Virtual vs. Hardware Sprawl
Many businesses, big and small, find themselves faced with the issue of hardware sprawl: as tech goes out of date or maintenance falls behind, many companies acquire new machines without getting rid of the old ones. BYOD policies, which we’ve discussed quite a bit on the blog, play their own roles in multiplying the pieces of hardware that access or store company data. Larger companies especially find the task of tracking and maintaining these devices time-intensive, since each employee may have multiple pieces of tech that they use for work. Virtualization can be the answer for some...
read moreDisaster Recovery and the Average SMB
In our previous post, we touched on the alarming trend of SMBs adopting first and planning for catastrophe later. Disaster Recovery (DR) is a crucial component of any company’s tech adoption/maintenance plan, but a surprising number of SMBs seem to have little to no interest in recovery testing. According to the Search Storage Channel article, two major obstacles reported to be holding SMBs back from performing regular recovery testing is time and effort. Since time and talent are both at a premium at SMBs, these are valid concerns, though disaster preparation is important enough that...
read moreSMBs Ahead in Virtualization Adaptation, Surprisingly Behind In Disaster Recovery
SMBs are enthusiastically adopting virtualization, but recent data shows us that they’re still having major security and disaster recovery issues. It’s a classic example of embracing a new technology before being able to handle all aspects of it, including one of the most important–security. While this is exactly the kind of innovative spirit that allows small businesses to thrive, it also shows us that enthusiasm for new technologies is overshadowing the very real need to have solid security and an actionable emergency plan. Interestingly, another recent article indicates that as...
read moreSMBs Believe In Their Immunity To Cyber Crime
Last year, over half of SMBs surveyed in an Applied Research telephone survey for Symantec reported that they did not consider their business a “possible target for cyber attacks.” Though most small business owners are aware of the types of threats that are out there, a business’s small size can lull its owners into a false sense of security. Even if you’re not a huge corporation with vast assets for hackers to pursue, cyber criminals can still profit from your data, or at least wreak havoc in your system. Every business has sensitive data that they want to protect, and are...
read moreGreen IT
Chances are, your company has at least attempted some sort of “green” or sustainability initiative over the past few years, either in an honest effort to make the world a better place or to save money. Unless they’re properly planned and implemented, these projects often falter, fizzling out before they can make any real impact. And they can end up costing you more money if According to the 2012 Energy Efficiency IT Report, 54% of respondents said that they had or were developing “defined and enforced programs or strategies to manage power demand and/or consumption in their data...
read moreHome Base: The Future of Telecommuting
A British company that sent its workers home to work for a day in preparation of the Summer 2012 Olympics found that one third of its employees reported being more productive at home than in the office. The IT World article notes that “On the day, the 3,000 O2 employees saved 2,000 hours of commuting time, with the majority of that saved time (52%) spent working.” We’ve talked about working from home on our blog before, covering topics like workshifting and cloud usage, and how these change the way that companies grow and work gets done. The main concerns when it comes to telecommuting...
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