by Dave Moorman

For more than a decade, the media and IT experts have been touting the benefits of corporate messaging and collaboration as a productivity enhancer, but the adoption of these tools has been restricted largely to larger enterprises. Now, with the proliferation of smartphones, messaging both inside the office and out has become easier than ever, and the majority of office workers are already comfortable with at least two forms of messaging (email and texting).

As a result, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are perfectly positioned to leverage this powerful tool for their benefit. Making the concept even more attractive, third-party vendors have developed messaging and collaboration platforms specifically for SMBs. These can be deployed on a smaller scale than their enterprise counterparts with a correspondingly smaller budget.

Many business-grade IT messaging platforms go well beyond email and/or real-time communication (instant messaging or texting) to include calendar scheduling, file exchange, and even voice and video features. Once a product becomes this extensive, it functions as a full-fledged collaboration platform, enabling workers to exchange ideas and information for brainstorming, sales development, training and more.

Of course, not every SMB needs a full-blown messaging and collaboration platform. In fact, if your employees are equipped with smartphones, they may have already created an ad-hoc messaging solution of their own, texting one another from various locations to confirm meeting times, find out where someone is or exchange other basic but valuable business information.

Similarly, if you use Microsoft Outlook or Exchange (especially Hosted Exchange) you already have a feature-rich communication platform in place—you just need to explore its full functionality and evaluate the other tools with which it connects.

The point is that messaging can be whatever you want it to be – from simple text messaging or office email to a unified platform where all forms of communication flow through a centralized gateway. (The latter solution is more expensive to deploy but provides security controls that are important for protecting corporate communications.)

The key is to determine what you need and how to implement it in a manner that is affordable but enables you to begin accelerating productivity immediately. In an October 2012 report, research firm Radicati Group predicted the messaging platforms market will grow from $5.7 billion in 2012 to more than $7.8 billion by 2016. Where will your firm be during this period of explosive growth?

Give me a call and let’s discuss how messaging can drive productivity for you.

by Dave Moorman

Are you confused about the difference between “business continuity” and “disaster recovery?” Have you heard the terms used interchangeably, or has your IT manager or provider used the term BC/DR (business continuity/disaster recovery)? These two activities go hand in hand, but they are not the same. Making matters more confusing, the definition of disaster recovery can vary based on the company; the industry; even the situation.

In future articles, I’ll dig more deeply into solutions for and approaches to business continuity and disaster recovery, but right now, let’s review the distinctions between the two. Knowing the difference will help you avoid exposing your firm to greater risk than its ownership considers acceptable.

Business continuity is almost universally defined as the plan for ensuring a business can perform critical functions—usually at a level tolerable to customers, vendors, regulators and other outside entities—no matter what life throws its way. Business continuity plans can come into play after a disaster or major disruption (and may be put into action before the event occurs), but they are much more than the mechanism by which a company gets through such an event.

The definition of critical functions varies from one firm to another, but they go well beyond getting servers up and running to incorporate maintaining power supplies and/or securing a location for employees to work. Business continuity plans also include personnel—which individuals or positions are required to ensure the business can operate at the desired level. Most companies develop their business continuity plans after making a thorough evaluation of business processes to determine which are essential to baseline operation.

Disaster recovery is a plan for recovering from a disaster at a level of downtime acceptable to the company ownership. Disasters come in all types and sizes, from tornadoes to virus outbreaks. As a result, most companies have multi-layered plans to address various scenarios.

IT continuity/recovery plans are components of both business continuity and business disaster recovery. A core recovery mechanism for both types of plans is data backup and recovery. However, firms that can tolerate little, if any, downtime also incorporate advanced recovery solutions such as failover servers (off-site, backup servers that can be activated in the event of an outage). Such solutions provide both business continuity and disaster recovery.

Firms that can survive week-long data outages—or that have very small budgets—may opt for offsite backups (with tests) but anticipate they (or their provider) may have to rebuild their environment completely, from scratch. These solutions enable disaster recovery, but they could place a firm’s business continuity in jeopardy. Stay tuned for more information on the finer nuances of these vital business operations.

by Dave Moorman

The productivity gains companies achieve through technology are undeniable. Historians and economists confirm them constantly on a broad scale; many experts even attribute the sluggish hiring recovery to technology. The increased efficiency and productivity workers achieve with technology continues to reduce the number of employees companies need to perform core functions.

For SMBs, the challenge isn’t recognizing that technology increases productivity. Rather, it’s figuring out how best to start that process in their operation, especially when budgets are tight. For example, big enterprises are touting the productivity gains of giving their field workers iPads, but how many SMBs can shell out thousands of dollars to purchase 10 of the devices at one time?

The trick, then, is to find inexpensive ways to accelerate productivity, and then use the economic benefits of those improvements to pay for more technology tools. One way to do this is to ask your staff to submit ideas. Hold a contest and give away gift certificates to a local restaurant to the staff with the best submissions.

A few ideas that are inexpensive to implement include:

• Install a wireless network printer so field staff can print documents from their mobile devices without having to send them to desktop PCs, then open the documents and print them from the desktop.
• Add a video conferencing systems to your conference room. This enables your staff to meet with clients, vendors and field personnel remotely, which frees up travel time for more productive pursuits. As a bonus, once the system is installed and everyone knows how to use it, you’ll find that brainstorming sessions and other business-innovation drivers will happen more frequently.
• Empower your personnel to work remotely with smart, Internet-connected devices. Surveys show that many employees are happy to check email and perform other business tasks outside the office if you make it easy for them to do so. If you cannot afford to equip your personnel with smartphones, iPads, and the like, you can adopt a BYOD (bring your own device) policy that gives them access to company resources, such as email, on their own devices. Just be sure you have a knowledgeable person (in-house or outsourced) to configure adequate security policies.

Never before has technology been such a powerful enabler of productivity gains for companies of all sizes. In future articles, I’ll detail some of the more significant (but still manageable) technology changes you can implement to drive your company forward through the power of productivity.

DynaSis, Atlanta’s premier provider of IT services and support for small and medium businesses (SMBs), today announced the launch of a new, high-availability monitoring and alerting service. The service conducts analysis and inspection of DynaSis customers’ on-site infrastructure and networks, 24/7/365, scanning for issues such as low disk space, servers being overwhelmed by too many user requests and unable to process them efficiently, and other problems that affect availability and performance. Offered at no additional charge to DynaSis’ managed services customers, it adds a further layer of scrutiny on top of DynaSis’ already robust network and infrastructure management and maintenance solutions.

“We’re constantly introducing improvements to increase the value of our services to customers, and this monitoring solution is an example,” said DynaSis President Dave Moorman. “Already, we have identified and helped avert low disk-space issues in advance that have prevented clients from reaching disk capacity and jeopardizing system continuity.”

With the new service, which is fully cloud-based and automated, engineers in DynaSis’ network operations center see a dashboard of the customers’ infrastructure at all times. If issues arise, engineers receive either an email, text message or phone notification, depending on the urgency of the situation. In the case of a physical limitation such as a low disk issue, engineers hear an audible alert so they can notify the customer and increase disk space allocations.

Should a customer bring a new storage device online, the service will detect that device, autoconfigure itself to monitor it, and send an alert of the activity to ensure it was authorized. On the client side, the service installs a software agent that monitors activity unobtrusively and with no performance degradation. The agent sends only outgoing signals to DynaSis’ network operations center, completely eliminating the possibility the service could open vulnerabilities in the client’s system.

“This intuitive, automated service ensures our customers have the best possible operating environment, around the clock,” says Moorman. “We can also retain event logs for up to one year, letting us identify recurring trends, such as periods of high-capacity usage, that help us make beneficial recommendations to our customers, moving forward.”

by Dave Moorman

For many small or medium business (SMB) owners, the concept of technology purchases is associated with spending money, not saving it. In reality, it’s entirely possible to save money with technology upgrades and services—not only on the technology side itself, but also in other departments throughout your operation. These savings are in hard dollars you can count—not the harder-to-quantify savings through the increased productivity technology enables.

Here are some examples:

• Save energy through virtualization: Replacing your existing servers with virtualized servers, either on-premise servers or in the cloud, reduces your electricity consumption and cooling costs (and also saves on costly office space). According to a report the U.S. government’s Energy Star site, server virtualization can reduce a firm’s server room/data center energy consumption by 10-40%. Furthermore, if your servers are cloud-based, employees can telecommute (work from home) full or part time, saving you even more office space.
• Cut payroll expense by outsourcing technology management: Not only does the virtualization mentioned above reduce your dependence on in-house server experts, but handing off system security, maintenance and other important monitoring tasks to a third-party firm will also reduce in-house IT staff expense. Furthermore, technology has become so complex that rarely can one or two people be masters of all its aspects. As a result, only very large companies can afford to have sufficient in-house expertise for all their processes. SMBs that outsource some or all of their IT management needs reap the benefits of a large IT staff—without the expense.
• Speed your network; reduce its financial toll: Another aspect of IT where firms save money is through managed networks. Rather than pay several thousand dollars a month for a dedicated T1 connection for each office, firms turn to third-party managed service providers. Redundant Internet feeds and network management services ensure 99.99% uptime for their Internet and network connections. This speeds the flow of work and increases productivity, of course, but it’s generally less expensive than dedicated lines—especially for firms with small satellite offices. In a 2012 article that ran in BizTech magazine, Houston-based firm PSC reported saving $500,000 when it switched to managed network services.

These are only a few examples of the hard-dollar savings you can achieve through technology upgrades and enhancements. In many cases, the savings are greater than the cost of implementing the technologies. Many firms have found themselves able to equip their staffs with iPads; hold employee loyalty events, and provide other perks to personnel with the savings they have achieved through technology improvements.

by Dave Moorman

Risk is all around us. It’s beside us as we step off a sidewalk and cross a street; it’s seated next to us every time we fly in an airplane or drive a car. It’s our constant companion, and some experts say this causes humans to inadequately recognize the importance of risk mitigation.

In life, that’s a good thing, to a degree. It’s gotten humans where they are, today. For example, if we stopped to adequately assess the risks in hurtling ourselves across town in a metal bucket (a car) at 60 miles per hour, we might never go anywhere.

In business, the opposite is true. Inadequate risk mitigation can be highly destructive to a company’s future prospects; it should be one of every company’s top objectives. And, with technology playing such an important role in business achievement, it must be a core consideration in this process.

So, where are you in the risk management and mitigation process? Do you have valid reason to believe you have adequately shielded both your business assets and technology infrastructure from possible loss, damage or theft? For most businesses, the answer is either “No,” or “I don’t know.” (If you answered “Yes,” give me two minutes to persuade you otherwise.)

What constitutes risk management and mitigation as it relates to technology? A successful approach encompasses all the following activities, and more:

• Network security management (including but not limited to virus blocking, spam filtering, intrusion detection, firewall monitoring and management, network device monitoring and management, and remote access—e.g. virtual private networks—management).
• Infrastructure security (restricting virtual and physical access to your servers and other core hardware)
• Monitoring and application of system changes, modifications and upgrades.
• Effective, replicable backup and recovery within a timeframe that works for your business objectives, both on-site and remotely.
• Desktop and device management (securing and managing access to the hardware and system resources that employees use for daily activities without hampering productivity).

Nested within these line items are many other operations, from policy management to data deduplication. Collectively, these activities represent the technology component of corporate security. And, although they are limited to technology, for most companies they protect against 90-95% of the most persistent and harmful threats.

Such a broad list of items may seem overwhelming to many, but when incorporated into a systematic approach to security, they are highly manageable. In fact, DynaSis manages all these activities for dozens of customers on a daily basis, without a hitch.

The gut-wrenching reality is that risks to businesses and their assets are greater than at any previous time in man’s history, and the task of protecting critical resources and precious intellectual property is more daunting. Fortunately, the weapons available to fight this war and its many battles are more robust and comprehensive that ever. Are you ready to enlist?

As part of its continuing effort to provide customers with the best service in the IT industry, DynaSis—Atlanta’s premier provider of IT services and support for small and medium businesses (SMBs)—today announced its backup audit program. These audits confirm the integrity of the backups DynaSis performs for its customers and gives them the opportunity to review their backup program and adjust it easily if desired.

“DynaSis has always prided itself on maintaining 100% data integrity for its customer backups, but we want our clients to be confident we are performing backups to their precise specifications at all times,” said DynaSis President Dave Moorman. “To this end, we have created a formalized audit process wherein a dedicated, professional auditor reviews and documents both the efforts of our software engineers and the parameters of all our backups. We’ve already completed two of these bi-annual audits and in both cases; the results confirmed our superior level of service excellence.”

Although the internal audit ensures client specifications are being rigorously adhered to, DynaSis wanted to take its service a step further. Beginning in 2013, all customers receive a document after each audit that details the parameters of their backups, including the volumes, drives and folders being archived as well as each backup’s frequency, retention policy and size.

The report also includes recommendations for improvements, such as additional server space needed to complete the backup process moving forward. Customers then have the opportunity to evaluate and approve the parameters of their backups, down to the file level, and approve or reject the recommended changes.

The auditing process is totally transparent and non-disruptive to the customer, yet the reports give them insight into their backups and enable them to confirm their needs haven’t changed since the last audit. This gives customers an easy opportunity to remove backup exclusions, include new data pools if desired, order more storage and perform other tasks within one quick review.

A DynaSis representative meets with each customer to go over the audit results and have them verify that the backup parameters are 100% in accord with their wishes. After that, the customer signs the Backup Approval document and DynaSis returns to its customary behavior of backing up customer data quickly and with no fanfare.

“The bi-annual audit is designed to be a milestone that makes it easy for our clients to review and approve their backup process, but it is not an exclusive opportunity,” says Moorman. “If a customer discovers between audits that their needs have changed or they missed asking us to back up an important particular drive, folder or file, we are always willing to help them make a change at any time.”

As we turn the page on the calendar to 2013, we would like to take a moment to first, thank each and every one of our clients for their business in 2012. Each customer is very important to us. That is why we took the time last year to make serious investments in personnel and infrastructure -- to help promote service excellence -- and in technology -- to better safeguard their technology assets and data.

In this update, I’ve taken the time to detail the achievements and accomplishments that we believe make us Ready for Business in 2013. I hope you’ll take the time to review.

300% growth in SANs and Servers at our data center.

Many of our customers are moving to cloud-based solutions, so we made that an area of special focus in 2012 and expanded the number of SANs (storage area networks) and servers at our data center by 300%.

New and improved cloud-based monitoring tools.

Whichever application or business process you’re ready to move to the cloud, we’re ready to make sure it works for you.

20% Increase in support personnel.

In parallel to the growth of our data center resources has been a 20% increase in the number of employees working in our NOC (network operations center), the logistical center of our preventative maintenance service.

New backup audit process.

You’ve been diligent about your backups but until you actually need them, how can you be certain they work as promised? To ensure our dedicated backup engineers are performing all backups to the precise specifications of the customer, we hired a professional auditor to perform twice-yearly audits beginning in 2013. After each audit, customers receive a document that details the parameters of each backup, including the volumes, drives and folders being archived as well as each backup’s frequency, retention policy and size.

25 new business and technology certifications were earned.

Certifications are awarded to our individual technicians when they participate in training on different technologies. Certifications our team received this year covered products and platforms from Microsoft, DELL, SonicWALL, Apple, PowerVault, EqualLogic, Compellent, Cisco and more.

Four Microsoft competencies were renewed.

Competencies are awarded to our company as a whole when a certain volume of staff receive a certification or award. Microsoft has raised the bar on their partner program, making it more difficult to receive and maintain partner status and competencies. We were awarded renewal of four competencies from Microsoft that recognize our combined expertise for their Desktop, Server, Hosting and Mid-Market focuses.

Five new service vans were added to our fleet.

Now when you require on-site support, we are able to get there faster and be better prepared to service you.

When we say we’re Ready for Business, we mean we’re ready to help you operate your business – with all of these great new abilities. But don’t think we’re stopping to rest. Already our plans for 2013 go far beyond to a multitude of new customer service and support improvements. Hold tight. It is going to be a great year!

Dave Moorman

President, DynaSis

DynaSis, Atlanta’s premier provider of IT services and support for small and medium businesses (SMBs), today announced that Dell has certified it as a Preferred Partner in the hardware company’s PartnerDirect program. Per Dell, companies that reach the coveted Preferred Partner status with Dell are recognized as experts in key Dell offerings. They also must complete specific competency requirements; DynaSis is certified for Dell’s requirements in Server Competency, Storage Competency, and Networking & Security Competency in both Networking and Security specializations.

“Dell is a leading provider of IT solutions and services, and DynaSis has enjoyed a long and fruitful relationship with the company,” said DynaSis President Dave Moorman. “Achieving Preferred Partner status is another milestone in our mission of providing world-class service and solution excellence to our customers.”

DynaSis certification to four competencies far exceeds the minimum for Preferred Partner certification (one competency). In order to receive recognition for these competencies, members of DynaSis’ technical staff were required to complete training and demonstrate proficiency in areas such as Dell PowerVault Storage, Dell Blade Server Administration & Configuration, Certified SonicWALL Security Administrator, and many more.

In addition to confirming DynaSis’ advanced expertise in key Dell solutions and services, Preferred Partner status also provides benefits DynaSis can leverage for its customers’ benefit. These include potential access to seed units for customer demonstrations and Partner Resource Desk access.

About Dell
Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) listens to customers and delivers innovative technology and services they trust and value. Uniquely enabled by its direct business model, Dell is a leading global systems and services company and No. 34 on the Fortune 500. For more information, visit www.dell.com, or to communicate directly with Dell via a variety of online channels, go to www.dell.com/conversations.

About DynaSis
DynaSis is a managed IT service provider for small and medium-sized businesses in Atlanta, Georgia. DynaSis specializes in offering on-premise and on-demand managed IT service plans, managed hosting and professional equipment installation. For more information about DynaSis’ services visit www.dynasis.com.

by Dave Moorman

For several years, I’ve been hearing from customers who liked the idea of cloud computing but were worried about the security, privacy or accessibility of their applications and data. Some had a hard time envisioning what the cloud is, or how it works. How can their data and programs be segregated from those of other businesses if they are on the same server? How can a solution used by so many companies offer better delivery speeds than a pipeline used by just one?

Interestingly, once company questions or objections regarding cloud computing are addressed (by us or others), we often get a phone call from an executive or decision maker saying, “We’re ready to go to the cloud.” With the reliability and security of cloud computing established and its promise explained, some companies are ready to embrace it like a new best friend. With objections resolved, they are ready to start reaping the benefits, pronto.

In reality, just because a company’s management is conceptually and psychologically “ready” for the cloud doesn’t mean the business is. As much as we support cloud computing and the dramatic advantage it can provide to most firms, not all business models transition well to it.

Don’t get me wrong—nearly all companies can benefit from some form of cloud computing, even if it’s just hosted email and disaster recovery. But to leverage the cloud to greatest benefit, companies need to draw a parallel between their business goals, challenges and opportunities and the technologies available in the cloud. They also need to explore their current IT state and determine their “readiness” for the move. Things such as are my applications compatible, do we have enough bandwidth or have i maximized my depreciation on our existing hardware not only can minimize cloud benefits, they can increase the risks of running your business there.

That’s where cloud assessment solutions come in. Whether it’s a purpose-built program implemented by an IT services firm like DynaSis or a brief, self-administered test from a cloud hardware or software provider, a preparedness assessment is an integral component of moving to the cloud. And, if the assessment results indicate your firm isn’t as ready as you thought, the insights you’ll gain can help you refine your plans and realign your goals.