manage software upgrades that are required on your systems as old versions of software become unsupported. We can then advise you of recommended upgrades to be undertaken as part of a regular review programme.

3. Antivirus / Antispware Management
Maintaining up-to-date security software is an essential discipline in keeping your IT systems running reliably. Although endpoint security software is self-updating, modern malware can deactivate it in the event that your PC is infected. Indeed, antivirus software that is out of date or deactivated is a warning sign that the PC may have suffered a successful malware attack.

4. Windows Update / Patch Management

Windows and application patches are the front line battleground in combating internet malware that causes your PC’s to run slowly and crash. Sometimes Windows updates fail to install, and it is essential to monitor these events and take corrective action to make sure that the relevant update is installed as soon as possible. Also, when a WIndows patch continues to fail to install, it is a sure sign that something is wrong. When this happens, it’s time for a rebuild, and by catching the problem early we can schedule the support work so that it has a minimal impact on your business.

5. Desktop Policy Management

Your PC’s will run a lot more reliably if you ensure that you only have software that is essential for your business installed on your PC’s. We monitor software that is installed on your PC’s, and identify any unwanted software that we find. We then either agree a change to your policy with you if it is needed to run your business or take action to remove it.

6. Scheduled Maintenance

To keep your PC’s running at peak performance, you have to do a little maintenance on a regular basis. We make sure that routine maintenance is carried out to clear out temporary files and defragment your hard disk to make sure that you get best performance from your systems. We also make sure that a full antivirus scan is run overnight on your PC’s on a weekly basis.

7. Helpdesk Support

All IT Systems fail sometimes, at which point the support process starts and we will employ telephone, remote or onsite support as necessary. The benefit of diligence in undertaking all of the above processes however is that they will minimise the amount of times that your systems fail. The most expensive component of providing IT Support is the cost of sending an engineer to site, and it only makes sense to do whatever is possible to minimise this expensive activity.

Our approach is very different to self employed consultants who may charge cheaper hourly rates because they don't provide these essential preemptive maintenance services. Lower hourly charges may appear attractive initially, until you find that you are regularly writing cheques for £200 for ad-hoc support. Our approach is to do everything possible to avoid onsite callouts which are not only costly, but also result in lost staff productivity for you while your staff wait for an IT repair to be undertaken.

If you would like to know more about our IT Support services, please visit our web site, download our IT Services white paper, or contact us by telephone on 01707 255060 or via email at info@clearview.co.uk.

What Do You Do When Your IT Fails?

Many companies would simply stop working without access to their mainline business applications, so it is surprising to find that many companies' backup procedures fail to address best practices for contingency and business continuity planning.  As a business owner you need to plan for contingencies such as IT failure, fire and flood, and there are a number of sensible backup procedures that you should consider implementing to protect against IT failure and give yourself the best chance of keeping the wheels turning when disaster strikes:

Data Backup

Every company needs a plan for data backup, and in fact most companies do at least something. We often find however that these plans can be very simple, and often just comprise taking a backup of the server to a backup drive or tape.

Offsite Backup is a must!

Unless you have offsite backup of your company data, you are not protected against real emergencies such as fire or flood, where both a company’s main server and the backup drive can be destroyed. Given that loss of your data through fire is effectively your worst nightmare, surely every company should be backing up their business critical data (i.e. that which is needed to get you up and running again) to cloud storage to protect against this eventuality. Whilst many people still have legitimate concerns over data security in the cloud, there are a number of suppliers that provide affordable encrypted online backup which will protect your confidential data and ensure that you can recover your business data swiftly in the event that disaster strikes.

Don’t Rely On Manual Methods

We also still find companies where offsite backup is a manual process. While any offsite backup is better than none, do you really want to run the risk that lightning strikes when the person who performs data backup for you is on holiday? Given that there is little or no premium to be paid for automated offsite backup software, we strongly advocate that you should remove the element of chance and automate the entire process.

Don’t forget laptops and mobile devices

The great thing with laptops and tablets is that you can work on the move and carry your work round with you wherever you go, but unless you do something about it, that information is not going to be backed up anywhere in the event that your laptop is stolen, lost or the hard disk fails. There are some very neat solutions to address this issue now, some of which are built into standard data backup solutions, and others which provide cloud backup / synchronisation as part of a cloud storage service that allows you to share information across desktop PC’s laptops and tablet devices. You will need to take into consideration the way that your employees work in selecting the right solution for your company, but backup for laptops and mobile devices should be considered if you want to avoid the wringing of hands (not to mention data recovery costs) when your laptop hard disk fails taking with it the business plan that you have been working on for next week’s meeting with your bank manager!

Plan For Resilience When Moving To The Cloud

Cloud computing adoption is now moving swiftly ahead. Apart from email, many companies are starting to move business applications such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) to cloud based services. If industry experts are correct, we will all be buying our business software on subscription from a cloud supplier within the next 5 years.

The benefits of cloud computing are clear. You gain access to all of the software that you need to run your business without having to invest in expensive servers, or the technical expertise to install and maintain them. Furthermore social media services such as Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus are becoming part of everyday marketing and customer service activity. Yet the more we become reliant on the Internet to run our businesses, the more disruption we suffer when technology fails leaving us disconnected from our customers and business information.

Keeping The Internet Running

Fortunately, firewalls, routers and the links that connect us to the Internet are fairly reliable. Nonetheless, given the potential loss of productivity that businesses are likely to suffer in the event of the loss of Internet service, it makes sense to make provision for backup.

Firewall Resilience

The majority of business class firewalls such as those provided by SonicWall can be configured as a high availability pair such that a secondary unit automatically takes over in the event of failure of the primary firewall. The software and configuration of the secondary firewall needs to be identical to the primary unit, but manufacturers provide concessionary pricing so that the cost of firewall resilience is affordable.

Internet Link Resilience

Many firewalls will include the provision to automatically switch over to a second line in the event that your primary Internet link fails. Nonetheless, you need to be careful to ensure that your backup Internet link enters your offices through a different route to your primary link. It wouldn’t be the first time that a company’s primary link fails only to find out that their backup Internet link enters the building using the same cable route that has just been dug up by the gas board! To avoid this issue, there are two options:

• If you can live with a reduced service for a few hours that will provide you with limited browsing together with the ability to access email, a 3G or 4G cellular connection  can be connected to the firewall for use when the primary link fails.

• If you need better performance, a 2 MB satellite link can provide the backup Internet connection with only minimal degradation of service.

The problem with building resilience into your IT systems is working out where to stop. Should you install resilient hard disk configurations, mirrored servers, or do you simply outsource the problem of system resilience to a cloud provider? As a business owner, you will need to weigh the likelihood of a failure of a server, network component or internet link against the impact to your business and the cost of incorporating different levels of resilience, although we would be pleased to advise anyone who needs some help in these areas. 

The points raised above are simply a starting point, but if they help you to formulate a Business Continuity strategy that will help you to sleep a little easier, I will have done what I set out to do.

If you would like to discuss your needs for Computer Support or Business Continuity Planning, please call on 01707 255060, or email us at info@clearview.co.uk. We would be delighted to help.

How To Cut The Cost Of Running Your IT

Have you ever wondered why you still get viruses / malware on your company’s PC’s even though you have purchased security software from a reputable vendor? It’s a good question and one that you need to understand if you want to minimise the operational cost of running your business. After all, every time you need to call an engineer it costs you money, and not just in terms of cheques that you write to your IT support company. In addition, there is the cost of lost employee productivity caused by degraded performance as your system becomes unusable, as well as the time lost while your employee waits for their system to be rebuilt. So what should you do to ensure that you don't waste money on engineer call-outs and lost productivity?

IT Security Is A Process

You have to recognise that IT Security doesn’t just involve installing software. You have to make sure that you perform necessary housekeeping on a regular basis. Specifically, it is essential to keep your systems updated with the latest updates and patches for Microsoft Windows and common applications such as Adobe and Java to protect you against the latest security issues that are discovered.

The reason that regular maintenance is so critical is that newly discovered software bugs (also known as vulnerabilities) are used by hackers and fraudsters to plant malicious software on your PC’s. These are the cracks in your defences that allow your security to be breached even with security software installed.

It is likely if not inevitable that you will suffer malware infections at some point if you allow your employees to access the internet. Hackers and security companies are locked in a constant battle that is played out on your IT systems on a daily basis. When a new bug is found, hackers move quickly to write and distribute code that allows them to exploit it before the security companies react with countermeasures to identify and foil their attempts. Each time a new bug is found, a number of PC’s are infected before the new updates are installed.

To give you some idea of the scale of the problem, in 2012, Secunia (the industry reference point on IT security) issued 124 “Security Advisories” for Windows 7 covering 237 vulnerabilities, of which 5% remain unresolved at the time of writing this article. Internet Explorer 9 was the subject of 14 security advisories covering 70 vulnerabilities of which 7% are not yet resolved. These are just two of the most common items of software installed on your PC’s, yet we are already talking about a new security threat being discovered almost every day.

How To Keep Your Systems Up-To-Date

Your PC’s should prompt you to update Microsoft Windows, as well as applications such as Adobe and Java on a regular basis. If you ever see a message that an update has failed to install, you need to do something about it. The reason that the update has failed is very often that you have unwittingly downloaded some malware from a “hacked” or malicious website. If this is the case, malware can be silently gathering your login credentials and feeding them back to a hacker without you realising it. Very often your PC will start to run more slowly as the malware starts to take up resources. To make things worse, once malware finds a victim it will often send out for its friends, which themselves take up more resources until your PC becomes unusable and needs to be rebuilt.

Do It Yourself Or Call In The Experts?

It is understandable that many small business owners still take a reactive approach to IT security. Taking time to make sure that the latest Windows updates and patches have been successfully applied, or making sure that antivirus software on your workstations hasn’t been disabled by malware takes time and takes you away from running your business. The problem is that unless you do spend time making these checks, you are far more likely to suffer a malware attack.

If you are happy to maintain your own systems, you can buy PC Audit software which will identify systems that aren’t updating properly, or that show other signs that they have been infected by malware. Otherwise, you may be better off outsourcing the process of regular auditing and updating your IT systems to a Managed IT Service Provider who will be able to use automation software to manage the process more efficiently and cost effectively than you are able to do yourself. They will also be able to undertake a number of other essential housekeeping tasks at the same time such as clearing out temporary files and making sure that PC Hard disks are defragmented on a regular basis, which will also boost your system performance.

If you would like to know more about the IT Support or Managed IT Services that we provide, please download our Managed IT Services White Paper, visit our web site, or contact us by telephone on 01707 255060 or via email at info@clearview.co.uk