Cashflow is oxygen... required for the life of your company!

Cashflow is king. Or, as I like to put it, “Cash flow is OXYGEN! No company can survive long without it!”

In our current economic environment, managers at all levels in an organization must be part of a cash flow solution. In particular, effective management of Information Technology (IT) resources, whether by the CEO, CIO or IT department manager, can immediately help a company’s cash flow position.IT resources often require significant spend well in advance of proportional need. Imagine the situation where your IT staff is over loaded, but by the same token there is not enough work to support another body.

What do you do? You can do nothing, you can hire a permanent employee or hire a temporary employee. All of these solutions have pluses and minuses. Doing nothing is very risky. As soon as you stop maintaining your systems your company is at risk. Even if you keep all the systems up to date, the mere fact that you are under utilizing your IT staff, is costing you opportunities.Hiring a permanent employee is never without its risks and expense. Anyone that has ever hired more than a couple of people knows it is an imperfect science. A person may appear to have all the right skills, seem to be a good fit within the organization and may appear as if they may last a while.

How many times have you thought those things only to be disappointed within months.Temporary and contract hires are a little better. But you still have to spend time and money to get them up to speed. They never quite fit within the organization. And often, if they are a great fit, you can’t afford to hire them. Even if you do hire them, you often do so before there is a full time need for them.
Managed IT services have simplified the above options.

IT security, IT Backup and Disaster Recovery, remotely managed Servers and Workstations no longer require on-site staff. In fact, it is rarely cost effective to use high paid professionals for these mundane tasks. What makes even less sense is maintaining and supporting Microsoft Exchange.

Your IT staff often comprise some of the brightest and best employees in your organization. They are far more capable than the demands placed on them by managing unreliable backup tapes, or worrying about the endless stream of Microsoft patches. When you relieve them of the burden of chasing viruses and stopping spam, they are free to help you with your business intelligence projects. They can actually contribute to the bottom line instead of just draining the black ink.
In a perfect world, more cash flows into a company than out of it. But we don’t live in perfect worlds. In order to grow we need to hire employees and make large capital investments. Effectively run companies are now looking at ways to minimize capital expenditures with respect to Information Technology.

The New Paradigm
The new paradigm is Information Technology as an operations expense. Transforming IT operations from capital expense to operational expense has a number of benefits.
1. Simplification. As an operational expense, IT spend can be more easily budgeted and controlled.
2. IT can be a variable operational expense, not a capital expense.
3. IT as an operational expense means predictable cash flow. As a company goes through its business cycles, they don’t pay for wasted capacity.
4. IT costs can be directly correlated to the actual number of users. Financial projections are simplified and accurate.
5. As IT capex goes away depreciation expense, therefore, is also be reduced and eliminated.

Maintenance Free IT, is not just a dream. For companies that intend to survive the current financial storm, it is a necessity. Throwing money at servers, employees and software, in advance of the business to support them, just does not make sense. Pay as your grow is simple, practical and good for cash flow.

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What gets measured, gets done

This is an age old saying in the business world, and it's proven to be true time and time again.
Imagine, however, applying this to your personal and/or family life! I have done so and it's worked wonders.
Stress is lower and enjoyment is higher - yes, we're still busier than ever, but having documented goals and a family "Who we are" standard makes decision making much simpler.
Our sons enjoy being part of "the plan" and getting the family calendar lined up has become a uniting activity.
It's entirely too easy to become spread too thin these days. Document your goals and then apply them with standard (invariable) and defining (focused on the goal at hand) objectives. These posted objectives will hold you accountable and motivate you in so many ways. As Nike says... just do it! But, do what you define as important; don't try to do everything.
Cheers,
--- Bill

Don't worry. Our data is backed up..... I think

Written by Jason Vanzin
How would your company cope if you lost all the data on your network? If you think it wouldn't be so bad, shut your servers down for an hour and two and see the chaos that ensues.

Disaster recovery isn't sexy, but it's one of the most important IT functions within any organization, from a one man shop to an international conglomerate.

Many times I have been called out to new clients that have just experienced some type of failure or catastrophe that requires recovering their data only to find out they were not properly backing up their data. Most businesses either (A) don't have their data backed up like they are supposed to or (B) thought they had it backed up to tape or some other medium only to discover the tape is bad.

As you can imagine, stress levels skyrocket, and wallets open widely to get back what they can.
Analysts estimate that 40% to 70% of tapes backups fail when restores are attempted. Considering the cost of tape drives, tapes, and the software to back up your data, this is a horrific statistic.

How much would it cost an engineering firm if millions of dollars in drawings were lost to a failed server or a fire. Even if hard copies were available, the man hours needed to receate those drawings could be enough to put the firm under.

Not only do you have to worry about your backup failing, you also have to worry about your tapes falling into the wrong hands. Your entire company's data is backed up to tape if you are backing up to tape. If your IT guy is worth his salt, he probably has you taking the tapes offsite in the event of a fire, flood, or some other disaster. The problem with taking them offsite is most the time they are taken home with an employee, which opens you up to the risk of the tape being lost or stolen.
How much would it cost your company if you lost a tape, and someone used it to get all of your clients' social security numbers, bank account numbers, etc? How long would your clients stay with you, and how much liability would you be exposed to?

Tape is a thing of the past, and it should go the way of zip drives and floppies. Newer technologies are now available from companies like EssentiaLink that can provide continuous backups to a fixed storage device, and the data can also be sent via the internet to an offsite datacenter. All data should be encrypted, so there is no exposure to theft and liability.