The Almighty Cloud – What is it?
We’ve all heard the commercials with every vendor’s sales campaign about cloud computing for your business but is it really the right move? If contemplating this transition be sure to ask yourself- Is cloud computing a possibility for your business? It all depends on your architecture, environment and how prepared you are as a business. If you’re not prepared, it can be painful and extremely disruptive. If you are prepared, you can release the chains and give yourself some freedom and continue to operate very effectively. First, you...
read moreNever Let Technology Professionals Make your Technology Decisions
It’s already time to start thinking about: Next Year’s Budget Organizing Case Studies Finding Quick Wins Starting the Preparation to Secure Funding for the Next Fiscal Year Pairing Funding with the Company's Vision, strategy, direction and goals. As a business leader, I’ve always found it to be a challenge to couple our business goals and objectives with technology. For instance, human resources wants this service, operations wants a different widget and as you have probably surmised, finance...
read moreBackup Strategy- What are your Thresholds?
What You Should Know About Backup Strategies I think everyone today performs some level of backup whether it’s with the use of the native xcopy, robocopy to a local disk or external drive, or something more sophisticated such as an offsite Backup Disaster Recovery (BDR)/replication site. Either way, having a good back is only a great start and does not complete the intended process. As a business owner and/or operations manager, you must know and ask about the following. What about the ability to recover that backup? ...
read moreTechnology is an Accelerator for Business Growth
In today’s digital world, technology is very important, but it’s not the end-all, be-all for your business. Do you think this is an obscure comment from a business technology provider? It is not and if your current technology provider is not echoing this concept, then you are with the wrong provider. The concept is business whereas the solutions, are technology. What does technology do for your business? It should automate individual tasks that are performed manually through single or multiple...
read moreWhen is it a Good Time to Upgrade my Software?
As an IT professional, I’m routinely asked, “Should I upgrade my software?” Not including the need to upgrade due to hardware or operating systems requirements, I always respond, “What does the new software version or platform do for you that you can’t do now?” “Will the new features bring value to the business?” “Will this upgrade save you operational time?” “Does it fit into your business, strategy, direction and...
read moreHow Long Can Your Business Technology be Non-operational Before Having a Detrimental Impact to Business?
Several years ago I attended a course at MIT with some of the brightest technology strategists in the business and some of the biggest financial institutions of the world. We were asked, “How long can your business be non-operational before it has a detrimental impact to the business?” Without hesitation, the attendees (including myself) shouted out “Maybe a day, maybe.” The task force of professors spent the next two hours talking about business technology, what its value is and isn’t for...
read moreMaking the Best IT Decisions
It is always wise to have an IT expert on hand to offer advice and an IT team that offers IT support for your business in place. This will help with running an efficient business and will ultimately, eliminate unecessary stress associated with issues in technology. To truly benefit from any type of information technology service, the person in charge must make the decisions that are best for the company. In order to do this, the decision maker will have to decide on things such as whether to hire an in-house IT employees to work on a...
read moreMore on the Benefits to Bringing in Outside IT Consultants
To provide an extension to a post created last week, which can be found on ION Technology's Weebly Site, here are more benefits of hiring outside IT consultants. In addition to having a consultant with your best interests in mind, an outside IT professional can offer more benefits than simply, making financially sound decisions. For instance, in hiring a temporary employee, a business will cut some of the overhead that would be produced from hiring in-house employees. This makes perfect sense because after spending time and energy...
read moreHosted VoIP – Should Your Business Be Making The Switch?
Yes. And here are the reasons why: Commercially available since the late 90s, and with massive technological advances achieved since, Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP has managed to forever banish poor quality, scratchy voice calls. Today, more and more businesses have turned to VoIP as all it requires is the internet and a VoIP phone to handle your organisation’s communication requirements. Cost, cost, cost – this is the main reason why businesses opt to make the switch to VoIP telephony. Companies are choosing VoIP business...
read moreStruggling to Implement Successful Time Management Skills?
In our fast paced society, I think it is safe to assume that everyone struggles with successfully managing their time. This is especially true within the workplace when there are so many things to get done in what feels like, so little time. For those that struggle with managing time and tasks while at work and as a result, contemplate skipping lunch hour or staying late to make sure things are getting done, think about whether anything else can be done to improve time management. It is highly probable that your answer will be- yes,...
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