In this blog entry, I’ll dispel a myth about how long PCs should last and how we can predict when you’ll need to upgrade or replace office PCs…and how making the right decision will result in big dividends for your business.

First, the myth…”By the time I get all my software installed and the machine set up the way I want, it will be time to replace my PC already.”

This statement is a myth because if PC technology is purchased correctly and strategically for your environment and for the specific users that will be on the systems, machines should last several years without needing significant upgrade or replacement. So, how has this myth impacted your business?

The myth only holds true for those that buy the cheapest department store PC or Dell’s cheapest online special. Those machines are engineered for a low price point and are usually not going to hold up well in a business environment. Acquiring sub-performance machines for your business will not only result in a drain on productivity compounded over time, but there will be other financial impacts as well.

It’s also possible to overbuy technology, which is just as costly to the organization. While it’s true that when you buy much more than you need you end up with a fast computer that cost much more than the average PC, you run the risk of the inevitable shift in core technology that occurs every couple years. Part of you’re investment is lost because you are left with a fast computer that still can’t run the latest applications because of technology advances in areas such as processor (CPU) or graphics chipsets (GPU).

The costs of buying incorrectly are quite high, so it’s very important to make the right purchasing decisions at the right time. So, the question you should be asking is, “How do I buy PC technology appropriate to my needs and user environment?”

Centrend has an extensive process for analyzing our customer’s environment which we call our Technology Assessment. While the scope of our technology assessment results in much more than a guideline for purchasing PCs, here a few of the key areas that we look at in the assessment that provide valuable input for making the right PC technology upgrade and replacement decisions:

1. What is the age and type of existing equipment?
2. What maintenance plan has been followed to prolong the serviceability of the machines operating system and components?
3. In what departments and for what specific power users is the best technology required? (Likely strategy is to replace these users computers first and push their machines down the line)
4. What software upgrades of critical systems are anticipated or what new software technology is expected within the planning horizon?

The best advice I can offer is, don’t wait! Take the time now to explore and discover your PC technology situation and have a replacement plan in place so you don’t get blindsided with the sudden requirement to replace a lot of your machines all at once.

Will your organization need to upgrade some or all of your PCs and server or networking technology soon? Do you need help determining when to upgrade and what kind of investment to make? Contact Centrend today for a free consultation and for more information about our Technology Assessment program.

Many organizations use instant messaging (IM) to facilitate communication between employees and to make themselves more accessible to key contacts outside their company. For example, a purchasing agent can send an instant message to a customer service representative (CSR) and ask if a product is in stock. The CSR will receive the message on her screen and be able to instantly reply. If the CSR is not at her desk when the message arrives, the message will be placed in a queue for review upon return to her desk.

Instant messaging has become a great new standard for taking customer service to the next level – it enables fast response, efficiency through multitasking, and the ever-increasing concern that today’s aggressive spam filtering is sending more and more email into an amorphous black hole.

Unfortunately IM’ing is also of the riskiest things you can do on your computer, your network, and your data.

Instant messengers such as AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) or Yahoo Instant messenger expose you to numerous perils you need to be aware of. The nature of some of these threats may surprise you.

Instant messaging clients that are not properly secured can be used;

• To infect your computer with Viruses
• To extract information from your computer by spyware infections
• To send you spam.
• By predators to lure children

If you don’t have the right configuration and message security software in place, your systems are at risk when you use instant Messaging tools. Contact Centrend to learn how you can successfully and safely leverage IM technology in your organization.

A few weeks back I was talking with a prospect about how they back up their data. They are a small company and right now their file storage environment is decentralized; meaning they store data on various machines rather than on a single file server. The owner told me that their backup strategy is to have the office manager go around to all 10 computers every week and plug in a USB hard drive. She then runs a backup using the built in MS Windows backup program. Once a month, the owner would take one of the USB hard drives home and bring back another one; thus maintaining a monthly offsite backup.

With this strategy, any new or changed data not backed up since the last week’s backup would be lost. I asked why he wasn’t concerned about the possibility of losing a week’s worth of data, and he listed several reasons:

1. “Our data doesn’t change that much that someone won’t have a fairly recent copy of the key files somewhere.”
2. We have printouts of all the important stuff and could recreate it if he had to.
3. Even if our computers were down, we could still get product out the door.

That all sounds reasonable, right? But then I challenged him with these questions:

1. Have you ever tested the backup strategy? Can you actually get data off the backup USB Hard Drives?
2. Would it be worth checking to make sure a copy of the data exists somewhere else?
3. Have you ever analyzed your workflow to be sure you could actually do business if your systems were down?
4. Do you consistently remember to rotate the backup drive offsite?
5. How long does it take for your office manager to do the backups? What is this manual process costing the company?
6. Are you certain that the backups are actually being done on schedule?
7. Can you verify that all the data files that should be backed up are included in the manual backup set?
8. With your backup strategy do you realize you would could lose a full month of data if you lost your facility due to fire, flood, power surge, etc…?
9. What if a USB Hard drive was stolen? The data is not encrypted and can be retrieved by anyone that has possession of the hard drive unit!

This past week he called me and asked for help to create an affordable, reliable and automatic backup strategy. His organization hadn’t experienced a failure, but he’d done some investigating since we spoke and realized not only was his organization’s data at great risk, but it was time to move forward with automated, online backups. Here are the highlights of his discoveries:

1. To run the backup, the office manager needed 15 minutes to 45 minutes depending on the amount of data the particular user has. Files in use cannot be backed up, which meant that the user has limited use of their computer while the backup is running.
2. Because of scheduling, work priorities, etc, he found she was actually performing the backups once every couple weeks at best.
3. If she had been doing the backup of every computer, every week as he’d thought, it would be costing the organization approximately $100 a week, before overtime, at her present salary. Nearly five hours per week would be spent running backups!
4. The final straw: He and his office manager tried restoring the data to one of the computers but had no instructions on how to find the files to restore or where to put the restored files.

My new customer was lucky. He found out BEFORE a crash or disaster that he needed to revamp his backup strategy. How sound are your plans? If you’re not sure, contact us for a free consultation and analysis of your backup strategy.

If you’re a manager, supervisor, or HR professional, have you ever cringed at what you thought you saw on someone’s screen as you came around the corner? Was there something inappropriate there before the screen suddenly changed to a website? If employees are surfing inappropriate websites while you’re around, are you concerned what they might be looking at when you’re not in the office? How about after hours if you run multiple shifts?

Allowing (or passively ignoring) employees surfing inappropriate websites introduces many business risks that you need to be aware of:

1. Makes the employees e-mail, along with everyone else’s email more susceptible to spam (unsolicited junk email). While there are things Centrend can do to reduce or virtually eliminate SPAM from your email inboxes, why exacerbate the problem?

2. Can introduce viruses and spyware into the system. Sites with explicit content are often used to distribute spyware and viruses to obtain banking and credit card information, or just destroy data.

3. Sexual Harassment – For example, an employee feels uncomfortable from seeing pornography on a coworker’s screen

Aside from the employee looking at inappropriate web sites, how much time is being lost through their surfing? The same concerns applied to the flood of jokes that get forwarded around.

Unless you take away Internet access completely, you can’t stop 100% of inappropriate or excessive surfing. But there are some things that you can do minimize the problem and mitigate the risks. Here are a few quick tips:

1. Make an acceptable Internet use policy part of your employee handbook. The policy should define when personal surfing and e-mail is allowed (lunch breaks, etc…) and clearly state that inappropriate surfing and e-mail is never acceptable.

2. Your firewall should be able to return information about your users browsing activity. It’s easy to set up and a powerful deterrent against inappropriate or time wasting surfing. If you are planning to monitor however, you should notify the employee that such monitoring can and will take place at random.

3. Beyond monitoring, you can implement a technology solution to block inappropriate content. With the right systems in place, you can filter problem e-mail from getting in or out and you can return a “BLOCKED WITH WARNING” page when an employee attempts to access an inappropriate site.

For a free consultation and assistance in protecting your business from problematic surfing and email issues, contact us at www.centrend.com or 888-558-9550.

Thank you for visiting Centrend’s Technology Results Blog.

Business leaders are faced with making decisions every day about what technology to invest in now and in the future. With all the technical buzzwords and catch phrases, it can be a significant challenge to decide what to do. Experience shows that the wrong technology decision can have serious financial and business consequences.

The mission of our blog is to serve the community as an invaluable resource providing practical advice and strategy for leveraging technology in your business. We promise to communicate in laymen’s terms as much as possible and will include links to our online technology glossary where appropriate.

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Sincerely,

The Centrend Consulting Team