Quality Equipment = Quality Experience

I don’t get to play golf as much as I would like, but you wouldn’t know it from all the golf shirts in my closet.  My wife is incredibly organized and errs on the side of minimalism. As a result, she really takes exception to the fact that I have so many shirts and she takes every opportunity that she can to get me to purge a few of them. In particular, she’s after one light purple “Polo” branded golf shirt that I’ve owned since college. The shirt’s in great shape but it’s age and the fact that I have so many newer, wife approved shirts places it in my wife crosshairs every time she gets an urge to spring clean the closet.

Problem is that I’m pretty partial to the shirt. Back in college I didn’t have a lot of money. So when my mother purchased the shirt for me I knew I had a quality item. Of course, I never would’ve dreamed that the shirt would’ve lasted as long as it has.

I usually tell my wife I can’t give the shirt away because, "I just look to good in it .”  Then she rolls her eyes and tells me, "get over yourself."  She’s right, it’s all too true that I feel like I look good in the shirt, but I think the real reason I keep the shirt around is because it’s a reminder of the quality of buying quality.

Similarly, there’s a lot of technology out there and just like golf shirts, tech comes in varying degrees of quality. Sometimes the technology is so important that it’s really hard to justify purchasing the most "economical" option. Yes, servers from reputable manufacturers such as HP cost more, but the data and software applications that reside on servers are vital.   If something were to go wrong HP has a pretty deep bench and resources that can be brought to bear to correct an issue. The risk of using a lesser-known manufacturer really outweighs any cost savings.

But sometimes the cost to quality trade-off is less cut and dry. Wireless networks for example are often targeted for cost-cutting. It makes sense, wireless networks are a more recent addition to corporate local area networks.  As such, I think they still carry the stigma of being considered optional or add-on.   Early on this may have been the case but now more and more of us have multiple devices that use a wireless Internet connection.  That means that the equipment managing the wireless network has to be more powerful and it has to be smarter and that means it’s going to be more expensive.

At Endsight, each of our clients is assigned a Technical Account Manager or TAM.  One of the TAM’s primary functions is to identify key areas of weakness or inefficiency in the computing environment and to make recommendations to address those areas. Part of the TAM’s analysis includes evaluating and comparing technology options. Endsight’s  Network Operations Team is also continually evaluating new hardware and software that can be safely and reliably deployed across the client base.

Sometimes we end up standardizing on one of the more expensive platforms and sometimes not. More often we find that the most valuable solution (the one that will provide the most "de-hassled" end-user computing experience) isn’t necessarily the most expensive solution. But because were looking for the most quality solution, most of the “economical” technology is rarely the right choice.

Adam Camacho, one of our TAMs, forwarded the included link:   This article by William Van Winkle, details the findings from a wireless performance test that his team conducted.   Adam included this as part of the due diligence he was conducting for one of his clients.

If you feel like it might be helpful to work with a partner that can bring recommendations based on research and analysis of what’s happening on your network, click here and lets schedule a time to meet in person.

Internet Bandwidth Options

Reliable, high-bandwidth Internet connectivity used to be a “nice to have”, but this is quickly changing. Traditionally, office based computer users accessed shared computing resources via a local area network (LAN). Internet outages and slowdowns would disrupt web browsing and e-mail but work could continue because a LAN centric computer network didn’t require an Internet connection to provide users access to resources such as file sharing, print sharing and database access. The only people that were completely shut down by a disruption were remote workers.

Over time, businesses have come to rely more and more on their connection to the Internet. That reliance is accelerating with the advent of cloud computing. Broadly, cloud computing is using the Internet to deliver computing services such as e-mail and CRM. I’ve written about cloud computing before, you can read more about the benefits of cloud computing by clicking here.

Over the next few years it’s expected that businesses will migrate their LAN centric computer networks to a cloud-based computing environment. In a cloud-based computing environment every worker is a remote worker that’s completely dependent upon the organization’s Internet connection for access to corporate computing resources. This dependence really elevates the importance of the quality of the Internet connection. In addition to being reliable and fast, the connection really should have some redundancy built into the design.

At Endsight, we’ve been working with our clients to help them plan for this transition as part of our “all-inclusive” outsourced IT support program. Typically, we employ a design that includes hardware from SonicWALL and two Internet connections from competing Internet service providers (ISP)’s.

The hardware design and integration is fairly straightforward but selecting the right mix of ISPs isn’t as easy as it sounds. There are a lot of options each with its own cost / performance tradeoffs. I thought I’d try to summarize the available options. I’ve also linked to Wikipedia descriptions of each option if you’d like more detail.

Telecom options include DSL, T-1, & MPLS connections. Basically, these options leverage the phone company’s (mostly AT&T) telephone infrastructure. These solutions are tried and true and include service level assurances. You can purchase these options from a variety of providers and resellers. If this option makes sense, it’s important to work with a provider that will offer more support than simply providing a 1-800 number.

WiMax or fixed wireless broadband internet is becoming more and more popular. Instead of providing a connection using wires, this option uses fixed wireless antennas that are installed on the roof of a building. These antennas point to other antennas that terminate a connection into the public internet. This option offers high speeds at an economical cost. Its key limitation is that to work the antenna must have a line of site to the terminating point. This can sometimes be a real challenge.

Fiber-optic communication uses pulses of light transmitted through optical fiber. It is extremely fast and when compared to many other options, its cost / throughput is really economical. The main drawback is that the optical fiber required to transmit a signal is kind of scarce. If your business is in a metro area such as San Francisco or Oakland then your building may be “lit” meaning a fiber connection may already be available in your location. If not, then to take advantage of this technology the Telecom Company or ISP will have to deploy optical fiber and that could be prohibitively expensive. To find out if your building is “lit” send me an email and I’ll be glad to put you in contact with a partner that can help you.

Cable internet access uses the same infrastructure that is used to deliver cable television. It also offers high speed / high throughput internet access for an economical cost. As with fiber-optic communication, cable is dependent upon availability. In addition, cable is less reliable then some of the other options out there. This is less of an issue if there is a redundant connection from a Telecom or one of the other providers.

As I said, this is only a summary of some of the options. There is a lot more to this. If you feel like a deeper dive into your options might be helpful, please feel free to connect with us at Endsight. We included IT Strategy and part of our fixed fee outsourced IT service

Easy Way to Fix Computer Errors

Fix Computer Errors With These Quick Tips
By Kaiser R.

When it comes to fixing computers to make them run faster and smoother again. It can become quite a task if you truly don’t know how to. Here are a few things you can do to make your computer fast again.

As you use your computer files and folders become unorganized in your PC’s way of organizing things. This is called fragmentation. After your hard drive has so many fragments it will take longer for your computer to find files in its own filing system thus taking time to run or open programs and files you are trying to use. With Windows and other operating systems they usual provide you with a disk defragmenter tool which will get rid of fragments found on your computer. This will make loading programs and files much faster.

Get rid of any junk files that you may have. People tend to not clear out their internet browser temporary files folder, cookies, history data, etc. Cleaning this at least once a month will help keep the junk to a minimum and help in improving performance.

I’m sure you all know about scanning for viruses, spyware, and even malware. When you do scan for this make sure you are running in safe mode. For windows you simply turn on your computer and press F8 at the boot screen.

When Operating systems are running in safe mode they only load the bare minimum files and programs to run the operating system. This will make sure you are able to get rid of them certainly. Be sure to use more than one scanner some can find certain infections while others can’t.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kaiser_R.
http://EzineArticles.com/?Fix-Computer-Errors-With-These-Quick-Tips&id=2005769

“Exchange” your POP mail solution

When I first started in the IT services business back in the late 90’s, e-mail was starting to become pretty important to most business. Still the prevailing opinion back then was that when comparing importance of availability, e-mail was a distant second to the company phone system. In fact, people would continual say authoritatively “The phone systems CAN NOT go down!”

Today, pretty much every worker has a cellular phone, and while still very inconvenient, if the corporate phone system does go down, business still functions. E-mail on the other hand has become such a mission critical component of the way we do business, the importance of a reliable, available, and secure system is a huge priority of businesses of all size.

As CEO of a company who acts as the outsourced IT department for dozens of small business, you can imagine we are in a position to make recommendations for e-mail solutions frequently. There are basically two options when it comes to managing e-mail. On one hand you have server based e-mail solutions and on the other you have desktop (POP) e-mail. In the case of the desktop solutions, e-mail is routed from a server on the internet, usually owned by your ISP, to the desktops in your environment where your e-mail will ultimately reside on the PC of the user. A server based solution, all the e-mail for the corporation is funneled to a server on the network and the users access the local server to see their mail.

The desktop solutions are very inexpensive (in many cases free), but are very unadvisable for an organization that values security, reliable, ease of access, or availability to e-mail. A much better idea is to spend the money on an e-mail server. By centrally managing all e-mail boxes in your company, you can now back-up email, control access, and offer a wide range of connectivity options such as remote locations, handheld devices, or web-consol access. Furthermore, since all of the e-mail boxes are centrally located a variety of enhanced collaborative features are available to your team such as shared contacts or the ability to view other workers calendars.

Of the server based e-mail options out there, by far the most popular for small businesses is Microsoft Exchange Server. It is extremely feature rich and because it is so popular, it is much easier to find good IT support than other options such as Novell Groupwise, Lotus Notes, or free software built on Linux. If you haven’t yet moved your business to a server based e-mail platform….there is no time like the present. You won’t regret your decision.