On-line Backup – Speed Bumps

I previously wrote about some of the due diligence questions to look at on looking at hosted, on-line backups.

Michael Krigsman at ZDnet has some personal observations from experience on that very topic.

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Photo Credit gwen via flickr

Real SMB IT: Hardware And That Damn Morning Coffee

Let me paint a picture of two scenarios here, if they have not happened to you yet, buy a lottery ticket, because sooner or later, they will!

Scenario Number 1!

It is too early in the morning, but you manage to pour yourself that coffee, sit down at your desk, and promptly spill that coffee all over your notebook keyboard.

Scenario Number 2!

It is still too early in the morning, you still manage to pour yourself that coffee, power up your computer…. and meet;

a) a black screen
b) a blue screen saying something along the lines of BOOT ERROR KERNEL FAULT IN MPORTDRV.SYS
c) Maniacal laughter as your PC grinds to a digital halt

OK, so number three was exaggerated, but the first two were not!

As an owner or manager of a smaller business, I am sure that your technology service provider set up a server for you. They probably handed some backup tapes to whom ever is sitting closest to the server as well!

But are you actually using that server?

Or are those proposals, invoices, and reports just sitting on each persons computer or notebook?

uh huh??

You probably have most of them on your machine right?

The SMB Takeaway

Your Tech Services provider may have set up your server to back up all your data, but most likely they did not set it up to back up data on every individuals personal computer!

And if your data is not on that server when the coffee meets the notebook keyboard….

Good luck with any data recovery.

Even if you travel a lot and absolutely need your data, every few days make sure that you at least make a copy of it on your server. If your machine dies, at least you have something!

An ounce of prevention….

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Photo Credit cathyse97 via flickr

X-Box Support Incident From Hell

Three  days of X-Box live support hell. And what is worse, the root resolution would is so obvious.

As a parent – I should be able to control, or Administer all my kids accounts, heck I only have one, imagine if I had several of them!

This is being written on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon as I sit on hold for the 7th time, in about 6 hours of calls since Friday night.

You see, my son is a minor, so setting up his X-Box live account needed my name, credit card details – the usual bits and pieces.

Yet through the X-Box console he was able to change some of this information into his name.

So now the name associated with the credit card is no longer me, yet of course my name is not the “gamer tag” identifier.

So basically X-Box support is telling me to Eff Off.

There is a reason that in technology we identify parent – child relationships, in that the child (or leaf) objects inherit permissions or restrictions from the parent (or container) object.

Come on Microsoft, get it together on that.

PS it is still not resolved

Delete Microsoft Word’s Tilde (~) Temp Files

As much as we may not like it Microsoft Word crashes now and then. Now if Word crashes too often, it can actually be caused by other factors in your network, which is beyond the scope of this post.

However in some cases these crashes can be caused by too many temporary files left by previous times MS Word has crashed.

When you open a Word document, the software automatically creates a temporary copy of the document. That temporary file has the same name, but starts with a tilde (~) and is located in the same directory or folder that you opened the file in. It simply looks like this;

Sample MS Word Temporary File

When you finish working on that document, save it, and exit MS Word, that temporary file gets removed automatically.

However if for some reason MS Word crashes on you while editing that document, that temporary file can be left behind. This is normal as when you restart MS Word, this temporary file is what is used to try and recover what you may have lost when the program crashed.

But again, sometimes even after that attempt at recovery, the temporary file can still be left behind.

One small business that I am familiar with had all of their customer related documents in hundreds of folders located on a server, and in each of the folders there were dozens of these temporary documents,  totaling almost a thousand of them scattered through all of the folders.

The Repeated Crash

The sample picture I have above shows Sample.doc with the ~Sample.doc temporary file. In some cases, if MS Word crashed on that Sample.doc and the temporary ~Sample.doc file got left behind, the next time you try and open the original Sample.doc, you have a pretty good chance of MS Word just blowing up again.
And then again.
And then again

Search And Delete

Periodically, search your server document storage folders for left over temporary files starting with that tilde and just delete them.

You may be surprised that many exploding documents no longer explode when trying to open them

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Real SMB IT: The 2 Basic Building Blocks of Improving IT Service Reliability

As a C level executive, General Manager, or Owner of a small to medium business, too often we leave any talk (possibly even thought!) about our investments in technology assets and staff until the time something breaks.

And that is unfortunate!

Cambridge MA based Forrester Research identifies that 80% of businesses identify that their Information Technology (IT) is between “somewhat” and “critical” to business.

Yet still we often live with the mind set of; out of sight,out of mind. (at least until it breaks!)

Question: Have You experienced some of these symptoms?

Consistent and regular failure of your IT infrastructure? Maybe the Internet dies regularly, E-Mail seems to fail more often than it is working, people cannot log in to their workstations or cannot access the servers they need?

Or perhaps this one; You are paying IT staff or suppliers;

And yet…..

You are usually wondering what they do all day?

These are often symptoms of that out of sight,out of mind tendency that we all can have.

Fortunately it is relatively easy to begin changing this mind set without becoming a PhD in Computer Science!

You can change it simply by starting a regular conversation with your Information Technology Management team or supplier on the these two basics of IT service delivery blocking and tackling.

1) Is It Written Down?

If critical information exists only in the brain of one person, that person is a disaster waiting to happen. All IT assets and services must be documented.

That does not mean that you need 500 page manuals on each of your servers! Think of the assembly instructions for some piece of assemble it yourself furniture. As brief as can be while still maintaining all the critical information and relationships among the pieces.

Consider these documents a road map or cheat sheet of how each piece of your IT infrastructure supports and depends on other pieces. This documentation should remain fairly technical, the goal is not to have your grand mother be able to rebuild it (unless she was a computer expert of course!) but it should be explicit and clear enough that any individual with skills in that technology environment can use that documentation as a baseline to either rebuild,or keep moving forward.

As an example; if you are a manufacturing concern, I am quite confident that every time an operator for a particular machining tool leaves, that you are not going back to the machine vendor to re-train a new operator. You have the operating procedures and instructions both for training , and for operator substitution.

Why would you not do the same with your IT infrastructure?

2) Give Me The facts Please!

Our second tool in this basic blocking and tackling is maintaining records and reporting on all issues and requests that have affected your IT service delivery.

At it simplest, in your discussions with your IT Leadership; how many things broke last week? and most importantly, do we know why it broke? And how long did it take us to fix it?

You also want to know how many calls for help and service that your IT staff are dealing with. This should include everything from helping fix that corrupted Marketing presentation, to why that particular person is having trouble printing in landscape mode.

Using my same machine tool example, if that tool is failing regularly, you need to know why. And if regular operator issues are occurring, again, that can begin to point out trends or the requirement for improved training.

The SMB Takeaway

If you only talk to your IT staff or suppliers when things have broken, you will not be successful in monitoring or improving your IT service delivery and IT infrastructure reliability.

Without having to learn techno-speak, just beginning to ask these questions on a regular basis will begin to demonstrate what is happening within your IT organization.

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Photo Credit Leo Reynolds via flickr

Real SMB IT: Consulting Services And Scope

Lets try this little story on for size!

You want to hire a plumber to replace your kitchen sink. So out you go and you get a couple of quotations, here they are;

Vendor number one’s quote states; Replace sink

Vendor number two’s quote states; Replace sink, Re-install existing faucet hardware, modify plumbing to fit new sink

Now which of those above quotations make you feel most comfortable that all contingencies are met?

Which one makes you comfortable that there will not be surprises on the scope of work or billing?

Maybe Number Two??

Unless you have a long history of service and trust with the vendor of quote number one, you can understand that that quotation number two covers the bases in a lot more detail.

Now, How About IT?

For smaller businesses it can be fairly common to use outside contractors and suppliers to perform installation or maintenance of your IT assets. Maybe you don’t have full time IT staff, or perhaps you just have a small IT staff that needs outside help in performing a larger task.

But like the example above, don’t forget that there can be a problem here!

It is a natural, but often invisible problem that exists because your contractor, supplier or VAR (Value Added Reseller) and yourself can be looking at the same event or work, but through different lenses.

Freebies vs. Being Nickled & Dimed

For yourself as a manager in the small business space, you are thinking;  “Well since they are here installing that server anyway, I am sure that they can take a few minutes and do this upgrade to our MS Office applications while they are here….”

But for the Management of that vendor or contractor, they need to have their staff into, and then out of your office in the time frame that they quoted you to install that server, and adding what could be an hour or more of time to upgrade those MS Office installations was not part of their plan.

This type of disconnect can lead to frustration and distrust on both sides.

Your supplier feels that you are trying to drive them out of business supporting you with freebies, while you think that they are being unreasonable and doing a nickle and dime routine because you think that the little thing should only take a couple of minutes.

Get Rid of the Disconnect With Proper Scope

To remove this disconnect when sourcing IT contract work, ensure that your vendor and yourself have an itemized list, or breakdown  of each and every task that are to be performed for any particular contract. This will be the scope of your contract engagement.

This point is also the time to discuss those little extra’s.

You think that a few minutes will upgrade your MS Office applications, and they can respond that with 17 workstations at 10 minutes per workstation (assuming nothing goes wrong!) you are looking at almost another three hours of labor.

The SMB Takeaway

When dealing with IT service providers of any kind, ensure that you have an itemized list of the work that is being contracted for. And ensure that it is broken down to as granular a level as is possible.

It takes a bit more time up front, but it is time well spent.

Because both parties can develop the trust that what was contracted for is reasonable, and mutually beneficial.

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Photo Credit using neighbo.com via flickr

Real SMB IT: Dishonest PC Repair

Venus Flytrap

Every couple of years somebody publishes an exposé on some class or type of service business that is fishing for honesty and integrity.

Disappointing as it is, it had to happen. The August 10 2009 print edition of Business Week (I could not find it on-line) had a brief note by Arik Hesseldahl titled; Shifty PC Repair.

Same idea, set up a basic sting operation where a machine has a known minor defect (in this case just a loose memory chip) and take the machine to various service outlets.

In this UK example, only one of six sting targets actually just fixed the problem. While some over charged for non-existent problems, some actually copied data off the machine. If that is a business machine with possibly confidential information, you see where that can go.

The SMB Takeaway

That behavior is deplorable. Period.

But to reduce that risk, as I have written before, planning for the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) when purchasing IT assets is critical in the small to medium enterprise. That means planning for the fact that sooner or later something will need to be repaired.

So here are two ways to reduce that risk;

1) When purchasing desktops or notebook computers, spend the extra few dollars for the vendors on-site extended warranty service

2) On out-of warranty older equipment, have a trusted local vendor that will do the work on your site, and have the repairs watched.

The key point here, they may be able to squeak in a little padding on the bill, but when they are sitting in your facility they sure can’t use a USB stick & grab your entire Quick Books database.

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Photo Credit Wikipedia

Real SMB IT: For Heavens Sake, Use Templates!

Too often in the small business space we tend to re-invent the wheel. Again, again, and again, then again for good measure.

Case in point, my spouse also works for an SME, she was working on a document that three or four people had contributed to.

The document had to be cleaned and formatted to a consistent look and feel as each contributor had done their part in the way they saw fit. One used text and bullets , one used embedded tables etc.

It was a nightmare.

We worked on that G-D thing until after 1 AM

The SMB Takeaway

Whatever software you are using, take the time to develop styles and templates. It makes filling in the blanks so much easier. Time and time again.

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Who Is Closest To The Server?

This is for Managers in smaller businesses.

I know that Steve or Jane is sitting closest to the spot that you want to put your first real server.

But as you use that server to collect your critical financial information, customer information and invoicing, Are Steve or Jane the the appropriate person to automatically take the server Administrator Job? The new IT Guy or Gal?

I know, it seems easy; stick a tape in every night and assume the best.

But the number of things that can go wrong are endless.

And can Steve or Jane be empowered & accountable for support of that machine? in good times and in bad?

Because if they don’t have those skills, in bad times trying to make them accountable is a different word, it is just the fall guy.

Were You Voted Closest To The Server?

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Photo Credit Manuel W. via flickr

Goodbye To Another Bad IT Guy

First, especially in this economy, I don’t want to make light of anyone losing their job

But let me tell you a story.

I was talking to a Regional Business Development Manager for a Fortune 1000 sized global organization. One of his largest customers (this customer would be a sizable business in the SME space – but as it is a low tech business, IT requirements are not complex) was being stonewalled by this IT staffer with excuses on how difficult some little change was .

A web based tool that this SME was using had some default settings that was causing customer difficulties and causing lost sales.

After about 4 months, it took an end-run around this IT staffer to fix (in minutes) the problem.

Now, apparently, there were previous incidents, but this was the straw that caused the termination.

Could, this staffer have been really over his head? Possibly, I will never know.

But I would be willing to bet that this SME business broke every tenet that I write about here. Abdicating IT, not delegating. IT not being part of the conversation.

But at the end of the day, IT staff are there for one reason. To support and advance the business. Stonewalling is not acceptable.

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