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By the DynaSis Team
We recently came across an interesting case study of the City of Asheville, which transitioned its disaster recovery solution from being on-site to being hosted in the Cloud. In doing so, the city not only gained redundant failover capabilities, it also reduced its recovery time objective (how long it takes for all data and other technology assets be running and available after an outage) from 12 hours to two. Reading it made us wonder how businesses are faring, in terms of cloud adoption. To our dismay, we realized they are not moving as rapidly is they could.
A 2015 survey by Continuity Central, an international business continuity information portal, found that only 6.2% of respondents are planning to implement disaster recovery, availability or other cloud technologies this year, with the large majority (nearly 85%) making other business continuity changes, instead. When asked what challenges are impacting their ability to make disaster recovery improvements, the number one hindrance (cited by 35.6%) was lack of budget, funds and resources.
This is unfortunate, because adopting the Cloud for disaster recovery isn’t expensive or complicated, and it requires little to no internal IT resources to setup and manage. Many providers, including DynaSis, offer prepackaged, cloud-based disaster recovery solutions that can be set up quickly and easily, with no disruption and very little expense.
Given the value of cloud computing for business resiliency, we find it inexplicable that all businesses are not leveraging it for basic data backup, at the minimum. After all, the Cloud enables companies to store data in a location that is geographically remote from the business. Depending on the solution, it may also allow an organization’s personnel to access that data from any Internet connection—even from a mobile device with a cellular data plan if traditional computing resources are not available.
Admittedly, the cost of cloud disaster recovery goes up if a company wants its data replicated very frequently (hourly or less), or it needs near-instant availability of its server images. Fortunately, the average company doesn’t need that level of service.
All companies should perform evaluations and determine their “data risk” tolerance—how much data they can afford to lose—and choose a solution based upon that decision. In many cases, companies discover that only one or two departments need backups more than once a day, with the remainder of the firm requiring them less frequently. Cloud storage is so flexible that most providers can set up backup services with varying schedules that accommodate such needs.
At the very minimum, organizations should store their business continuity plans in the Cloud so that key personnel can access them if the physical location of a business is destroyed or inaccessible. After all, a business continuity plan can’t help a company or its personnel if it’s sitting on a shelf the day a disaster hits the business.
Larger enterprises understand this, and their rates of cloud adoption are among the highest within the corporate world. SMBs are taking longer to grasp the value of the Cloud in disaster recovery. That’s ironic, given that the Cloud is the one place where all businesses are equal.
About DynaSis
DynaSis is an Atlanta IT services and cloud computing provider for small and midsized businesses. All of our solutions focus on helping companies achieve the three fundamental IT necessities of the modern business—availability, security and mobility. We specialize in on-demand and on-premise managed IT services, managed cloud infrastructure, desktops and backups, and professional hardware and equipment installation. For more information about DynaSis’ IT support and services, visit www.dynasis.com.
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By the DynaSis Team
For as long as man has been able to scratch an image on a wall, people have been saving “data.” From etching on stone tablets to writing on papyrus, humans have always recognized the value of archiving information we consider important. Today, data and data protection are more than a convenience—they are essential to business survival. Yet, we find that many firms still take a lackadaisical approach to data protection.
While the majority of companies backup their data—some through multiple mechanisms—there are many “data protection” strategies that some organizations overlook. Following are some top recommendations for data protection.
If your business isn’t achieving all five of these goals, it’s time to revamp your approach. IT providers such as DynaSis can help develop data management and protection strategies, including the use of secure cloud resources, to ensure your data is always accessible when you need it.
About DynaSis
DynaSis is an Atlanta IT services and cloud computing provider for small and midsized businesses. All of our solutions focus on helping companies achieve the three fundamental IT necessities of the modern business—availability, security and mobility. We specialize in on-demand and on-premise managed IT services, managed cloud infrastructure, desktops and backups, and professional hardware and equipment installation. For more information about DynaSis’ IT support and services, visit www.dynasis.com.
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By the DynaSis Team
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)—a cloud computing solution wherein a firm’s data servers and other related resources reside in an offsite data center rather than at the organization’s physical location—is fast becoming a solution of choice among modern businesses. Servers no longer need to be physical boxes, sitting in a server closet at the office. Thanks to virtualization, a server can reside anywhere, with secure access to it provided over a high-speed Internet connection. In most cases, firms can pay to have their own, discrete server hosted at the data center, or they can lease a server allocation carved from a much higher-capacity storage device that is shared by multiple companies yet isolated and secured through software from intrusion.
With IaaS, hosting companies provide, not only the storage space itself, but also the operating system and any necessary hardware to make the server secure and functional. IaaS providers also handle server maintenance and monitoring, as well as backup and sometimes administration. These virtual servers can host not only a firm’s data but also its email systems and most, if not all, of its software and other computing resources.
With IaaS, companies pay for the server space and related operations through an ongoing weekly, monthly or yearly fee. They don’t own the physical hardware, so the cost is an operating expense rather than a capital expense. IaaS platforms are highly scalable, so allocations can be adjusted up or down on demand.
Adopting IaaS offers companies numerous benefits, not the least of which is the elimination of hardware and operating system acquisition, management and maintenance. IaaS also reduces the IT burden associated with owning server hardware and eliminates the possibility of a server outage. (Servers can and do crash in data centers, of course, but hosting providers have built-in redundancy and failover programs that ensure continuity of service even in the event of a server crash.) Most providers guarantee uptime of 99.999% (“five nines”), which is 5.26 minutes of downtime, per year.
Research firms such as Yankee Group report that IaaS brings companies numerous benefits beyond hardware/software savings and capacity management. Other benefits include greater resiliency (disaster recovery/business continuity), more effective resource utilization (firms pay only for the server space they need), and sheer convenience, since business leaders and their workers can access corporate data and applications from any Internet-connected location.
Furthermore, many companies report that IaaS enhances both worker productivity and business innovation, often significantly. IaaS expedites communication and collaboration, even among remote workers. It is a key driver of mobility, which has long been proven to boost employee efficiency and satisfaction.
For the business leader, the time, money and energy not spent on making technology purchase and management decisions, as well as hiring and managing technology staff, can be diverted to business growth. Finally, the ability to expand server capacity on demand lets firms grow their resources quickly for special projects, product development and other needs, making them more competitive and willing to pursue innovative ideas.
In fact, an Oxford Economics survey found that 36 percent of responding firms adopted cloud solutions such as IaaS, not based on the traditional drivers such as cost savings and resiliency, but rather for their innovation benefits. Per the report, the transformation brought about by IaaS and other cloud solutions is “fundamentally altering business processes, [bringing] incredible opportunities, including the ability to build a real-time enterprise where interaction and innovation flourish." We couldn’t agree more.
About DynaSis
DynaSis is an Atlanta IT services and cloud computing provider for small and midsized businesses. All of our solutions focus on helping companies achieve the three fundamental IT necessities of the modern business—availability, security and mobility. We specialize in on-demand and on-premise managed IT services, managed cloud infrastructure, desktops and backups, and professional hardware and equipment installation. For more information about DynaSis’ IT support and services, visit www.dynasis.com.
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By the DynaSis Team
Every day, business leaders—or their employees or vendors—engage in a variety of activities to keep the business running. Does that mean every single one is beneficial? Before you answer, consider this.
There are plenty of activities, such as firing a problematic worker who wasn’t properly vetted or repairing a PC that was inadequately maintained, that keep a business running only because they fix problems that shouldn’t have occurred in the first place. In addition, vendors, employees and even business leaders all engage in activities that don’t really do anything but waste time or money.
So, how does a business evaluate whether activities are beneficial or not? We believe there are four key criteria that can determine whether or not an activity has merit within the organization:
These are the “lowest common denominators” of business success. Any activity that is not doing one of these things may be keeping your business running, but it isn’t improving your operation or making it more competitive. At the end of the day, improvement, and not status quo, is what leads to long-term success.
The question then becomes, how can you evaluate your business activities and eliminate the ones that don’t provide one of these four benefits? Cutting away the dead wood and the fat is a process that takes time and reflection. It isn’t immediate, but it can really strengthen your business.
Ask key employees and stakeholders to look for activities or actions that aren’t providing one of these four benefits and then explore how they developed. If it’s a wasteful activity that slipped in unnoticed, stop it. If the activity became necessary due to another problem (like a PC repair caused by inadequate maintenance, in our example), making resolution of that issue a priority. Then, start looking again.
You’ll find areas to improve throughout the business, and we have a few to suggest for technology.
Last, don’t let your busy schedule prevent you from starting this initiative. In the time it took you to read this article, you could have identified the personnel that will help you in this task and gotten them started finding areas for improvement.
About DynaSis
DynaSis is an Atlanta IT services and cloud computing provider for small and midsized businesses. All of our solutions focus on helping companies achieve the three fundamental IT necessities of the modern business—availability, security and mobility. We specialize in on-demand and on-premise managed IT services, managed cloud infrastructure, desktops and backups, and professional hardware and equipment installation. For more information about DynaSis’ IT support and services, visit www.dynasis.com.
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By the DynaSis Team
For many small and midsized businesses (SMBs), having up-to-date technology means running Windows 7 or 8 and having servers and desktops that are only a few years old. That’s a good start, but there are many other modern technologies that businesses can implement to increase operating efficiency and productivity and drive business success.
One prime example is virtualization. With virtualization, a company’s data, applications, operating systems and other IT assets reside on a software-generated image of a hard drive, rather than on a physical server, personal computer or other computing device. Using this technique, one physical piece of hardware in an enterprise can host multiple virtual servers, desktops or storage devices. Virtual machines can also be hosted in the cloud, at data centers or through other cloud hosting providers.
Virtualization offers numerous benefits, including more efficient utilization of existing computing hardware. With each physical server that can be virtualized, it eliminates one more piece of hardware to be managed, maintained, repaired and replace. The result is reduced server maintenance cost and labor, lower capital and operating costs, and reduced energy and cooling costs. Virtualized servers, desktops and storage systems can also be created faster than the time it takes to acquire and provision a new piece of hardware, which increases operating agility.
In later 2013, the Blackstone Group released a study that found nearly 70 percent of SMBs using virtualization technologies were doing so to move servers from hardware to software, reducing server sprawl and its associated management and maintenance load. Despite these benefits, only 62 percent of SMBs surveyed indicated they were “comfortable” with virtualization technology.
Companies like DynaSis work to demystify virtualization technology for their customers, making it easier for them to make the move. Virtualization has reached market maturity, so although the technologies can continue improve, there is absolutely no risk with adopting virtualization when it is implemented properly.
Virtualization isn’t the only example of modernized infrastructure, of course. Two others are backup appliances, which afford business continuity and reduce downtime in the event of an outage, and mobile computers such as tablets, which empower remote workers with the ability to perform office functions, no matter where they are. Adoption of these technologies varies among SMBs, but there is no doubt that nearly every SMB has room to improve in its deployment and use of modernized technology.
The irony is that these technologies really can level the playing field for SMBs, and they often represent such a cost savings that they pay for themselves quickly—sometimes within months. The problem, of course, is that many small and midsized business leaders are so tied up with the daily press of business that they don’t have time to step back and explore the value these solutions bring.
We’ll be bringing you more information about beneficial, modernized technologies in the near future. We hope it helps you use technology more effectively for your business success.
About DynaSis
DynaSis is an Atlanta IT services and cloud computing provider for small and midsized businesses. All of our solutions focus on helping companies achieve the three fundamental IT necessities of the modern business—availability, security and mobility. We specialize in on-demand and on-premise managed IT services, managed cloud infrastructure, desktops and backups, and professional hardware and equipment installation. For more information about DynaSis’ IT support and services, visit www.dynasis.com.
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In the daily rush of “important” business functions like sales, accounting and other hard-dollar activities, it’s easy for business owners to cross their fingers and dismiss disaster recovery and business continuity concerns, figuring that the odds are in their favor. After all, the Small Business Administration reports that only 25% of businesses that experience a disaster fail to reopen. Surely you will not be one of them, right?
The problem with such reasoning is that in today’s data-dependent business environment, “business continuity” doesn't mean keeping your business open after a disaster. True business continuity from a technology perspective means keeping your business and its digital assets functioning and available even during a minor IT disruption, and these are more frequent than you might think.
A 2013 Ponemon Institute survey of nearly 2,400 business continuity and IT professionals found that almost 70% of them anticipate a minor IT disruption (fewer than 20 minutes) over the next 24 months. (Approximately 23% of them expect to experience a major disruption―seven hours or more.)
Do you consider an outage of less than 20 minutes to be acceptable? Before you say yes, consider these scenarios. What if that outage happens when your sales manager is developing the most important proposal in your company’s history, and the file he or she has been working on for days is irretrievably lost?
What if your dependable, weekly backup solution did not happen to capture any of that work? Moreover, what if the IT outage is not minor, but rather, it involves a server crash or some other event that takes more than 20 minutes to resolve?
Do you have a plan to be up and running within minutes of the event, no matter what, perhaps with the help of cloud computing? Could you or your Managed IT Services provider restore that lost file―the one your newest, biggest customer is expecting by day’s end?
This may sound like an unlikely scenario, but it happens every day. In fact, unless you have redundant, cloud-based systems in place, your team is likely experiencing outages and data losses of which you are not even aware.
For example, are you aware of every occurrence where an employee experiences a file corruption―or accidentally deletes a file? Often, workers do not report these losses if they can hide them from their superiors, fearing retribution for careless behavior. Instead, time is wasted recreating the file, which drains productivity and erodes the bottom line.
In reality, the biggest “cost” of IT outages is not the time to diagnose problems, get systems back online, or purchase new hardware. The results gleaned from those surveyed IT professionals (whose jobs rely on having a good handle on this issue) found 75% of the costs from an IT outage, cyber attack or other IT-related problem are business-related―from productivity drains to loss of customer confidence, to cancelled or abandoned sales.
Understanding the true financial consequences of an IT disruption is vital to making meaningful risk calculations. We hope this information will help you do just that.
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By the DynaSis Team
BYOD―Bring Your Own Device, a program were employees use their own devices for work tasks, is moving from being an option to becoming a certainty. A 2015 report from research firm Tech Pro found that 60% of companies currently allow BYOD, with another 14% planning to do so, soon. A 2013 Gartner research survey predicted that by 2017, half of all employers would require employees to supply their own device for work purposes.
The reasoning is simple―not only does a firm save money when employees provide devices, but it also fosters greater employee satisfaction and work-related device usage. BYOD also drives innovation, not only because employees have access to work functions outside the office, but because firms that allow BYOD often reinvent their processes, adopting mobile-compatible apps for everything from timesheets to contact management and more.
Despite the benefits of BYOD, however, many problems that have plagued businesses for years―particularly security―continue to be concerns. In the Tech Pro survey, security was the number one reason companies reported as their reasoning not to allow BYOD.
Because of this consideration, we recommend firms approach BYOD like they should any other IT strategy―with proper evaluation and planning. It may be easy to say “yes” to employees regarding BYOD―or to do nothing and simply allow personal devices to creep onto the network―but neither of those approaches give businesses an optimal outcome.
Regarding security, advanced IT services providers such as DynaSis offer affordable mobile device management platforms (with IT support) that secure corporate access without restricting the user from enjoying the device, personally. These platforms include remote lock and wipe features and/or “find me” functions that help an employee recover a misplaced or stolen phone.
In the first instance, employees shouldn’t balk at remote lock and wipe―or any other access restrictions―on personal devices, provided it only impacts corporate data.
In the second example, most employees are grateful for locator solutions, since losing a mobile device or having one stolen and not recovered creates a financial burden on the owner.
As Gartner Vice President and distinguished analyst David Willis noted in the 2013 report, "We're finally reaching the point where IT officially recognizes what has always been going on: People use their business devices for non-work purposes," said Mr. Willis.
We couldn’t agree more, and provided that company leaders approach the effort with business (including security) focused planning and execution, we fully support BYOD. After all, if workers are going to sneak personal usage onto a business device, why not turn the tables and let them provide their device (with or without a subsidy) for business use?
An appropriate BYOD program has many elements, and we don’t have room to discuss them here. Furthermore, firms that implement BYOD should also develop the business case for their programs beforehand and make sure they’re extracting maximum benefit from BYOD.
We’ll save those discussions for a future article, and in the meantime, leave you to consider the statistics that clearly show BYOD is the future of business mobility.
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By the DynaSis Team
Productivity, one of the four essentials for a successful business in today’s competitive environment, can also be surprisingly elusive. Depending on which study you read, any number of stressors can reduce office productivity.
One study reports that travel problems―such as traffic and road construction―leaves more than a third of workers in such a state of stress that it impacts their productivity for hours. Another reports that 61 percent of workers find a noisy workplace or adjacent co-worker to be their productivity killer. Other productivity zappers are impromptu meetings (40 percent) or sitting next to the boss (38 percent). A small percentage of employees can even be distracted by street noise or slamming doors. Adding to the confusion, 27 percent of workers aren’t bothered by any of these issues and prefer working surrounded by various stimuli.
The point we gleaned from these divergent reports is that workers aren’t alike. Most can lose focus and productivity from some environmental variable, but it’s literally impossible to say one particular stressor is a culprit in all productivity losses. So, how is a business owner to foster the highest-possible level of productivity?
We believe the answer is flexibility. Current technology offers an affordable way for business owners to drive staff productivity through agility. Smartphones, tablets, laptops and secure Internet connections let employees set up a “personal workspace” (preferred by 86% of workers) wherever and whenever they want.
That agility and mobility is an important facet of office productivity, and here we found the reports are pretty consistent. One global survey largely sums it up, reporting that 65 percent of mobile device users say those devices, along with anytime/anywhere work flexibility, are key productivity drivers.
In other words, while the variables that reduce productivity are wildly divergent, one factor that definitely increases it is access to mobile technology. It’s not that every worker wants to work from home or the road. Rather, every worker should be empowered with the tools to work whenever and wherever they wish, from checking email at the coffee shop on the way to the office, to signing off on a procurement or work order while waiting for a meeting. They should also be given the IT services and IT supports to ensure those devices are functional, and that corporate data is secure.
Precisely because of technology, workloads no longer develop on a set schedule. Employees who can respond to this unpredictable environment quickly and easily, on their own terms, will be the most productive and least stressed. It’s that simple.
Cifial USA General Manager Galen Stump was frustrated with his underperforming IT provider. For Stump and his workers, their provider wasn’t merely ineffectual, their inefficient approach caused Cifial USA to incur unnecessary expenses. “We were operating on old equipment running Windows XP, and we were experiencing regular breakdowns,” he says. “Our former IT firm was not encouraging us to upgrade anything, because the older our equipment was, the more service it needed and the more money they made. We were in an endless cycle of fix and repair.”
Complicating matters, the IT provider was located in Florida and only sent technicians to the Atlanta area periodically. “Most of the work was done remotely,” says Stump, “and I felt we weren’t getting the service we needed to be productive and up-to-date.”
Stump evaluated several firms, but DynaSis was his first choice, thanks to his positive community interactions with DynaSis's Vice President of Managed IT Services, Chas Arnold. “I really liked Chas, and I had a lot of respect for him, so when the opportunity came to work with DynaSis, I jumped at it,” says Stump. The corporate office in Portugal, which conducted the final evaluation, agreed that DynaSis was the right choice.
One of DynaSis's Technical Account Managers was assigned to the project and met with Stump to confirm Cifial USA’s budget and performance objectives, and then the DynaSis team performed an IT assessment for the firm. “The assessment was completely seamless,” says Stump. “We didn’t even know that it was done, then they came back and had all the information.”
After reviewing the company’s needs, network conditions and other key data, DynaSis recommended that Cifial migrate to its infrastructure-as-a-service platform, Ascend.
With Ascend, customers pay a fixed monthly fee to use infrastructure that DynaSis purchases, owns and maintains, with 24/7/365 system maintenance and support, as well as system upgrades as needed, all included in the price. The fixed monthly fee model meant that Cifial USA could avoid a large capital purchase and have highly predictable costs going forward, something both Stump and the home office in Europe liked.
“In their formal proposal, DynaSis said, ‘We could do it this way, but we have another solution we believe is more cost effective,’” says Stump. “They explained that if I became an Ascend customer, any downtime we experienced would cost them money, so making sure our systems and PCs are always operable would be in their best interest, too. Our systems are our lifeline, so that was the perfect solution for us.”
DynaSis installed a new physical server for Cifial USA, configured into four virtual machines running Windows Server 2012 R2. User desktops were migrated to the new Windows operating system and Office 365, the cloud-based version of Microsoft’s industry-leading productivity suite.
The DynaSis team also deployed a redundant backup solution composed of an onsite backup appliance with data replicated to the DynaSis data center. “We had a computer crash before working with DynaSis and we lost some data,” says Stump. “DynaSis sold me on the security and reliability of the backup. I didn’t have that confidence with our prior provider.”
Today, Stump says, the new system is working beautifully, and he has the reassurance of knowing that if any problems occur, support will be swift and painless.
“The initial installation was probably one of the best transitions I have ever experienced,” says Stump. “Since then, they perform most of their updates and maintenance remotely, so there is no office disruption. With our former provider, my personnel were incredibly frustrated—every week, somebody’s system was down.” Stump concludes, “With DynaSis and the new equipment, everything is so much better and more efficient.”
According to Stump, his employees are delighted to be working on new, faster equipment without the interruption and downtime of technology problems. “We have 1,500 customers calling in, and our personnel are engaged in a constant flux of information exchange,” says Stump. “If anything goes down, we are dead in the water. DynaSis is committed to keeping us up and running.”
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By the DynaSis Team
Recently, we read that e-commerce giant Alibaba, in partnership with Xi’an International Medical Investment and DHC Software, is building the first “cloud hospital.” This doesn’t mean that patients will be “seeing” doctors or receiving treatment through the cloud, of course. Rather, the team aims to create a cloud-based hospital administration platform with the goal of improving the quality of medical care. How will the platform achieve its goal? By using the cloud to make it easier and faster for medical entities and their practitioners to manage individual patient cases and optimize treatment and outcomes.
In a statement, the group’s spokesperson cited numerous specific attributes of the cloud platform, including faster information sharing among hospitals, expedited services such as online appointment-setting and payments, and software analysis of patient medical records and family health histories for more accurate diagnoses.
This project, while in its early stages, indicates to us the extent to which cloud technology is almost fully integrated into our lives―and certainly, our futures. Recent statistics support this assertion. A 2015 State of the Cloud Report found that 82 percent of organizations are using the public cloud for at least some business functions, and 63 percent are running private clouds.
Those figures were gratifying to us, here at DynaSis, because we have been promoting the value of cloud computing for years. Provided that an enterprise works with a reputable, experienced IT company, the Cloud is no less secure than on-premise installations. In many cases, it is far more secure.
Properly configured, secured and managed with full IT support, cloud technology promotes the three pillars of technology for the modern business―mobility, availability and security. The first question, then, becomes, what is the right configuration for a particular business―public cloud, private cloud or hybrid cloud?
The survey we referenced above found that hybrid cloud technology is currently the preferred strategy among enterprises (future plans), at 82 percent. That represents a 12 percent increase over the 2014 report. Hybrid clouds, where a company distributes its workloads and data among both public and private cloud environments, is perceived as offering the best of two worlds.
With a public cloud, a company’s data may be stored in common databases with the data of other companies, or workloads may run over the same network. With a private cloud, even though the company may be sharing space at a data center with other companies, the cloud environment and network traffic are rigidly separated from that of other firms. A hybrid cloud unites these two aspects of the cloud, with some workloads running in a public cloud and others in a private one.
The distinctions between the three types of clouds―and the way in which workloads and data are distributed among public and private clouds in a hybrid environment―can be confusing and somewhat murky, so we will devote more articles to them at a later date. For now, the key takeaway is that even the most diligent companies are moving some of their assets or workloads to the cloud for the gains they reap in productivity, mobility, redundancy, risk reduction, ROI and other key metrics. If you haven’t poked your head into the cloud yet, we urge you to do so, soon.
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